Kill the Hobby: Why I Risked My Family's Future for YouTube

What does it take to walk away from a thriving family restaurant and bet your future on YouTube lawn care tutorials? We sit down with Travis, whose winding path runs from TV weather to co-founding Feltner Brothers, to teaching digital media, to launching Budget Lawns, and finally deciding to go full time as a creator. The story isn’t about luck; it’s about consistency, service, and adapting the right things while guarding the core.

We unpack what made a neighborhood burger shop an institution: the same great meal every time, clean bathrooms, fair pricing, and smart upgrades like online ordering, curbside, and an app. Travis explains how they modernized:  brioche buns, smash techniques, tech-forward ops, without chasing every trend. He’s candid about the hard parts of family partnerships: overlapping roles, unspoken expectations, and the strain of leaving. His playbook now is simple and sharp, write roles down, revisit the plan, work in the business to earn trust, then on the business to scale, and grow talent from within.

Then we shift to the creator economy. Budget Lawns targets real homeowners who want a great yard without losing weekends or money. Travis breaks down platform reality: seasonality, search intent, thumbnail real estate, and why the right audience beats big vanity metrics. He resists random sponsorship clutter to protect trust, and he’s building beyond videos with community and cohort ideas that echo the restaurant lesson, open more doors than the front counter. If you’re building a small business or a channel, you’ll walk away with practical, transferable tactics: be consistent, evolve delivery, and keep the promise the same.

Subscribe for more candid small business stories, share this with a friend who’s plotting a pivot, and leave a review to tell us the bold move you’re considering next.

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Transcript

Quitting Safe Work For A Dream

SPEAKER_02 0:00

I cannot die one day and be on my deathbed not knowing if I can make lawn care videos on YouTube for a living.

SPEAKER_03 0:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:11

And at the end of November. I notified my employer that I was going to pursue this as an online business. I have all these things kind of in the works. Other opportunities have come my way. And I guess for now you could say that I am a full-time YouTuber.

SPEAKER_05 0:34

This is another episode, though, of Big Talk about Small Bit Nest. And we've got somebody here who knows a lot about small business.

SPEAKER_04 0:47

Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

A lot about a little or a little about a lot.

SPEAKER_04 0:52

It is confusing as hell. Every time I think I know a little something, I realize I don't know as much as I thought. I'm not only like a 15-minute increment. I'm like, man, I'm doing great. Oh man, what the hell am I doing?

SPEAKER_02 1:06

The good thing is I love change. Yes. So I'm somebody that thrives on change and not really knowing what's going on all the time. So that suits my personality.

SPEAKER_05 1:15

Well, you've done a million things. I mean, you're I we're going to get into that. You've had like a really crazy career, honestly. But I met this guy at um a barbecue trailer. Okay. I introduce recognized him because I said, Hey, you're a Feltner, aren't you? Because you know, I always go to Feltner viewers. They're great. Yeah. And sure enough, he was. But we were at that, what was that place called?

SPEAKER_02 1:38

Uh Bow's Buy You Smokehouse in Harmington. Little red trailer.

SPEAKER_04 1:41

I've heard about that.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

I'd been telling people how good it was. And we went and tried it with a friend. And said, I got to come back and get this. Two days before Christmas.

Meet Travis And The Family Business Roots

SPEAKER_05 1:49

Yeah. Well, the it's the quantities are huge there. Were you just there gnawing on some pig meat? We just were picking it up, and Travis was there with his beautiful family, and I was there with my bride. And I can't remember why we were coming back from farming today. Was that your first time there? Was it like spontaneous? First time there, never been there.

SPEAKER_02 2:08

Well, we don't. So it's meant to be there.

SPEAKER_05 2:10

It was. But anyway, we started talking, and and Travis has got a really interesting background. So, Travis, um before we get into what you're doing now to make a living, which is pretty crazy in my opinion.

SPEAKER_02 2:27

It's not quite a living yet, though. Okay, well that's all right.

SPEAKER_05 2:32

But but tell us about yourself.

SPEAKER_02 2:34

Now, your family, they had small business, right? They did. You know, everybody in my family did. It's really pretty much all I knew. So my brain was wired from day one to be my own boss. Never wanted to be. Did you grow up in Russellville? Where grew up in Russellville. Everybody knows about Feltner's What are down the Russell across from tech. That was my grandfather who started that.

SPEAKER_05 2:55

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:55

The story on that is totally different than everyone thinks. Everybody thinks, oh, that's the original.

SPEAKER_05 3:01

Right.

SPEAKER_02 3:01

And they're the heirs to Whataburger. I'm like, you think that'd be done what doing what I was doing at Feltner Brother for a decade? If I I would have been sitting in Corpus Christi, Texas, you know, yeah, right. Doing something besides flipping burgers all day. But that that was my family. And and everybody thinks that we came from that lineage working in the restaurant, but we we never worked there. We were one of the very few family members that never worked at the Whataburger in Russellville. Our dad owned an athletics store and apparel store.

SPEAKER_05 3:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 3:30

Uniforms, sporting goods, tennis shoes. He did that for close to 20 years. And his sister owned a women's shoe store and women's clothing store of some sort. All in Russellville. It was over on uh East Main, I think it was. My dad's store, Feltner's Athletes Corner, was on West Main. Yeah. Of course, everybody knows where the Whataburger is, still is today. But uh he sold that in the early 2000s to a young kid that he hired at 18 years old out of high school, and that guy still owns it today, has six kids. And uh so we we just saw the the freedoms that our our dad had being our baseball coach, our basketball coach, everything we did. Our parents were there.

SPEAKER_03 4:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:09

And so you know, you get out of college and thought I wanted to be the next Jim Cantori for the Weather Channel, and went and worked in the TV business. It didn't take me but about 14 to 15 months working for somebody else to go. This probably isn't gonna work out for me. Well, tell us about that. So you did you go to U of A? Where did you go? I did. I went to U of A and ran cross-country and track for a few semesters. And um for U of A?

SPEAKER_04 4:33

For U of A. Oh wow, that's big because they're one of the greatest in the world.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

They they were, and we were fortunate to be recruited by Coach Mc John McDonald. Yeah, and got only ran for three semesters, so I'm not gonna sit here and act like I was a track star or anything. Yeah, people say, why'd you quit? I said, when you're running 85, 90 miles a week, and that being a student athlete isn't what most you know general populations think it is. It's all you don't quit, you retire.

SPEAKER_04 4:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:58

And so we retired from that. And um, I had tried architecture and athletics at the same time. No, not gonna listen.

SPEAKER_05 5:05

Well, that's to me, yeah. So wide-ranging. You will not believe the story of this guy. Nobody believes what I've done when I tell them. So when you so you got out, you went to work doing TV news. How did you get that job right away? That's hard to get, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 5:18

Yeah, it it is. You know, it's um I went from architecture to business to broadcast journalism, and I loved watching the weather channel when I was in high school and hurricanes, and and I could tell you every weird kid. I wasn't I live in Tornado Alley and I love hurricanes. I could tell you every weather channel meteorologist just by their voice. And so I wanted to do weather, but uh Did you chase tornadoes? I didn't. Oh man. I was a hurricane guy. Oh, okay. And I loved hurricanes. So coming from markets all, we didn't have a meteorology program, so I had to look for small market television stations that typically would hire non-meteorologists for weekend weather, but news reporters during the week.

