Stefano Devigili & Jonathan Ruiz - From High School Friends to Leaders of Grant Brothers Tree Service

Ever wondered how high school friends can become successful business partners? Join us as we sit down with Stefano Devigili  & Jonathan Ruiz, the dynamic duo behind Grant Brothers Tree Service. From humble beginnings tackling small landscaping jobs to operating a comprehensive tree care service across Northern Virginia, Maryland, and DC, they share their inspiring journey, filled with challenges and breakthroughs. Get ready to master effective communication and customer service skills, and gain insights into the unique demands of the tree service industry in their region.

Scaling a business from the ground up isn't easy, but Stefano and Jonathan reveal how they did it through strategic reinvestment, meticulous financial management, and the invaluable power of word-of-mouth marketing. Discover why they believe that top-notch service and accumulating positive reviews are more impactful than traditional advertising methods. Hear their practical advice on the optimal timing for tree removal and why you should consider tree work before other home improvements to avoid unexpected complications and costs.

Faith plays a central role in the philosophy that drives Grant Brothers Tree Service. Stefano and Jonathan discuss how their Christian values shape their business operations, emphasizing the importance of treating employees and customers with respect and care. Learn about their customer-focused approach, which has significantly contributed to their success and customer retention. This episode not only provides actionable business tips but also delves into living a life that honors Christian principles, offering a rewarding perspective on both work and personal life.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:30

My name is Stefano, last name is Divigili. It's a bit of a tongue twister, but our business is Grant Brothers Tree Service and we do all kinds of tree care all over northern Virginia. We have several crews all over and it's what we do. It's what we love to do and this is my brother yeah, I'm Jonathan.

Speaker 2: 0:55

Uh, last name is Ruiz. Um, yeah, like he said, we just a local company. Um just heard of Salmon, virginia, maryland, dc. Um, it's kind of in the tree service.

Speaker 3: 1:08

So tell me how you, how did you guys get into the tree service?

Speaker 2: 1:12

so yeah, it was kind of a funny story really. Um, just out of high school, um we didn't know what we wanted to do yet. So stefano came home one day and he was like hey, do you want to start a business? And I was like yeah, yeah, sure you know whatever sure and uh, you know, we just started doing like mulching.

Speaker 2: 1:31

Actually, our first job was like right next to our high school and, like we were, we were working like during class, like we used to ditch class to go start this job, and then class ended and everybody, like everybody you know, was getting out of school and we're like all right time to go to the backyard.

Speaker 3: 1:48

We don't want to hide in the backyard we don't want all our friends to see us.

Speaker 2: 1:51

so that was kind of how we started just doing like little landscaping jobs and then, you know, eventually we just kind of grew interest towards, like, the tree service. We always saw the guys like up in the trees and you know it just looks so much fun. And so we started, you know, by working at a company, a tree company, and then we started learning and eventually we just kind of started doing that on our own.

Speaker 3: 2:16

Yeah, how was that like starting your own business.

Speaker 1: 2:20

It was a challenge for sure. I think, um, like, jonathan and I like got a lot closer through it. It was a lot of difficulty because, um, we're both super, uh, hard-headed people, very stubborn, both have like business owner mentalities, and so they say like something like 90% of businesses fail and like, of those businesses, if you're a partnership, that increases you, like exponentially more, because people just don't like to do the simple things of communication and whatnot. But definitely, being in a partnership with your brother, your best friend, it helps because it strengthens all of your interpersonal relational skills too. And we were in the service business too, so we had to learn how to converse with customers. We'd laugh about the first times we would have to call when they would submit our form on the website. We'd get their phone number and we would obviously have to call them to set up an appointment or whatever it may be, and we were always like shaking, like who was the next one who had to call?

Speaker 3: 3:36

I've been there before in my first job. I'm like, oh wait, this is really nerve wracking.

