Trailblazing Success: Rethinking Contracts and Trail Construction with Randy Martin

Wayne Herring00:00:00 - 00:01:08
Hey, business builders. I'm really pleased to bring you Randy Martin, the founder of Trailscape today. Randy is near San Jose, California, also a little bit to the west of Lake Tahoe on the border of California and Nevada. And Randy has built a company since about 2007, so over about 17 years that builds trails, private trails on people's property. So he works with landowners who have between 10 50 Acres to build trails that have a grade of about 5%, which is walkable, bikeable, up and down over steep mountains, down through little valleys, etcetera. Those trails serve as a recreational resource on the land, and they also serve as a fire break, which is something that he hadn't thought of when he first actually started building these trails. So Randy tells a story of working 70 hours a week and kind of gutting it out, tells us about his team today, tells him about the plan for the next 10 years, which includes looking for a successor, building value in the business, tells us about the marketing system that he used. Postcards actually are the best thing for him, although it's also important to be found online if somebody has the idea in their head that they wanna trail.
Wayne Herring00:01:08 - 00:01:34
But the postcards are ones to incite action and help people see possibility on their land that they hadn't even seen before. So he tells about the marketing. He tells us about the sales. He talks about his superpowers of business builder. He's very humble like many of you, so he didn't necessarily come out. Well, this is my superpower, but I will tell you it's groundedness is what I hear in him. And I think this is a really great talk. I think it's fascinating, interesting how he went from that 70 hours a week.
Wayne Herring00:01:34 - 00:02:02
He's at about 25 hours a week right now. Loves what he does. He's combined passion. He does love trails, loves running, loves biking, but he's combined passion in an arena where there is a demand for his services, even if it's kind of a narrow demand and even if you have to look for a bit. So his advice is to both no. Don't just follow your passion and dreams. Make sure that there's a viable economic pathway or trail forward. So I think I love this.
Wayne Herring00:02:02 - 00:02:10
Randy from Trailscape, and go get them, builder. Hey, Randy. Welcome to the Business Builder Way. It's really great to have you today.
Randy Martin00:02:10 - 00:02:12
Nice to be with you, Wayne.
Wayne Herring00:02:12 - 00:02:52
I've got your website up here. If anybody wants to look you up, you are a business builder. You've built a business that as soon as I heard about it from our mutual friend, Chris Ramey, I was like, man, I wanna interview Randy and get to tell his story. So you're the founder of TrailScape. And for anybody who's not watching the YouTube video, if you're on audio, I've got the TrailScape website up, and it says your land, your trail, your legacy. We build trails that make inaccessible land enjoyable and fire resistant. You're in California, so fire resistant in the west is really important. And so if you would, Randy, tell us a bit about the business as it exists now.
Wayne Herring00:02:52 - 00:03:02
We'll be switching time frames a bit as we tell your story. But if you would, tell us about the business you have now, the people, the work that you're doing, where you're at, all those things, whatever comes to mind.
Randy Martin00:03:02 - 00:03:05
Well, first, slide that image up a little bit so we can see the whole turn.
Wayne Herring00:03:05 - 00:03:09
Picture of a trail, and there's a turn on it. Okay. Yep. And at the top of it
Randy Martin00:03:09 - 00:03:51
So what's nice about it is it's not just a a u-turn, but it's actually an omega shape, which makes it so that if you're on a bicycle, you get kind of a pre turn, and you can put your tires up on the bank if it was a bank turn. And they're designed to drain without eroding, as well as being kind of a delightful experience running or walking or whatever. Your hills, your legacy. So many of our clients, we'll have 5, 10, 20, 50 acres, and they'll have oftentimes no trail at all. There might not even, there might be a road or anything on it. So it's just the land is really just a privacy break and a a fire hazard, and doesn't really give them much delight. So we get on the we get on their land and just provide them with a beautiful access. And we build our trails typically at about 5%, which is just an easy way to go.
Randy Martin00:03:51 - 00:04:17
You can run down. You can run up. You're you're not having to hit your brakes if you're riding too much on a bicycle. But we're located in Roseville, California, which is about 15 miles east of Sacramento and about a 100 miles, west of Tahoe. I don't know that Sacramento or this area is is wonderful region, but it's close to some pretty neat things. We're close to the coast. We're close to San Francisco, Bay Area, as well as Tahoe. So I was able to ski a little over 30 days this year.
Randy Martin00:04:17 - 00:05:02
Most of them just popping up for the day because it's only about an hour drive. So that's been a a delight to me. Our customers are primarily people that have land, 10 acres or more, in the hills because if it was flat land, then anybody could dig it. And then are wealthy enough, so they have a nice, you know, usually a pretty nice estate. So the beautiful thing is that we're working with kind of the top 1% of people, and they they tend to be smart and surprisingly generous and easy to communicate with. And over 15 years, we've only had 3 times where I ultimately didn't get the last check, which out of about 600 clients, that's a pretty good form. I I have to be, you know, careful in other arenas to realize I have to be a bit more shrewd than in my own arena because the people are just so sophisticated.
