Blake's First 30 Days: 17 On-Site Appointments, 3 Closed Jobs, About $25,000
I hope you enjoy reading this blog post.
Author: Brady Carlson | Dirt2Dollars
Published: 7 November, 2026
Blake runs a land clearing and mulching operation in the Southeast. He signed with Dirt2Dollars in September 2026 on our rolling program, the smaller one, not the flagship.
Thirty days later, on October 19, 2026, he sat down with Filip, his client success manager, for his first-month progress call. This post is what that call looked like, number by number, including the parts that didn’t go well.
Where He Started
Blake had the profile we see constantly. Good operator. Big machine. Work coming in waves off word of mouth. Busy weeks, then dead ones, with no way to control which was which.
He wasn’t desperate. He just wanted the machines running on a schedule he set instead of one his last customer set for him.
He came in at a budget of roughly $65 a day in ad spend on top of the management fee. Not a big swing. A test.
The First 30 Days by the Numbers
43 inquiries from the campaign.
About 20 of those became booked on-site appointments after our call center qualified and scheduled them.
17 appointments completed by the time of the call. 7 more already on the calendar for the following two weeks.
3 or 4 cancellations.
3 closed jobs:
A $20,000 clearing and grading project. The homeowner had $5,000 up front and asked to pay the rest at $1,500 a month. Blake had never done a payment plan before. He took it, with a contract.
A roughly $4,000 one-day tree clearing job with the big machine.
A roughly $1,000 quick job he can knock out in an hour.
One pending $12,000 quote. The homeowner wanted it done before month end, then had to travel. Blake’s staying on him.
One pending $1,500 field cleanup waiting on a church board’s approval.
One $1,500 to $1,600 field cleanup quote where the homeowner was good with the price.
Filip’s read on the call:
“17 appointments, three or four of them canceled, three or four of them closed, and you have seven upcoming. All of this in a month. This is pretty good performance. This is outstanding, above average performance.”
What Didn't Work
We put this in every case study because it’s true in every case study.
The no-show. One inquiry came in flagged as a commercial job just outside Blake’s radius. He accepted it because “commercial” sounded big. He drove two and a half hours. The guy didn’t show, then called wanting to mulch a lot he planned to pave, which you can’t do. Blake told him he needed a land disturbance permit and a plan first and never heard back.
Blake owned it. He hadn’t confirmed before he left. That’s exactly why our process has the call center confirm every appointment and why we coach contractors to confirm again the day before. A two-and-a-half-hour drive on a Sunday for nothing is a lesson you only need once.
The quiet quotes. The first three appointments from early in the campaign had all gone quiet by the time of the call. Blake followed up. One finally said he’d call when he’d talked to someone else. That’s the reality of advertising: some property owners you meet aren’t ready yet, and you find out later.
The radius. Blake noticed the system was flagging inquiries from towns 45 minutes away as “outside your range.” Turns out those towns were further than 60 miles by road even though they were an easy drive. Filip pulled the targeting map so Blake could redraw it by hand: shave off a corner, expand another where the work actually is.
What Blake Said
When Filip asked how the first month felt:
“Dude, it’s picking up.”
When Filip asked whether he was good to continue:
“100%.”
And when Filip asked him to commit to three months so the media team could stop relaunching ads every two weeks and actually optimize:
“You just keep closing. You keep doing you. I’m good for three months.”
He signed the three-month agreement on the call. Same price. Same service. Just the commitment.
Why the Commitment Matters More Than the Money
This part of the call is worth reading if you’ve never run paid ads.
Blake asked Filip a smart question: wouldn’t relaunching ads more often make them hit faster?
Filip’s answer was no, the opposite. Here’s how he explained it:
“If I know I have you for 90 days, the way ads work, let’s say it’s a bad ad, it’s not performing good one day, second day, third day, I can let it sit four or five and let it explode. But when I only have you for a couple of weeks, I can’t afford to be giving it leeway.”
On a 30-day basis, every slow stretch becomes an emergency. The media buyer cuts the ad, relaunches, and the algorithm starts over. On a 90-day basis, the media buyer can let an ad find its audience, which is when inquiry costs drop and volume goes up.
Blake’s first-month inquiry cost was about $28. Filip’s target with a 90-day runway is lower cost, more inquiries, and a better inquiry-to-appointment rate: from 43 inquiries and 20 appointments toward 60 and 40.
Filip was also blunt that month one was fortunate:
“This was crazy good and quite fortunate, but it cannot be the norm. I cannot possibly promise you, nor can I be chasing this kind of high every month.”
He said that to a client who had just closed $25,000. We’d rather set expectations low and beat them than the other way around.
The Calendar
One more thing from the call that most contractors don’t think about until they’re in it.
Every appointment we book lands on Blake’s Google Calendar automatically, with the property owner’s details, the project notes, and reminders. He also puts his own start dates on it, which show up on our end as blocked time so we don’t book over his production days.
Filip’s line:
“Once you get used to it there’s no coming back. Doesn’t matter if you work with us or not, you’ll love it.”
The calendar is the product. The ads are just how we fill it.
Where He Is Now
Blake’s on a three-month agreement through the winter, with a plan to talk about a 12-month program in January once he has three profitable months behind him. His machines have a schedule. His inquiries get called within minutes by someone who isn’t him. And every two weeks he spends 40 minutes going through every name on the calendar with a human who knows the account.
That’s the whole system. Not complicated. Just done.
About Dirt2Dollars
Dirt2Dollars is a done-for-you marketing agency. We are not a coaching program. There are no courses, no group calls, no 1-on-1 coaching. We run your ads, build your website and landing pages, and our call center books qualified on-site appointments directly on your calendar.
We’ve generated over $100 million in on-site estimates for more than 250 contractors. Most of our clients see an 8x to 12x return on their ad spend.
Ready to See Results Like Blake?
If you’re a land clearing, excavation, or forestry mulching contractor and you’re tired of relying on word of mouth or competing on shared platforms, we should talk.
Book a Demo Call with Our Team
Brady Carlson / Dirt2Dollars