SPEAKER_05 6:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 6:03

And so I pull up the list of all 210 television markets, and I see 151 at the time it was, was Panama City Beach, Florida. Sounds like a good place.

SPEAKER_04 6:14

Got spinnakers there. Yeah, it's gone now.

SPEAKER_03 6:17

Oh, is it?

SPEAKER_04 6:18

I'd I'd probably take that job.

SPEAKER_05 6:19

Booters uh is next to the city. Whoa, whoa, whoa, bro. What is job?

TV Weather To Entrepreneurship

SPEAKER_04 6:23

Why would you say that? But I think a Panama, sorry. I mean, my God, what kind of person are you?

SPEAKER_02 6:33

So I I look up all the affiliate TV stations in Panama City Beach Market, and I get on NBC Channel 7, and there's a posting, weekend weather anchor news reporting. And I said, This is to be kidding me. Yeah. I send off a VHS tape, overnight it send it off, and I get a call back. They said, Hey, you do know this job's gonna take a little bit of reporting. I said, Well, I got a reporting VHS tape ready too. I'll overnight it tonight. Overnight tonight, I was uh manager for the GNC in Fiesta Square at the time. A couple days later, I get a call and says, It's yours if you want it. Put in two weeks' notice, two and a half weeks later, I got a U-Haul loaded up and I'm heading to Panama City Beach, Florida to live on the beach and do the weather all be done.

SPEAKER_06 7:20

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 7:21

And little did I know that job was not even open. They had already filled it and forgot to take the job posting off their website.

SPEAKER_05 7:29

And they just still hired you anyway, huh?

SPEAKER_02 7:31

Well, the person they hired, they brought them in, did all their background checks, had too many driving infractions. He had to drive company vehicles. Sure. They had to let them go.

SPEAKER_05 7:41

Oh man.

SPEAKER_02 7:42

And so I just just right, just like meeting you at Bose, right place, right time.

SPEAKER_05 7:46

Yeah. That's great. So so you decided you didn't like that.

SPEAKER_02 7:49

You know, I I I interned under Dan Skoff at K NWA. Oh, yeah. And and uh he was so great to me, so pivotal in getting helping me get that job, put together a sizzle reel or a resume tape. And um, you know, it just I liked it, but it it was it was out of my control, I guess you could say. I mean, it was all about the I mean if there was severe weather coming, you're gonna be here 24 hours. Yeah, you gotta be. I mean, no holidays, no nothing just not what I grew up with, the flexibility and freedom that I saw my dad have.

SPEAKER_05 8:17

Business ownership.

SPEAKER_02 8:18

And I thought, you know, if I do this long term, it used to be five, six, and ten o'clock newscast. Now it's five, six, seven, nine, ten, live stream. Like we need you to do a billion things, be 20 people. And I thought, how am I ever going to be a father, a coach, sure, and do the thing if I have to be at a TV station every single evening? And so that's when the gear started going, hey, why why don't we open a restaurant? What well I shouldn't say restaurant, why don't we open our own business, me and my brothers? And this was 2008 when we started thinking about this. And of course, the economy was horrible in 2008. And we were like, well, what do we what are we gonna do? We how are we gonna our parents didn't fund anything, they didn't provide us the capital to get started. They didn't, they did nothing, they helped and supported us, but they didn't do anything financially. We were all in that boat, yeah. And uh we said, well, you know, Grandpa did pretty good some burgers.

SPEAKER_05 9:11

I bet if we you know slap Feltner on the sign and you were in a burger spot down there when you opened up down in the would a power district. Yeah, the metro district. Metro district, yeah, down in uh Fayetteville. Yeah, that's where they open up. Prelude breakfast bars. Yes, they're doing well too. Yeah, they're they've got a couple locations, I think. So you so you started out there, and the three of you were working in there, right? All three of us. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 9:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 9:35

And so how how was that? Fights. Not an easy job.

SPEAKER_02 9:40

Some fights. You got, I mean, I tell you what, there are so many people so worried about what people think about them in this world, right? What they say, what they do, what they believe. Some of the best things that ever happened to us at that restaurant were just from being ourselves, just being brothers. I mean, fry bags being thrown across the counter. My brother probably kill me if he if he knew I was saying this stuff. I never saw that.

SPEAKER_05 10:07

As a customer, we didn't see that.

SPEAKER_02 10:08

You guys are going to 22 and 23 years old still. That stuff's gonna happen. A twin brother, I have an identical twin and a little brother. But some of those real life moments created long-term lifelong customers that were there when they got to see us be brothers that understood, wow, they're going through it. This is not it. We gained a lot of respect from people, but you know, uh aside from you know, the things that brothers do, arguify, whatever it might be, you know, we were able to make it work, which for a lot of family businesses, especially as close as we were and as competitive as we were, it was hard. It was very hard. So then how long did you work with the burgers? I did that from uh June of 2009 through March of 2019. So about a year.

SPEAKER_05 11:00

Uh 10 years.

SPEAKER_02 11:02

Felt like a year. So you you guys moved.

SPEAKER_05 11:05

You weren't over there all that long in that location, if I recall.

SPEAKER_02 11:08

We were there from 09 to probably sometime in 11 or 12.

SPEAKER_05 11:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 11:13

Um, hot button topic at the time was paid parking.

SPEAKER_05 11:15

And it was hard to park over there.

Launching Feltner Brothers

SPEAKER_02 11:17

I mean, you yeah. It was. And you know, you look back now and it's not as big of a deal. But at the time, it was a very, very big deal. You're asking people to really struggle to find a place to park, then have to figure out how to pay for it to come spend nine bucks on a cheeseburger and fries.

SPEAKER_05 11:36

Yeah. Guys, your pricing was always so good. Still is. It still is. We go there all the time. It's fantastic. I probably go to Feltner Brothers at least once a week.

SPEAKER_02 11:45

Also, I'll I'll say thank you for my brother. You know, we I always say I'm the has been brother. I should just be Feltner brother.

SPEAKER_05 11:52

I I I I would like to talk about that business a little bit because I think they they, you know, obviously you you created a very successful business. There's always a line and it it's the place is always packed, and you're different. I mean, what do you think made that business successful?

SPEAKER_02 12:11

I I think the most important thing, if I could sum it up to one word, is consistency. Uh, we live in a world where there's so many options.

SPEAKER_03 12:21

Right.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

People want to know that the option they choose is exactly what they want.

SPEAKER_03 12:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:26

And I think every time you go to Feltner Brothers, even since I've been removed from it, and I don't go eat there a whole lot because sometimes I don't like going in because I see things that I probably do a little bit differently, but it's not mine anymore. I know, I get it. Yeah. But I think just consistency. Pricing has stayed relatively consistent. Yes. It hasn't changed to pass on the exorbitant labor costs and food costs on to the customer. They've stayed true to taking care of the customer first. Bathrooms are always clean.

SPEAKER_03 12:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:57

The restaurant's always clean.

SPEAKER_03 12:59

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 12:59

I think if you get online and you look at reviews, the number one thing you'll see all the time is that it's always the same meal that people come.

SPEAKER_05 13:08

And that's I always order the same thing when I go. But the people there are so nice. How do you get those women who work there that come around to the tables and everything to be so smiley and and friendly?

SPEAKER_02 13:19

I have to give all that to Grant. Uh he's the owner now.

SPEAKER_05 13:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:23

Um, he has done an incredible job. I think we always had it from day one, but since he really took over the reins, he has done an incredible job instilling a culture. And I know culture is a buzzword.