Wayne Herring00:05:02 - 00:05:47
Yeah. Given that we were looking at a trail and dirt going uphill is, like, again, on your website, just kinda helps guide us through how the company is right now. So you've got this really clearly spelled out process on your website, how it works, connect with us, plan an estimate, build the trail, enjoy. So can you you tell us you you've built about 600 trails. You've worked with people who have 10, maybe 50 acres. You put this trail when you said 5% grade. So even though it might be very hilly, it might be hard to go right up the hill, straight up over the hill because the way you grade it out with those omega turns, etcetera, makes it makes it doable. So so that makes sense to me.
Wayne Herring00:05:47 - 00:06:02
Can you tell us a little bit more about the connect with us plan and estimate? What's that process like? And do you do all that personally, or do you have designers on your team that go out and look at sites, or is it Zoom and aerial photographs
Randy Martin00:06:02 - 00:06:35
in today's world? Or The first thing is we think of terms of grade in two ways. 1 is, what's the lay of the land? Is it 20% or is it is it is it a 100%? A 100% would mean, you know, 10 feet this way and 10 feet this way. And we we deal with percentages typically, not not degrees, and degrees are usually about half. So about 45% would be about 22 degrees, somewhere in there. I think there's a plus or minus 5% in there. But, so the tread grade, we like to generally put it about 5. And if somebody wanted us to do it at 10%, I I might say, hey. No.
Randy Martin00:06:35 - 00:07:11
I'm just not interested. But usually by the time the conversation's done, they're saying, oh, I get it. We don't want it to be so steep. The reason for keeping it mild is for the user experience, as well as if at 10%, it's very difficult to get to water to run off the get off the trail, and it's water that's running down the trail that really rips it up. We were pretty happy with this with the, being real conservative this way was we got pounded by rain year before last. I mean, it was an amazing year in California. And actually this last year, we got a lot of rain also. But out of the 600 miles of trail that we built, we only got about 10 calls of people saying, hey, we've got some erosion.
Randy Martin00:07:11 - 00:07:31
And when we checked them out, only 2 of those were some water running down the trail, which is the part that we can control, and the other ones were water came across the trail and just ripped it out. So we were we were very pleased about that, and, our guys are very specific about making sure that they drain. We make it so that trail drains about every 40 feet or so. Mhmm.
Wayne Herring00:07:31 - 00:07:31
So in
Randy Martin00:07:31 - 00:08:08
terms of the process, we're getting out to clients using postcards and ads and and magazines. Frankly, we haven't had that much luck with people getting the idea from us to build a trail online. If they have the idea, they can find us. And since trail building is a pretty small industry, we're usually 1st or second in their search. But in terms of getting people to see our product and go, gosh, honey, that's a great idea, almost never happens online. They're just not finding us, and we've tried various ways. But they do find us through the postcard. The postcards will, they'll go to our website and they'll come in from there.
Randy Martin00:08:08 - 00:09:16
Usually through the contact page, I will take the I I ask for their address. So when I talk to them, I've already pulled up their property lines in Cal Topo, transferred those lines from Cal Topo to Google Earth, and I've been able to fly around and kinda get a feel for what they're looking at. And then I'm just interested in what what do they wanna do that isn't obvious? Usually, it's, hey, there's a string here. There's a view here. A lot of that stuff is obvious, but they may have preferences as to what they want. And I'll be asking questions like, based on their age and stage, you you know, they have grandkids, who do they want to attract back to the property? Because there's a, what I call the flavor of the trail where we can make the trail meander and undulate enough to get the water off the trail with a fairly, what I'd call, a mundane flow. But someone might want something more exciting for bicycling so that the the the trail can be exciting at at 15 miles an hour because it's moving, rather than have to get you have to go 40 to get to get the excitement for those of us that like that adrenaline boost. So what I'm able to do oh, and then I also overlay topo, 40 foot topo into Google Earth.
Randy Martin00:09:16 - 00:10:01
So I'm able to lay out a trail that'll be pretty close to what will be built in moderate terrain. The more radical the terrain gets, the less likely that my approach is gonna work because it's always more gnarly, especially in the ravines than it looks like on Google Earth. So I I know that going in. But if if all I knew was the elevation at the bottom and the top, I could just divide that by 0.05 and tell you about how long that trail is gonna be. Sure. What I wouldn't know is how many turns there's gonna be. And usually by the time we get out there, we're gonna add a few turns and it ends up being a little shorter than we think. So for the most part, we're able to estimate without going out, and then we will write up the agreement for plus or minus 15%, because it's always a little bit different.
