Austin Gray: Hey, welcome back to the Owner Operator Podcast where we talk all about owning and operating small locally owned businesses. If you're listening to this, you're probably either an owner, an operator, a solo owner operator, or you run some big business offering some unsexy service in a local market. We appreciate you guys listening, so thank you to all the owner operators out there listening to this.

In this episode, we have an owner operator named Brock Peel who started Canadian Sanitation less than a year ago. In seven months, he has grown the business to $1.3 million in revenue. This is the first episode of a two-part series because in this episode, we get into more of the story behind Brock's inception point and his thought process.

Then we'll have a version two of this being released shortly, so make sure you stick around for that episode as well because Brock's mindset and the way that he thinks about building businesses and specializing in a specific service is very unique, and it's super important for a lot of people to hear.

So, I can't wait for you guys to listen to this episode, and I'm super excited to release the second episode as well. So, if you're enjoying these episodes, would you mind to like, comment, and subscribe? If you're on YouTube, in the comments, would you mind to just let us know what you think of these episodes?

And also, if you know somebody who would be a good fit to be on the show, just comment their name in the YouTube comments. If you're listening on Apple or Spotify, we would sure appreciate if you would like, follow, and leave us a five-star review. Just like building a service-based business, five-star reviews are super important for podcasts as well, and we're all in the business of generating five-star reviews from delivering five-star service.

So, it's our goal to deliver you guys five-star service through this podcast by delivering as much value about growing small locally owned service-based businesses.

So finally, this episode is brought to you by OWNR OPS. OWNR OPS is an online hub specifically for service-based business owners. You can check it out at ownrops.com, that's ownrops.com.

Without further ado, let's jump into the episode with Brock.

Brock Peel: Yeah, thanks man! Happy to be here.

Austin Gray: So we were just riffing earlier before I started the recording here, and we were getting into so much good content, so I'm like we gotta throw on the recording. But yeah, we were just talking about like launching your product and not being perfect right out the gate, just throwing some things against the wall, seeing what works.

We were talking about how the podcast here has brought on different business owners in different industries, and Brock and I are sort of both in agreement that we believe that learning from other service industry business owners can be beneficial. And so Brock owns a septic and sanitation company, correct?

Brock Peel: Yeah, I co-own it with a partner of mine.

Austin Gray: Cool! So you want to tell us a little bit about just your background and how you got started in the business?

Brock Peel: Yeah, it's a little bit long-winded, I guess, but I started out... I was actually heavy equipment diesel mechanic. Right out of high school, I went into college. I did that for a few years. I worked for our big dealer up here, which is Tormont Caterpillar.

So I did that for a few years. Kind of during that time, I was dealing with some real estate. You know, I bought a house when I was 19, worked on that, sold that, bought a few other places, and turned some other places around. I did a commercial to a fourplex conversion, so I was really busy in that industry.

I was staying working with my day job, making some half-decent money, got into real estate. I kind of felt that I was getting sick of my day job and wanted to start a contracting company and start doing this for other people. I started my contracting company just over three years ago, and I was doing home renovations, additions, just like a lot of home renovations, interior work.

But again, my background was kind of always in the heavy equipment industry. I picked up a mini-ex to start doing some small work like some basement walkouts, some concrete pads, small excavation, started kind of just dipping into that.

I got a cheap one used and just started doing a bit of work with it. One thing led to another, and I kind of heard about the septic industry. I had a friend of mine that was in it; he was pumping. So I got my septic license so I could start doing septic jobs for my contracting job.

I got my first couple jobs, I put in a couple of septics. My buddy, who's my partner now, helped me design them and kind of walked me through installing them, and you know, we did a couple of septics, carried on, and decided him and I were talking about it a few times and we were talking about kind of, you know, I wanted to get out of the contracting side.

I was getting sick of the interior renos and stuff like that, and I liked the earthwork. So one thing led to another; we kind of made a business plan because he owned a pumping company, so he was doing pumping and he was doing the odd install.

We just made a business plan that said let's be one of the only ones in the area that are doing pumping, repairs, and installs—all in-house design, everything. We just kind of took a little bit different approach to it than other guys in our area were, and we started Canadian Sanitation together.

We were up and running by last May of 2023.

Austin Gray: That's awesome! So you started very similar to how I did. You just went and got a machine, and it sounds like you did some different odd jobs like dirt work, and then sort of just kept your pulse on where the demand was.

Brock Peel: Yeah. You know, I always kind of kept with what—like it’s sometimes hard when you want to go fully into something that you know nothing about, right? So that was say me with the contracting. I kind of got into that, but I stayed with the contracting doing some renos, doing additions, stuff like that.

When I bought my machine, to kind of keep, you know, it kind of fed the beast, right? You know, you have to pay your bills; you got to have some money coming in.

You know, I've got two kids now. My wife just found out she was pregnant a week before I quit my job when I started my company, and I've got multiple mortgages now and I've got bills to pay. So, had to keep going and keep making some money, but I would take the odd small excavation job and kind of get into it.

You know, I took some on that I was weighing over my head a couple times, but I was kind of reaching out to guys that I knew and talking to guys and just getting some experience. Just taking one step at a time, right? Like not taking on a six-figure dig that's going to put me under on my second or third job kind of thing like that, right?

So, taking on small jobs, doing concrete... I had basically no experience in concrete and just started doing it and started doing small jobs. I started buying some stamps and we started doing stamps, and then next thing we were getting, you know, next thing concrete was like our specialty.

We were pouring concrete retaining walls, we were pouring massive concrete paths and walkways and steps, and we were stamping them, and you know, did some driveways and kind of started getting into that. I still think to this day that's a great industry, and it's a great way to make money. It's a lot of work but it's, you know, it's a good way to make money.

Austin Gray: Yeah, definitely. That's funny you bring that up. That's my dad's business back home, and that's the business I grew up working in was stained and stamped concrete.

