Burning out

@colb What exactly does shutter the business? I almost assume, shut down.

@Brando CalPankian What do you mean by, "...the fact that we've hit a level that isn't sustainable for us wearing as many hats as we do."
I'd understand, as others said, you'll need to charge more, to pay the current employees enough?

It's a great thing you have 3 really dedicated people, maybe let them carry some of the weight that burdens you.
And, increase price, limit growth, keeping business small, with only you, and these 3 others.

By what you said about "So many customers say "if only you had been around here x years ago"
It seems your quality to price ratio, is too generous for the customer.

Most of the time, my 3 other brothers work with me, and I'll work with them in exchange.
It's great to have only trusted, dedicated people to work with. Quality, speed, precision and proficiency are superior.
 
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southsoundtree said:
What specifically are you dealing with?

What are you doing and in how much time?

What aren't you doing that you should?



What mistakes and triumphs getting this far?
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I'm still dealing with long days and a lack of qualified or able bodied people. We're dealing with constant machine failures, thankfully under warranty, but none the less it's adding a ton of time to things. Cloey rolled her ankle, so she's on light duty and everything fell on me alone again.

Back to 12-16 hour days 6 days a week. Pushing to be able to have a visit back home to Washington at the end of the month. We're producing 4 days of tree care, 1-2 days of sales, and 2 days of PHC right now to try and keep up.

I'm not doing enough administrative work that I should be. My wife is doing what she can but being pregnant again, running the office with two kids, and running the marketing she's stretched thin. My moments at home are spent organizing things for her to be successful, bookkeeping, TCIA paperwork, dot paperwork, equipment repairs, and implementing more consistent systems and sops.

Mistakes so far, hiring the wrong people. Hiring the wrong mechanic, which influenced us buying our equipment this winter. Trying the wrong CRMs all winter (jobber is so amazing omg). Getting the wrong trailer from a vender and not raising a stink about it. Some sales expectation issues over the winter (managing customer expectations). Buying aging equipment that needs worked on (no time or want to fix things when I'm off, down time issues). Not taking the time to set up proper management plans last year, i.e KPI, monthly equipment cost, job costing, etc. Tbh big mistake has been dragging my feet on some opportunities as well.

I feel like we're at a crux where we're making really good money and gaining headway as a business, but I'm reaching the limits of my education and experience on how to move this from being a profitable employee venture to actually being an owner. Right now I'm back to all of the climbing and lift work and most of the cleanup plus training and implementing. I'm a glorified employee with no benefit so to speak.
 
Willber said:
@colb What exactly does shutter the business? I almost assume, shut down.

@Brando CalPankian What do you mean by, "...the fact that we've hit a level that isn't sustainable for us wearing as many hats as we do."
I'd understand, as others said, you'll need to charge more, to pay the current employees enough?

It's a great thing you have 3 really dedicated people, maybe let them carry some of the weight that burdens you.
And, increase price, limit growth, keeping business small, with only you, and these 3 others.

By what you said about "So many customers say "if only you had been around here x years ago"
It seems your quality to price ratio, is too generous for the customer.

Most of the time, my 3 other brothers work with me, and I'll work with them in exchange.
It's great to have only trusted, dedicated people to work with. Quality, speed, precision and proficiency are superior.
Click to expand...
Yeah shut down/close up.

Basically the three of us are producing more than we can sustain long term. We're all maxed out in what we can accomplish in a day.

We did have issues with being too cheap. We've been raising rates, but still are grappling with work being bid months ago, so there's a lag time to implementation.

We've got no family or anything here. We moved here a couple years ago.

The labor market is terrible right now. Hardly even getting applicants.
 
Merle, I looked at the book online, it seemed very interesting re the concepts of Technician, Manager, and Entrepreneur, and how most folks (especially tree folks I'd say) start their biz as technicians bc they are really good at their work so why work for someone else when they can do it for themselves. But if they lack the tactics and strategy of how to manage the biz, nor have the strategy of what they envision the biz becoming, being only the highly skilled technician is pretty much a guarantee for burnout or biz closing or extremely limited growth.

I find these to be very interesting concepts especially since I just finished a 48y tree career and could basically be a poster child for being the Technician with limited managerial skills and almost no entrepreneurial skill. I'm halfway thru the book right now and am eager to see exactly how I could have done better.

Thanks for the book suggestion.
 
cory said:
Merle, I looked at the book online, it seemed very interesting re the concepts of Technician, Manager, and Entrepreneur, and how most folks (especially tree folks I'd say) start their biz as technicians bc they are really good at their work so why work for someone else when they can do it for themselves. But if they lack the tactics and strategy of how to manage the biz, nor have the strategy of what they envision the biz becoming, being only the highly skilled technician is pretty much a guarantee for burnout or biz closing or extremely limited growth.

I find these to be very interesting concepts especially since I just finished a 48y tree career and could basically be a poster child for being the Technician with limited managerial skills and almost no entrepreneurial skill. I'm halfway thru the book right now and am eager to see exactly how I could have done better.

Thanks for the book suggestion.
Click to expand...
I need to get the book.
 