Randy Martin00:10:01 - 00:10:36
And with that, we just gotta build some trust. And one thing that I, I think I'm pretty good at is, being able to gain the client's trust pretty quickly. I mean, at the age that I am, as long as we've been doing it and maybe because of some Toastmasters, and if you're not much of a public speaker, Matt, I'd say go do Toastmasters for a year. It's fantastic for just learning how to communicate well and and, organize your thoughts on the fly and so forth. So I'm able to get their trust pretty quickly. And it is a little bit of a sales job to get them to go to contract without being, about going out. There's almost always a, hey. Well, don't you wanna come out? Well, yes.
Randy Martin00:10:36 - 00:11:06
But there's some logistics challenges to if I go out and lay out the trail, there's somebody else that's gonna build it. So we have a disconnect there. I'd much rather have the trail builder meet with the owner and do it that way. I like to feel the owner, and sometimes we'll build a trail and we'll never even meet the owner. They're flying around and they're multibillionaires. But we really like to touch the owner so that we can get a feel for her. Just by watching them walk, we can tell what kind of trail they want. And do they have grandkids and how to blend that flavor of the trail? So it's custom to them.
Randy Martin00:11:07 - 00:11:58
And what they have now is a ski out trail. And I don't know if you've ever looked at real estate in a place like Park City or something, but if you've got a $1,000,000 condo that's near the ski area that you have to get in your car to go to the area, but that same condo is $2,000,000 if you can ski in, ski out. So to be able to leave your house without having to load up the bicycles and so forth, it's a beautiful thing. And it's something that a very small percentage of people actually have a significant trail on their land. So it's quite a wonderful process. And what's neat is that we build a great product, but we don't get nitpicked because we know so much more than the client that they're not gonna be in a mode of, hey, what about this? What about that? So when we're walking the trail, it's kind of a skip in the woods, not a punch list. And we'll have situations where Eric, one of our lead trailblowers says, Randy, you can't believe it. I was taking them out for a walk and they both started crying.
Randy Martin00:11:58 - 00:12:37
They were so happy. I mean, it's a significant improvement that we're making to their land where instead of pushing through the brush or climbing up the hill and breathing hard and all that, they're able to walk at a 5% grade, which is right in that accessibility range. In fact, it is lower than what you, an accessible ramp, I think, can be up to 12%. We're at 5%. So almost everybody can walk full speed without having to get out of breath. And with that, there's some, you know, social benefits to not having a situation where one person is saying, come on, can't you go faster? Or Sure. Sure. Can you wait for me? Everybody can pretty much walk a 5% grade, normally, unless they're really elderly.
Randy Martin00:12:37 - 00:13:18
I mean, an older person that is in decent shape can can navigate that. So Nice. Then we go to contract. The DocuSign comes through pretty quickly, and then we schedule it. And then I think a lot of your passion is about not getting stressed out and owning a business with and enjoying life. And so I'm pretty careful in not about not scheduling the work way out ahead. So the way this works is that we'll give you a call Thursday or Friday, the week prior, and just say, hey, is next week a good time for you? And then we'll begin from there because trying to schedule and push, it's just, it's too much work and, there's kind of this, we just don't know what's gonna happen. And it really, it really comes to me.
Randy Martin00:13:18 - 00:13:38
It's arrogant to plan too far ahead. It's as if I'm God, I mean, we just don't know what's gonna happen and how it's, it's, how it's gonna go. And that too is a little bit of a sales job in, in getting them comfortable with the idea of, Hey, I think it's gonna be about a month or 2, but usually whatever I think it's gonna be, we can usually get to you quickly because we've got 5 crews and we can get through the work pretty quickly.
Wayne Herring00:13:40 - 00:14:20
Well, and I guess I think a trail is a bit of a want, not a need. And a lot of things that we believe to be needs are not needs either, but it makes sense to me that you could have that type of flexibility. And, yes, absolutely. So for anybody listening, I've heard a couple things. One is you really look at your marketing and you have an idea of the difference between somebody who hadn't thought about having a trail on our land that I hadn't thought about that versus somebody who's like, let's have a trail on our land. I wonder who could do it for us. That's very perceptive. And then this piece of to minimize stress for you and the client both, like, we can't schedule it.
Wayne Herring00:14:20 - 00:14:36
It just but we give you an idea. And, there's a number of things I hear that you build in, like, plus or minus 15%. And taking this piece of plus or the schedule, roughly this. Yeah. I can see how that would help your lifestyle as a as a business owner, for sure.
Randy Martin00:14:36 - 00:15:07
And it is a I mean, that trust thing is important because they're gonna be getting into a contract plus or minus 15%. Are we gonna be the guys that are that maximize that or let's say and so I have to, you know, share with them. Half the time the trail can start can be less than that. And I'll say something like, I'm not trying to lowball and I'm not trying to pad this thing. I'm trying to hit the center of the target, but I'm not there. So we we need a little room to move and that's usually a a pretty good approach. And about 9 times out of 10, it works. And then we'll have some situations where they'll press for, they want to see us and then we'll typically charge for the special trip.