I think I’ve had this conversation with a lot of guys, you know, that I talk to who are wanting to get into the business and want to get into kind of moving some dirt, and they think that, you know, they see what we're doing with the septics, and they think, “Oh, there must be a ton of money into it," and it’s tight.

The margins are actually tight. You know, you gotta really have a good oil machine and be managing things properly and efficiently to kind of make some money. But I think, you know, the stamped concrete and, you know, some of that smaller hardscape work, I would say to date out of everything I've done, I mean, I've framed, I've done concrete, we've done hardscape, septics, I've done a little bit of everything.

To date, the highest mark of any job I've ever done is concrete.

Brock Peel: Every single time.

Austin Gray: Specifically stained and, or excuse me, stamped concrete, or are you saying concrete in general?

Brock Peel: Just concrete flatwork. Not foundations; I don't like doing foundations, but just any concrete flatwork, even brush finish, stamp finish, you know, anything like that.

I mean, I got kind of into a rhythm with it where I had a good kind of sub crew of concrete flat finishers. They would come in, we would dig base prep, and we would actually form it. I'd order all the trucks; they'd come in and they would place it and finish it for me.

They’d be done in a couple hours, you know, and then that part of it finished. So, I could have two, three, or four of them on the go, and they could run to kind of job to job. All we had to do was, you know, dig it and prep it and form it, and that takes only one or two guys, right?

But if you're doing a, you know, a 2,000-foot pour, you want four or five guys at least to do that kind of a pour, especially if it's a walkway, right? So I just didn't want to have that kind of manpower on staff to do that.

Austin Gray: So you would do all the foundation prep work?

Brock Peel: No, this isn't foundations; this is just flat work. I would come in, like if we were doing... if we were doing a walkway or we were doing stairs or we were doing like a concrete pad fire pit or anything like that, so I would come in with my little three-and-a-half ton, I would say dig the area out, we'd put all the clear stone or whatever needs to be put in there.

We would do all the forming, put the rebar in, the wire mesh, and then I had finishers that would come in; I would order the trucks, line pump, whatever we would need, and then they would come in and they would actually place it and finish it for me.

You know, and then once it's done, I'd come back and strip the forms, backfill, clean it up, right? But that placing and finishing part of it, at least, was something that I started to not have to deal with. Like, we did a lot of placing and finishing, but on some of the bigger ones or the ones that I just didn't have time to do, I would still take the job on, but I would bring them in to do it.

Austin Gray: So if you like the margins so much in concrete, why the switch to septic?

Brock Peel: I like the margins; I don't like the business of it, really. I just don't like the... I just don't like the business model. It's a little bit, I guess the best way to put it is it's a tough gig.

It's really like concrete's just a stressful gig in general. Everything's kind of... it's just organized chaos for the most part, right? Which sometimes is fun and sometimes is good. But really, you know, the margins are good if you land the job.

But sometimes, you know, you can get any Tom, Dick, and Harry that can come in there and there's no permits, there's no inspections, there's no nothing. There's no qualifications required to do it, and you know, they'll come in and, you know, they can undercut the job and kind of, you know, it's a bit of a race to the bottom the odd time, even though I do say the margins are good.

I think to actually feed a business, you know, full-time, I think it would still take quite a bit of work to keep yourself busy doing that. And inevitably, you're going to have to probably get into doing more larger concrete work and, you know, foundation stuff like that.

And even if you want to do flat work, just the manpower that's required to do it wasn’t something that I was interested in taking on.

Austin Gray: Yeah, something you said, it’s organized chaos, and it really is. If you've never been on site during a concrete pour day, it's, I mean, you hit the nail on the head, it's organized—well sometimes can be organized; sometimes can be radically disorganized chaos as well.

But it's just a highly stressful day whenever concrete's, whenever mud's flowing.

Brock Peel: Yeah, I mean my first pour ever was... you know, the guy actually, a friend of mine who, you know, I think I've heard you say it on your podcast, it's like, you know, when you're looking to hire your first employee, you already know that guy, right? So, I hired a buddy of mine the second week I started my business.

He basically came with me right from the start from my contracting business. He’s our lead guy right now with our septic business. He’s been with me right from the start.

He did, you know, he and I did like the first concrete pour we ever did, which was a 900 square-foot wrap around, you know, wrapping around a tree and a walkway into a driveway, and we were doing a colored brush finish.

If anybody's ever done concrete, if you're doing this as your first pour, and it was 35 degrees Celsius outside with the sun beating down, it was one of the worst experiences I think of my life, and I can't believe I did concrete after that.

I had, you know, I brought my dad in to come give us a hand just to move the concrete around because we had to do it most of it by wheelbarrow. It was super, super stressful. You know, it was a lot of work, and we were, you know, pretty well next to throwing up the whole time we were doing it, because we were running so fast and trying to get it done and the concrete was curing before we could even get it brushed.

You know, trying to get the derby on it, it was a bit of a nightmare and it was a learning curve. I lost money on that job; I underquoted the hell out of it. I had no idea what it was going to take, and I worked my ass off and I lost money on it.

But I learned a ton from it and, you know, went into the next one like, "Okay, maybe we'll take on like maybe 300 square feet. Maybe 900 is a bit much for right now." So we started doing just some smaller ones and then started going up from there, right?

We kind of took a step back, and you know, just kind of took it one step at a time.

Austin Gray: And the biggest thing too is like if you don't know it, like what I would do is I would get the job and I would bring the pros in to do it and I would actually just watch them and see how they're doing it, right?

So I did that a few times. It's like, “Hey, come in! I'm not going to make a dollar on this job.” Like we had an excavation job and they needed a bunch of concrete work. So I brought some guys in; they pretty much did the whole thing.

It was the first big stamp job, and you know, I just kind of watched them. I think I was pissing them off a little bit because I was asking them so many questions. But I didn't care, and you know, we just watched them do the whole thing and seen everything that they did.

