Austin Gray: Tell us when you started and how much revenue you have generated since starting.

Tyler Mumford: I started on August 3rd, 2024. I did $69K through the end of the year and $75K counting the month of January.

Austin Gray: What's going on? It's Austin here with the OWNR OPS podcast. I'm so unbelievably excited about this episode! If you are wanting to start your own local service-based business, then you've got to listen up to this one. Tyler Mumford from Grind Time Stump Grinding has started a business. He was making $175K a year working a tech sales job and decided he wanted to get into entrepreneurship.

If you are falling asleep at your corporate job because you're bored as heck, then this episode is for you. I love the strategy that he has implemented for how to go get his first jobs. I'm not going to spoil it for you; you've got to stick around and listen. Let's jump into the episode!

This episode is brought to you by Jobber. Jobber is the all-in-one software management solution specifically for home service and trade businesses. I remember when I was starting Bearclaw several years ago, I was wondering how the heck I was going to send estimates, keep track of a job schedule, send invoices, and collect payment. When I came across Jobber, I felt like I had found the Holy Grail.

Jobber makes the back end of my business so efficient, and it saves me time as a business owner. So if you are in the early days of starting your home service or trade business, look no further than Jobber as your software management solution.

And if you use our unique link, I get a commission from it, and Lord knows I still have debt to pay down on all this heavy equipment. If you've been enjoying the podcast, this is one way you can support us. Visit go.getjobber.com/OWNROPS; that is G.GTJobber.com/OWNROPS.

Tyler Mumford: Thank you, Austin! I’m excited to be here.

Austin Gray: Tyler Mumford, welcome to the OWNR OPS podcast! Thank you so much for being on.

Tyler Mumford: Dude, thanks for having me! I’m stoked to be here. I was just telling you that I was looking back through our Twitter DMs from about a year ago—pretty much to the day—it was like January 30th of last year, and I was like, “Dude, this podcast is awesome! Thanks for what you’re putting out.” This was way before I ever had an idea about a stump grinding business, so I'm really excited to be here today. It's going to be fun!

Austin Gray: Well, I am unbelievably excited to see that you started your stump grinding business. Tell us about it. When did you start, and how much revenue have you generated since starting?

Tyler Mumford: Yes, I started on August 3rd, 2024. That was my first service. I showed up to a four-stump job without having ever run a stump grinder. That was my first day. I’ve done about $75K, counting the month of January. I did $69K through the end of the year and then an additional $6.5K in January.

Austin Gray: So you started in August?

Tyler Mumford: Yes, that was my first service.

Austin Gray: $75K? Did you say $75K?

Tyler Mumford: Yep!

Austin Gray: Dude, that is awesome! That's incredible!

Tyler Mumford: I appreciate it! It’s been kind of a wild ride. I thought it was just going to be a side hustle. I was in tech at the time; we can talk about the whole story, but I wanted out of tech. I thought it was just going to be a side hustle for some extra cash, but about a month in, I realized this was a little bit more than just a side hustle, and I needed to take this seriously.

Austin Gray: How did you even think about this? Where does the idea come from, like, “I’m going to start a stump grinding business?”

Tyler Mumford: Great question! The first seedling of the idea was in high school. I worked on a tree crew. So I knew that people ground stumps, but I thought tree crews just ground them. I had never seen a big 50-horsepower machine that grinds; it was all the small stuff because I'm from Arizona.

That was kind of the first idea I had. Then recently, in July—I'm going to get the dates wrong, but it was around July 10th—I first heard about this idea on the Chris Corner podcast. He was talking about a B2B stump grinding business. He didn’t come up with the idea; he just runs a little tree crew in Texas.

I was like, “Wait, what is this? I know what stump grinding is, and I know how to sell B2B because I was in the B2B SaaS space.” So I thought, “Let’s dive a little bit deeper.”

From July 10th to August 3rd—about 20 days—I basically had a business up and running and was getting a decent amount of leads in that time. I worked quickly; it just seemed like the right fit for me. I'd been looking to get out of tech for years, and that was kind of the thing that stuck out to me for some reason.

Austin Gray: Okay, so starting the business, you've got the chicken-and-the-egg problem. You need equipment, you need customers, you need marketing, you need jobs, you need revenue, you need cash flow. How do you approach all this, and what was the timeline in which you layered all of that in?

Tyler Mumford: So the very first thing I did was determine how expensive some of this equipment is—it's not nearly as expensive as some of the stuff you run, but the stump grinder is still expensive. I wanted to see what the value is and whether there was an actual need for this service.

What I actually did—this is also from Chris Corner, so I want to give credit where it’s due—I scraped a list of tree companies in Boise, Idaho. I looked up at Chat GPT for a similar city to where I live in Provo, Utah. The Salt Lake City area came up. I asked, “What’s a similar city in population, amount of trees, climate, all of that?” It said Boise, Idaho.

So I thought, “Alright, sweet! Let’s pull a list from Boise,” and I started cold texting Boise tree companies. I said something like, “Hey, I know a little bit about stump grinding. Are you in need of a good stump grinding sub?” You can call that dishonest if you want; I get it. I was not planning on being up in Boise, but I wasn’t taking money from anyone. I was just kind of seeing what the industry was like without burning any future leads.