Randy Martin00:15:07 - 00:15:29
Fair. So that if they're having to weigh it out and or I'll try to say, well, tell you what, why don't we rather than just come out and look at the land, why don't you agree to have us flag it? And so there might be a 2 or $3,000 fee for us to flag the trail and at least we're then getting one step closer to building it. And I I think only one time we had somebody where we flagged the trail and it didn't go ahead.
Wayne Herring00:15:29 - 00:15:30
Sure. You
Randy Martin00:15:30 - 00:16:11
know, once they're committed, I think there's a principle that says that people are much more concerned about not losing money than they are about gaining money. So to to lose that feels, you know, kind of a they just don't want it. Something that I didn't mention when we were showing that initial slide is the fire breaks. And for a few years, we weren't really marketing based on the fire breaks, but we realized that it was the big deal. So it actually, it made us say, all right, I proclaimed myself an essential business during COVID because we do fire breaks anyway. So you think that a 5 foot wide trail, what's that gonna do? Well, in high winds, it will do nothing. The fire would jump over a, you know, 5 link, you know, freeway. But in normal winds, the the fire will come up or run out of fuel and stop.
Randy Martin00:16:11 - 00:16:45
And we have actually had 7 homes saved in what we call the Glass Fire, which was a huge fire about 5 years ago, where the fire came up to our trail and stopped in 7 different cases. And it could have been there were some fire persons on the trail stopping. And in many cases, it'll just come up and stop. And they would usually wait until it got all the way up to the house. We've got some photographs of where the black comes down, and we can see the architecture in the house. It it was a pretty sweet thing. It was a kind of a tear inducing moment to realize that our trails actually are have that goodness also of of saving people's homes and maybe even lives.
Wayne Herring00:16:45 - 00:17:06
And, having seen, some firefighters do a controlled burn and establishing the initial pathway and then doing these short little back burns off of the trail. I can imagine that if somebody had a trail like that, it just makes their job so much easier to to get started with something instead of having to rake all the debris and everything to have a starting point. Right?
Randy Martin00:17:06 - 00:17:13
Right. And just to be able to access it instead of having to pound through brush with all the stuff they're carrying, they can do a 5% trail and get down to it. It's a luxury.
Wayne Herring00:17:14 - 00:17:26
Oh, that's true too. Right? The 5% thing comes back back in, doesn't it? It's awesome. So in thinking about your business and thinking about okay. So you go out and you work with these people. What states do you work in? California is the key.
Randy Martin00:17:26 - 00:17:41
We're licensed in we're licensed in California only. There's a few states that don't require licensing, like like Montana. So we've done some work in Montana. Okay. We've had a couple of people outside the state that have invited us to for something specific, but we stay pretty much in California and, Montana.
Wayne Herring00:17:41 - 00:17:54
I have a brother in Montana. So awesome. And just to to give us a price range, like, what's the ballpark? A 10 acres, 50 acres, people get these trails. Like, how big are these projects that you're doing?
Randy Martin00:17:55 - 00:18:15
I mean, assuming it's rugged terrain, which it almost always is. So we're gonna have, like, say, 50% slopes, which are if that's a 150 is in here, that would mean if we were digging a 5 foot wide trail, it would have about a 3 foot high cut. And, generally on a 10 acre parcel, we can get about 1 mile of trail.
Wayne Herring00:18:15 - 00:18:16
Okay.
Randy Martin00:18:16 - 00:19:00
So on smaller parcels, that's as if someone had a 100 acres, it would make more sense to maybe have, 4 or 5 miles of trail. If we tried to put 10 miles, it would just be too dense. And just kind of an average number would be somewhere around, you know, between $40,060,000 per mile given, you know, how difficult it is. So that's there would be some creek crossings that would include masticating both sides, the brush, both sides of the trail. We have a, this about a 3 foot by 3 foot box that has a it's like a mower, and we can just reach out and it just grinds up anything less than about an inch in diameter and just leaves it on the ground. So we've got not only a 4 to 5 foot wide trail, but about 5 foot either side. So it's about a it ends up being about a 15 foot fire break.
Wayne Herring00:19:00 - 00:19:00
Nice.
Randy Martin00:19:00 - 00:19:03
And that's so all that's included in that rough number.
Wayne Herring00:19:03 - 00:19:32
So that's good. 40, 60,000 per mile, 10 acres that that gives people an idea what they're looking at. Of course, lots of more details. So you've told us a little bit about marketing, a little bit about sales, a little bit about the actual work, constructing. I I'm on your web page again, and here's this excavator, and it has a rock hammer on it, mini excavator with a rock hammer at the moment. And you said it also has and a thumb I see to be able to grab things. I got a lot going on there, a lot of capability. You mentioned this tool that you can get off and masticate.
Wayne Herring00:19:32 - 00:19:37
What that's not a word I use a lot, but that has to do with, like, brush, like grinding it down and things like that.