And you know, kind of learned from them. I didn't make money on it because after I did a lot of the work and hired these guys and paid them to do it, there wasn't really much money left on the table for me. But you know, I got to see it happen and got to see the process.

You know, it gave me a little bit more experience going into the next one, right?

Brock Peel: Yeah, definitely! And for those of you listening who don't know what 35 degrees Celsius is, I did the translation and it equates to 95 degrees Fahrenheit.

So basically hot day, muds on the ground. The hardest thing about concrete is you're just up against a gun the whole time. And if you have guys who don't show up, heaven forbid you're subbing out a crew and they just don't show up, like it can just turn to a nightmare like very, very quickly.

So I'm with you; I grew up working in the concrete business. Every single day if there's mud flowing, it's a stressful day.

And there are great margins in it, but I'm like you, I wanted to pick a different industry where I could still operate some equipment, be outside working outside, but not be under the gun so much on one specific day. So can we talk about the transition from concrete into like, "Alright, you make this decision to go into septic full-time." You must have seen either an opportunity or did somebody challenge you to specialize? Can you talk us through that?

Brock Peel: Yeah, it was a bit of a process, and it was a little bit of a time. I did a few septics with my contracting company, and I had a friend of mine who owned a pumping company. I actually worked with him at Tormont.

You know, when him and I quit, I talked him into quitting his job when I quit because he had a pump truck and he was making good money on the weekends, pumping. And, you know, he was putting in some septics with some guys and he was making way more money than he was making at Tormont.

I was like, "What are you doing? You know you're 25 years old. You need to quit, just go out and do this—you’re making money here." He was just a parts guy. So, go out and do this and take a crack at it.

So after I quit, he quit two weeks after me, and then he went on his own pumping and I went on my way with contracting, and we stayed in touch. And then when I did my septic license, he already had his, so anyways to get back to how I got into it is I did a couple.

I kind of seen a little bit of a market there. I decided that I liked moving dirt, I liked the earthworks—let's try our hand at some septics. I got the license, got my first job, then got my second job three doors down from it because I seen that we were starting a septic there.

They walked down and said, "Well, we need one," and then I did that one and then there was a guy down the street, another guy, so then we got three basically on the same block around the same time.

So we tackled those and, you know, my buddy gave us a hand, and after those, I kind of really realized that I liked it and I liked doing the septics. So I was going to just try and focus on it a little bit more for my business, for my contracting business.

But I kind of realized that, you know, if you’re hiring a septic guy, are you thinking you’re going to hire like a renovation company, right? So I had to kind of make a decision like, you know, what did I want to do?

I dug some foundations, and I’ve done some arm stone work, some hardscape work. I just kind of thought that I really wanted to focus, and I saw that there was an opportunity there.

I had a little bit of, I guess, a little bit of advice and kind of—I wouldn’t call him a mentor—but somebody who I spoke to with another septic company out west. Just got talking to them and kind of talked about their business model and what they were doing and, you know, specializing and offering the service work and the emergency work and how well it was working for them.

I did my market research around here and saw that there's essentially nobody that was doing what we were doing or what we were proposing to do, which was to be a septic pumper, installer, emergency repair, in-house design—everything—which we didn’t reinvent the wheel by any means whatsoever.

You know, there was a lot of case studies to go over in other regions; it’s just that there wasn’t anybody in our region that was doing it. So, you know, realized that there was a bit of an opportunity there, and him and I talked about it many times.

And my partner had the experience in pumping, and I had a lot more experience, say, on the business end of running the business, running the numbers, and doing the designs and planning the jobs and quoting.

I had quite a bit of experience, you know, over my course of a few years with the contracting company and doing excavation. So I kind of found the septics, for the most part, to be a walk in the park.

So kind of with both of us together, we thought we could probably make a pretty good business out of it. And that was kind of it; we just decided one day like, "Are we doing this?" You know, wrote up the business plan and started the company, and yeah, kind of went full force. It was a bit of a slow start at first, I will say that.

Austin Gray: So what did you do to market yourself after you made that decision to specialize?

Brock Peel: First, we did—and again, in my couple years with my contracting company, I learned a lot and I learned basically what not to do. You know, marketing is key especially if you want to be a new business in any area.

I was really cheap with the marketing with my contracting company, and I often think that maybe if I would have known more about marketing when I started that company that, you know, maybe that company would have gone a direction that would have been different than it did.

Right? Maybe it would have gotten bigger than it did, you know, beforehand in a faster, shorter amount of time. But it didn't. I was still getting the same kind of quality of jobs that I was trying to get away from. You know, same level of jobs, right?

I wanted to start getting bigger ones, but I wasn’t really marketing myself that way. So, the first thing we did was get on board with a really good company to make us a really good quality website that we had to pay for.

Our SEO and our Google ads, like, you know, that kind of stuff—like really invest some serious amount of money into that. And it was quite the crapshoot at first because it was more money than I could ever imagine that we would be spending, you know, to do that, especially as a business that really like—we were spending this money before we even had a single job, right? Before we made any money.

So I fronted all this money personally, you know, out of my contracting company to do all this, to pay for the website, to pay for the first couple months of our Google ads or SEO. It can be a little bit disheartening at first sometimes because you don’t get that, say, instant gratification with it. It does take some time, right?

Like you can be, you know, you can spend $10,000 or $15,000, and then, you know, for the first couple months, and then, you know, you’re not seeing any return, and then all of a sudden, it’s a bit of a snowball effect, right?

Once it starts to catch some traction, it really starts to take off, which is what we found.

Brock Peel: So, hit the social media, really just Instagram. Like I didn’t even get a Facebook until, I don’t know, like a month ago. I know a lot of guys have good experience with Facebook; for me, I kind of took it to SEO. SEO was my main thing.