I have not found Gerber's books apply well to our industry. Most of the work we do is far too highly technical/specialized/dangerous to think about people in terms of replaceable cogs in a wheel. It takes a special kind of person to go up in the air and get this work done. You can bring all the ground guys and all the chippers, trucks, whatever, but if you don't have that one guy who can actually bang out the work at height, then you have nothing. And good luck hiring that guy because as soon as he realizes the game and what he's worth, he'll be starting his own thing.

Gerber's central premise is correct - that someone who is great at doing X assumes that they should own and run a business doing X, and why this is so wrong. So I don't mean that his ideas are without value, but his thinking around solutions just don't apply in tree work, in my opinion.
 
Brando CalPankian said:
Yeah shut down/close up.

Basically the three of us are producing more than we can sustain long term. We're all maxed out in what we can accomplish in a day.

We did have issues with being too cheap. We've been raising rates, but still are grappling with work being bid months ago, so there's a lag time to implementation.

We've got no family or anything here. We moved here a couple years ago.

The labor market is terrible right now. Hardly even getting applicants.
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I thought that you moved there for family.

Is there anything tying you to the area?
Is the market/ seasonality as expected?



You'll make it through those underbid jobs in time. Bidding is very complicated. You'll underbid more in the future, but hopefully at a greatly diminished rate.
 
southsoundtree said:
I thought that you moved there for family.

Is there anything tying you to the area?
Is the market/ seasonality as expected?



You'll make it through those underbid jobs in time. Bidding is very complicated. You'll underbid more in the future, but hopefully at a greatly diminished rate.
Click to expand...
Nope. Moved here because during covid I was turning wrenches. Got head hunted for a job out this way.

Nothing specifically keeping me here. Our home, some debt, but nothing too crazy.

Not real seasonal no. Winter is prime time for oaks and removals.

Edit for autocorrect

Yeah we're almost through them. It sucked ass for a while there. I learned a lot. Bidding climbing with two people and little overhead vs a bunch of equipment and overhead is way different.
 
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Brando CalPankian said:
Yeah shut down/close up.

Basically the three of us are producing more than we can sustain long term. We're all maxed out in what we can accomplish in a day.

We did have issues with being too cheap. We've been raising rates, but still are grappling with work being bid months ago, so there's a lag time to implementation.

We've got no family or anything here. We moved here a couple years ago.

The labor market is terrible right now. Hardly even getting applicants.
Click to expand...

Dude, it sounds like you got something good going on. Who am I to tell you what to do but don’t give up just because it sucks.

The small things do make a difference

Another great book is https://books.apple.com/us/book/build-a-business-you-love/id6740594680


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Nelkuhns said:
Dude, it sounds like you got something good going on. Who am I to tell you what to do but don’t give up just because it sucks.

The small things do make a difference

Another great book is https://books.apple.com/us/book/build-a-business-you-love/id6740594680


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
We really do. It's just all consuming right now. Like, I'm not trying to complain because I know what we're doing is good. The tempo of things to keep it afloat is just not sustainable long term.

Thank you for the book! I have some time tomorrow for fathers day so I'm excited to start reading.

We're opening up hiring again. Cloey is most likely going to be in the office for a while or office and PHC hybrid. I've got two good candidates, one for groundie and one for another apprentice. We'll see if maybe that helps. Cloey can help back me up administratively and help Kay with backend work.
 
Muggs said:
I have not found Gerber's books apply well to our industry...
Click to expand...
I was wondering the exact same thing while reading his book. But ultimately I think that view, while very understandable, is not valid. Bartlett for example has been in biz since 1915 and seems to be doing better every year and they are nationwide- they are getting done without the need to find a 'unicorn' for each office and each crew. Sure this work can be tricky and dangerous but I don't believe you need to hire, nor be, a complete stud to make it all work.

As the book says, you have to have a vision and hire people that believe in that vision and thusly you will hire and retain the right people to make your tree biz flourish. Sure, if a skilled stud develops or shows up at your company, your results may improve a bit but to set things up such that things will only work as long as you have that 'one guy who can bang out the work at height', well that probably means you've set things up wrong for your biz and it's a race to the bottom in terms of profit and longevity.

What Gerber advocates is not at all easy to set up IMO but I'd say that it is accurate, and that is coming from someone who was a career-long fairly strong micromanager. Maybe I wasn't as bad as I'm suggesting but being a 3 person crew for decades says something about not wanting to grow. Ha get this- one ground guy I had back in the day said about me, "the best boss I ever had....he does all the work!!" OMG. :ROFLMAO:
 
Brando CalPankian said:
We really do. It's just all consuming right now. Like, I'm not trying to complain because I know what we're doing is good. The tempo of things to keep it afloat is just not sustainable long term.

Thank you for the book! I have some time tomorrow for fathers day so I'm excited to start reading.

We're opening up hiring again. Cloey is most likely going to be in the office for a while or office and PHC hybrid. I've got two good candidates, one for groundie and one for another apprentice. We'll see if maybe that helps. Cloey can help back me up administratively and help Kay with backend work.
Click to expand...

Cool, do you guys run more than one crew?
What about TCIExpo have you been there?


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Nelkuhns said:
Cool, do you guys run more than one crew?
What about TCIExpo have you been there?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
I had two crews last year. We're in a small town between the twin cities and Duluth, so finding folks can be difficult. This year we've only got one crew.

I've not been to TCIA expo yet. Hopefully if things go well we can this year.
 
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