Real stories from the field. Industry insights you won't find anywhere else. Written by the people who actually do the work.
"It's unbelievable how much you don't know about the game you've been playing all your life."
The quote is attributed to Mickey Mantle, the legendary Yankees slugger. There's just one problem—he never said it. It's completely made up, a Hollywood invention for dramatic effect. But here's what's funny about this fake quote: it's more true than most real ones.
I spend my days in an industry that literally grows on trees—forestry mulching and tree care. Like baseball before Billy Beane, it's an industry where success has traditionally been measured by gut feelings, generational wisdom, and the kind of intuitive knowledge that comes from decades of looking up at canopies and calculating risk. But also like baseball, it's an industry ripe for a data revolution.
When I was hired to rebuild the sales department for a tree service company, I thought I understood the game. I was the tree guy—the expert who could handle any project from the ground up. Sales seemed like an easy fix: stabilize revenue so we could focus on operations without the weekly financial rollercoaster.
My wife and I had built a system that was lean and lethal. She would schedule 20-30 in-person sales appointments for me per day—not per week, per day. The marketing campaigns produced phone calls, she documented everything in our systems, and then scheduled my visits based on efficient routing. We had the week pre-planned with zip codes mapped for optimal efficiency.
But here's where it gets interesting: because I was selling the jobs and had an almost photographic memory for addresses, I could follow up and watch the work get completed. I saw the hurdles the crews faced, how those impacted the profit and time predictions I'd made, and most importantly—I saw patterns emerge.
It was amazing to watch it evolve from nothing to small consistencies to being able to predict job duration down to the minute. The numbers started telling me a story that I could run ahead of, job after job. Sure, I struck out plenty, but I was getting on base more and more frequently.
Every job became a data point. Every address held memories of specific tree conditions, crew challenges, and profit outcomes. The patterns revealed mathematical relationships as consistent as gravity—relationships that had been governing our industry for generations, invisible to operators who relied solely on experience.
The fake Mickey Mantle quote became my reality check: I was learning how much I didn't know about the game I'd been playing my entire professional life.
After years of gathering, processing, studying, and deploying data from the tree care industry, I've identified what I call the MoneyBall Rules—nine universal principles that govern profitable tree care operations, whether you're running a single crew or managing a fleet.
Rule #1 - The Pitcher Rule (Leadership): Data sets the pace, intuition follows the count. Every successful tree care operation starts with measuring what actually happens, not what you think happens. Track your true production rates, actual costs, and real profit margins before making strategic decisions.
Rule #2 - The Catcher Rule (Operations Management): See the whole field, call the right play. Document everything systematically—job conditions, crew performance, equipment issues, weather impacts. The patterns in your records become tomorrow's competitive advantage.
Rule #3 - The First Base Rule (Fundamentals): Master the basics before swinging for home runs. Get your core processes right—accurate estimating, consistent safety protocols, reliable equipment maintenance. Flashy techniques don't matter if you can't consistently deliver profitable work.
Rule #4 - The Second Base Rule (Efficiency): Speed comes from eliminating wasted motion, not moving faster. Study your workflows to identify bottlenecks. The time saved between cuts, between sites, and between setups often exceeds time saved during actual work.
Rule #5 - The Third Base Rule (Precision): The closer you get to home, the more details matter. Small variations in technique, equipment settings, and crew coordination compound into major differences in profitability. Measure and optimize the details others ignore.
Rule #6 - The Shortstop Rule (Adaptability): Position yourself where the data says the work will be, not where tradition says to stand. Use your performance metrics to identify your most profitable job types, optimal crew sizes, and ideal market segments. Let the numbers guide your positioning.
Rule #7 - The Left Field Rule (Hidden Value): Find profit in the work others avoid or undervalue. Every market has underserved niches where your specialized knowledge creates pricing power. Use data to identify and dominate these opportunities.
Rule #8 - The Center Field Rule (Strategic Vision): See the entire field, anticipate where the industry is heading. Track macro trends—environmental regulations, insurance requirements, technology adoption. Position your business where the industry will be, not where it is.
Rule #9 - The Right Field Rule (Execution): Consistency wins more games than spectacular plays. Build systems that deliver predictable results regardless of which crew is working. Your worst day should still be profitable, and your best practices should be teachable.
At the end of the day, this industry—like every industry—comes down to money in versus money out. That's the only scoreboard that matters. I track everything to increase money in and decrease money out simultaneously, building ecosystem-wide solutions designed to stabilize the industry.
The beauty of these principles isn't that they require advanced technology or massive capital investment. They require something more fundamental: the willingness to measure, analyze, and improve systematically. The professionals who embrace this approach don't just work harder—they work smarter, and they consistently outperform competitors who rely solely on experience and intuition.
TreeAI beta - coming down soon - out now on iOS
TreeShop Maps - coming soon - AppStore Review is a waiting game sometimes
TreeShopOps - is next on the list - from customer website straight to your phone - Live updating system, sales, automation, and an ecosystem of business operations tools specific to the TreeCare Industry
Whether Mickey Mantle said it or not, every data point collected in our industry proves the truth of that quote. The game we've been playing our entire professional lives contains layers of complexity and opportunity that most operators never discover.
The MoneyBall revolution in tree care isn't coming—it's here. The question isn't whether data-driven operations will dominate the industry; it's whether you'll be leading the charge or trying to catch up.
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