So, hit the SEO, Google ads, which our web builder and everything—like they manage all that for us; they do our SEO, Google ads, manage our website, all that stuff for us.

And then kind of Instagram, just trying to stay active. Like, I think I don’t think Instagram—I’ve got, I actually got, I think maybe one or two jobs through Instagram. And you know, maybe we’re getting jobs that we’re not even realizing are from Instagram, but I know for sure one or two of them was from Instagram.

But Instagram to me is more just like a digital resume, right? Like to me, that’s what it is. It’s just like, you know, if somebody’s looking at you on Instagram, they probably already know who you are; they might be already thinking of hiring you. They’re just hopping on there to see like, “Hey, is this guy real? Is he actually doing work? What’s going on?”

And like, somebody might follow you for three weeks or a month on Instagram before they even reach out to you, right?

Austin Gray: I think for me, that's the way that I look at it—you’re really—I don’t feel like going to get a ton of work through it; that’s just in my personal experience.

And a lot of people might say otherwise, but I look at it as a digital resume. It’s just for people to keep an eye on you, see what you’re doing, you know, see that you’re actively working, right? To see that you’re actively busy and see the work that you’re doing.

Brock Peel: I agree 100 percent. I don’t think we’ve got a job from Instagram or Facebook, either of those.

But to your point, especially if you have someone managing it like we have an agency who manages all our social, so like I just take pictures on the job. I have some of the guys take pictures, and then we'll add it to a shared iCloud album, and then like they publish, they do all the captions, they do all that stuff.

They—we sort of have like worked with them to develop our tone. But to your point, it is a resume; it gives the credibility. And that's the benefit is, like, if a customer finds you on Google—which, in my opinion, is a way better form of marketing—SEO and website, so hats off to you for starting with that, it’s like once they find you, they’re probably going to research you, and if you don’t have that, I always say it’s a necessary evil.

If you don’t have the Instagram or the Facebook, then you don’t have that resume to sort of validate the work that you’ve done.

Brock Peel: And if you understand how SEO works, and again, you know, you know, contrary to what I’m saying is that I’m not on every social platform because I just don’t have the bandwidth for it to kind of deal with all that.

And I like, as much as I have a love-hate for social media, you know, I love it for the—you know, I love to see what other guys are doing and keep track and see some of the cool work; but then there’s a huge part of me that hates it. It kind of sucks you in.

But if you know how the SEO works, then you’ll know that, you know, whatever money that you’re spending on your SEO, like you can compound that by being easier found on multiple platforms, right?

Like, so like the more platforms that you are on, the easier it’s going to make, so your SEO dollars are actually going to go farther. Like whatever you’re spending on your SEO because you’re now found on other platforms—whether it’s Instagram, LinkedIn, all that kind of stuff, Facebook, any local newspapers or any local stuff like that.

Anything that you can be found online anywhere, that’s all going to help your SEO, right? So you can actually, you know, these free platforms that you can be on can actually spend less on your SEO because those SEO dollars are going to go farther on these platforms because you’re found through multiple different places on Google, right?

Austin Gray: Definitely! And the way I’ve heard it described before is it’s just free backlinks in the beginning.

So if you create your social media sites and then you backlink to your website, Google’s going to recognize that backlink. So yes, it does definitely help early on.

I’m curious whenever you made that decision in the beginning because a lot of people, like, I see two different types of people who start businesses: one, the person who understands that there's value to a digital presence, and they do exactly what you and I did because I did the exact same thing as you.

I was probably like $15,000 deep before, you know, I even like got my first job, right?

Brock Peel: Actually, I should take that back. Long story short, yeah, I should take back that comment because I was sort of like out in the field getting the jobs first, so I shouldn’t—I shouldn’t say that—but for you, you made the decision that it was important to get a website and invest in SEO, whereas I see some other people who are like, “Yeah, I think there’s value there,” but they haven’t made the decision yet, and then they like kind of want to DIY everything.

It sounds like it worked out well for you to just delegate that, right?

Brock Peel: Well, and again, like I had that experience of what works and doesn’t work from my previous business, right? Like my previous business, my wife made my website on Wix. I was paying like $200 a month and, like, well after it took me a year to even be like, "Alright, I’m going to spend $200 a month on my SEO. Like this is a lot of money but I’m going to spend 200 bucks a month on it," right?

So, you know, to realize that those were just wasted dollars. And you know how awful my website was. And once I got into kind of, you know, I started researching it and I sat down with a web builder; we went through my existing website for my other business, and we dissected everything.

And like all the click speed and everything where like where Google rates my page and how it was just complete trash, right? So, that was a bit of an eye-opener for me.

So I kind of seen what worked and didn’t work, and again, like even with our septic business, my partner had some contacts, and we both already had some jobs lined up, so we did have work down the pipeline.

We had enough work probably to keep us going for a little bit. Where some people might take your foot off the gas and be like, "Oh, well, I have work, so more will come," but like I’ve always been of the mindset, like even when guys back off in the wintertime, they don’t want to spend the money on marketing in the winter.

Like to me, that’s a time to double down. Like I want to spend more money now than when I’m busy in the summertime, right? You know, it’s like when you take your foot off the gas there.

So even though we had work, we had it lined up right out of the gate. I knew that, okay, well what happens when we’re done that work, right? I need to be getting the work. I need to be working on this two or three months ahead of time because this is going to take two or three months for people to know who the hell we are, right?

So we kept busy through the people who already knew who we were for a couple months, and it really worked out well because all of a sudden once like August rolled around and we started to get a little bit of traction, we started to get more genuine leads outside of our circle, right?

Like outside of the people that we knew and had already contacted. So people were finding us more organically, and honestly, like that took, you know, that took a couple months, you know, even to get there, right? It starts working as a flywheel at that point; like if you can make that decision like you did and invest the money in the digital marketing and then go get the jobs while Google is sort of like indexing your site and the first bits of SEO are starting to work, yeah, then if over here you’re getting the jobs and I’m sure you got great reviews from them.