Speaker 1: 3:42

We're timing out the voicemail and it's like are you still there? And it's like, yeah, we're still there, we want to rerecord, rerecording the voicemail. And sometimes people have the answering machine so they pick up hello. Like why are you recording three times? And you're like don't pick up, don't pick up. Yeah, so there's a lot of learning experience. Um, and it was a lot of fun at the beginning. Um, it's still a lot of fun today, it's just different.

Speaker 3: 4:08

Yeah yeah, well, it sounds like you guys have grown a lot too. What's happened like?

Speaker 2: 4:12

yeah, I think the growth has been such a blessing um, in different ways, like we don't have to be like on the field as much as we used to, so we get to spend more time on like back end stuff, you know, helping grow the business right and so in that aspect it's been such a blessing.

Speaker 2: 4:30

But you know, with any growth there's always going to be issues, and so now we have I keep saying it's the, the headaches. You know the like anxious calls are, not, you know, like our first customer. Now they're like uh, you know an upset customer somewhere. Uh, because one of our guys left a water bottle or something things like that, so managing those client relationships.

Speaker 1: 4:52

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 4:53

Yeah, tell me about the actual tree service, especially in North and this area. I mean, I imagine there's a huge business behind it. We live behind woods and tree maintenance is a lot. It's expensive. Tell me about that, that process and the importance of what you're doing.

Speaker 2: 5:12

Sure.

Speaker 2: 5:14

So yeah, I think like we live in such a diverse area right, Like we live in places like where, like you're saying, you have woods right behind your you know, in your backyard and then we go into DC and there's, like you know, heritage trees that we can't cut or you know and so we live in such a diverse area and so I think that's why there's a lot of tree companies, because it tends to be like within the tree service, there's like specialized tree services, so there's people that will only do like removals and like big wooded areas, and there's other people that will do like only certain types of trees, like you know, tripping them and making sure they're done correctly, like in those areas like DC, and there's a little bit bigger companies that do all around, and that's kind of where we're trying to trying to head down. Um, so we do a little bit of everything. Um, that you know, and in the area I try to be as diverse with our, you know, community yeah yeah, tree guy is like someone that nobody wants to have to call.

Speaker 1: 6:14

But you need to know one Because everyone thinks they can cut down a tree. And then you start doing it and you're like I'm going to call Grand Brothers instead Because it's a lot of work. I mean, we have a lot of heavy machinery, we have a lot of equipment. We're rolling up to a job site with a half a million dollars in gear, just showing up and, um, it's, it's really expensive stuff to get the job done right yeah so it's um, it's a really specialized line of work and one of our biggest pet peeves is when people like say like oh so do you guys like?

Speaker 1: 6:47

you guys like cut grass and stuff like. No, it's completely different from like landscaping and everything completely own category yeah, and quite dangerous as well, right yeah, I mean, I mean it's the most like hazardous job in in america.

Speaker 3: 7:02

So yeah, I know we have a couple dead trees that need to come down that have been stressing me out. My husband's like I can do it, I can do it makes me a little bit nervous, like I'm when it might fall on our house.

Speaker 3: 7:14

Yeah, yeah they're tall trees and when these storms come in and I just watch them blowing and I'm like man, some of these trees are going to give at any moment. What advice do you have for property owners that have trees like that? Or maybe you're looking to buy a new house. Do you recommend somebody kind of come out and talk to you about what your tree maintenance is going to look like?

Speaker 2: 7:36

because I think it's something homeowners don't budget for yeah, yeah, I definitely think that would be, you know, a wise decision, just like an inspection. Right, you want to do like an exterior inspection, make sure all your trees are okay, like you don't want. Uh, like we had a job, like we do a lot of emergency work, you know, so we get a lot of those calls.

Speaker 2: 7:57

We had a job where the person had just bought the house and like two months later, there was a tree on our house and, you know, had to be like basically devastating and so I think it is wise to to get inspected by, like, a licensed arborist not just, you know, some guy with a chainsaw, because he'll just tell you, yeah, this tree needs to calm down, but a licensed arborist who actually cares about trees and, you know, care about your health and well-being.

Speaker 3: 8:22

Yeah, for sure. What challenges are you guys seeing in this industry and how are you guys overcoming those?