I got hits fast—dudes were saying, “Can you be out here in an hour? I have six stumps for you.” I was like, “Oh crap! I didn’t know what to do with those phone calls.” But I started talking pricing with those guys and figured out a price that made sense up there, which I bet made sense down here.

I did the exact same thing to generate some leads, but before I started generating leads in my area, I went and built a relationship with a dealership. I am not machine-oriented; I had never towed a trailer before this business or run anything like a stump grinder. So I wanted a dealership relationship that could help fix things if they went down. I found the main brands of stump grinders, built a relationship with the dealer, and he told me, “Hey, you can rent this thing for a month. That rental will roll into the price of the machine if you decide to buy it.”

The rental price was around $4,500, and I thought, “Alright, I know I can get some leads. I can get this machine for $4,500; the most I'll be in the hole is $4,500. I’m not going to lose that much.” So I found a trailer rental, and then I had to buy a truck. That was just an excuse to buy a truck, which I wanted.

That's kind of how I balanced those few things and started reaching out to get jobs. I landed two jobs on my first Saturday, August 3rd; I picked up the grinder for a month’s rental on the Friday before, figured it out on that first job, and the rest is history. That’s the machine I own today.

Austin Gray: That is awesome! Now, what was the price of the truck that you bought, and what was the price of the trailer?

Tyler Mumford: The truck was $35K; it was an F-150. If I could go back, I would have gone with a ¾ ton diesel, but neither here nor there; that's the truck I have now, and it's been awesome to me. The trailer was one I ended up buying after renting a month from Facebook Marketplace for around $700, which was a good deal.

The trailer I use now is a 7x14 dump trailer; it’s about $12K. My stump grinder was $55K, which was by far my biggest expense. I didn’t put any money down on the trailer or truck. I traded my paid-off car for the truck. For the stump grinder, you had to put 20% down as it was a business startup loan, and I got pretty shafted on the interest rate for that, but we’re paying it off, and it's great.

Austin Gray: Yeah, that’s fantastic! And nothing like a high interest rate to motivate you to pay off that equipment, right?

Tyler Mumford: Exactly! 100%! I figured out what I was doing in that first month, and my payment ended up being like $990 a month. I was like, “Three stump jobs? I’m cruising!”

It’s crazy whenever you break down what they charge you to rent that machine and then figure out what it actually costs when you just buy it and finance it.

Austin Gray: Right, if you look at my finances from that first rental month—the $4,500 I spent—that business does not look great as it was four or five times the price on what I pay month to month to own the machine now.

I always tell people it can be a scary number; don't get me wrong—if you don’t have a lead or don’t know if this thing is going to work, I don’t recommend buying a new stump grinder that entails a $990 payment. But I was already confident I could land some jobs by then.

Tyler Mumford: Yep! I did $9K in my first month and $23K in my second month, so I was like, “Oh, we can handle a stump grinding payment!”

Austin Gray: For sure! Whenever you break it down on the annual piece, it’s like, “Alright, it’s $12,000; I can figure that out in some way, shape, or form.”

What I love about what you did is that I hear of a lot of people asking these questions like, “Hey, I want to start; how do I think about this?” It’s like, man, you just go—just do it—and you’ve done that. That’s why I’ve been so excited to host you on this podcast, because in that beginning phase it’s like, “Yeah, $4,500 rental? Who cares? You just figured it out!”

You did it, figured it out, and then found a way to decrease that cost. That's what I love watching about you, and I love seeing your posts out there.

Tyler Mumford: Thanks, man! I appreciate it!

Austin Gray: So you’ve got $35K in the truck, which you traded a personal vehicle for. I’m sure you’re driving that personally too, right?

Tyler Mumford: Yeah, 100%.

Austin Gray: And then the trailer—did you pay cash for that, or did you get a loan?

Tyler Mumford: I got a loan on my personal credit. I have good credit, so I used that as a... you know, I had the money for it. I’m not rolling in cash, but I could have paid for the trailer or whatever.

I was just like, let’s keep some backup. I didn't know how the winter months were going to be, so that was the biggest thing starting in August since winter was coming. I had no money down on the trailer and then 20% down on the stump grinder.

Austin Gray: And what's your payment on the trailer?

Tyler Mumford: The trailer payment is about $170 a month. I think it's on a five-year loan. I try to double my truck and trailer payment every month just to pay that off a little faster.

Austin Gray: Fantastic! That’s awesome. I think that’s super smart too; just in a startup, you don’t know what the winter months are going to look like, especially where we live, Utah and Colorado. You've proven to figure it out.

Tyler Mumford: Getting gritty in the winter, that's for sure! I’ll tell you that it's not quite as easy as the summer months.

Austin Gray: Well, cool! I wanted to start with the finances because everyone’s going to ask, “How did you come up with $55,000, $12,000, $35,000 for a truck?” It’s like, “Well, if you have good credit, just go get a loan for them and focus on optimizing cash flows.”

You took the same strategy I’ve taken. Identify the machine you need and then go rent it for the first month. Make sure you can get the jobs for it, and if you can’t get the jobs for it, you’re just out that money. You turn the machine back in, and you go back to your W2 tech job. That was my perspective as well.