SPEAKER_06 13:36

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 13:36

But it's really, and everybody wants to talk just about that.

SPEAKER_06 13:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:40

But a culture can change and it can evolve and it can always improve. We thought we had a good one while I was there. My twin brother were there, but he's really taking it to the next level. And I have to give him all the credit on that because out of the three brothers, I'm probably the least fuzzy-feely, yeah, emotional, like getting in the feels. Cultural centric.

SPEAKER_05 14:03

Cultural centric, exactly. Yeah, you just wanted people to do what they're supposed to do and move on, right? Yes. So that was me. We get that. We we understand that. I feel that.

SPEAKER_02 14:13

So I think that's it. You know, in a time where it got really, really hard for a lot of restaurants, especially 20 and 21 when COVID hit a lot of that stuff. They just kept doing what they did. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:26

And they took some of the hardships and they reinvested back into the business during that time period and said, hey, this is going to end like every other hardship. And we want to make sure when we get shot out the tunnel on the other side, we're ready for everybody to come back from what they were getting before, but better. And so always focusing on how do we keep getting better, but stay consistent with it at the same time and put the customer first.

SPEAKER_05 14:52

Yeah. I, you know, I think it's interesting when you look at businesses like that. And another one to me was Herman's, where they become an institution. I mean, you you've already established that. I mean, you haven't been there forever in this town, right? But you you've established this sort of institutional presence that comes from not changing anything. And there's that's that's a real strategy. I wrote an article on that once called The Strategy of Not Changing Anything.

SPEAKER_02 15:18

And I think there's a there is a little nuance to that. You don't change anything because you're a burger restaurant, you're not going to try to become a taco restaurant. You're you you're not gonna try to compete with slim chickens or raisin canes, or you're not gonna become a chicken tender restaurant. But I think what we did change were the right things. Always changing with marketing, online trends. What does the consumer want? Because you know, when Feltner Brothers first opened, we were taking the the model of our family's restaurant from the 60s.

SPEAKER_05 15:47

Right.

What Made The Burger Shop Win

SPEAKER_02 15:47

The old school, pre-formed, fresh, never frozen burger patty, diner style burger. And here comes this little thing called Smash Burger in the chain. And now younger folks growing up, they don't remember the days of the old school diner burgers. That looks cheap. It looks frozen, it doesn't look great on Instagram, it doesn't look good in a picture. So we weren't getting this new audience of the younger generation. We had our grandfathers, yeah, old customers, but they're they're starting to get older, eat less red meat. Maybe not go out to eat as much, or unfortunately, they pass on. So how do we keep evolving with what we do to always be up to date with what the consumer wants? And I remember when we changed in 2018 from a simple white hamburger bun to a diner style patty to a brioche bun and a smash. Pretzel bun, too, yeah. And they started doing pretzel bun for a little bit of time. When you start realizing that what you can do can be better, if you'll listen, yeah, is amazing. That's when that's been not revolution. Exactly. You know, and you know, we didn't start all of a sudden doing hand-battered chicken tenders because that became popular. Right. We started doing smash burgers because smash burgers became popular.

SPEAKER_05 17:08

It's amazing how much fried chicken these kids eat. I swear to you, my 14-year-old can eat it like three times a day. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's all she does is she wants to go to Chick-fil-A or Canes. Really? Or back and forth. Or slims. Yeah. Yeah. There's two. It just blows my mind. And if you're on campus, you know, with all the restaurants, you know, I'm a professor over there. All the restaurants we have at the student union and then in the old bruff building, Vikers Hall, and all that, the only ones that have a line are chicken, Chick-fil-A, and Slims. Okay, there's like at 4 30, there's like 70 kids lined up over there.

SPEAKER_02 17:48

And then everything else they have is practically well, you know, that's the time of your life where no one can tell you no, you've had too much chicken and ranch already.

SPEAKER_05 17:56

Yeah, it's bizarre. So, anyway, though, so you guys, you built that business up. Obviously, it's gotten more and more successful. You had you added the app, they've done an app. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:07

And that's the a huge part of it. Yeah, you know, evolving with the technology. Um, I'm a big believer in technology. Uh I I don't think that really name me one piece of technology that's really made things more difficult. Right. And I'll probably pay you a hundred dollar bill because it's, you know, and unfortunately, I see with with what I've done most recently from a professional level, there are a lot of restaurants that are just not bought into what technology can do for their business.

SPEAKER_05 18:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:38

Um, and so yeah, adding the app and online ordering, you know, as we I would always tell people is if you could open more than just that front door of your restaurant for customers to walk in and order your food, would you?

SPEAKER_03 18:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:51

Well, yeah, I would. Okay. So there's an app, there's online ordering, there's DoorDat, there's all these different places where people can find you. Why are you resisting any one of them? You could tell me all the excuses in the book.

SPEAKER_05 19:04

I mean, why though, like during COVID, did so many big restaurant chains, let's just take Red Lobster or whoever? Okay. They didn't bother. I mean, they made no attempt to have drive-thru. They made no attempt to let's move our customers out in the freaking parking lot. It just amazed me how unwilling they were to adapt. Egos in the restaurant business.

SPEAKER_02 19:29

I mean, massive.

SPEAKER_05 19:30

So, anyway, you guys built that up successfully.

SPEAKER_02 19:34

Even the curbside pickup. Right. Little banner on the flagpole out there. I mean, that's been, you know, when somebody orders on the app or online, they can say, hey, I'm in a gray uh SUV Toyota Tacoma, whatever it may be. So that pulls up, they paid for, staff sees them, walks out, takes them.

SPEAKER_05 19:50

It's convenient. Off they go. So you did that for 10 years. About 10 years, yeah. Then, but you decided you want to do something different.

SPEAKER_02 19:58

You know, we it was uh it was 2019. I had one that was about to turn two, a little girl that was about to turn two. I had a second one on the way.

SPEAKER_05 20:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:10

Was the only one of the three brothers with kids.

SPEAKER_05 20:13

Okay. Not the case now.

SPEAKER_02 20:14

Not the case now.

SPEAKER_05 20:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:16

We had opened the Tawny Town location. Uh it was there, our lives were kind of just naturally going in a different direction. Mine was going towards fatherhood and to enjoy kids for the first time in my life. Theirs was still very business motivated, professionally driven. And it it in 2019, I was kind of at that crossroads. Like I wanted to take Feltner brothers to, you know, a small regional chain. They weren't so interested in that at the time. I think things would be different the more mature we've gotten, and our lives have kind of settled down with families and kids. And I just made the decision at that time. You know, it's time for me to be a dad, to learn how to be a better husband and not be in this restaurant all the time and be more present in their lives. Sure. So I left. Is that when you became a teacher? So I had no plan. I had zero plan.

SPEAKER_05 21:08

You seem to do that a lot. You just like jump off and I like the challenge.

SPEAKER_02 21:12

I like to see if you're gonna fly. I like not knowing what's gonna happen. And and that's how so I'm uh it's the first Saturday after I left the restaurant on a Friday. Well, I'm sitting around my underware, literally. I'm like, I looked at my wife, I said, What do people do on the weekends? Because you know, college, you work on the weekends. Sure. Out of college, I'm a TV weather anchor on the weekends. Restaurant, you get a weekend off. It's Saturday, Sundays, Monday, Tuesday. And I looked at my wife, she's an elementary school teacher. She said, I think people go to Sam's on the weekend. Sam's Club. We do that sometimes. I said, Are you kidding me?

