How To Start And Operate A Successful Stump Grinding Business Part 3 Setting Up, Insurances etc...

[Music] hey everybody it is me again uh thanks for checking out our kingsman enterprises youtube page and looking into this series so if you're serious about getting into stump grinding business or maybe you're already in the business and you're just looking to be more successful at it i am hopeful that this becomes a resource for you that is beneficial and helps you succeed in just becoming everything you could dream of listen this is a great industry it is a a fairly untapped industry successfully and i hope to change that for you so in a previous video we talked about your customer base so i'm going to assume that you already know what your customer base is you know where to go to get to them you've done your research and you're making those phone calls you're setting it up or you're about to get there next thing is is now let's do you you've set up your business um we're going to go we're going to touch on that real brief now that is going to be completely up to you at dba and llc and s corporation you know whichever you decide however you decide um you need to remember that if you're doing this as a small business whether where it's just you what are your aspirations with this where do you see the future with it you know i'm not a just a right now kind of guy i'm looking it's like a chess game to me i look at it as a challenge as a strategy and you know my overall goal and in a chess game your overall goal is to do what to take over right you want to win you want to get to the king and be the one that wins the game right so you need a strategy to do that it takes several moves to get there and there's a certain way to do it to ensure that you get it done some of those moves are quicker than others to get to that and achieve that whereas sometimes it's just a long drawn out game because you got really good competition so we're going to use that as an analogy in this business because you might have a lot of competition in your area you may have next to none if you have next to none stump grinding should be a really easy thing for you to be super successful at if you've got a lot of these stump grinding companies out there i'm going to tell you right now they're almost always a mom-and-pop organization they're usually very small usually running one maybe two rigs and when i say rigs i mean actual you know truck and trailer setups if they're running on their own they might have two grinders they might have a big one and a small one a small one so they can get through gates a big one so they can do big stuff and higher volume and so on so you need to decide what kind of business you really want to get to do you want to grow or do you want to just stay small potatoes so you figure that out but let's go ahead and just assume that we want to grow i want to show you how to grow you want to be larry lunchbox and just go from one job to the next job barely paying off your your equipment and hardly covering your insurance and your fuel and put a couple bucks in you know food on the table by all means go for it and i mean no disrespect i'm not the guy for you to watch i am just going to be burning up some of your time uselessly because you don't have the aspiration to push forward to become more now if you're that guy that wants to produce and expand and get bigger and grow then stay tuned to this because i'm going to do everything i can to teach you how to be successful now listen i have watched a ton of videos out there of people that do stump grinding and they give you these how-to tips and whatever else i'm going to tell you right now i'm going to be way more in depth than they are uh i am gonna go uh i have a squirrel issue i see so many things that are going on in my path i i see tons my some people their tunnel is like this mine's like this so if i veer off for a minute give me a second i'll come back but that being said um on this particular video you got your business set up so you got to get your your general liabilities insurance you're going to find out that through your research if you're contacting your your local contractors what are their requirements that's important for you to know so your municipalities are going to require a certain level of insurance you need to make sure that you've got that coverage they're going to require workers comp if it's just you uh or a one or two in florida for instance you can have up to three workers comp exemptions but they all have to have 10 of the business ownership so that's maybe you your wife and you know one of your kids or an employee i don't know and are you willing to pass on a percentage of your ownership of your business to somebody else you know that's that's a tough one that's something you'll have to figure out but that uh workers comp exemption is not always accepted so some of these places are going to go yeah we don't we don't even recognize that which is absolutely ridiculous especially if it's just you that's on their own their job doing the work there's no reason why and you can progress later as you hire people you can hire on a payroll company which provides you know all of that provides you they do all your payroll so they'll do all your taxes a couple checks and they'll go ahead and cover your workers comp insurance as well it's astronomical it's stupid ridiculous expensive um me personally i think workers comp is one of the biggest scams on the planet if they stop allowing these frivolous lawsuits in the courtroom from you know some bonehead that injures himself either on the job caused by his own you know stupidity or or negligence and also on a homeowner's property if they stop those lawsuits from those people being able to sue the homeowner for nothing they've done uh or you as a business owner for something they did wrong we wouldn't have to worry about that we wouldn't need workers comp insurance it's stupid it's absurd so as a as a legitimate business and i'm going to tell you this most of the stump grinding guys out there are just one guy he's in one truck he might be doing a pull behind uh you know that hooks to the hitch and he's backing up to the stump every time that is the biggest part of your competition most of the most of your competition is exactly that or they've got a small trailer and they got a little pull-off machine