But I bet it jumpstarted you to figure out your marketing and sales to pay for that $4,500 rental.

How did you do that in that first month to get more jobs?

Tyler Mumford: The first month was really about using one strategy. I don’t want to give myself too much credit; it was just cold texting! I think cold texting is wonderful if you're selling to tree guys.

About 95% of my work is sub-work. I hope to bring in more of my own leads this year, but the beautiful thing about sub-work is I got reviews the whole time.

The strategy was I used software called Outscraper to scrape tree leads from all the cities around Salt Lake through Park City—anywhere I was willing to drive to do a stump job.

I scraped tree company leads from there. The thing about tree companies is that for the most part, their numbers on Google are usually their cell numbers unless you’re getting towards the bigger level of tree companies with an office. Most of these tree guys are owner-operations—they’re gritty guys—so a text works really well.

I would send a cold text to them; it was something along the lines of, “Hey, my name's Tyler. All I do is stump grinding in the Salt Lake County and Utah County area. Do you own a machine, or are you in need of a reliable sub?” That was the first text, along with a picture of my business card to legitimize me a little bit. The business card had my website and email on it, so they could see, “Oh, this guy actually does stump grinding and doesn’t just do it on the weekends or whatever.”

I would text 40 tree companies on day one, and on day two, I would send to the same list, just following up with a little arrow that works wonders. Some guys don’t see the text from before, so when they see the “just following up here,” they call me thinking I’m trying to give them business.

They’re like, “Hey dude, what’s up? I just saw your follow-up text.” I’m like, “Oh yeah, I’m a stump grinder.” Then they’re thinking, “Oh crap! I shouldn’t have called this guy,” but now I have them on the line.

I’d just follow up pleasantly every single time. Towards the end of these conversations, I’d share my pricing and how I work. I was usually doing this while out on jobs, right?

Then I’d say, “Hey, if it’s not too much trouble, I would love to add you to my list.” I’d text these tree guys at the beginning of every week to see what you have for me. If you don’t have anything for me, just ignore the text. But if you do have something, just let me know, and I’ll get you on the schedule, and we can get it done.

So every week through the warm season, I’ve tapered this down in the winter just because most guys aren’t doing too much on the tree side. But every week in the spring, summer, and fall, I say, “Hey, any stumps for me on Monday morning?”

Then we get texts coming in, we get people on the schedule, and we get going.

Austin Gray: This is so awesome! This episode is brought to you by Bearclaw Media. Bearclaw Media is a growth agency for service- and trade-based business owners. If you want to grow your business and you offer a high-ticket service in local service or trades, there’s a really good chance that we can help you grow with Facebook, Google Ads, and content creation for platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.

If you're interested in growing your business, check out bearclawmedia.com.

Listeners, this is gold right here! If you’re trying to start a business, you’re hearing it from a B2B SaaS sales guy starting a local service business, and you’ve just implemented a sales process that works.

So, let's recap that for the listeners. Every Monday morning, you scrape the list with Outscraper, and then I forgot to mention my cold text software used to be called Porter House. It’s called Straight Text now. I think the beautiful thing about using a Mac and an iPhone is that it sends the text through your phone, and it sends them in blue, not green, like some of the other softwares.

So the contractor, if they have an iPhone, receives the text in blue, which has a way higher response rate. It's kind of funny that that’s the case, but it’s true.

What's this one called again?

Tyler Mumford: It's called Straight Text now.

Austin Gray: Okay, so we have Outscraper, and now Straight Text. Are you able to manage campaigns in there?

Tyler Mumford: Yeah, in Straight Text, you're able to manage campaigns. I just have one for cold outreach, which isn’t even a campaign. It’s just a single cold text that we’ll send to 40 people.

You upload the list, and backing up a few steps, Outscraper gives you a CSV file that you can download or an Excel file that you put into Google Sheets. Those Google Sheets are usually a huge messy thing; I have a template of how I clean that up. I can send it over to you if you want, but I make the data really nice in Google Sheets and then take 40 people a day, create a new tab at the bottom, download it as a CSV file—I’m getting really technical here.

Upload that to Straight Text. You do need a Straight Text premium account so you can upload CSVs and text the CSV group. Straight Text is like $26 a month; it’s the best investment I’ve ever made.

You upload that list, write a text that you want to send to your 40 contacts for that day, hit send, and it takes over your Mac and starts sending texts to each person through the messaging app.

I also have another sheet for every time I talk to someone who's interested in potentially working with me. I call it my drip contact list or drip text list. That’s the one I upload every single Monday—I just redownload it because I’m usually adding people to it—and then I send a quick text: “Any stumps for me today?”

Austin Gray: Incredible! Thank you so much for sharing this! Guys, this is coming from a B2B sales pro. He’s been in software at the highest level, leveraging technology and applying it to local service businesses, so take a page out of his playbook here.

Let’s talk pricing. How do you price your stumps?

Tyler Mumford: Yeah, just real quick on that last part, my deliverable for you next time I'm coming on—I’ll have a cold email. I'm working on that right now. I think cold email has a really good opportunity with bigger tree companies.

