Having spent the last year driving myself crazy (driven a few others crazy too, my apologies) and sorting through chaos, I finally see some better paths ahead….new regulations and what not that have come out are also helpful. Taking a different perspective to reframe the problem and seek viable solutions has been better. In an effort to manage my current companies costs and mitigate risk, I will be using Skool as a platform to organize training and safety documentation, various company docs and plans, strategies and results. This year we are testing a few different pricing and marketing strategies, and for the past several years I can't say we've used much of any marketing strategies other than to collect reviews, network, and set up various accounts. We haven't been super thrilled with any of the lead services we've used, and generally feel they are wasting our time and our money. Personally, I haven't been thrilled with some of the advertising I have seen or paid for either outside of that. We are still figuring some of this out, but that is to be expected. I have been asked for help with setting up various online accounts, building websites, connecting services, business structuring, safety/compliance and risk management, pricing strategies and bidding/estimating. These are all areas that I have delved deeply into the past year, and will use Skool to facilitate that assistance to those we either currently work with, those who are interested in working with us, and those who are seeking assistance and are willing to take certain steps to get what we have to offer.

Testing hourly rates lately on jobs that detail significant miscellaneous little things like bushes and small trees, and whole property trimmings. The reason for this is that it gets to be highly cumbersome tallying up the amount of time it will take per job when that tends to be highly subjective and variable. I have absolutely no idea how much other companies charge per hour if they do, and my understanding is everyone bids slightly differently, but costs (varying by hazards, equipment, level of risk/technical expertise required, crew size, etc) can vary dramatically depending on available resources and strategies applied to operations. Tree work ain’t cheap work, and many are surprised by the costs. It’s a lot easier to bid bigger trees and trimmings as that is our bread and butter. Anyway, I will break down my logic more, but for today I tested $650/hr estimated at 5hrs with a $250 discount for being a referral. That is $3000 with estimated direct/indirect costs being less than $2000. Ideally I am trying to formulate a 180 day operating schedule that does no less than $3000/day. This would yield $540k which covers more than double our current costs, revenues, etc. Truly believe operational efficiency and scale will be more applicable under a subcontractor model utilizing the above system, and mitigating significant liabilities.