that they bring out that's remote or stand behind with manual controls that's generally going to be your competition may very well be you and listen all the power to them i mean zero disrespect by them because anybody that's out there working earning a dollar is 100 good on my book so um i commend him for it but maybe you're that guy and you're like i am so sick of just beating one day to the next listen i've been there i know what it's like i know what it's like going hungry i know what it's like you know going through your ups and you're like right at the pinnacle and all sudden it starts going back down so if anybody gets it it's me so let me try to help you avoid the down and try to stay where you're going up uh even a plateau is not good in business sense but at least it's better than down right so let's get you to plateauing and going up so at this point you should already have your business set up you should already have your workers comp set up you should already have all your tax information all your licensing everything that you need should already be done so i'm going to assume all that's been taken care of and now you're ready to go you should already have your customer base you should already be ready to call on your customers so you're going to be doing cold calling you're going to be doing door knocking is what i mean by cold calling so you're either picking up the phone and just calling whoever's on whether if you're doing a google or however you're finding their phone numbers you're going to be calling that list and hey you know joe's tree service my name is andy with kingsman enterprises we do stump grinding in your area i don't know if you have already a company that you're utilizing but we'd love to come out there and show you what we can do um and listen i'll tell you this if it's a a customer that's to provide me with multiple you know work multiple jobs volume based customer i'm going to offer them to come out and do one for free now listen that comes with restrictions i am not coming out there and doing your 60 inch you know live oak that you just cut two and or two feet off the ground uh that's not happening i'll come out there and do a 30 inch or somewhere around there when you get something that's relatively you know not too small but not too big let me come out there and show you and listen a 30 incher is gonna be probably your your median spectrum anyway so that's a great size to say hey let me come out you should be able to knock out a 30 inch depending on what piece of equipment you have relatively quick so you give them that let me come out show you what i can do so you should at that moment folks you need to be setting yourself up to be taking videos of some way shape or form i'm sure i'm going to go into your media here shortly in another video how to video yourself uh you can spend a ton of money on it or you can be stupid simple um this is being done on an iphone 12 and but i use gopro eights and they're attached to our helmets sometimes we attach them to the machines and we get the video all different ways sometimes they're on tripods and whatnot so suction cup to the whatever we do a lot of different things with that so we'll go into that in another video but you when you're doing these free stuffs you better be taking video of it and utilize be careful of the tree company name being in the background for two reasons one they might not want that uh it gives them publicity which could be a good thing for your relationship but if they're not a good tree company you really want to be careful being affiliated with them because if everybody in town knows joe's is a bad dude he damages stuff and everything else but you're over there doing work for him they're gonna stick you with their reputation so be really really careful with that um so kind of keep their name out of it having the extra equipment in the background is not a bad thing it lets them see that you're doing work for other tree companies which a tree company wants to see that oh he's already doing work for somebody else now listen if they're a reputable tree company you want to utilize that in your conversation with you know joe's so if fred's is the number one tree company in your county and they do more tree work than anybody else out there most successful at it and they do you know great job they got 205 star reviews um that you want to utilize that as a selling tool for yourself so you want to let them know hey joe we're already doing fred's you know stumps as it is he loves us uh you know he he'd absolutely give a recommendation on us he highly recommends us to do all of his stumps he gives us all his customer stunts we'd love to have that same opportunity to do yours there's a reason why he uses us and it's not because we're bad it's because of the quality work we do the customer service we provide for not just them but even when the customer walks out they get a professional company from from start to finish not just a tree company but the stump company so it's a reflection of the entire job so you want to make sure that you do your part in it and i will tell you this as a tree guy on the tree side of things before i was grinding on my own stumps hiring a tree a stump guy out there to do it i've been through several and the the last one that i used i used him for over a decade actually i've used him for goodness for probably closer to 13 or 13 or 14 years so 13 i believe so he i never had to worry about a call back the ones before that i did so you go from one to the next to the next now when you show up on a job as a tree guy and you are you know top notch and they love the way that you do your work you don't leave sticks behind your clean up is is phenomenal you're safe your stuff is is good to go customer's super happy with you and then i subcontract that stump and then the stump guy comes out and does an absolute terrible job they tear up the yard getting their equipment to it they grind it up they leave this massive pile of junk they don't even clean it up into a nice tight pile they just right where the machine ended they pull the machine off and leave a trail going back to their their truck uh or if it's a pull behind they leave a trail behind it and then they just drive off what does that say about your business guess who they're calling they're not calling the stump guy i can assure you with