SPEAKER_05 21:50

And so we're in people go to Sam's club. She said, It's just fun. You just see all that stuff they got there. You just walk around, get you a little hot dog.

Adapting Menus And Tech Without Losing Identity

SPEAKER_02 21:59

That's what it was. She said, I heard the cafe's like super cheap. And I had been telling her, I said, you know, I wonder if my old professor, who was was at the time the chair of the journalism school, Professor Larry Foley, needs any help in the journalism school. So this was just in passing. I said this at home. And we're at Sam's that Saturday, and we're sitting in the little cafe eating a snack. And I have not seen Professor Foley in years. But there he is. He just walks right by. And my wife and I had never seen him in public together. And there he goes, walking right in front of me. And I said, You've got to be kidding me. That stuff doesn't happen. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 22:45

It does, though.

SPEAKER_02 22:46

Well, not by accident, right? Right. Exactly. You have to walk through the door when the door is there.

SPEAKER_05 22:53

Into the universe. Yes. Say it's God, or you can say it's the energy field, or whatever you want. But it happens. So I just it does. It does. I totally believe in that. So yeah, so you see them out there. Now you didn't have your master's degree. I did not. So I I You're not going to be teaching at U of A without that, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 23:11

Well, my wife is like, uh, go say something to me. Let's I don't want to like jump up and run over there. He he was with his wife, and he's not leaving, he just got here. And so uh we're walking down one of the aisles, and I saw him and I acted like I was gonna run over him with the giant shopping car.

SPEAKER_06 23:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:26

And so that just kind of sparked the conversation. He asked how things were going, how's the restaurant? And I said, It's going well. And he said, Hey, by chance, do you need any help up in the journalism school? Uh he says, you know, you're too busy with the restaurant and everything. And I said, Well, might as well let the cat out of the bag. I haven't told anybody, but I I have actually left Feltner Brothers and I'm looking for the next career move in life. He goes, I need a GA right now. You want to you want to apply to grad school, take the GRE, put in an application for a GA position within two weeks. I took the GRE, applied to grad school, got a GA ship, and I'm going back to school to get my master's.

SPEAKER_03 24:04

God love you. There you go.

SPEAKER_02 24:06

And then during COVID, it only took me three semesters because of COVID. I was able to get done faster. And, you know, there was an op, it was not an opportunity, opportunity there in the journalism school at the time. Um, so that's how I ended up as the director of communications at the Springdale School District. And Bill there kind of knew, or not at the Springdale School District, uh, Springdale Chamber of Commerce, but Bill there knew that I my goals were to get into teaching. I wanted to pass along my storytelling, my broadcast journalism, my video editing, my writing skills to the next generation. And by chance, here comes a job teaching middle schoolers at Don Tyson School of Innovation, how to do all those things in digital media and applied for that. Right place, right time, got it too. So I've I've been shown over the years that you don't always have to have a plan for it to work out. It always seems to work out. So as long as that keeps working that way, I'll keep doing it.

SPEAKER_05 25:00

So you want the Tyson School of Innovation's got a good reputation. Incredible. And and um so that congrats on that. And um, you did that for how long?

SPEAKER_02 25:10

About three and a half years. You know, I I had substitute taught while I was in grad school, you know, I subbed out at DTSOI one time and said, you know, if I ever taught, this is the kind of school I want to teach in. Everybody said, why don't you go to Harbor, Springdale uh high school or hard?

SPEAKER_05 25:28

I Springdale schools have gotten so much better. I it's amazing. Uh people don't realize that in Fayetteville, you know, everybody's a snob. It's like Springdale. The only reason I go there is to get my auto parts, you know. Well, you know, that's what my ex-wife used to say. The only reason, good reason to go to Springdale is eat chicken and get auto parts. Eat tacos. Yeah, well, they do have good tacos, too. And it's Springdale's. But Springdale's really coming on. I mean, downtown Springdale blows me away. The schools, all of them, they've upgraded. There's so many new.

SPEAKER_02 25:59

My wife's school at Westwood Elementary is about to be completely rebuilt. She's excited about that. But you know, I I didn't want to relive my high school experience again. With you know, there's not that there's not the athletic scene at Don Tyson. There's some at Done Tyson School of Innovation, but it's not football and basketball. It's not just it's a very uh academic-driven school, really unique programs from, you know, at the time there was robotics and drones and digital media and avi tech and film production. And you know, it's just a place for me to go and kind of immerse myself in kids that weren't exactly like me in high school, worried about sports and all that kind of stuff the whole time.

SPEAKER_05 26:38

So you did that for three and a half years. Then what? Why'd you leave that? Oh gosh. Didn't where we live high school forever.

Fatherhood And Leaving The Restaurant

SPEAKER_02 26:46

I was just having a by chance conversation with a friend of mine in the restaurant industry one day. He sells groceries for one of the big food service providers up here. And he knew about my background in media, in my experience in the restaurant world. And one of their partners, a company called Spillover, has a digital marketing platform, single sign-on or single username, password platform geared specific to restaurants from their custom website to their online ordering platform to a dashboard on the back end for all their online analytics, connecting their Yelp and Facebook and Instagram and Google, everything into this one user interface. Yeah. He said, Hey, why don't you know if you're your your background in both fields would serve you well for that? And it just turned into simple conversation, into one more conversation, into another, then hey, we want to bring you on board.

SPEAKER_05 27:40

And um that's how I ended up selling software, which no sales experience, but yeah. You don't think you'd have a hard time selling anything, do you?

SPEAKER_04 27:49

I don't Travis, do you from the from the time we've been in this show? Do you do you see a need as me to be a co-host here? Or do you think that Mark is just capable of doing it on himself?

SPEAKER_02 27:59

You know, we've got that just from the bows, right? We kind of have that. Well, I'm sitting here going in the back of my head, I'm going, Travis, shut up here. Well, you know, this isn't your show.

SPEAKER_04 28:08

No, I mean I'm sorry, Mark. I mean, uh the user everybody knows you can watch this episode again and see how much you've allowed me to even ask a single question. I'm sorry. I just was I've got to be.

SPEAKER_05 28:20

Should we what should we do like I would do just about asking questions? I what can I say? Should we do like I would do? I haven't been talking that much.

SPEAKER_02 28:28

I pray to you have a pencil with my sixth and seventh graders when they would work in groups. I would put a pencil on their table because they could not control their volume or who was talking. Yeah, and the only person that could talk was the person with the pencil. Yeah, that's the talking stick.

SPEAKER_04 28:42

Yeah. We need that in here, I think. I'm sorry, Mark. I quit missing. But I do have a quick quick question, rewinding back to uh to Feltner brothers when you made that decision to leave. Like, what if there's people that are listening to this that that maybe are teeter-tottering? Like, because I imagine, like, can you tell you a little bit on a journey about how tough that decision was for you?

SPEAKER_02 29:04

Kind of what made you know that little Yeah, it was I think the most difficult part was how was it going to affect the dynamics and relationships of my family?

SPEAKER_04 29:15

Yes. Yeah, that goes to the point that we talk about about having family businesses, right? When people are involved. I mean, because it gets thick hard, it's really thick.

