“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. There’s just one problem—he never said it.
I spend my days in an industry that literally grows on trees—forestry mulching and land clearing. Like baseball before Billy Beane, the professional Tree Care Industry is an industry where standards have always been controlled by gut feelings.
Just like baseball, we have identified our industry as ripe for us to design and build a completely new way of doing things. Out with the old. Full system upgrade!
From Sales to Systems
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 Lacey and I 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 scheduled my visits based on efficient routing.
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 I could run ahead of so to speak. Sure, I struck out plenty. The accuracy was increasing.
Every job became a data point. Every address held memories of specific tree conditions, crew challenges, and profit outcomes. The patterns revealed the math to be as consistent as gravity—ideas and methods that had been governing our industry for generations were suddenly no longer covered in shadows of the unknown. This was invisible to operators who relied on experience to solve problems.
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, time to push this intentionally.
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 or effort 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.
The Bottom Line
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. That’s what we’re building at TreeShop—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. 1% a day (minimum) improvement. The professionals who embrace this approach don’t just work harder—they work smarter by intentionally being a student, and they will consistently outperform competitors who rely solely on experience and intuition.
What We’re Building
TreeShop — Our forestry mulching and land clearing operation in Central Florida. This is where we test everything before we teach it.
ShopOS — The operations platform for tree service operators. From customer quote to job completion—proposals, crew management, job costing, equipment tracking. Built from running our own business since 2016.
The Founding Member Program — 1-on-1 work with me to fix your pricing, your profit, your whole damn business. Plus early access to everything we’re building.
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.
Im Jeremiah- This is TreeShop— see ya next time.
Originally published on TreeShop Substack