Randy Martin00:19:37 - 00:19:40
So it's kinda like chew masticating. It's a more of a dental term. But
Wayne Herring00:19:40 - 00:20:06
Oh, right. Okay. That makes sense. So it's, like, chewing it up and and getting rid of anything. So the other thing on this page that I'm looking at for those listening says, our trail builders are artists as much as they are technicians. Our clients love our trail builders almost as much as they love our trails, and I see marketing and maintenance, logistics manager, trail trail lead operator. There's, like, 6 people on your site. Eric, you mentioned, who's a lead trail builder.
Wayne Herring00:20:06 - 00:20:26
You got a few of those lead trail builders, Eric, David, Jeff. So, like, tell us about your team. And by the way, I have a son who loves the outdoors, and I was telling him I'm interviewing you today, and I was telling the whole story. I'm like, here's this guy in California who created this company where they go out and build trails, which is is really cool. You probably attract a unique individual that wants to come be part of that.
Randy Martin00:20:27 - 00:21:02
Yeah. They've gotta be, yeah, tough and creative. And the I mean, the creativity comes with, you know, when you're laying out the trail, do I go above this tree or, you know, below this tree? Oh, look at there's a view. Let's pan that view. There's a weighing out, and then there's the technical part of kind of weighing out what that'll be tougher, but it'll be better than just it's a problem. The whole thing is kind of a problem solving mixed with creativity. And then the build part is I'd say it's probably more more technician, but it's gonna be easy for a while, and then you're gonna run into something that's tough. You're gonna run into rock or a tree or tree roots or something, a creek.
Randy Martin00:21:02 - 00:21:35
There's gonna be some problem that will then slow you down. So the the challenge is and the more efficiency is being able to work through and not have them have these things stop you. So have the right tools in your little toolbox and make sure that you've starting with fuel in the morning. And so you're just, you're just getting through. It's kind of like life. You're just continually going through and getting stopped and working your way around. We pay our guys pretty well. The trail builders get a percentage of the job assigned to labor and anything that's left over after they built it, the lead trail building gets to keep or distribute amongst the guys that helped them.
Randy Martin00:21:35 - 00:22:08
So they end up if they're doing well, they'll end up getting or earning about $80 an hour, and about half of that would be their standard wage. So I like to pay them well, and they're very happy. They're very creative. They're mostly working by themselves. We will have guys that will kind of float to be what I call a second on the job, but most of the work is done either with an excavator or a little dozer and it's loan work. And so one guy will work for 8 days and then go home for 5. Another guy works for 3 days a week, and most of them are just the standard 5 days a week. But for the most part, they love their work and they're quite independent.
Randy Martin00:22:08 - 00:22:35
I just have them, hey, Sunday nights, I want you to tell me where you are and what you intend to do and what equipment you have. And it's a text that they're all communicating together. So they're thinking, oh, so you've got this? Hey, do you think that I can swing by and pick that up? And it's such a simple tool, for them to be communicating with me and them all at the same time. And then my primary job, and then gosh, I have also a full time mechanic now. Shane just changed my life. Look at my fingers. Aren't
Wayne Herring00:22:36 - 00:22:38
No more banging knuckles for you.
Randy Martin00:22:38 - 00:23:04
And there's no grease under my fingernails. It's just it's quite for a while, I was doing everything, you know, marketing, building, replacing, and all that. And then I started hiring, you know, guys to do the builds, but was continuing with the logistics, which is really the worst part of the part it's part of the job to, you know, evac. We had starter to go bad at a dozer on the other side of a creek, and he had to change the it was awful. And that would have been me. So I'm super happy to not be doing that anymore.
Wayne Herring00:23:04 - 00:23:24
That leads to more skiing. I don't always spend as much time talking about the current business, but I I'm just super interested. It's cool and and different and unique. And so there may be people out there that would wanna contact you. Do they have to move? I assume that everybody's kinda local so that they can come to the shop or come to the yard and then go out.
Randy Martin00:23:24 - 00:23:51
Well, yes and no. We've got one guy's actually floating. He and his girlfriend broke up, and he's just, I'm gonna sleep into my truck on the non workdays. But since the jobs are not local, always staying in a motel. So he'd be 5 or 6 days in a motel anyway. And so he just kind of unplugged in this and is going around. But most of them, they live in the Roseville area and then go out to the jobs in Napa, Sonoma, which is about a 2 hour job drive, and it's in about 6 or 7 hours to get to Southern California, and we do do that also.
Wayne Herring00:23:51 - 00:24:04
So there's a company, and there's how it is. But how did you start this? When did you start it? There's been a building of this company and the reputation to get to here. When did you start it? What was the story of starting it? How did you get here, Randy?
Randy Martin00:24:04 - 00:24:54
Well, I was working with my father from 2,000 to 2,007 approximately. We were real estate real estate analysts, then our customers were developers and builders. And as a report writing and I was decent at it, but I never really had much passion for it. And I was looking for, hey, what's my next gig? You know, what's gonna happen after this? Well, we had a project where it was a 1300 acre project with about 400 units of active adult, And there was about a 1000 acres of ag land that couldn't be developed. And I'm looking at this as a guy that was, who loved trails and running and cycling and so forth and thinking, Hey, let's build a bridge over the Tuolumne river and build them up an 8 mile trail system. And my sense is that it's gonna add a lot more value to this community than it's gonna cost. And it and it's internal maintenance. Well, you know, do a little analysis on that.