Yeah, so then if those people leave you the reviews, then it expedites the SEO process, and then two, three, four months down the line, that website starts working for you. Is that what you saw?

Brock Peel: Well, that's exactly what we saw, right? Like right out of the gate, I mean it wasn’t really… there wasn’t really much going on, right?

Like we didn’t have much traction with it; you know it was a nice site but we had to start getting, you know, like we had to like it took some time, right? We had to get some reviews, we had to get some clicks, we had to get some traction.

We had to put some ads out there to get people clicking on it, right? Like we had to get some volume on it, you know, to kind of get that traction. And then it kind of like, you know, even now, you know, we’re still, you know, we’re still working on it.

I think we’re up to 21 or 22 five-star reviews on Google, so you know, we’re still working at it. Our ratings are getting higher, so you know it’s still a work in progress, right? But we’re, you know, we’re starting to climb up there; we’re starting to get a lot more, you know, organic leads.

But again, like I wanted to delegate that. Right? That's—I don't—I'm not interested in learning how to do SEO. I'm not interested in learning how to do the Google ads, how to make a website.

Like, I don’t—that's not like the amount of time that’s going to take me to do that. And I really, really learned that like, you know, from my other businesses. Like, you know, I really had a job there, but where now is we’re really trying to create a business where like if I’m putting on all these hats, I can’t do it.

Like, where my specialty is is, you know, planning the job, selling the job, trying to be the best septic company in the area, learn all the advanced treatment, take all the training that we can, try and be the best company in the area and be the most knowledgeable.

Like I’d rather be learning about a new septic technology than, you know, like messing around at home with my SEO. I’d rather pay somebody else to do that, right?

So that was my analogy. Where I did try and do it myself with my previous contracting company, I just really, you know, really didn’t work.

And again, we were busy; like we were still, you know, we were getting a lot of like, you know, authentic and like referral leads, and we were definitely busy enough, but the amount of traction and leads it takes if you actually want to grow and scale a business and get, and also like you can market yourself in the way that you want to go, right?

Like you can market yourself in that direction. So I think that was a big thing for us.

Austin Gray: For our listeners, how much did you spend on your website and SEO services right out of the gate?

Brock Peel: So, out of the gate, we were quoted at—we got a little bit of a deal on the site—we were quoted at $8,000 to build a site, that's Canadian dollars.

So we were quoted at $8,000, but we actually, so the web builders I got referred to by somebody else who I knew, and they built his website and he actually—he’s in the other side of the country from us so he said, “Hey, if you want to use some of my coding, a lot of the stuff that they’ve used for mine and like, you know, kind of my website setup,” he’s like, “you know, go for it, use it and just put, you know, kind of put it into your guys' format with your guys’ branding.”

So, really that saved us, and we were going to be signing up for the, you know, kind of the monthly SEO on Google Ad. So we ended up getting the website for $3,500.

So, I think it was like $3,500 to $4,000 for the site. And then right out of the gate, we were spending $3,200 a month on SEO and Google ads.

So $1,600 a month on SEO, $1,600 a month on Google ads. Now with our web builders, that was kind of the—you know, we could have gone less if we wanted to, right?

You know, we can kind of tailor it how we want. But looking at it, that was almost what they were recommending as the minimal spend to be worthwhile.

And I understood it because I had started to spend a bit more money with my other website, and it just really wasn’t getting me anywhere.

So their thing is: well, you can spend $2,000 a month on both and it’s really not going to get you very far, but if you spend that extra little bit, it’s going to double or triple what you’re going to get for $2,000 because Google is going to start to recognize you easier.

I don’t know the logistics behind it, and maybe they snowballed me and they calmed me into spending that kind of money, but at this rate, I don’t really care because it’s worked.

So, you know, we were $3,200 a month for that, $3,500 to build a website. And yeah, so not with not much money coming in and kind of just getting started, that was, you know, that was a pretty serious spend.

Austin Gray: But you've seen that pay off for you.

Brock Peel: We've seen that pay off, and we've actually increased—we’ve increased our marketing spend. So now we have, I think right now—we’re probably anywhere from $5,000 to $6,000 a month we spend on marketing right now through all the platforms.

We have some billboards; we have the SEO, Google ads, the website, and we do, you know, some sponsored Instagram ads—not very often—and then we kind of do some sponsorship deals and things like that, kind of donations for marketing as well.

So yeah, we’re about—we’re about $5,000 to $6,000 a month right now on average on marketing.

Austin Gray: Have you guys tried any direct mail?

Brock Peel: No, no I haven’t.

Austin Gray: Have you, Stan?

Brock Peel: Yeah, I just launched one last week because we’re about the same monthly spend too in our business. And, you know, I can second that, it sounds like a lot whenever you're starting, but whenever that's bringing you in, you know, over 10, sometimes 20x that in a month it starts to make sense.

But yeah, we tried the direct mail because we found these like little pockets where our services can be offered, and so we were getting a lot through the paid ad campaigns, getting a lot of leads, and then as I started to close those leads, I thought, “Well, yes, I can go knock the doors.”

And I do go knock like immediate neighbors, but I don’t have a sales rep in place yet, and so I thought, “How can I like hit this at scale?” Right? So I sent out, I think I sent out probably like 4,000 postcards last week, and I’ll report back. I’ll let you know how it works.

Brock Peel: Yeah, no, I’ve thought about it. We got some printed before, like when we first started out. We got some printed just with kind of, you know, like hey, "15% off or 20% off any pumping and, you know, inspection services if you use this."

But we honestly just drove around and dropped them from people’s mailboxes ourselves, which is super inefficient. But I haven’t really looked into the direct mail campaigns.

I have definitely thought about it. But again, we just had kind of our iron in so many fires that I can only take one step at a time, and I haven’t heard of many people doing it and wasn’t sure on the return on investment on that.