Speaker 1: 8:29

I think Jonathan kind of touched on it a little bit. There's a lot of people who think that they can do it and they're not properly equipped with the right insurance, they're not properly equipped with the right experience and they'll get into this and they're a lot cheaper than most people are. But you know it's a gamble. You'll end up paying for it if they cause any damage, if they get hurt or anything. Another piece of advice I would add onto that for any property owner is that if anyone is doing work on your property, if they get hurt on your property and they don't have workers comp, that's good they can come after you, they can come after your property and they can come after your assets and the things that you own and a lot of people don't have the right insurance.

Speaker 3: 9:13

I didn't know that.

Speaker 1: 9:14

Yeah, yeah, if they don't have the right insurance, they can come after you personally and since it's your property, it's not like you can shelter that with a trust or anything, because it's on your property and there's certain loopholes that they can get through to literally access your home and stuff like that. And it's why you, when you get a certificate of insurance, there's a phone number on each single one and you call that phone number and ask are they equipped to do this kind of work? And that's something that we always tell people because, um, you know, we're, we're not the cheapest in town. Uh, we're not the most expensive either. We're right in the middle. That's where we want to be and it's. It's because of our insurance, mostly, I mean it's expensive.

Speaker 3: 9:56

I'm sure Very expensive. Yeah, how did you guys learn the ins and outs of this business? Did you work for someone that kind of mentored you or who kind of inspired you to go this route? And how did you guys self-learn this?

Speaker 2: 10:13

Yeah, so we, like I mentioned before, we started working for a different tree company early on, and within that there is this you know guy who really took us under his wing and just showed us like really the ropes you know. He, you know showed us like how to do the job properly. He has like 30 years of experience in this, he's a master at his craft, and so we're very fortunate to have him as kind of like a mentor, teacher type guy for like the hands-on, the most dangerous part, and so that's kind of where we learned most of our things. And then it was through trial and error, you know, the back-end stuff, like you know, which chipper truck should we buy? Which you know chainsaw should we buy? That was more trial and error.

Speaker 3: 11:01

And how much do you want to invest in the equipment?

Speaker 2: 11:04

Exactly, yeah, exactly yeah. All that. You know, we've made some decisions and then we kind of backtrack on it and we look back and it's like, oh, we shouldn't have done that, you know so it's a little bit of live and learn. Yeah, yeah, that's right, that's right. The first like two years.

Speaker 1: 11:19

I don't think we took a penny from it, like we just reinvested every last dime and I mean it was. It was hard but it was also easy because we were like kids and like we just didn't have any living expenses, so we were just. Our only expense was food.

Speaker 3: 11:36

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 11:37

So we were just reinvesting basically everything and we did have side jobs and stuff that we were. You know we would use to make enough money to, like you know, pay for those little things like food or save up for like gear and stuff like that. But we were super frugal at the beginning and I I still um like know where every single dollar is going and stuff like that.

Speaker 3: 12:01

That's good, yeah, that you haven't lost sight of it. And where you started? Um, what are you guys doing for advertising and marketing these days? What is working for you? What's not working for you?

Speaker 1: 12:12

Yeah, um, so we've done a lot of Google ads. We've done all kinds of things. Uh, facebook ads we've done like um, like door mailers and stuff like that, and it's really just kind of a black hole. You can dump thousands and thousands of dollars into Google ads and Facebook ads and all that and there is a return, but the quality of the leads you get it's lower and the amount of actual conversion is way off compared to word of mouth, way off compared to like word of mouth.

Speaker 1: 12:58

So what we've done over the last like five years of being in business is like completely pride ourselves on our reputation, which is why we don't have a single bad review on the internet. Like we don't have anything less than a five star review on the internet. Like if it's a four star, that that's like a one star to us, and we we act that way with our guys and everything. It's like you leave the, the job site, perfect. Like you leave it and you don't even accept payment until she tells you she's happy with the job yeah and like and do you guys haul all the things with you, because I know that's a big thing too.

Speaker 3: 13:29

Some people like take down trains and leave it. Yeah, we do everything.