How I price stumps is super straightforward. There’s a starting price. There are tons of guys on Facebook groups who will say you’re dumb for doing this. Honestly, those guys are way too harsh on anyone trying to learn stump grinding, so I’ll just put that disclaimer out there.

You price per inch of diameter of the stump. Usually, you’ll take the widest piece of the diameter of the stump—where it goes into the ground on one side and where it goes into the ground on the other side—and multiply that by a price per inch. In Utah, I price $7 per inch. I will up that if I'm going directly to a customer—that’s kind of my contractor pricing.

I get a ton of people responding to my tweets or my posts on X like, “Dude, you don’t price enough,” or whatever, they’re playing armchair quarterback, as you like to call it. You have to have a good price for contractors.

The trade-off is that with one contractor, I can win. I mean, there's one contractor that has given me $15K so far, so yeah, I'll take $50 off a job to go get that other $15K from that contractor.

Sorry for that tangent! So $7 an inch to grind. I would upcharge if you need all the mulch hauled—that’s why I have that dump trailer—but I charge almost double for that because it takes so much longer to haul.

It’s more work because I don’t have a mini skid yet, so I try to upcharge. I don’t do that too much and then that’s your starting price. If people want you to grind deeper than 8 to 12 inches, which is my standard, I have a higher price for that—for like concrete laying or a lot of roots around the stump—I’ll upcharge, or if there’s tight access to the backyard, I’ll upcharge.

But the starting price is that price per inch. My minimum is $150 to show up at anything under that. If I'm doing that stump in ten minutes, so $150 for ten minutes of work feels like a pretty good trade.

Austin Gray: Yeah, that’s great! And everybody—there will be some people who blast you, “Why do you have to have a minimum?” It’s like, “Because I have a truck, I have a trailer, I have to drive there, and I have to mobilize back home.”

It takes you arguably almost as much time to do a ten-minute stump in regards to your time block for the day right as it takes to do one that might take you half an hour.

When you add mobilization and demobilization, you mentioned hauling the mulch—are there any other opportunities for upsells on this service?

Tyler Mumford: Yes! Hauling the mulch is the first one. By the way, you can kind of sell the mulch back to the homeowners. Tell them, “Dude, you're going to want this mulch! How much does mulch cost you from the store?”

You have flower beds over there—this is free! This is free and it’s organic and it’s great!

If you just want to be a grind-and-go guy, which makes a lot of sense when planning your day, it just makes your day a little bit easier if you don't have to haul anything to the dump.

That’s an upsell—hauling the mulch. The second upsell, which I haven’t really dabbled in much, is bringing in topsoil. After you haul the mulch, you backfill the hole with topsoil, making sure it’s all graded out and looks really nice.

Then the last one would be if it’s in a grassy area, you could lay sod. There are a few things there that would work as upsells to the product.

Everything that you add there just adds a little bit of complexity to your day. It’s not something I’m turned off by; it’s more about figuring out what I want to add. What’s actually worth it for being there?

But I would say those are the three things that most guys are doing when it comes to upsells.

Austin Gray: And your trailer is a dump trailer, right?

Tyler Mumford: Yes! You could easily load up with topsoil!

Austin Gray: Oh yeah, yep! So I'm just curious—how would you do that? Would you put your stump grinder on the front of the trailer and then section off a section and then dump topsoil in the back?

Tyler Mumford: Yeah, that’s the hard part. You could put the stump grinder on top of the topsoil and back it off, which I've done before.

With the mulch part—bringing that conversation back to hauling the mulch or the wood chips—this is why you need to charge a lot for it because the customer just thinks you’re hauling it. But for me, I’ve got three more jobs in this county and the dump's down in the county south of us. I have to go drive down there and figure out where to dump that day, which just adds a lot of complexity.

I've found some ways to deal with it by finding landscape yards that will take my mulch for free now. That’s great because I find a few in every city; I can just pull up to the big pile of mulch and dump my stuff without talking to anyone.

Yeah, that’s been a big learning lesson—yeah, you can always add money to a job, but sometimes adding money to that job will actually lose you money for the rest of the day because you’re just not being smart on your route.

With topsoil, I don’t think you need a dump trailer full of it for the size of stumps you’re working with here. Usually, you'd take the wood chips out down to about a foot below grade, then just add a foot of topsoil over the wood chips. So it’s not a ton.

Austin Gray: You could actually do bags of topsoil—that's probably the easiest. I’ve done that before in my truck bed, and that’s a good way to do it.

Tyler Mumford: I usually don’t need to fill the whole trailer.

I want to get a bit operational now, so I'm just going to follow up: What kind of trees are you grinding out there?

Tyler Mumford: We pretty much have everything—not I don’t want to say everything, and I'm not a tree expert, so a disclaimer—if there are arborists listening to this, please don’t get in my DMs and destroy me. Half the time, I don’t know what I’m grinding!

We have most trees here in Utah. I grind stumps: it’s a stump—I’m getting the stump out for you!

I do a lot of pine, a lot of ash, a lot of maple. We don’t have oak out here; down in Florida and the south, they make huge money on oak stuff because oak is really hard to grind, so they charge even more for oak grinding.