But yeah, keep me posted on that. I definitely would like to know how that works out for you.

Austin Gray: I will! Let's talk septic pumping business. Like let's talk the actual economics of this.

So what does an average ticket pump look like? Like if you’re just coming in and pumping a septic system, how does that look?

Brock Peel: You're losing money—yeah, no, I don’t—the pumping business is tough, especially around here. Where we are, you're looking at, you know, the price really ranges, right?

So you’re anywhere from $350 to $450 to pump out in the summertime. Wintertime, most guys hike their rates up because for one, you got guys who do field application have to bring it to a treatment plant, so then you got to pay to bring it to a treatment plant.

So then they charge more for that; the lids are frozen most of the time so it’s a pain in the ass. You also have to—you can’t leave the load on your truck, right, because it'll freeze, so then you got to bring it to the treatment plant.

Just pumping in the winter is just a nightmare all around, so most guys charge you—so in the wintertime for a typical 1,000-gallon tank, I think we’re like $650 or $675 to pump that out in the wintertime.

There are some guys that are as high as $700, and there are some guys that don’t charge any different; they still charge around $400. So it really, really ranges for the pumping.

Austin Gray: Okay, and how much do those trucks cost?

Brock Peel: If you're going to buy, if you're going to buy a new truck, you're looking at around $250,000 to $300,000 Canadian on the low end.

On the low end, if you're getting a nice Peterbilt or Kenworth, you're probably looking closer to $400,000.

Austin Gray: Wow. So is your business model to buy new or to buy used?

Brock Peel: Our business model is to subcontract other pumpers. That's our new business model. I personally don’t really like the business model of pumping; I think it’s a good add-on.

But we’re kind of trying something different this year. You know, I don't know, I think we're going to be one of the only ones around in this area that’s doing it, but we’ve kind of taken a little bit of a different tactic to it.

So we only have one truck; it's an older truck. My partner had it when him and I partnered together; he bought it for real cheap. We've kept it up on maintenance and kept it repaired, and it stays going.

But we know that, you know, to be pumping full-time with it, we have to keep in mind the cost of replacement on that, right? So every time that truck’s running, like, it's a hard thing to make money at if you don't have a field.

Like, I can kind of like—I’ll go back on that a little bit to give you background on that is that a lot of the pumpers in our area have, say, been in it for 40, 50 years or 30 years and they have fields, right? So it’s called land application—we distribute the effluent on like raw sewage onto fields, and they turn it in with tractors, and they actually distribute surface distribution on the fields for the Ministry of the Environment.

It's next to impossible to get those new permit applications, let alone the million dollars it would cost us to buy the field. So we obviously land application is not something that's ever going to be in the cards for us at least for a very long time.

So it’s hard to compete with those guys who are doing the land application because they don’t have to pay to dispose of it, right?

So to say that if they're charging $350, even if they're charging $400, you know, the pump for us for every 1,000 gallons, we pay roughly $130 just to get rid of it.

Plus the truck, the insurance; we're about $15,000 a year for one truck for insurance because of the Ministry of the Environment. Plus fuel, plus the cost of replacement, plus the labor because nobody wants to drive a septic truck.

So it costs good money to pay somebody. Really there’s, you know, if you’re charging $350 to $400, I mean if you’re not doing six to eight pump-outs a day, which is a lot if you’re—that truck has to be running pretty flat out to be able to make some money, right?

If you’re only doing a couple a day or you’re doing, you know, 10, even 10, 15 a week, if you look at the labor, insurance, everything to do that, there’s not really much money left on the table when you’re spending, you know, $130 per tank to get rid of it, so around $450 per truckload just to get rid of it, right?

Austin Gray: Yeah, definitely. So your bread and butter then is the installation and repair?

Brock Peel: Yeah, so our bread and butter is pretty much all installations, replacements, repairs, inspections; we do a thorough inspection, which there’s not a lot of guys around here, you know, doing the inspection services like what we do.

It's not a huge part of our business, but it's definitely a part of it. Installations are our bread and butter, but kind of servicing the clients and, you know, being able to offer that pumping, I think kind of is integral to our business model.

So I don't want to give up the pumping, but we’ve kind of worked out a deal with, you know, with another newer pumper in our area that, hey, you know, we’re spending, you know, we’re spending all this money on marketing as it is, you know, we’re not going to back off.

We’re going to, you know, we’re going to spend a lot of this money on marketing; we’re going to keep going, and we’re getting a lot of leads for pumping, but we can’t keep up to it because my business partner to date has actually been the one that’s been running the truck mostly.

We’ve gone through a couple of employees; it just seems really difficult to hire somebody willing to drive a septic truck that’s capable of doing it.

It's a lot harder work than you think. Typically, any of the pumpers in the area are all owner operators, so they’re the guy who owns a truck typically the guy running it.

So that's the case from most guys around here because it's just hard to get somebody. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's hard.

So we’ve got a guy around here, he’s got a truck, he just wants to pump. So what we’re essentially doing—in what some brokerage and dispatch companies do for dump truck—we’re going to—we’re actually going to dispatch for him.

So we’re going to keep our call service going; we’re going to keep our dispatch going. So the, you know, the girl who I have doing dispatch for us now, she’s going to keep that going, but she’s actually gonna, you know, we’re gonna have him set up, you know, as a vendor, and we’re gonna be dispatching him out to these pump outs.

He’s going to even, you know, put a deal on the side of his truck that says "contracted by Canadian Sanitation," and he’s going to be going out and he’s going to be doing the pump outs, supervised by us if it's—if there’s an inspection, anything like that.

So he’ll be invoicing us directly and we’ll be invoicing the client. We will have our own truck still, so if there’s—because we do emergency too, right—24/7 emergency.

So if somebody has a backup, so if this other pumper can’t make it, then we’ll send our truck out to do it to make sure we can service that client.