that they're calling friend they want to know why their yard is tore up man everything was great so you got the stump done what happened you know sometimes i don't even realize that you're you're subcontracting that out as a tree guy so if you're the stump guy do your tree guy the absolute best job that they can possibly get even if they aren't as good as you are on your cleanup if you've got to clean up some of their mess in part of your cleanup charge them a couple bucks more or just tell them look man if i have to come up and do a base cut every single time i come up here and grind your stumps i'm going to start charging you more for it because that base cuts got to go somewhere right so you got to haul it with you you're going to stick it at the curb which is bad on the customer's side unless you're in a hurricane thing and there's fema still picking up um but you know not all the time so you want to make sure that that you stand out all the time so when you're a reflection of that tree business you got to remember it's a reflection from start to finish on that job so the customer is not happy with your job he's calling the tree guy which then trickles back down to you you might not have him as a customer anymore so you are going to compete with the other guys that are out there that are doing a lot of that so i want to encourage you to do a really good cleanup get yourself a good rake get yourself a blower use shields and i'm not talking about that crap that they sell on cheryl tree or or tree stuff um listen there's not a good shield out there i'll put another video link later on our shields that we're going to be patenting and selling and i'm not just downing the other guys because i got my own but you look at my videos and you see the shields that we made compared to those the junk that's out there and you'll see why ours are the best but any protection is better than none so i've seen guys out there with metal stakes with like tarpaulin material that's a screen type that you would see over like a dump trailer or something like that where they've laced it from one metal stake to another and they just roll it up and then they unroll it and take it down around their stump so all that stuff stays interior for the most part it's hard to keep not tore up but at least they got some kind of protection that's there even if you are using the ones that you get off of cheryl tree or tree stuff they're all made in china who knows where it's better than zero your customer will appreciate that you'll look more professional you'll look like you actually care about their property and that's going to be important it's important to your tree guy as well so outside of that depending on what equipment that you've got you want to think about the padding that you're using or may need in like a wet area or a really pristine lawn or landscaped area that you might have to traverse to get to the stump what are you doing to make sure that you don't tear it up from point a to point b and back again so you might that might be plywood for you it might be you know uh cut up pieces of stall mats might be turf mats you know who knows you got to figure that out and we'll talk about the pros and cons of each of those in another video so uh again though what sets you apart from your competition so your customer service should be that of the best you should be very professional with your speech how you speak to people yes ma'ams yes sirs no thank yous pleases you know you want them to know that you appreciate their business you want to go in there well spoken and you educate the customer you know this is what we're going to do we're going to do it like this and this is why i'm doing it like this it's no longer drawn out thing you don't have to go in for you know 30 minutes of discussion over it you just pull up if they're there we'll just use it as an example that's not your tree customer and it is a just a door knock hey mr mrs jones i see you got a stump out there you know i'd love to take care of that stump for you we grind it four to six inches down below the grade we clean the whole area up it's left into this tight little small pile that's left for compaction if it's anything that's massive of course you can sell them on hauling the clips away if you have that capacity if not then of course you're gonna have to talk to them about that and all you out there that are telling your customers that makes good mulch stop telling them that that's a bunch of bull crap that that all that shavings off of an oak tree that are just wood chunks that are thrown all up in the mix the fluff stuff and talk about the fluff i'm not talking about that real fine mixture that you get with a good chip quality mixed in with the dirt i'm not talking about that i'm talking about that fluff so you got a big old head of stump that's still sticking up off the ground and you don't cut it you're gonna have to grind all that up and that creates all that fluff you tell your customer man that makes great mulch you know it doesn't it robs nitrates away from the surrounding plants so that's not a good thing for them at all if you're trying to grow other stuff in that area stop telling them that these guys that are the fly by niners or the larry launch boxes that i call them that's what they do they go in there and they sell the customer on a line of bull crap and that's all it is it's a line of bull crap makes great mouths just put it out wherever no it doesn't you ever try to grow anything in those areas you ever try to dig through that stuff with a shovel or or a little planter spade doesn't happen you got to physically remove that junk so that you can get in there the only time it's any good and it's any any easier to work with is several years of decomposition and that's if they're small good quality chips mixed with dirt if it's just that fluff it ain't nothing nothing that they want so that being said don't be that guy that's selling them a line of bull crap be honest with them have some integrity about yourself it'll carry a long way educate your customer properly yes you don't want those whatever you think the size of that pile is going to be multiply it by four because depending on what equipment you have depending on what cutting wheel you have is absolutely gonna be the truth on that so um again educate them let them know what you're gonna do listen guys