Randy Martin00:24:54 - 00:25:32
How much is it gonna cost? And and sell us on the idea. So I called a guy from the Professional Trail Builders Association, the PTBA, if you wanna look that up, but they're actually pretty active in the east. And I talked to the guy that happened to be the president of the organization. He says, well, gosh, you sound like an enlightened developer. Why don't you come speak at our trail building conference? So since I was actually commuting to Southern California to do this, we work with my father. Reno was just across the border about 2 hours from me, from Roseville. So I go to this to to speak on the develop it was only the the the the value of trails to developments was the was the topic. And I kinda looked around and said, boy, these guys are making a living building trails.
Randy Martin00:25:32 - 00:25:57
This, what a neat thing to do. I mean, everybody loves trails. This is in 2007 and the market, the real estate market was about to crash. And I knew that our business was gonna just really hit the tank. So I went back the next year hanging up shingle of, Hey, I'm a trail designer for developers. And looking back, it was a clearly a fake it till you make it thing. And I I was able to pick up one client. So I went out and laid out a trailer and he kept asking me about equipment and all this trouble.
Randy Martin00:25:57 - 00:26:20
And I had no clue. It was pretty wild. Anyway, but I had a contractor's license from, you know, my early days that had been on hold for all these years. There was a public job, that went to bid. I had a license and and I knew a guy that knew how to build trails. So we bid on it and won a 12 mile trail. And that was the really the beginning of the business. And Eric, the trail builder, he tells a story.
Randy Martin00:26:20 - 00:26:49
I knew him from church and so forth, and I told him, hey, Eric. I'm planning to start a trail building business. And the way he goes, well, and he's, Danny kind of looks at me like, well, okay. Like, good luck with that. And a short time later, he asked me to borrow my excavator, and he built a pump track in his backyard. And soon after that, he started working for me. And, he's been now with me for, I think, at least 10 years and, still just continues to love the business. But little by little, at first, I was, you doing the digging.
Randy Martin00:26:49 - 00:27:17
I was doing the marketing. I was doing the repairs, the whole thing. I think I borrowed a truck. I mean, it was actually shortly after we started this business, my wife left me and things were it was just brutally tight. But little by little was able to kind of free up weekends and so forth. So it did, it was 5 or 6 years of just a lot of work. And now I'm probably working 25 hours a week because I manage the business all right from this location. And I'm primarily just a salesman at this point, which is I like it.
Randy Martin00:27:18 - 00:27:43
I'm pretty good at it. And I also have another estimator. So on the smaller jobs I can pass, which I do find the small jobs take as much effort for the salesman as the big jobs. So I can hand those to him, and he's able to handle those and all the maintenance jobs, and I'll just kinda manage the larger ones that could be you know, some of these jobs could be 200, 300, $400,000. Those come by occasionally. So kinda make sure to get those moved forward properly.
Wayne Herring00:27:44 - 00:27:49
So how many hour how many hours do you if you had a guess during those initial years trying to get the thing going?
Randy Martin00:27:50 - 00:28:11
Yep. Yep. Probably 70, especially when I take the tractor off the job, put it on the trailer, bring it to a site. The dozer was a kind of a unique looking machine. It wasn't just an excavator that everybody's seen before. So there was a lot of looky loading to go on. So I'd always bring that on-site and it was just a long weekends. But we're only making money when the steel is digging dirt.
Randy Martin00:28:11 - 00:28:31
So it was, those were, those were hard days. And then if something broke, I only had one machine. So if that thing was down, there was no revenue created, but now we've got 4 dozers and 8 excavators. So if a, if a dozer breaks, we just bring another one and take the other one back. It's it's it's really a quite a wonderful season.
Wayne Herring00:28:32 - 00:28:40
Four dozers, 8 excavators, a mechanic, who probably has a support vehicle, 3 primary trail builders. Is that right?
Randy Martin00:28:41 - 00:28:59
Right now, we've got 4 plus a maintenance guy. We've had as many as 5 at a time, but this we don't have a lot of backlog now, and we are rolling into I'm doing a, you know, a certain amount of postcards every month. So the flow of work I I don't have a a huge backlog, but it it does seem to be coming in fairly consistently.
Wayne Herring00:29:00 - 00:29:15
So you've added more trail builders over the years, and more equipment as we've had demand. What's ahead? What do you see ahead as far as building this into the business? Or or will you build the business? Or is this, like, mess is nice, and I think we'll keep it like this? Or
Randy Martin00:29:16 - 00:29:58
My challenge now is it's time for me to start finding a successor. I'm 65 this month, so I I plan to stay in the business probably till I'm 75. But it would be nice to do less. And I need to, dial in the guy that can primarily be in this mode of of selling and managing, which doesn't necessarily come from the field, but it could. The sales part is the part that I've had the most difficult time replacing. So we'll see how that flies. The real challenge that I've got is that, you know, I do wanna do less in the business and I'd like to be relaxing more. And I'm finding that I'm getting a little less interested in it, which will just naturally the, the revenue will just tend to tend to fall.