Austin Gray: I love it! You guys are getting creative and figuring out a way to make it work.

Brock Peel: Well, I can't tell you it's working yet, so we’re gonna, you know, we’re gonna see how it goes. In my head it makes a lot of sense because, you know, he's charging, you know, he's charging a preferred rate. I mean, he has his rate that he's going to be charging, and you know, he’s going to have his name on the side of the truck.

And I don’t really care if people call him directly because basically, you know, the thing is if there’s any repairs, replacements, or failures, what we want is we want to be, you know, we want to be the first one in touch with him to be the first one, you know, the first one in contact with his client if there’s, you know, if there’s a failed system or if there’s a damaged system or anything beyond pumping that needs to be done.

We want to be the first one in contact. So that's really all that we essentially care about. So, you know, if we have that with him where no matter what, if the client goes directly to him or they come to us, we’re going to be the first one in contact.

But he’s kind of, you know, he’s kind of newer to this game, so the thing is that I know that what he’s going to realize is, “Hey, I have a group call or a group chat here thing with Canadian Sanitation, and all they do is send me the address and tell me where it needs to be pumped, and I send them a statement bi-weekly or monthly, and they pay me—I don’t have to deal with the client!

I don’t have to answer all the phone calls! I don’t have to get the credit card numbers! I don’t have to chase people for money! I don’t have to do any of that! We’re going to handle all that.” I mean, if he’s charging us the same price that he’s charging anybody else, why wouldn’t he want to work for us, right? Why wouldn't he want to be contracted by us?

So that’s kind of, that’s my thought. I'm gonna, you know, kind of see how that plays out, but if I was him, I think it would be a lot easier, right? You know, whether it's chasing people for money or spending the money on marketing or taking the calls and, you know, having a client call you five or six times to tell you, you know, what their septic systems doing now and smell from it, and maybe they need a pump out, maybe they don’t, right?

So that’s just a hassle that he doesn’t have to deal with.

Austin Gray: Yeah, totally. Alright, let’s talk installs. We've got about six minutes here till the top of the hour, so can you give us the overview on—well let's talk, let’s do like a crash course, and maybe we can do a second podcast here where you break these down.

But for listeners who may be starting a septic company anywhere in the U.S. or maybe somewhere else outside of your service area in Canada, how do you price or quote septic install or repair? And feel free to start wherever you want.

Brock Peel: Well, for starters, I actually just designed a book that I'm going to be kind of releasing for, you know, people to buy through me or wherever. I'm not trying to make money on it at all or anything.

It’s just the fact of I’ve wrote this out for so many guys that I know, and how I price them, how I do my takeoffs, how I do my designs.

So I’ve actually wrote a little—it’s just a septic design manual that’s all it is. And it’s here’s all the questions that you want to ask clients. This is everything you need to know about the property.

I have code references for Ontario in the back for the codes that I know that you need to know right off the top of your head when you're on site.

And then I also have how I do my takeoff calculations very fast, right? So there are a lot of different ways to do it.

But as far as, you know, as far as material goes, I have all these, you know, kind of calculations in my head that I’ve memorized that say, you know, most guys like yourself or other excavation guys have different ways of getting to that same figure.

But I have my way, and it seems to work really fast. So I do everything based on the square meter; I base it on the yard, how much it's going to be.

I know the price of—all the prices of everything, right? So the number one thing is to price out—know your numbers. Know what everything costs, landed.

That’s a big thing—know all your septic components. When you have any materials, anything that you’re buying, whether it’s tanks, pumps, parts, fittings, pipes, you know, whether it’s septic sand, filter sand, stone, top soil, if it’s an advanced treatment system, whatever it is, know the cost of every single one of those and have those somewhere, right?

So we use Jobber for everything, so we can actually put products and services in there. I can adjust my markup; I can put my markup in there.

So what I’m doing, you know, when I'm looking at a septic, I know, "Okay, it's a three-bedroom home; it's all sand soil."

So anybody knows, or doesn’t know, septic systems in Canada here—I don’t know, maybe it's different in the states, the principle is the same, but maybe how they articulate it is different—but it’s your tea time.

So a three-bedroom house here is going to be 1,600 liters a day; your tea time of 10, say if it’s all soil; you know your Q is your flow. So your Q times T over 850, that's giving you your service, your surface area; your Q divided by 75 is going to give you your contact area.

So that’s all going to work code in square meters. So I can do that really fast, and then I know the thickness of that.

So I go, “Okay, I calculated by the truckload. I go, ‘Okay, I'm going to need three trucks for this for filter sand.’ A thousand bucks a load; three grand for a load of stone, things like that.

And then I know my numbers of what it cost me to run my business and run that crew every day.

So if I know, “Okay, this is going to cost me $1,500 a day,” right? And I—this should be a three-day job, but it's going to say take us four.

I price it out, “Okay, my cost on everything and then I work out the exact cost it's going to take me with my manpower and my, like, my daily cost is everything.

That’s my whole business in a whole, and maybe a lot of people don’t want to do it that way, but that's how I look at it; I look at what my business costs to run over 20 days, right? Over a working month, over 20 days—that's my entire overhead. That’s how many crews I have running.

So how much do that crew cost, and what percent of this is my total overhead? That’s marketing, that’s everything.

And so I work in that cost and how many days it’s going to take, I work in my cost for every material on site, and then I have my margins that I want to hit.

I have my percentage that I know that I need to hit on that job to make it worth it. And so if I know all those numbers really fast, I can quote it really fast because I know, “Okay, this is what it's going to take; this is what I want to make, and that’s the number it spits out.”

Austin Gray: That’s awesome! We quote very similarly. Do you have your percentage like so once you get to your manpower cost or your base costs, do you tack on a specific percentage for overhead and for profit?

Brock Peel: Yeah, so we—you know we have, well you have obviously markup, margin, very different things, right? So I look at my profit margin on the job as a whole.