We don’t really have that out here, so it’s mainly those three that I run into the most. There are tons—I’ll do like eight fruit trees out of their little vineyard in the back when they want to replant. They want to plant back in the same hole, so I’ll just do eight fruit stumps. Those are super easy.

There’s a lot of different types of jobs; it’s probably not super interesting stuff for the podcast, but the reason I’m bringing that up is because we grind and chip a lot of pine. The pine is heavily acidic, and it does affect the soil composition.

I think this is a little too nerdy for this podcast, so I'm going to switch topics. I was just curious if you could grind some of that stuff, then mix it with topsoil bags and just put it back in place to let it decompose over time. I don’t know the answer to that question; maybe something worth looking into.

From what I’ve heard too, if you put topsoil over it—and you’re bringing it back down to grade and putting topsoil over the top—there’s a lot of organic matter, which is good for the underlying soil, but it doesn’t look great on the top.

You want the top looking clean with topsoil or clean like if you're in a black mulch bed at a really nice house—the mulch looks clean and dark but it just doesn’t blend in the same, so it's about making sure it looks good for those customers.

Austin Gray: Okay, average ticket size?

Tyler Mumford: The average ticket is around $300. I just did this this morning; it was right around $300. I think it might have been about $290.

Austin Gray: And is that on, like, one stump, or is that grinding multiple stumps? You're doing $7 per inch, if I remember correctly?

Tyler Mumford: Yes, exactly. A typical job probably is one stump. I would say not a majority, but about half to 60% of my work is just one-stump jobs.

You’re showing up, and if it’s big or small, it doesn’t matter—if it’s small, it hits that $150 job minimum. Bigger stumps—I've had one that was about 8 feet across—that one was $1,200 for one stump.

So it runs the gamut there, but a lot of it is just one stump that a tree crew is removing, and I'm coming in to take care of it.

I’ve done a 20 stump job for a city that was a $4,500 day, which was awesome—that’s my biggest day yet. I've done another few $3,000 to $4,000 days for tree companies that are taking out a lot at a time.

You just have to be ready for anything, but I would say my sweet spot is anywhere from one to four stumps at a location. The ticket I'm saying is what the contractor is paying me for, so on average, I'm getting paid about $300. That includes that $4,500 city job and my $150 job minimums, which all averages out to about $300.

Austin Gray: I got you. How long does it take to say you have to do three or four twelve-inch stumps?

Tyler Mumford: I mean, out of there in a half hour. The grinder is probably running for about 20 minutes, and I try to get set up and take down as fast as possible. Right there, that’s 48 inches times $7; we’re working with about $350, and you’re in and out of there.

Austin Gray: Yeah, exactly! You're in and out of there for a half hour. On most days, like in the summer, it’s a hybrid between bigger ticket and lawn care, right?

So I’m willing to drive an hour from my house for a stump job. In Salt Lake County, I live in Utah County, so I’ll have like three days in Utah County and two days in Salt Lake County in a week.

Usually, stumps aren’t super time-sensitive, so I can game it a little on my routes.

But you’re not making most days’ money from one job; it's showing up and doing that four-twelve-inch stump job, and that’s job one of like eight. You can put a really good day together if you’re smart with your routes and pricing.

Tyler Mumford: Yes!

Austin Gray: What is your goal with this? How long are you going to be owner-operating doing eight jobs a day?

Tyler Mumford: It’s a good question! Right now, I’m super biased toward stacking as much cash as I can in the bank. I was listening to your podcast that you released with the septic guy who did 2.3 with three guys in six months. That’s insane!

What stuck out to me was the beauty of the owner-operator model in the early days. If you want to build something bigger, the owner-operator concept is probably not the most ideal for the biggest things in the world.

But, in the early days, it allows you to stack cash, know what you do really well, and learn what works and what doesn’t while you’re out on the job. You’re actually feeling it—when you underprice something, when you overprice something, when you feel like, “Oh, this was really worth my time, and this isn’t.”

If I just had an employee doing that for me, I wouldn’t feel those things as much day-to-day. The employee could be cursing me out under their breath while I’m sitting in my office, and I wouldn’t know it. But when I'm out there, I’m feeling: “This was not worth $100,” or whatever.

So it allows you to really shape your business model while stacking cash. My margins are super high; everything I make goes back into the bank account, enabling me to have a lot of dry powder for the future.

My ideal goal is to have enough consistent business early in the spring again that I’ll think, “Alright, I need to go get another truck, another trailer, and another stump grinder and then run both me and another guy.”

I think that would be a super profitable model with two trucks running. After that, I am not sure what the market is like for a massive stump grinding company in Utah.

I don’t know—I know I’ve got competitors out there. I know there are a lot of tree companies, but I feel there’s room to run here.

But I’m just stacking cash, making a lot of profit, and really enjoying my day-to-day. It’s not a bad life. I can also figure out whether I want to stay with stump grinding or ditch it for something else like grading roads or clearing land.

There are a lot of options there that I see myself potentially liking in the future, but I don’t have to rush it. It’s not a specific, clear goal, but I’m trying to build as much need for the service with the sub-model as possible.

Then hopefully, I can build into two or three stump grinders running at a time.