SPEAKER_02 29:24

And and not to sugarcoat it, it was really hard. Okay. It was hard on my parents. It was hard on my brothers because I I had left my twin brother, who's now not with the business anymore. And then my little brother, who ironically was the one that in the ear in the early stages of it thought he might leave to go become a teacher, but now he's the only one that is left. But it was, you know, they were not happy with me, my brothers, because we had, you know, we had made a commitment to each other, not just ourselves and to each other. And there was a feeling of you know, that I perhaps abandoned, abandoned them or did them wrong. Um, so that was the most biggest hurdle to overcome was that initial, you know, kind of fracture in the family. And it did it, it it did not last long. I think if I if I told uh if I could give people one piece of advice, if that's what's holding you back from what you think is going to make you happy, or because you feel like you owe it to them, sit down and have conversations because we are actually closer as a family, top to bottom, now than we were then, because then all we did was work together.

SPEAKER_03 30:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:34

Now we get together for razor back basketball games and March Madness and baseball games and go to Omaha for the we could never do that back in the day, especially when you're trying to split three salaries across a small business. Right. And then families were starting to grow. My brother has his kids now, and you know, they're starting to grow, and it the the pie was not big enough at the time. And so I think just navigating that was the hardest. But now that we have the the benefit of being able to look back and see what happened, we're able to kind of dissect where we could have probably gone wrong. Would we rewind in time and go do it? Are there any redo it? Are there any regrets or any of that? No, we're all happy with where we're at in life.

SPEAKER_05 31:22

Good.

SPEAKER_02 31:22

The the jobs we have, the relationship we have with each other and the the families we're building. But I think we're able to look back in our mature, more mature years now. I mean, it's only been seven years, but we realize now that perhaps the roles we had identified for ourselves at 22 and 23 years old, maybe we were in the wrong spots.

SPEAKER_05 31:42

Yeah. And we didn't know that until you're 22 or 23. You experienced enough life to know what your options really are.

Grad School, Chamber, And Teaching

SPEAKER_04 31:50

Exactly. What would you suggest to somebody that's looking to maybe start a business with their family, with maybe a wife, brothers, or sisters or whatever, and like blaming on the lessons you've learned, how would you start that business? Like what what are some of the conversations you'd have in the very before even get it going? And how do you make it as fruitful as you can to kind of avoid things, right? To do your best.

SPEAKER_02 32:15

Really have defined roles and goals and objectives. Like we started this based off the idea that our grandpa sold sold burgers, and if we did that, maybe we could make our own paychecks enough to pay written bills and have fun. Like we didn't know what we were doing. Right. Um, so we kind of just started it on a whim. And fortunately, we are all very hard workers motivated, driven in anything we have done in our lives. But I would really have it outlined like, here's what I want out of this, here's what you want out of this, and here's what you're gonna do and what I'm gonna do. You know, you you look at the biggest, most successful burger restaurants, five guys, for example. There's five brothers now. It used to be four brothers and a dad, but they all have their own very defined roles. One runs the bakery, one runs franchise management.

SPEAKER_06 33:03

Right.

SPEAKER_02 33:04

And you know, we were there was a long stretch there where we thought we had defined roles, but we were really kind of stepping on each other's toes.

SPEAKER_05 33:11

Yeah. And uh that's a problem in a family business or a business with partners. Yeah. Yeah. You don't even have to be family members.

SPEAKER_04 33:18

100%. Like, do you have did do you think like having somebody designate as the true CEO or the true decision maker is a good idea?

SPEAKER_02 33:26

Or you know, we had those kind of things written down on paper legally.

SPEAKER_04 33:29

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:30

And it always cracks me up. Somebody starts a business and they get an LLC drawn up and then they change their LinkedIn to CEO and they haven't made a dime yet. But none of those titles really meant anything to us. Yeah. Um, I think we we we had our roles, but we didn't have roles for what we might see as the long-term future and growth of the business. So when it did come time to say, hey, let's do this, this, and this, or let's evolve, I was on the media side. I yeah, I put a lot of effort into creating videos and editing. And that took a lot of time in the office. Back in 2014, 13, 14, when I went and bought a GoPro at Best Buy and started putting 30-second videos up before there was TikTok, YouTube, shorts, or Instagram reels or Facebook Reels, that looked crazy to people. Right. What are you doing? And so there were just disconnects on how can we do what we love in life through this business? We weren't able to see it then. Yeah. I think now, if we could, if we could go back, I would fall right into the digital media marketing person. Grant would fall into the culture. He loves being involved in the community festival. Well, high school athletics, he's really involved with that. University of Arkansas Athletics, giving back, working with the boys and girls club, stuff like that. That was his wheelhouse. All of us have a pitch of OCD in us, which we've all said, you know, that's to your question earlier. What has been its success, a lot of its success? It's been our blessing in life, but it's also been slightly curse, more of a blessing. But we were able to use that kind of obsessive mindset to put together really, really defined systems and processes and organization and how the shelves should look and how the food should be prepared and visited. Um so we all shared that, but we just we couldn't not be young kid brothers and and transition that mind to okay, how do we act like business partners?

SPEAKER_04 35:37

Right. That's tough.

SPEAKER_02 35:39

It is, it's really tough because you want to treat each other like brothers all the time.

SPEAKER_05 35:42

100%. Yeah, and see they when you walk in there, it's gotta change when you're when you're in there working.

SPEAKER_04 35:49

Absolutely. There's a lot of depth to that too. I mean, I imagine like I haven't experienced that personally, but like if somebody doesn't show up for work, like you're angry and you would like to fire them, but can you really fire them? I mean, as a family member, man, that's those are the depths of uh That's when it gets bad. It is right, yeah. And I mean, but I think that if you are in that situation, having those conversations super early, laying some groundwork, giving some rules that we're all abiding by, like you just can't miss. And if you do and you do it twice, then we write it down. Write it down, yeah, and and bring it back up.

SPEAKER_02 36:22

You know, we we had the operating agreement, all that stuff written. Yeah. Titles in the operating agreement, but we never sat down and really detailed, and this is where young and dumb kind of comes in. We you know, a business plan, everybody thinks they write it and that's it.

SPEAKER_05 36:37

No, gosh, it doesn't evolve.

Lessons For Family Partnerships

SPEAKER_02 36:39

Of course. You know, we should have gone back and we should have changed those things because we would have these conversations over and over of like, okay, here's kind of what I want to do, here's what you want to do. But until it's written down and you're kind of held to it, that conversation is gonna last till you get back in the kitchen or in front of the cash register, and then you get going back into the groove of things, and then 60, 90 days down the road, you're kind of having that come back to Jesus meeting again. And oh, you just finished talking about this. Have it all down.

SPEAKER_04 37:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:07

Don't leave anything up for question.

SPEAKER_04 37:09

Yeah. And those are the hard things in business, I think. Like I'm constantly, I mean, when you talk about getting back in the kitchen, like to me, like getting back in the kitchen in my business is going back in the emails. It's just this never-ending arraignment in the meetings, meeting with people, you know, all the things that we have to do in the business, but then on the business, like I need that time of writing things down, strategizing, updating, having those complex things that I just keep pushing back and back. And I mean, I've lived in that world continuously for the last 20 years. Right.

SPEAKER_05 37:43

That's the nature of the beast. But I mean, you and I have both seen these people who say, Well, I'm not gonna work in the business, I'm only gonna work on the business. You can't do that. That is a terrible thing. They get so disconnected so fast they don't know what anybody's going through, and then they just sit there and read one management book after another and have one BS program after another that they're gonna implement.