I have a certain markup that I put on certain materials; I have to—that's kind of part of the quoting process for me that's a little bit custom.

There are some materials that you can mark up, you know, a certain percentage, and also the handling time for me, right?

Like how much, say, is it for me to get that material, right? And/or, you know, get those products and how much planning do I have to do and designing and ordering those components? So there might be a bigger markup on it. But essentially, the only number that I really care about, and however you want to structure it, and however you want to make it look good to your client at the end of the day, right?

However it’s going to look on your quote, that’s up to you if you want to have 30 line items or three; it doesn’t matter to me. The point that matters is what is the profit margin on the whole job at the end?

That's the only number that I really care about.

Austin Gray: That’s a great approach.

Brock Peel: So whatever I need to do to those numbers to get that, that’s what I’m after. So I don’t really care about specific markup on each thing because sometimes that markup can change, right? Like I can’t, you know—I might be able to take a load of stone, say, that I can get, you know, at a preferred rate or, you know, like if it's just sand fall, I might be able to get it for $300.

Well, I know I’m going to sell that for $500, right? So that markup, right, I’m, you know, if I’m at a 50% markup on that truckload or those truckloads, well I can’t put a 50% markup on my, you know, advanced treatment tanks that are $25,000, right?

I can’t charge $35,000 for these tanks or I’d never get the job. So that’s kind of understanding that is important but I think if you take the same approach and you just try and shoot for that profit margin number at the end of each job, it’s not really—it's going to work out and then you don’t have to spend.

Like I used to spend way too much time, like I used to spend way too much time on each job and trying to like, you know, I’m like, “How the hell do guys do so many jobs? How do they quote so many jobs?” because I would make every job I’m quoting like my baby where I would look at every single stone that was going to have to go in there.

But now I look at it more on volume based—it’s like, “You know, I quote similarly for each job.” There are some things that you really have to look at, and there are different conditions, but I look at it like, “Hey, if I quote 12 jobs in the time it would maybe normally take me to quote three, well, you know, if I win and do well on seven or eight of them, and maybe I was a little bit under or maybe I needed two more loads of fill on a couple of those jobs I didn’t realize—or it took us another day—it’s going to work out in the end, because the time it’s going to take me to drive to every single site and spend six hours quoting every job and look at every single job like it’s the last job I’m doing, it’s gonna take it—it’s going to cost me way more than another day in a machine or another load of fill or something that we maybe possibly didn’t see coming.

But that’s, again, totally different business model doing what we’re doing compared to other jobs, right? Like it’s not really, it’s not really art what we’re doing, right? So like, you know, if you’re quoting a hardscape job, like it might be a little bit harder to do that; that’s why I don’t want to be in that industry, right?

I think it’s a little bit, you know, it’s too custom for me, right? And too—you gotta be a bit of an artist to do that stuff, so that’s why I want to stay out of that.

Austin Gray: Understood. What is an average septic install on the low end and then like what's an average range, low end to high end?

Brock Peel: $20,000 to $25,000 probably. I mean, well, I don’t know, these houses are getting bigger and the lots are getting tighter, so you know, we’re doing, you know, mainly like mainly for us, we seem to get called on the tricky ones.

We seem to get called on the ones that are difficult, like really tough, whereas no other installer like—there are a lot of other installers that just do a raised filter bed; that’s all I do, right?

Whereas I’ve really made it my kind of baby to be the, you know, really understand every single type of septic system. So when I go onto a site to look at it, I’ve got about six different systems in my head that I’m trying to see if they can work there.

So we do a lot of like advanced treatment systems, which you're looking at anywhere from, you know, on the low end, $40,000 up to, you know, $75,000 for one of those advanced treatment systems.

The biggest one we did this year for one system was $125,000, right? So that’s one, you know, that’s one system for around 120, it’s a big advanced treatment system.

Austin Gray: How big was that house, just curious?

Brock Peel: 11,000 square feet, six bedrooms, had a flow of around 7,000 liters a day from what I remember.

Austin Gray: Got it. So your typical three-bedroom house is 1,600 liters a day is the calculation.

So if you, you know, just to put it in perspective, that typical 2,000 to 3,000 square foot house is 1,600 liters a day. This place was 7,000, so let’s put it in perspective.

Brock Peel: This is awesome, man. Well, we’ve got so much more to talk about here, but we’re over the hour mark, and I want to go ahead and wrap this episode one up. I would love to have you back on for a second episode and we can talk repairs in that episode.

Brock Peel: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I know that you like to dive into the numbers and stuff like that, and I have no problem with that. I'm willing to share anything.

Austin Gray: Sweet! Well, after we get this one wrapped up, we’ll schedule that second episode to come back on. But for those of you, or for our listeners, where can they find you and your business online?

Brock Peel: Instagram is probably the best, just Canadian Sanitation. That’s our Instagram, and our website’s Canadiansanitation.ca. That’s really the only platform.

I mean, on Facebook, it’s just basically an account that’s connected to our Instagram, but I typically do most of it through Instagram. Again, it’s just a digital resume, and it's just a way to kind of stay in touch and show everybody what we’re doing, but it’s not really my preferred method of marketing.

So, everything on Instagram to date, I do all myself—all of our stories, our posts—everything. So if anybody reaches out over Instagram, they’re going to be reaching out directly to me.

Austin Gray: Well, there you have it! Brock Peel with Canadian Sanitation. Brock, thanks so much for being on the show!

Brock Peel: Yeah, thanks for having me on, man! It was great.

Austin Gray: And listeners, thank you so much for listening! If you like these episodes, if you’re listening on YouTube, would you make sure to like, comment, and subscribe to the channel?

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This episode is brought to you by OWNR OPS. OWNR OPS is an online hub specifically for helping small business owners start and grow service-based businesses. You can check that out at ownrops.com, O-W-N-E-R-O-P-S.com, and we'll see you guys in the next—