From Zero Online to 5 Star Reputation in 2 Years

This week, I sat down with Alex Carey, owner of BNC Tree Service in Phoenix and a LeadTruffle customer. Alex and his wife bought BNC, a 27-year-old tree service, in December 2023, a business with no website, no Google profile, no software, and no brand, but a stellar reputation built over nearly three decades.

Coming out of 20 years in corporate America at companies like Google and ZipRecruiter, Alex walked away from a straightforward path to build sales teams somewhere else, and instead spent 10 months hunting for a business to buy. What he found, and how he’s grown it from 11 employees to 22 in under two years, is a masterclass in acquiring a legacy business and modernizing it without losing what made it great.

We covered why he chose tree care over other trades, the brutal first 90 days running crews that didn’t speak his language, and why he flipped the business from mostly commercial to mostly residential work.

The Key Takeaways

Below are the most essential insights from my conversation with Alex that you can apply to your home services business today.

1. Buying a “No-Frills” Business With a Rock-Solid Reputation

BNC Tree Service had zero online presence when Alex bought it, no website, no Google profile, no logo, but 27 years of word-of-mouth reputation behind it. He saw that gap as the opportunity: a business that already had the trust, it just needed to be found.

“There was no frills, I mean, no website, no Google profile. And I said, geez, they’ve got amazing reputation. All we have to do is allow people to find it. And that’s kind of what we’ve done.”

— Alex Carey

2. Why Tree Care Over a Licensed Trade

Alex looked at plumbing, HVAC, and electrical, but those all require licenses and years of hands-on experience to own. Tree care in Phoenix has no ownership license requirement, which gave him a much lower barrier to entry into a services business he could run without a trade background.

“For plumbing and HVAC and electrician services, in order to be in business you have to have a license… This was really kind of a way to get into the services business, but there was a low barrier to entry. And that’s kind of why this stuck out to me.”

— Alex Carey

3. The 10-Month Search and the Book That Changed His Direction

Alex’s first instinct after leaving corporate was to start something from scratch, but with a mortgage, a marriage, and two kids headed to college, he needed cash flow from day one. Reading Walker Deibel’s “Buy Then Build” pointed him toward acquiring an existing profitable business instead of starting cold, and toward SBA financing as a way to do it.

“If you’re a company that’s doing a million dollars in a year in revenue and you’ve been in business for at least 10 years, you’re one of the top one percent of companies in America, and that is available to be purchased at 90% financing through the SBA. That was groundbreaking.”

— Alex Carey

4. The First 90 Days Were Brutal

There was no office, just a yard, and nine of the twelve guys on the crew didn’t speak English, while Alex didn’t speak Spanish. He shadowed the previous owner for 90 days straight, riding along and frantically taking notes, because nearly three decades of institutional knowledge lived only in that owner’s head and phone.

“It’s kind of like getting punched in the face every day and then you just have to get up and get ready to get punched again… I shadowed the previous owner for 90 days, just drove in his truck and on my phone taking ridiculous notes, because everything about the business for 27 years was in his head and in his phone.”

— Alex Carey

5. Restructuring From One Big Crew to Four Smaller Crews

BNC used to run as one group of 11 guys bouncing between commercial jobs, occasionally peeling off for residential work. Midway through this year, Alex split the business into two residential crews and one commercial crew, then discovered the commercial crew wasn’t even doing double the revenue of a residential crew. He restructured again into four crews of four, which meaningfully boosted revenue.

6. Why Residential Beats Commercial on Margin

The business flipped from roughly 70% commercial to 70% residential, and Alex says that’s where the money is. Commercial clients care mostly about safety and hazard mitigation and want service spread out as thin as possible; residential customers take pride in how their landscape looks and are willing to pay more, more often, for it.

“B2B is a race to the bottom… When it comes to residential, people take pride in their trees, they take pride in their landscape. They will pay a little bit more to have it look clean, look kept, almost designed… hence your margins are a little bit higher on the residential.”

— Alex Carey

7. The Five-Year Plan: Biggest and Best in a Fragmented Market

Phoenix has an estimated 50 to 70 tree services and no single dominant player. Alex’s plan is to become the most well-known household name in tree care in the city, organically adding crews, staying open to acquisitions, but only if the culture and goals genuinely align with what BNC already has.

“We’ve only got five stars on Google, only five stars on Yelp. That is something that we really pride ourselves in, continuing that legacy of what has been for 27 years, just now people can see it.”

— Alex Carey

8. Leading a Crew That Doesn’t Speak Your Language

Despite the early language barrier, Alex built a strong, trusting relationship with his crew by showing up every morning and investing in them personally, reinforcing that they’re an extension of him and encouraging them toward integrity and leadership, not just task completion.

“Your crew is just an extension of you… I get started with the guys and just pour into them. I reassure them that they’re gentlemen, that we are caring for people’s landscape… You can either choose to be someone that’s lacking integrity or you can choose to be a leader and a man of valor.”

— Alex Carey

Looking Ahead

Two years in, BNC has gone from 11 employees to 22, flipped its revenue mix toward higher-margin residential work, and hasn’t lost a single star on its reviews. Alex’s advice for anyone thinking about buying a service business: the transition will be brutal before it’s rewarding, and the way you treat your crew shows up in how they treat your customers.

“I encourage any owner or any service-based business to take the time to uplift, encourage, and motivate their employees to see the same vision that they have for the business. I think that’s going to pay off in dividends when customers interact with your guys, they’re going to see something really refreshing.”

— Alex Carey