eye.heart.trees
arborjunky
Okay so I'm in a bit of a quandary here.... I'm in love with everything trees (5yr majorly-serious bonsai artist, wood-carver&worker, etc etc) and spent the past 6yrs here in FL doing "freelance handyman&landscaping" work, got good & built a big clientele for my needs (never had/have trouble filling my scheduler) but the $ was lacking & one day on a tree job they brought-in a real tree guy and....wow I knew immediately it was what I wanted to do as long as my body would allow it, anyway shortly after I got my belt/ropes/top-handle and began trying to find more tree-work amongst my existing clientele and also constantly trying to find local companies to climb for (ended up finding two, both were very disreputable and while I'll tolerate a lot I won't tolerate late payment or "oh the guy's check bounced" type of job setups) so, for the better part of 6mo now, I've been doing 1-->3 tree jobs a week (for existing/long-time clients) and handyman/landscaping the rest of my time.
I tried another round of contacting all the local companies, still have 2 that I'm "in talks with" but the most-promising still may not work $$-wise ($200/d for climbing days but I'd have to do an unspecified % of ground-days where it'd be $100-flat and i'd be on the ground bucking-up wood w/ my own saws...that'll drag-down those $200 climbing-days really quickly...)
SHORT-TERM -- Would love to hear people's opinions on "chasing the storm-damage", have been contacted by one company/person who's leaving Weds, and another who's leaving tomorrow....I've never worked with either of them (was in-talks about contract-climbing and, w/ the storm that just hit, they asked if I wanted to go) so am a bit worried at the chances of going & getting a dog-crap cut%$$$ of things and get back realizing/wishing I'd stayed & made more $$ doing my normal mostly-handyman work.. Would LOVE any&all thoughts/advice on this type of thing, I know one of the guys/companies is going to be bringing 1 bobcat & focused on just residential just find downed-trees and charge homeowners to chunk them up & transfer to the front-curbing, am still waiting to hear back from the second guy/company to find out what his approach is (he's the one leaving tomorrow)
But, more importantly.....this slide-back to more-often-then-not doing handyman work has me so bummed, am even doing some climbs on my old practice-tree (big Oak in backyard, has a permanent ascent-line on it ;D ) when I've gone nearly a week w/o getting to do any real climbs, so:
LONG-TERM-- I'm close to done trying to find others to work-under....I've got a very reliable friend who's early-retired but still has his chipper & big truck and he's happy to help me (would be paying him of course) if I "went solo".....THIS is my dream, and I am just stuck at this "analysis paralysis" because I feel (and fear..) I'm missing *something* because it just seems too-damned-easy, it seems all I need to do is call the insurer and setup a policy (and a single-person 'DBA' company, $1M umbrella is a surprisingly affordable policy), setup my DBA(or corp/llc/etc) and BOOM I can then post online / not 'hide' and just openly work trees? What am I missing? It can't be that easy/simple..... ('hide'- yup I do hide, as I'm not insured yet I do work that should have it, mind you the inherent risk is something I always go-over w/ clients when deciding whether to proceed on anything, but I can't go post it to facebook or advertise because I've got enough 'frenemies' that know I'm not insured and would love to post "Oh did you get your insurance?" if I ever used social media...)
Thanks a TON for any&all advice, FWIW I have been a groundsman (1 summer but I learned a ton and have been - however infrequently at times - doing more & more since, w/ an incredibly steep change in my learning&experience curve beginning about 2yrs ago) and know my limits, heck I turned-down a tree 2 days ago after already spending nearly an hour on-site because, sadly, it was just too-far-gone(decay/dead tree removal) for a climber to get where they'd need to anchor anything (ie needs a lift/bucket), I want to go solo WAY more than I'd wanna climb for someone else and am happy to setup the DBA & pay my insurance but just feel there must be something missing here I mean the way the people at the county-gov't explain it it sounds like ANYONE could do it I mean someone who bought their 1st chainsaw that afternoon could still submit all the DBA & insurance paperwork and be "legal"/legit....if it's that low of a bar-to-entry then I'm certainly going solo, am just as eager to learn about this as whether storm-chasing is a good/strategic move for a climber ;D
I tried another round of contacting all the local companies, still have 2 that I'm "in talks with" but the most-promising still may not work $$-wise ($200/d for climbing days but I'd have to do an unspecified % of ground-days where it'd be $100-flat and i'd be on the ground bucking-up wood w/ my own saws...that'll drag-down those $200 climbing-days really quickly...)
SHORT-TERM -- Would love to hear people's opinions on "chasing the storm-damage", have been contacted by one company/person who's leaving Weds, and another who's leaving tomorrow....I've never worked with either of them (was in-talks about contract-climbing and, w/ the storm that just hit, they asked if I wanted to go) so am a bit worried at the chances of going & getting a dog-crap cut%$$$ of things and get back realizing/wishing I'd stayed & made more $$ doing my normal mostly-handyman work.. Would LOVE any&all thoughts/advice on this type of thing, I know one of the guys/companies is going to be bringing 1 bobcat & focused on just residential just find downed-trees and charge homeowners to chunk them up & transfer to the front-curbing, am still waiting to hear back from the second guy/company to find out what his approach is (he's the one leaving tomorrow)
But, more importantly.....this slide-back to more-often-then-not doing handyman work has me so bummed, am even doing some climbs on my old practice-tree (big Oak in backyard, has a permanent ascent-line on it ;D ) when I've gone nearly a week w/o getting to do any real climbs, so:
LONG-TERM-- I'm close to done trying to find others to work-under....I've got a very reliable friend who's early-retired but still has his chipper & big truck and he's happy to help me (would be paying him of course) if I "went solo".....THIS is my dream, and I am just stuck at this "analysis paralysis" because I feel (and fear..) I'm missing *something* because it just seems too-damned-easy, it seems all I need to do is call the insurer and setup a policy (and a single-person 'DBA' company, $1M umbrella is a surprisingly affordable policy), setup my DBA(or corp/llc/etc) and BOOM I can then post online / not 'hide' and just openly work trees? What am I missing? It can't be that easy/simple..... ('hide'- yup I do hide, as I'm not insured yet I do work that should have it, mind you the inherent risk is something I always go-over w/ clients when deciding whether to proceed on anything, but I can't go post it to facebook or advertise because I've got enough 'frenemies' that know I'm not insured and would love to post "Oh did you get your insurance?" if I ever used social media...)
Thanks a TON for any&all advice, FWIW I have been a groundsman (1 summer but I learned a ton and have been - however infrequently at times - doing more & more since, w/ an incredibly steep change in my learning&experience curve beginning about 2yrs ago) and know my limits, heck I turned-down a tree 2 days ago after already spending nearly an hour on-site because, sadly, it was just too-far-gone(decay/dead tree removal) for a climber to get where they'd need to anchor anything (ie needs a lift/bucket), I want to go solo WAY more than I'd wanna climb for someone else and am happy to setup the DBA & pay my insurance but just feel there must be something missing here I mean the way the people at the county-gov't explain it it sounds like ANYONE could do it I mean someone who bought their 1st chainsaw that afternoon could still submit all the DBA & insurance paperwork and be "legal"/legit....if it's that low of a bar-to-entry then I'm certainly going solo, am just as eager to learn about this as whether storm-chasing is a good/strategic move for a climber ;D