SPEAKER_02 38:07

Quit reading all these self-help books and business books and go do it. Yeah, go flip the big thing. It sounds great to work on a business instead of in a business, but if I can't work in it, how am I gonna tell somebody how to do what I want them to do? Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 38:20

And I I would give so much that's what I'm inspired by Sam Walton. Yeah. Was like the best in the world at balancing those things. Yes. He was working on it, yeah, and then he was in it. You know, and I mean, it's just amazing.

SPEAKER_05 38:33

Like you say, it's like you you have to go from like the micro to the macro stuff real fast. Continuously. And and the obsessiveness, I mean, I can relate to that. I again, I wrote an article once that basically said, I worry about everything.

SPEAKER_04 38:45

Yep.

SPEAKER_05 38:46

And you know, people would go, Well, why are you concerned with the blinds, the angle of the blinds when you drive by the office at night? I don't want to see, like, you know, some guy leaned up against the window in the corporate room, and there's this big black band, and all the other ones are right. It's like, why is that important? Maybe it's not important, but it it reflects on the quality of what you're trying to do. You know, so you do get in the in the weed sometime. And I think if you're willing to do that as a business owner, you get a lot more respect out of your people. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 39:19

Like everybody says if if they see that you're willing to, you know, we had our food truck at one time and it's 120 degrees in. Right, you did have that.

SPEAKER_05 39:26

I forgot about that.

SPEAKER_02 39:27

And you're out at the junk ranch craft fair in June, and it's and if you're right there in the trenches with them, it's hard for them to revolt against you.

SPEAKER_04 39:38

It is exactly. Cut corners, and yeah, but then it also helps you go, man, there needs to be some things that are fixed. Like we need to fix the AC.

SPEAKER_06 39:47

Exactly. I love the arrest.

SPEAKER_04 39:49

I love that there's an arrest development uh episode of my favorite show. Oh, yeah. And then uh uh George Michael says, you know, he wants to leave his shift, and and she's like, Well, you know, only dad can do it. And he's like, that's the only way that we can get the AC fixed in the banana stand, is if dad, the owner, goes and sits in. Of course, it shows a clip of him calling the AC, you know, the AC company, yes, I need an AC and I need it as fast as possible. I don't care what it costs. You finally experience some of the misery.

SPEAKER_02 40:18

Well, and when you do that, it helps to to solidify uh uh an employee base that stays. That's right. And and to to go back to what it's long-term success is retention in the best. I don't like to call it help employees. No, that's talent. Terrible. It's talent.

SPEAKER_05 40:39

Team.

SPEAKER_02 40:40

Like people that that stick around for a long time. They bought in because you gave them opportunity. They bought in there are guys at there's one guy at Felton Brothers that worked at the store off Dixon Street in 2010. He's been there for 16 years.

SPEAKER_05 40:56

That's incredible. Well, you just said you had an employee for seven years who's been on the show. Yeah. Yeah. And and he's in a obviously now he's in a high-tech business. Yeah. You know, and he was there for seven years, and he's a great guy, talented guy. I think a lot for you guys.

SPEAKER_02 41:17

It's definitely about you know finding the right people. Um, you can't do it all on your own.

SPEAKER_04 41:22

And it's and then investing in those people too. I mean, like, you don't have to find a star that you're poaching or that comes from something. Like, I like finding folks like you can just grow them. Yeah. Yeah. Like you can tell that they have some eagerness or some desire, or that maybe they don't even know, but you can see that they have greater talents than what they're even giving themselves credit for. He is so good at that.

SPEAKER_05 41:43

Seriously. He, I mean, I've watched it over the years. Yeah. We got to take the four of them now. You always have it. It's so encouraging, man. It really is.

SPEAKER_02 41:51

Parker's one of them, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 41:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:52

I met him when I was at Don Tyson. He would come and speak to it.

SPEAKER_04 41:56

Yeah. Yeah. But I don't let Parker know how good he is. So that's the key. I always get I always give him I always give him a lot of people.

SPEAKER_02 42:03

Well, that's it's changed so much. You know, in 2009, the the kids that we hired out of college, they didn't need you to tell them. Or I was oblivious to it. But over the years, you've seen the evolution of, you know, the positive reaffirmation that's needed by new employees or or you just anybody. And um, you know, we always you could see somebody put in an application for a job, and it never really mattered what was on paper because the best employees ended up being the ones with zero restaurant experience. Yes, yes, but wanted to learn because the ones with 10, 15 years of restaurant experience came with their baggage and bad hates. Hell yeah. And wanted to tell you, well, that's not how we did it at this other restaurant. Right. And that's not how we do it here.

Working In The Business Vs On The Business

SPEAKER_04 42:53

So it's such a problem. I tell you, like, you know, and I tell the team this too, and no one ever believes you, but as we get older, you know, you go through business and you you start to understand why you like why you question why am I doing this insanity of running a business? Because it is a little bit insane. Right. You know, and so I'm like, what the hell am I doing? But then when I lock back into, you know, like it actually happened this morning. I'm like, again, you know, the 15-minute increments, you know, scared and depressed, high excited.

SPEAKER_06 43:24

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_04 43:25

There's two months, yeah, this constant thing. But then I walk into the business and I see the team, you know, and and then you you hear somebody and they're talking, and it's just like, I remember that person three months ago or six months ago that had no idea what was going on. Now they're sitting here leading a conversation, just a small conversation that you know that they care about and they're like, feels so good. It does. It's like just to see that growth. And I mean, the best two days of my life, and I tell this all the time, we're at White Spider when we when we got bought out, we started writing. Bonus checks out of that some of those earnings. And watching those people that came in, we had two days of 15-minute meetings of writing bonus checks to people and thanking them. And watching that change, it was, but that's the only reason why I'm doing what I'm doing again. I want to see that happen 10, 20 more times before I die.

SPEAKER_05 44:18

Yeah, but you're not dragging me along with you. I mean, because you're supposed to write me chat, bro. This is the way it's always been. I mean, I don't write you chat.

SPEAKER_02 44:30

He was a good friend. He dragged me along with them. You had a at White Spider, you had a former Feltner Brothers employee that her name was Kimberly, I think it was Elwood at the time. Um she is a small business owner now, has her own tight. It's tidying by Kimberly May. That's cool. I think I've seen that actually. Her business, we they come and tidy our house and clean our house up once every three weeks. And she does my brother's house.

SPEAKER_04 44:55

And I mean, either on the side or wanting to start that at White Spider. She was she was awesome, man.

SPEAKER_02 45:02

She was, we didn't want to lose her.

SPEAKER_04 45:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:04

We did everything.

SPEAKER_04 45:04

How can we get it?

SPEAKER_02 45:06

But she was just one of those, kind of like Vlad, you were like, too many skills in the toolbox.

SPEAKER_05 45:11

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 45:11

Not going to be around. And to your point, I think that's what's so great about for me and a lot of the decisions I've made, none of it has ever been financially driven. I believe that. Never. I mean, look at the job list of what I've done. Yeah. None of them are high-earning jobs.

SPEAKER_04 45:28

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 45:29

But it's what you just talked about. See, you get so many dopamine hits just as much as you get those dives down in the dumpster during the day as somebody who's doing something for themselves.

SPEAKER_03 45:42

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 45:43

And that's what's worth it. That is like filling up the pocketbook every time you get something.

SPEAKER_05 45:48

When people know that, when they when you work, people who work for you realize that about you. Yeah. How powerful is that as a retention tool? Oh, it's a good thing. To me, it was it's huge.

