Just wanted to share what following the process looks like! If people in here are on the fence about making this their full time job, I made the jump in early March to go full time into this. We had our first baby in October and my wife was very skeptical/nervous, dare I say excited, about the whole idea of me quitting. I have been bouncing between jobs about every 8-10 months, and this last job was 90k salary with killer benefits, but I was battling depression, low energy, and just wasn’t myself. I sat down with my wife, showed her my plan, and I went all in. In Austin’s starter scorecard I had a goal of my first 3 months going 10, 20, 30k in revenue. Currently, around 3 weeks into April I will hit 60k in revenue, which is 6 weeks ahead of my plan. Long story short, it works. I look in this group every day for motivation and I see some great people doing amazing things. Asking questions. Taking feedback. Moving forward. Generating results. @Austin Gray ’s community here is fantastic, and I can’t help but feel thankful and alive this Easter weekend! I feel that we are all hard nosed, hard working individuals, and I pray that we all find peace, success and something to pour our work ethic into! Big things coming in 2026 for this group!

The hardest part of building a real business is not what you say “yes” to. It’s what you have to say “no” to. If you’re like me, “shiny objects” are real. New machines. New ideas. New services. New side business. The toughest part? You could probably do most of it pretty well. But that’s what makes it dangerous. Discipline for guys like us isn't about “waking up early” or “working hard” — that's in our DNA Discipline is this: Being able to look at all the fun, new ideas and say, “No. I’m going to fix the one hard problem in my business first.” In your business, the thing you NEED to do almost always feels harder than the thing you WANT to do. Why? Because you don’t know how to do it yet. Or maybe you kind of know what to do… but you know it will take longer than you want. So instead of addressing the "hard thing" head on, most operators: Buy a new machine or attachment Research "better" machine upgrades or HP options Start a new service (like excavation) Switch to a new service area Tinker with new software to “optimize” the backend But the truth is, we just need to be honest and ask: 1. What is actually holding my business back right now? 2. Am I spending my time fixing THAT thing? If cash is your bottleneck, you fix your prices until you make real profit If leads are your bottleneck, you learn how to market better until more leads come in If closing is your bottleneck, you call/text leads faster until you start winning more jobs Not “another project.” Not “build a house on the side.” Not “add a second business.” Not “research the latest high-flow technology” The question is not, “What else could I do?” The better questions are: “What's the bottleneck in my business right now?” “What am I not doing because I don't know how?” Step 1: Tell the truth about the single most important problem in your business that is: - taking way too long to fix, or - you really don’t know how to fix Step 2: Bite down on that problem like a log in the grapple and don’t let go until it’s in the pile.

Any tips on fence line quotes, for a church, about an acre. They want limbs done too and lots of rocks lol. I was thinking polesaw for a day and stack it for the mulcher to show up and take down the pile and have got the rocks outta the way from the polesawing and stacking. Thoughts? I kinda am at 4000 for 2 days mulching 1 day polesawing. Im still renting so my biggest expense is the mulcher for 1000 a day.

New business startup: Really want to go with Takeuchi, but the dealers are around 1-1.5 hours away. I have a Bobcat dealer in town. Is it worth going with them just for the ease of maintenance if needed?

Anyone one in the southern US, have some recommendations on actual working days as a single owner-operator they are realistically getting? For Florida, I'm looking at about 147 billable days (working four 10-hour days and having one full day account for maintenance and marketing and then around 40-50 days gone due to weather or other issues)