Austin Gray: I love it! I love the mindset! It’s awesome to see you putting it into action.

What was the driving force behind leaving your $175K W2 tech job? There’s got to be something more than the money, so I’m interested to hear—what aspect made you want to get outside?

Tyler Mumford: For sure! One disclaimer—it’s hard to write this into a tweet because you want it to sound good and snappy. The $175K is what I earned when I hit my quotas. I was a good B2B seller, so I usually hit my quota, but my base salary was half of that.

The other half came from commission; so, the first thing is I feel I can make more consistently from stump grinding than I could selling in tech because sales can go up and down depending on the product you’re selling.

There are a lot of things outside your control at a big tech company on what they decide to do with competition, pricing, commission structures, and those things.

It’s been a slow push toward my own thing since I started earning money in college. I did door-to-door sales, like the pest control guy you interviewed; I was a pest control rep for two summers. I knew I liked sales from that but definitely wanted out of the door-to-door industry, so I got into tech.

From there, I started building what I earned in tech. I really didn’t like that one Q2 I killed it—I think I did 300% of my goal, and it was awesome! Huge commission check!

Then I show up the first day at Q3, and they say, “Oh, dude, great job last quarter, but now you get a smaller room to work.”

Now, instead of the whole state of California, I’m now limited to just half and we’re also going to bump down what we’re paying you per deal. I was like, “I have no control over my future here. It's great to earn some checks, but I want that control! If I'm going to make money, it’s going to be because of me. If I’m going to make a lot of money, it’s going to be because of me, and no one can come in tomorrow and say, ‘You have to price your stumps differently.’ That’s up to me!”

Outside of the money drive, money drives us all a little bit, but it’s not a complete money decision—it’s an enjoyment and control over my life decision.

I can't tell you how much I appreciate my life since I left my W2 job! My wife comments every day, “You’re just like so happy!” I’m stoked to be here; I’m stoked to be alive, you know?

Austin Gray: What do you think it is? Because my wife has said the same thing since I started my business—like, “Dude, you have completely changed! Your energy is all the time!”

I still get excited whenever we close a new job, no matter how big or small. I love being out there in the field with the guys. We complete a job, send the invoice, and it’s like, “Yes!” What is it about it? What changed?

Tyler Mumford: I really think a lot of it comes down to that feeling of control and dictating your life and what you want to do.

I choose to work 12 hours in a day; that's a complete choice now. Whereas before, it felt like you were forced to work eight. I could have done my job in five or six hours.

There was someone telling you what you had to do, even though I was a hard worker. I’ve always been a hard worker but wanted to get my day job done in five or six hours so I could go work harder at the gym or on a side hustle.

Now it’s all focused on one thing, which I think is exhilarating! I’m not quite sure what the answer is because a lot of my days involve hard physical labor. I remember one of my days doing stump grinding; it was a long summer. I think I worked 12 or 13 hours that day.

I mean, I made a good amount of money, came home covered in mulch, dirt, and dust, and my wife thought I’d be low-energy that night, but I was pumped to be alive, and I feel that way today!

I’m still not exactly sure why that is. I have tons of friends still in tech, and when I tell them what I do day-to-day, they’re interested, but it’s like they’re often shocked.

They’ll say, “You do what?” and think, “That sounds miserable!” And I’m like, “What are you talking about? This is awesome!”

Part of it is how I’m wired as a human, and then the other part is just having that control.

Austin Gray: Did you do any sort of manual labor growing up?

Tyler Mumford: Yeah! I was on a tree crew in high school. I did some landscaping and worked on a tree crew, so that’s kind of where that came from. I also played athletics; I played football and lacrosse in high school and lacrosse in college.

There’s something to being connected—sometimes I don’t feel like I’m working hard until I start sweating. I think that’s from athletics and a bit of blue-collar labor.

I could work a whole day in the office and feel like, “Dude, I didn’t work that hard today,” but if I’m out grinding, I’m like, “Hell yeah! I’m getting after it today!”

I don’t know why that is; I think it’s just wired into me.

But it’s a real thing! I feel the exact same way! Earning a dollar while sweating is so much different than, like, Jobber just sponsoring the podcast—it’s cool and great to have recurring revenue coming in.

I’m very appreciative of that, so like Jobber, if you’re listening to this, yes, I am very appreciative of it!

But that does not feel the same as ripping it outdoors with the chainsaw and ripping some trees, covered in sweat and dirt. You feel like you actually did something that day!

Tyler Mumford: 100%! I agree! I think a lot of people, even those who haven’t experienced it before, would like it more than they think they would if they got out and did it with me; it’s just fun!

Austin Gray: Where did you play lacrosse?

Tyler Mumford: I played at BYU—Brigham Young University. I actually don’t talk about this much on X. I’m currently the defensive coordinator for BYU Men’s Lacrosse as well.

I balance a unique set of things because lacrosse is considered an extra mural or club sport in the west. I did this last year while I was in my tech job. We start practice at 5:15 a.m. and are out by 8:00 a.m., which works pretty well with most of my day.

We have trips coming up, and most of those will be before it gets warmer, but it’s not something I talk about much!

Austin Gray: What years did you go to BYU?