SPEAKER_02 45:58

That's everything. It was competition. Like I I'm done running, but every time when that door would open at 11 o'clock on home football game day, and you know you're about to get your teeth kicked in for the next eight to nine hours, that's the race. Yeah. It's time to start the race and working with that group of guys or girls in the kitchen and watching it all come together, and then at the end of the day, going, Yeah, we just did that.

SPEAKER_00 46:25

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SPEAKER_04 46:42

It lines up to a universal human law that we're all kind of seeking, right, in life, which is contribution. Yes. You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_05 46:52

You have to feel useful.

SPEAKER_04 46:53

You absolutely do.

SPEAKER_05 46:54

Doing something productive.

SPEAKER_04 46:56

And I think that owning, running your own business is one of the greatest ways to contribute back. Like you're either contributing one-on-one, contributing with your clients, and that's another place to put it, too. Exactly. Like to your point, you don't make financial decisions, you're making contribution decisions. How can I contribute to something that's that you know is going to contribute back, but you live that and it's just the financial is just a byproduct. It's totally a byproduct.

SPEAKER_05 47:20

It always is at 80%. That's where people don't understand. They think, oh, business owners are all just greedy or what's selfish or whatever. It's not the case.

SPEAKER_02 47:28

I was making you and you're working 80 hours a week. I was making about$3 an hour there for a little while. And everybody goes, Well, your name's on the sun. You you must be rich. I'm like, yeah, no. Not even close.

SPEAKER_05 47:41

I'm opposite of rich right now. Before we run out of time, though, uh-huh, I want to talk about what this guy's doing right now. Okay. Tell us about it. It's insane. About because it it fascinates when I heard this, it it fascinated me because it's something that you and I have actually talked about.

Retention, Culture, And Growing People

SPEAKER_02 47:59

So gosh, you know, it has been um I've taken all these skills that I've built up through all these different adventures in life. And every time you think that you're going to be doing something different, you kind of realize that everything all just kind of meshes together. And I've been doing using these skills on something for the last six, seven years now that has just strictly been a hobby. And I I love being out in the lawn. I love lawn and gardening. It was something I knew nothing about, self-taught, became a homeowner almost a decade ago. And here I am with this yard, and I've got to figure out what to do with it. Well, I'm not one of those that's just going to figure out how to do it, you know, bare minimum. I'm going to figure out how to make this thing look like Augusta National.

SPEAKER_05 48:49

So in 2000.

SPEAKER_02 48:52

In um 2019, you know, two years after becoming a homeowner and scouring just about every YouTube video I could find about lawn care tips and tricks, and finding that there was really nothing that suited my style and kind of my approach that I wanted to take, you know, homeowner-friendly, budget friendly, time friendly. Um, everybody online usually takes it to the, you know, to the extreme level and pours in all their resources and time and money. And it's just not realistic and doable for most people. So I said, look, I have all these skills. I'm going to make my own channel called Budget Lawns. And I'm just going to start posting videos talking about what I'm doing. And over the last, you know, six, seven years, the conversations, the rawness and the authenticity, and using a little bit of my teaching background and my journalism background and storytelling and writing and just being me, it just kind of just kept growing. Where, you know, a lot of other people kind of hit that plateau and they don't grow anymore. It just kept doing its thing. And I and I watched it do this while doing a lot of these other jobs. And it I just could not shake the thought in the back of my head of what if I just do this? What if this is my job? What if I treated it like a business? What if I ran it like a business and not a hobby? Could it be my next career path professionally? Kids, wife, she's not as big of a risk taker as I am. She's a teacher. You know, it takes a yeah, it takes a little, you know, you got to wait for the right time. And my kids are in at good ages now, eight and six, about to be nine and seven this summer. We're we're stable as a family, no major expenses. We're frugal. Both of us in our marriage were very frugal. We don't, we're not overspenders. We we're cheap by most people's standards. And, you know, I loved the people that I was working with at Spillover, maybe a little too connected to that industry. Really struggled a lot trying to sell software to people that are worried about saving because their restaurant is failing instead of figuring out reasons and ways to drive higher revenue to get out of the hole you're in, and the egos looking at me like I didn't know what I was talking about. And and I might have been too connected emotionally and personally to the to the topic and the industry. And after just so many years wondering what if, and then finally hitting that point of months of dwelling and obsession over I cannot die one day and be on my deathbed not knowing if I can make lawn care videos on YouTube for a living.

SPEAKER_03 51:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:46

And at the end of November, I notified my employer that I was going to pursue this as an online business. I have all these things kind of in the works. Other opportunities have come my way. And I guess for now you could say that I am a full-time YouTuber.

SPEAKER_05 52:04

Wow, congratulations. Wow, that's so that's so cool. When he told me that, we we were sitting out there at the barbecue, Joy, and I and I told um Travis that I always wanted to have uh, and I think we talked about it on this show before, the old man's lawn club, yeah, where we sit around and trade stories about what works and what doesn't, what tools we like. Eric loves big equipment. Okay, he's not into little stuff. He's he's got like massive trailers and freaking dirt moving stuff. But it's so much fun. All the tools, all the the gratification of the change, it's and the physical labor, all of it. It is.

Turning A Lawn Hobby Into A Plan

SPEAKER_02 52:45

It's like you know, every time you go out in the lawn, it's a process and you get to see your work from start to finish. And, you know, a buddy of mine, I think I told you at the barbecue place, started a website called the lawnforum.com. This was back around the same time that I started, a little bit before I started my YouTube channel. This I was kind of one of the beneficiaries of having the foresight to see that this niche was kind of taken off on YouTube. So there were very few people doing it. Um, but also having the foresight now, not trying to toot my own horn, but that's that's part of the fun in it. Kind of the risk and the reward, the you know, the kind of the fear and enjoyment at the same time. It having the ability to see that the platform is changing. YouTube is changing. All this stuff what was originally a hobby for me, you can't treat it much like a hobby.

SPEAKER_05 53:33

It's like a learning platform at this point.

SPEAKER_02 53:36

Isn't it? It is. It's education. Yeah, it's in and if you want to take it to the next level, you have to be willing to put in the effort and the time and in educating yourself to do so. Um, so it's more of me making a commitment and saying, I'm doing this. Yeah. Because I've done a lot of things on my side, which I think have worked to my benefit over the years in helping me grow while a lot of other lawn care creators have one, quit doing it, or two, not been able to grow. Um, it's really easy to buy into the hype of sponsorships and you get an email about this lawn. You know how I could own 20 robot lawn mowers right now if I wanted to. I could own 18 battery-powered mowers because I get emails all the time. But that shows viewers and the consumers of your content that you're worried about yourself. Yeah, you're worried about the free products. What can you get from this? And I have always just been focused on how can I genuinely help the audience. How can I take people who are looking for value in information, lawn care. They want to have a nice lawn at an affordable price, right? Without spending all their time away from their family and friends.

SPEAKER_04 54:47

What's the what's your YouTube?

SPEAKER_02 54:49

It's called Budget Lawns.

SPEAKER_04 54:50

Budget Lawns.

SPEAKER_02 54:51

And I had this I one idea one day.

SPEAKER_04 54:55

I'm gonna go check it out.