Randy Martin00:29:58 - 00:30:47
Well, if the value of the business is a multiplier of gross revenue or net, then there's, you know, motivation to really stay on top of the expenses as well as keep the revenue up. So that when it comes time to sell it, you know, it could make the difference between whether it sells for a1000000 or 3. And that's a, like, that's a serious amount of money, you know, moving towards retirement. So getting somebody that some new energy in here to be, you know, how about we do this and let's analyze this. And I've got a word out to a guy that's William Jessup University is just, about 5 miles from here and he runs the master's department for business, for business. And so I'm kind of hoping somebody will come out of that. It'll be interesting to see, you know, it could be someone that it might cost me 60 or 70 or $100,000 a year to have somebody along just learning and not really being all that productive.
Wayne Herring00:30:48 - 00:30:49
And that's right.
Randy Martin00:30:49 - 00:30:57
That significant amount of money. But at the same time, if that means that I can, you know, keep the value of the business out, that's money well spent.
Wayne Herring00:30:58 - 00:31:20
So just a few more minutes here, and I think this is important. Let's pretend that your successor is listening to this podcast. Right? Who are they? How would you describe I'm gonna ask you 2 questions. Who are they, and why should they come and talk with you and have a conversation? What is so awesome about this business and this work that you do?
Randy Martin00:31:20 - 00:31:51
Oh, well, what's so awesome about it is that it's simple, and it's outdoors. And for for you know, if a lot of the work is outdoors or it's got a mix. So for someone that is not wanting to be in front of their computer all the time, it's beautiful that way. The clientele is wonderful. The type of person that is that we've at least hired, we've got a fantastic staff of people that are trustworthy. They've all got credit cards and occasionally I'll review the credit card bills. Like nobody's abusing it. It's just quite a beautiful place to be.
Randy Martin00:31:51 - 00:32:39
The hard part is finding clients because it's a very tiny piece of the world that has large land in the hills and it has the money to be able to, for $50,000 to be easy. It's a teeny little, a one tenth of 1 percent kind of a person. So it's, we do have to do a lot of marketing. In terms of who it would be, somebody that would be somewhat mechanically inclined, hopefully, because there's a lot of problems to solve. The guys in the field are very competent, but they do enjoy being able to call me up and say, Hey, you know, this is my situation. You know, what do you think? I'm kind of thinking this, but what do you think about that? To be able to have that work is is nice, although it's probably not required and it would be hard for a guy to come in and actually be better than a trail builder, but I was one. So that helps. Having some background in sales.
Randy Martin00:32:39 - 00:33:10
And I I tried to sell insurance way back when was a complete imbecile at it. But just getting the training was fantastic. Knowing things like, you know, if a husband and a wife are talking to each other and they're deciding, it's like, what do you do? Do you pop in? And she's like, no, you shut up. You let them work it out. And probably the difficult thing for me was being able to hocken these kinds of numbers like they're nothing. You know, $50,000. So a key point in our conversation will be I'll show them the the plan. I'll show them the estimate.
Randy Martin00:33:10 - 00:33:41
I'll say, now this is an important moment because I need to know from you, are you saying, that's so much money or, gosh, that's not very much. Maybe, you know, should we do more? Because we can adjust this. We can adjust the scope to meet what you want because this is your plan. This is not my plan. So being able to get comfortable talking in those numbers, fix a bit. It took me a while. It took me a long time to get comfortable making the ask. So all that blend, and then they'd have to be someone that's where we're going to get along for 5 or 10 years while they figure this thing out.
Randy Martin00:33:41 - 00:34:01
And the entrepreneur people are not necessarily all that easy to get along with. I think I've been classified as adult ADHD. And you think one of the comments was, or you find ADHD, you know, adult ADHDs. Well, they're either unemployed or they're self employed because we're kinda quirky. We're just kind of a quirky bunch.
Wayne Herring00:34:01 - 00:34:30
And, I mean, there's a good vibe about you, the work you do. You speak respectfully about your employees. You speak respectfully with both gratitude and also an understanding of who they are about your clients. So you've got a lot going for you in terms of being able to mentor somebody. And you said the people that are on your team, they're trustworthy. You don't really have to review their credit card, but you do. You look at it every once in a while just to make sure. Well, a mentor of mine, his name was Warren Lewis, got me in this coaching thing.