Tyler Mumford: I graduated in '21. My first year was in '14. I went on an LDS mission to Fiji, where I lived for two years, so there are a lot of stories there. I came home and technically was in school for five years total, counting ’14, so I graduated in ’21.

Austin Gray: Very cool! One of my friends who I played safety with at CSU transferred out to BYU and played there, so I didn’t know if you were over there at the same time. He was finishing up in 2014.

Tyler Mumford: Okay, cool! Yeah, I was a true freshman then.

Austin Gray: That’s awesome! I didn't know you played at CSU; that’s incredible!

You guys always have—like, I always hated playing BYU because our student section’s awesome!

Tyler Mumford: The student section is awesome!

Austin Gray: I don’t know; it’s like you were just the team that was full of 11 guys that all worked hard and were all on the same page the whole time. You played from the start of the whistle to the whistle blows every time.

Tyler Mumford: Yes! It’s pretty impressive how consistent BYU is!

Austin Gray: It’s an awesome university; I’ve really enjoyed it! I actually live just a five-minute walk away from there, so I usually walk there in the morning to coach practice, then walk back home, and it’s, “Alright, let’s put on the Carhartt sweatshirt and let’s rip today!”

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Austin Gray: For our listeners, what's the name of your business?

Tyler Mumford: Grind Time Stump Grinding is the name.

Austin Gray: Grind Time! I love it! Yeah, Grind Time, one word. I think I have like over 55-star reviews now, so we’re cruising!

The coolest thing is outside of a little bit of SEO—so I pay a friend who runs a small SEO company about $400 a month. He gives me a deal on it, but he hosts my website and runs my SEO.

Outside of that, I haven’t spent a dollar on marketing; everything has been through direct sales and referrals.

That’s how I've built my business. I’m looking into more marketing stuff for the future, but it's been cool because I haven’t spent much on marketing—just direct selling.

But what the tree guy doesn’t know—and it doesn't hurt anyone—but as the customer always sees me pull up in my truck and trailer with my Grind Time Stump Grinding branding, and it’s not the tree removal company's branding, they think, “What’s this all about?”

I’m just like, “Oh yeah, I’m a sub. I know these guys well.” By the end of the service, they don’t care who is grinding their stump; the cool thing is I’m knocking on the door telling them I’m with this tree service, and at the end of it, I can ask them for a review.

I didn’t even pay for the marketing to get that review! So that’s been pretty sweet—kind of gamified the review system a little bit.

Austin Gray: That’s awesome! You started in August and you’re at 48 reviews now—that’s incredible! You probably heard Bod talk about it—B runs all of our SEO—but reviews are so important, and you are crushing it.

So if anybody is listening to this and thinking about starting, go back and listen to this episode like three times! Because Tyler literally has the playbook for this if you want to start a business as an OWNR OPS.

Tyler Mumford: I’m excited!

Austin Gray: It makes me really happy to see other people who see the world in a similar way. Starting a business is cool, but those little things, like earning a dollar while sweating and getting dirty in the field—that just feels good.

Sure, some people feel good about it; others think it’s stupid. “Why would you go shovel snow?”

But, for each their own, right?

Tyler Mumford: Yes!

Austin Gray: Real quick—I know we're wrapping up here. On the playbook side of things, I’ve struggled a little since I started my X account and LinkedIn. I post a decent amount about this, and I get asked all the time in DMs, “How did you do it? What are you doing?”

At first, I thought, “This is awesome! I’ll hop on a phone call with every single person.” But after one week of a lot of phone calls, I was like, “Dude, I don’t think I got anything done to help me build my business!”

So I sat down for two weeks and spent about 100 hours at night (so I could still have my days) and put everything into a playbook. This is not me trying to be a course guy at all; I’m just trying to focus on my business.

To anyone who DMs me, I’ll answer any question you have, and I will send you the link to this little playbook you can buy. I priced it at a no-brainer price—like $149 or something.

I’m not just trying to plug myself, but it covers the Outscraper thing, everything I did to land jobs, how I got my truck, trailer, and stump grinder, and then covers every brand of stump grinder and every machine. It’s about 85 pages long!

So I didn’t gatekeep any of it, but the only thing I don’t do is post about it publicly because I don’t want anyone in Utah knowing about it.

So if you DM me and say, “Hey, I’m from Virginia,” or wherever, I’ll get you the link and you can buy it from me. You can reach out with questions later if something isn’t clear.

It helps save my time because I’m dead-focused on building this thing as big as I can.

Austin Gray: Yeah, for sure. The reality is there’s nothing wrong with that! I’ve seen a lot of people bash the whole—yeah, I want to address this right now because I’ve seen some of it going on, where you’re obviously online, you've started your business, and you've created a little playbook that you’re charging $149 for.

If you are considering starting a stump grinding business, Tyler has already proven this model works!

I had this conversation with Logan, who owns a cleaning business. He sat down with Johnny Robinson, who sells a coaching program on Twitter, and Logan said, “I just paid for the coaching program, and since I did that, my business has radically changed.”

I’ve always been a big fan. I paid Les O’Hara, the contractor coach, who charges like $15K. From that $115K investment, I will take those lessons from someone who has built—and sold—three contracting businesses.