SPEAKER_02 54:56

I'm gonna go subscribe. And right now, you know, 41,000 something subscribers. And right now, it's a uh it's a very when you really dive into how the YouTube algorithm works and and what they're looking for out of their creators because you're not technically employees, you're 1099, you know, just you know, independent contract. But you have to know what they want as an employer. Right now, lawn care on YouTube is it's not trending, you know. It's but I keep putting all these videos out. People are like, why do you keep making videos? Because I'm building up a fresh new library of educational seasonal content videos that when people's brains switch over from snow to spring, they get online, they're ready to binge watch.

SPEAKER_05 55:39

Yes, it's going to explode.

SPEAKER_02 55:40

And you have to think in ways that aren't always vanity metrics. How many views am I going to get? How many, how can you provide value? Because once people are searching on Google and YouTube search for the topics about the videos I'm making, those videos can go from the basement to the penthouse in no time. I've had videos that didn't do anything in the first 12 months. Now they have 300,000 people.

SPEAKER_04 56:06

Yeah, it's crazy. And then, you know, this is a big day for you then, Travis, to be on the biggest business.

SPEAKER_02 56:12

I was excited when you said you want to come be on our podcast.

SPEAKER_05 56:16

Absolutely. That exists. That exists. Obviously, we don't care about sponsors.

SPEAKER_04 56:22

Nobody's calling us trying to give us because we're so focused on our listeners. Exactly. We don't even want sponsors. We we don't want sponsors. Don't try to call us to be a sponsor of the show. Hey, we're verse. We don't want anybody to tell us what to do. No, right. We care only about our listeners. We like some spots.

SPEAKER_02 56:41

Hey, there it does uh, you know, it does change a little bit when you say, I'm gonna do this to support my family, and that's my primary 100% form of income. But but I still want to I want to think of business strategies that don't just pad my pocketbook, but also provide a level of service they can't get from just YouTube videos. I'm fantastic. How can I form cohorts and communities of people that want to jump on Zoom calls and all be together and join these? Can we do the old man club?

SPEAKER_05 57:15

Yes, as a separate entity. I'm in a text group with guys like me.

SPEAKER_02 57:20

And our wives are probably like, what are those guys talking about all summer long? And then probably thinking we're like sending you know inappropriate pictures of girls to each other, and then all it is is our potted plants and the plants we just put in the mulch bag.

SPEAKER_05 57:32

Yeah. Or the or the nothing serious going on here, honey, trust me. The the new weed whacker we got actually works like it's intended, right?

SPEAKER_04 57:41

I mean, it's all there's a lot to review in that space. Oh my god. Because there's so much frustration with all of it.

SPEAKER_02 57:47

It is, and you know, it's um it's uh like anything else, it's just you know, how do you how do you compete? How do you stay forward thinking with strategies? How do you constantly, you know, I can I go back to this all the time. You think about what the viewer in this instance wants, not what you want. Too many people, and I've fallen down that trap. I think that's when I kind of had the epiphany of gosh, I'm making these videos about things that I find fun in the yard, but you know, the way the platform has evolved, people likening attached to the creator or the personality, but they're really in it for them at the end of the day. Make it for them.

Becoming A Full-Time YouTuber

SPEAKER_05 58:26

You know, it's funny, like I know you were you always show like your yard and stuff that you're doing on it. And it's you know, it's a it's a lot of people have houses like that, right? It's probably you know, it's a very common sort of situation. You live in a subdivision, you got a yard, it's rectangular, it's got you're trying to make it look good, right? Not all in one year, yeah. And so it's like so many people fall into that, and like you say, that's basically ignored. And that's probably the biggest market there is right there.

SPEAKER_02 58:55

Exactly. I've watched some of these other bigger creators in the space, they get kind of too big for their britches, and then all of a sudden now they've bought farms and they bought land. And they lose that connection. That's not how most of us live. And that's when I said, I gotta make something for the person in the neighborhood. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 59:15

It's just trying to mix it off.

SPEAKER_02 59:17

It's the genius, really. And so that's that's how it all kind of evolved, and it's uh, you know, now we gotta take it to another level because I got bills to pay. Right.

SPEAKER_05 59:26

Exactly. Well, we're lucky here, but I got my rich uncle over here that supports this show. Okay, and gives us this fabulous studio that he owns.

SPEAKER_04 59:35

But he's not happy, he wants more. He wants, you know, he said it earlier. What it you know just be happy for what you're getting. Okay, I well, son.

SPEAKER_02 59:44

The the hardest part is do y'all ever look at the analytics of your show and we get a lot of work every week? And here's the scariest look at it. The scariest part was kind of getting over the fact that, but I think you have to use it to your advantage. A lot of people refuse to follow what YouTube is doing with their platform and they expect it to stay the same way. Like all business owners think they're what well, it was working. I see so many restaurant operators that they were an institution four or five decades ago. Now they're going out of business because they haven't adapted.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:17

Same thing online. You know, right now I look at my analytics from what was it doing last year when I was making no content this time last year because I was struck solely focused on my new job. Sure. And and right now, analytics are behind.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:30

And so you're sitting there going, what's behind? I'm making more videos, but my my views are about right where they were last year. My revenue is down from where it was last year. But you have to focus on, okay, YouTube isn't doing this by chance. They know what's getting clicks, they know what's getting watch time, they know who's spending the most time on their platform. And if you look at your homepage on YouTube, where it used to be rows of five, six videos with five or six thumbnails, it's three. Rows of three now. The real estate and who's getting that real estate on the homepage or the scroll page on a mobile device is shrinking. So to me, the challenge of how can I be the guy in this lawn care and gardening space to win that real estate on their platform? How can I just keep getting better? I want to, when people click on, if if YouTube knows they're searching this type of content, I want my thumbnails shown every time. Not for so I look cool to my family and friends with lots of subscribers and views, sure, but because those people know that I'm gonna get the most valuable information in a digestible way that I can take and put into my loan, and it works because we're living in an age where you don't have to have the biggest audience and the most views to do very, very well.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:53

You have to have the right views audience, the right views and audience. That's it. That's why our 10 subscribers. No, I'm just we have much more of that. Most importantly, we do.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:03

You have to have fun doing it.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:04

You do, and we do, yes, we do.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:07

And I've always had fun doing it. The times that I didn't when I had full-time jobs, we just stopped making them. Yeah. But every time I'd stop making them, I'd miss it. So I'd like, what if I did this all the time for a job?

SPEAKER_05 1:02:19

Well, here we go. Hey, we've got to end this. It's fun talking. Is that over already? Yeah, it is, man. It goes by fast. It's all over.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:29

Tell them if they need to cut some of my voice out to insert y'all's, you know, I could talk, and you guys are easy to talk to, and I appreciate y'all giving me the opportunity to uh come in and blab about some of my experiences. It's been great. We thank you for coming. Appreciate your time. Answer some questions.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:43

Yeah, it's been valuable.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:44

I think the audience is gonna really get a lot of value out of this. I do too. Many reasons. Yeah, it's great. It really is been fun talking with you and look forward to seeing you again.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:52

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:53

Another great episode of that big talk about small business.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:59

There you go.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:05

Thanks for tuning into this episode of Big Talk About Small Business. If you have any questions or ideas for upcoming shows, be sure to head over to our website, www.bigtalkaboutsmallbusiness.com, and click on the Ask the Host button for the chance to have your questions answered on the show. Stay connected with us on LinkedIn at Big Talk About Small Business. And be sure to head over to our website to read articles, browse episodes, and ask questions about upcoming shows.