Wayne Herring00:34:31 - 00:35:08
He said leaders get the people they deserve, which could go both ways. Right? Right. And I'm sure maybe you have some story of somebody somewhere along the way who didn't quite fit, but it has gotten into this core group of people. So you're surely doing something right. The la the last question I wanna ask you, Randy, is so I work with business builders, people. I would say the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, but there's not actually many of them anymore. So it's more like somebody who owns an integrated medical practice, somebody that owns a marketing agency, somebody who's a contractor of various sorts. These are the plumber or whatever.
Wayne Herring00:35:08 - 00:35:22
These are these are people that I work with. You're a business builder. You've built this thing. What is your superpower, do you think, as a business builder? As an entrepreneur would be the other common phrase for that.
Randy Martin00:35:23 - 00:35:52
Well, first, I I hear this follow your follow your passion thing, which you hear is like, oh, well, I wanna be a candlestick maker because that's my passion. Well, there's gotta be a market. So blending the passion with a market is key. So my wife's an artist and it's hard to find you know, she's got this passion for art and writing, but it's really hard to find a market. So I I I love the business. I love the trails. I started with a passion for the actual object has been helpful. But then I find I do like the business part of it.
Randy Martin00:35:52 - 00:36:06
I like the leadership part of it, which I know I could do quite a bit better. But I mean, they're independent guys, so we don't really have to get together that much, but I think it would be good for me to spend more time with them just to encourage them in what they're doing and so they're not alone so much.
Wayne Herring00:36:06 - 00:36:38
Yeah. Maybe that's your superpower is there's this, like, balance. There's this you talked about the trail and how there's artistry to building the trail and balancing. You you gotta get it to where it's going, but then incorporating, the aesthetics and beautiful moments. So Yeah. What I hear you doing is there is a real strong sense about you, about balance and, hard work, balance with artistry, and that, like, groundedness is something I would I like, groundedness, and you got that.
Randy Martin00:36:38 - 00:37:14
And I suppose in the sales part, I'm naturally enthusiastic and also particularly enthusiastic about trails and what I know the trail will do for them. So I don't have to fake it and I don't have to fake my my enthusiasm. So because I'm enthusiastic and it brings out a smile, I think they just naturally I'm more likable in this Zoom format. So it's helpful to not be having to, I mean, if I was, I could be selling, you know, dumpster services or something and it would be a viable business. But how am I gonna get a passion for that? I'm just I'm not.
Wayne Herring00:37:14 - 00:37:42
Well and then then even in sales, the way you describe that, you've got a real groundedness there too where it's like, look. You you're telling people we are at a pivotal moment, and what I heard was, like, I'm not completely attached to the outcome, but I wanna help you see this is a pivotal moment. Here's a dollar figure. We've talked to we've kinda dreamed together. We understand what this might do for your property. Maybe you visualize through. Oh, yeah. There's a trail and seeing some pictures on your website.
Wayne Herring00:37:42 - 00:37:54
And now, like, it's there. We're just gonna have to decide, and I'll help you decide. I'm here. Like, I'm like your guide to help you make these decisions, but we gotta Yeah. Look at it soberly, and that's what you're doing.
Randy Martin00:37:54 - 00:38:21
No. Absolutely. The client is going to love the product. And one of the things I'll say to him, Sam, so I want you to prepare I wanna set some expectations here. Whatever you think this trail is going to be, it's gonna be much better. That's the most common thing that I hear from clients is, you know, I thought this was gonna be pretty good. This is just so much better than I ever imagined. And they'll kind of look at me like, really? You're gonna set expectations like that? And it's a wonderful thing to be able to say that with total confidence, that's the case.
Wayne Herring00:38:22 - 00:38:32
Yeah. That's really good. I think that's a great place to stop. Randy, thanks so much for coming and sharing more about the company you've built and the work that you do. I've really enjoyed this conversation.
Randy Martin00:38:33 - 00:38:35
Alright. Very good. Nice to spend the time with you.
Wayne Herring00:38:36 - 00:38:36
Thanks.

1. How does Randy Martin emphasize the importance of trust and negotiation in contracts, particularly regarding pricing variations and special trip charges?
2. What techniques do Randy and Wayne use to attract like-minded individuals to work on unique outdoor projects at Trailscape?
3. How does Trailscape manage to construct approximately 1 mile of trail on a 10-acre parcel, and what are the costs involved?
4. What specialized equipment and skills do the trail builders at Trailscape possess for trail construction, and how do they balance technical expertise and artistic vision?
5. How does Randy plan to build value in Trailscape over the next 10 years, and what is his approach to finding a successor for the business?
6. What marketing strategies does Randy utilize to promote Trailscape and engage potential clients, and how is the focus on postcards and maintaining an online presence significant?
7. What challenges did Randy face in the early years of establishing Trailscape, and how has the business evolved since then?
8. What specific traits and skills is Randy looking for in a potential successor at Trailscape, and how does he intend to make this transition successful?
9. How does Trailscape customize trails to the specific needs and preferences of each client, and what factors influence the design and construction process?
10. What is the approach to scheduling work at Trailscape, and how do they prioritize flexibility and minimize stress for both the client and their team?