Speaker 1: 13:33

so our goal is like get there and you tell us what to do and you don't have to worry about it anymore, like just you'll tell us what to do and we'll take care of all of it.

Speaker 1: 13:43

So, we just try to make it super painless and that's why people have left us Like I think we have like 115, 120, like five star reviews and it's like it's. It's that's what keeps us going, because people see that and, um, if we put a uh an ad out there, we're more likely to win over another person who has, uh, less reviews or a worse reputation. Um, because what people do is they? When they go to reviews, they don't look at the top reviews, they go show me the lowest to the highest and they look at the lowest reviews because they want to see the most authentic, like how were people upset and harmed by this company? And the only like um, bad review we have is from a competitor.

Speaker 3: 14:29

Yeah, I know in our neighborhood we have like a facebook page that's just for our neighborhood and I know anytime that someone's pleased with a service or we're not, we always pop it up there and be like hey, you want to give these people a shout out, and I'm always pleasantly surprised by the. You know some people it's on their head and they just haven't had a chance to look at companies or research and they're like, oh, we're just going to use them because so and so down the street said they did a good job. So, um, I believe, do you guys get a return from like good old-fashioned mailers these days?

Speaker 1: 15:03

we don't do a ton of them, um, we like probably get a scale up marketing this year or next year, but we've been staying steady. We don't want to be too busy right now, um, but we've been, you know, trying to. It's a balancing act because you can like we've quickly dumped too much money into it before and we don't want to like overdo it. So probably like next year um.

Speaker 3: 15:31

We'll start doing that so yeah, where do you guys see this going? It sounds like you have quite a team. Now, how many people do you have on staff?

Speaker 2: 15:40

it's like nine, I think yeah yeah, I think what we foresee is, you know, we eventually, uh, as years down the line, we want to be able to step away and let someone within the company kind of take our positions and manage these accounts and clients. We both come from a faith-based background and so we want to do more into that and we want to use this business to fuel that. And that's kind of the way we run our business is. Through that lens, we let, like we last, if that makes sense, like we will make sure our guys are all taken care of before we're taken care of. We make sure our customers are taken care of, you know, before the business is.

Speaker 2: 16:27

And that's, you know, against tradition, right, and I think that's been part of our success because we get to retain quality customers, we get to retain quality workers. For that, and you know, it's just I think it's a against the flow type of business and I think people feel that, like Stefano was saying, like people understand that they, you know, when we treat them, we call them up, like we actually want to talk to you. It's not like we're just here to take your money and leave. We actually want to talk to you, get to know you, and so I think that's been kind of a part of our success, and I think that's what's going to lead us to the next step, which is going to be that you know, able to use Grant Brothers to help others.

Speaker 3: 17:11

Right, that's awesome. Do you guys do clearing too? Like I know there seems to be a big market for that Like, if you live on a wooded lot to have it like kind of the brush and everything cleared out, is that something you guys do as well?

Speaker 1: 17:26

Yeah, um, we, we do Um. It's something that, like, we've recently added to kind of our services, because that's the kind of thing that involves a lot more heavy machinery and equipment, um, you know, to do it efficiently and, um, you know, be able to compete with other people that have that equipment. So we do that, um and it's. I mean, it's pretty easy because you just need one guy to hop in the skid steer and just go to town, basically like mowing down with an industrial tractor, yeah, and leveling it out.

Speaker 1: 18:04

So you got to do all that, and with one guy you can knock out like an acre, an acre and a half a day.

Speaker 3: 18:09

Wow.

Speaker 1: 18:12

It's a good kind of side avenue. It's a little different than the the tree industry because, um, most of the time, like what our guys are used to, is like finding a tree between two, like two houses or something, and then you do it piece by piece. But this is a lot more just like production based.

Speaker 3: 18:30

So yeah, what advice do you have for homeowners about when the right time to take down a tree is, because I think that's always sometimes emotional, like especially around here this tree's 100 years old yeah, I don't want to take it down, but it's not healthy or it's blocking a view. What advice do you have for homeowners?