go in there and pay attention where the utilities are do yourself a favor and have professional estimates that you draw up i'm going to go over that in another video but the important part on that is that it states right on the bottom of that and they sign off on it that we are not responsible for any damage to anything below the ground in the grinding area so you drive over and grind away and you hit the mainline water that ran right underneath that thing but you didn't pay attention to the fact that the water meter is four feet away and going to the house to service it everyone knows that the the mainline feed out at the road should be a certain depth but we also know that the feed going from the meter to the house isn't always that sometimes it ain't but this far so if you're grinding six inches down and hey but three or four inches down and you strike it but you didn't talk to the customer about that guess what you're doing you're now in the water line repair business so or irrigation lines sewer lines fiber lines you know all these underground utilities you better know where they're at you better get it do the 811 do a locate and get that stuff flagged so you know where it's at you should be looking at these things when you walk up on a site every single time so you know what you're dealing with from the get-go and it might just be that you grind a couple inches just barely below enough to throw a piece of salt over and go sod ready it and that's it so you want them to know that you see the junk they need to tell you where the junk's at or you need to call and get a locate or might be all of that all three so again education you look a lot more professional when you go up there and you care about their property and if i put shields up if they got uh you know glass that that's the house is really close to it or who knows what's in that something of their property whether it be a shed a boat a bike a car kid's play area who knows maybe some landscaped area where it's full of gravel and rocks you don't want to clean up your junk out of gravel and rocks especially the smaller the rocks are the more of a pain that is to clean that crap out of that because it blow all the rocks out too so you want to protect that area so every chance you get to tell them well this is what we're going to do we're going to prepare for this so that you don't have this crap in those areas now listen they might not go with you at that moment when you make the initial sales call but you having your your wits about you and you go in with a sales pitch that they understand that hey you know joe knows how to grind stumps he knows how to protect my stuff he knows he's looking for those utilities he knows that mulch isn't what i want he knows he'll even haul it away he is way more professional so you do that you're already on way up here on the list so they start calling larry lunch boxes out and they start coming out and they're like yeah i don't do any of that which most of them are going to be that way or they're just not well spoken they're not very professional they're not real courteous they're not all about they don't have much of a personality they have a personality of a rock they're real dry they just and i'm gonna tell you you're gonna find a lot of guys like that in this industry that's just the way it goes those are great for you that's why you go in there and put yourself up here from the start you want to walk away with that job sold as best you can right then and there because you lose your opportunity it decreases the minute you walk away and don't get the sale because somebody else will come in and guess what the customer cares about i'll be honest with you more than all that professionalism and everything else not every time but most of the time price they don't care that guy's not insured they don't care that that guy is a fly-by-nighter they don't care that guy just pulled up in a beat up truck with a smashed out windshield with a piece of equipment that zip tied together and leaking fluid all the way up to their stump they don't care the fact is you're going to go in there at 125 on the minimum and let's just say it was a a job that if you were to charge by inch at three dollars an inch just came in under the 125 but you stick your guns to 125 but old billy bob over there larry lunchbox he decides to do it for 50 bucks [Music] it depends on the customer now i will tell you this i cannot tell you how many customers both on the tree side and the stump side where i've gone on i've won that job and i'm way higher priced than they are you want to know why they have literally told me you are way more professional you're way more courteous and i could tell you cared about our stuff just from what you drove up on tells a lot about you so when you pull up with your equipment man wash your truck you don't have to have the best thing out there i don't have a brand new truck i got a 2006 chevy 2500 that i drive around all the time it's red you know how hard it is to keep red keep it clean it's not as hard right wash your truck wash your tur your trailer wash your equipment if you got clean stuff it shows you care about your stuff which says you probably are going to care about their stuff so you want to make sure that that you stand apart from the rest so when when larry launchbox pulls up with his half beat up barely alive business um there's a reason why it's barely alive and it's because of how he carries himself and how he conducts his business and he probably won't be in business much horribly longer or this guy will just skate through the skin of his teeth until he finally passes off or just physically can't do it anymore um you you don't even have to worry about that guy you're going to lose some to that guy i'm just going to be honest with you don't worry about it so i want to teach you further how to get into your sales side of things as we progress in our next video um then we're going to go ahead and we're gonna get into the equipment itself so uh in fact we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna talk about equipment first you

Channel: Kingsmen Enterprises

Views: 2,670

Rating: 4.8378377 out of 5

Keywords: Bandit SG75, Stump Grinding, Kingsmen Enterprises, King4me, King Shields, Avant 528

Id: _m1GhQ6IaH0

Length: 24min 35sec (1475 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 02 2021