A lot of people bash courses right now or those trying to be online gurus. I don’t think you’re trying to become a guru; I genuinely think you’re trying to build a stump grinding business, and you’re an entrepreneur.

So you're saying, “I have something valuable here that other people want, so why not monetize it.” Because guess what? Your equipment is expensive; your truck is expensive; your trailer is expensive; my equipment is expensive; my truck and trailer are all expensive to offer this service!

The faster you can pay that equipment down, the better off you're going to be to deliver five-star service.

So I personally have no problem charging money online for services I’m doing! I'm running ads for people; I do sponsorships!

Every dollar I am getting is just getting reinvested back into my business because that allows me to run a better business, faster, and deliver more five-star service.

I had to address that because I see people knocking it online and wouldn’t think anything you’re doing is wrong.

Charge the crap out of those $149 services and pay that stump grinder off!

Tyler Mumford: 100%! That’s exactly how I've been thinking!

Two things on that—you said the equipment is expensive, but what's more expensive that people don’t quite get—and it’s totally fine—I think I made this mistake a ton before I ever ran a business when asking guys for their time.

I thought, “Oh, this guy just wants to talk about what he does for business,” which might be true, but also, like an hour in the middle of my day—I usually make about $200 to $300 an hour grinding, you know?

So an hour talking to someone in the middle of my day is actually $200 to $300 that I’m losing by not grinding stumps. It sounds funny, but I was just like, “I cannot keep doing that!”  

So that’s the first piece.

The second piece is that I’ve spent a ton of money on courses. I’ve been entrepreneurially interested for years, and I’ve spent money on courses that never panned out; they weren’t the right idea for me.

A beautiful thing about paying a small chunk of money will get you quick feedback from someone in the trenches doing that thing. You can quickly know if this is something you want to pursue.

Because $149 or whatever anyone charges for these things is way cheaper than being stuck with a $60K stump grinder and saying, “Oh, I made the wrong decision.”

It’s just trading of knowledge. I do think it’s a little weird if someone is doing courses without actually running the business of the course they’re selling—that’s a different thing.

But if someone is running the business and wants to protect their time with knowledge they’re putting out there—that’s what I’m doing.

Don’t get it twisted; I’m just running a stump grinding company, but I had two down weeks in January, so I could put something together that transfers the knowledge I shared with you today.

It’s a win-win for all parties.

Austin Gray: Absolutely! You hit the nail on the head! Anyone out there creating courses on things they haven’t done or don’t have the credibility—that’s a different story.

But what you’re doing is pioneering the playbook. There’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to sell that in a way that you don’t have to trade your time for money.

So if you are listening to this and considering starting a stump grinding business, where can people find that?

Tyler Mumford: Just DM me! Go to X, @TylerMumfordTheStumpGuy, or find me on LinkedIn at Tyler Mumford. I also have an Instagram if you want to find my personal account and DM me.

I will send the link straight to you like I said; I don’t really put it out there publicly. I don’t want the few competitors in Utah knowing about this playbook or the exact things I do!

So, I’ll DM with you, see where you live, and send you the link to the playbook, and you can grab it. I’ll help you along the path! I already have a few guys who have landed jobs from it this winter, so I’m fired up about that!

Austin Gray: That’s awesome! And it’s smart! This shows how serious Tyler is about building this business—he’s strategically not sending it to anybody who could be a competitor.

It’s part of putting in time, effort, and energy into building a local business. The last thing you want is competition.

So you’ve got to keep your competitive edge! I’m totally with you on that! My competitors—man, I want to crush them! I’ve met most of them, and they’re great guys, but I want to crush them every single day.

I’m not trying to share anything! They could go listen to this podcast and find some of the things I’m doing!

It’s not like I’m hiding it, but I try to be somewhat smart about what I’m putting out there.

Tyler Mumford: Couldn't agree more!

Austin Gray: Awesome, man! This episode has given me so much energy. I want to have you back on in six months or twelve months down the line to see how your business is doing. Is there anything else that you’d like to share with the listeners?

Tyler Mumford: I think this is doable! I think the business idea and a ton of other business ideas are very doable.

I just want to share that if you are in that place of having cold feet—it doesn’t have to be forever! I was very interested in doing something on my own for around three years.

During that time, I thought I wanted to buy a business. I thought about starting a service franchise. I thought about doing XYZ, and I got cold feet on ten ideas before I ever started stump grinding.

You’re not a failure if you have cold feet sometimes! Sometimes cold feet or a gut feeling is good because it keeps you away from something you shouldn’t have pursued.

We talk about the business idea that works or who that person is, but a lot has led me to this point. I’m not even a success yet, but at least I’ve gotten out of the W2!

So don’t beat yourself up if you’re still trying to figure that out—you can find it!

It takes time, but you can succeed in whatever you want to do!

Austin Gray: I love it! Thanks again for being on another episode of the OWER OPS podcast. Listeners, Tyler Mumford with Grind Time Stump Grinding!

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You can also click the link in the header to get to that page. We’re going to wrap this one up.

Tyler, thanks again for being on! Listeners, don’t forget: work hard, do your best, never settle for less!

See you in the next one!