Speaker 2: 18:49

Yeah, we've tend to do a lot of our removals in the winter, okay, and that is for a couple of reasons, like it's always best to like do your tree work in the winter anyways, because the trees are dormant and so, like pruning them won't hurt them. You know there's not that potential to hurt them like in the summer. You know, because you cut a tree like you know trim it, that cut the the summer.

Speaker 3: 19:13

You know, because you cut a tree like you know, trim it, that cut could get like sunburned, if that makes sense, or like for sure bugs and stuff can get in, and so in the winter they're kind of like shocked exactly, heat shocked or something exactly winter they're already dormant.

Speaker 2: 19:22

Next year they come that that cut's going to get healed first and then you know the tree's going to grow. But as far as removals go, I think the winter. If you're like planning a removal, say like you know you want to do like a deck or something, but the tree's on the way. I would do it. In the wintertime you tend to get better prices and you know it's also a little bit like in my eyes, emotional. It's like, oh, the tree is not, doesn't have a beautiful green canopy right now. It's a little less emotional, you know it kind of already looks kind of dead right emotional yeah emotional wise, I would say that's probably the best, yeah, yeah, but definitely.

Speaker 2: 19:58

If a tree is rotten, take it down immediately. You know you're not going to be as emotional about it if it's on your house, that's true, yes, that is true a little bit less.

Speaker 1: 20:07

Yeah, emotions, yeah, I think like homeowners should think of tree work just like demolition, at least for tree removals. Um, you wouldn't, you know, put up a new fence, a new roof and then demo something after you demo the tree. You get rid of the tree first and then you put up your new stuff. We've had a few times where someone gets new gutters, new roof, new fence, and then they're like oh, now we want you to remove the tree, but don't harm the grass or any of the same stuff we put in.

Speaker 3: 20:34

You're going to make it a little bit tricky.

Speaker 1: 20:36

You're going to pay double now that you didn't do this first. You should have done this at the very beginning.

Speaker 2: 20:40

Yeah, at the very beginning, that's good.

Speaker 1: 20:42

Yeah, order of tree work.

Speaker 3: 20:52

You want to do the tree work?

Speaker 2: 20:54

first before you get any tradesmen in there. Basically, good to know, yeah, what do you guys find most rewarding about what you do? Um, I'd say, yeah, like the, the happy customers, you know, the satisfied customers, that's always, you know, a good rewarding feeling, like when you like. It's like, oh, we're done. They're like, oh, wow, you know that. That, oh wow, it's like, you know, makes you feel good.

Speaker 2: 21:11

It makes you feel like you did something today, right, yeah and I think the other thing that's so rewarding is, you know, our guys, you know, or these guys that we hired, now they've become more of like like family to us because they've stayed along, you know, for all these years and they always tell us like we've never worked at a company like this before. And that's rewarding to us because that was our goal. You know, we worked for their companies that they were just production based and they don't really care about you, you're just a number. And so we're like no, we don't want to do that. And so when you have our guys, like hey, you guys, you know, are thank you, you know, they thank us for how we do things. And that's a lot of rewarding too, because we just don't want to be like those other companies and just take advantage of them.

Speaker 3: 21:57

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 21:59

That's so funny. I completely agree with Jonathan.

Speaker 3: 22:04

As we kind of wrap up here, are there any last parting words you'd like to leave us with? Maybe a mantra that you live your life by, or business advice?

Speaker 1: 22:12

Glorify God with everything you have. I mean, we do everything honoring the Lord. Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior, and that's how we live our lives. That doesn't mean anything other than love others as you know, love your neighbors as you love yourself and love God and let everything flow through that. So yeah, treat everybody with respect and treat everyone and let everything flow through that. So yeah, treat everybody with respect and treat everyone how you want to be treated. So that's the most important rule? I think yes.

Speaker 3: 22:40

Well said. Well, thank you both for being here today and thank you for sharing your story with us.

Speaker 2: 22:45

Yeah, thanks for having us, and that's it, pleasure.