Chris Mehrkens is the owner of ByeBye Stumps, which offers tree stump removal and grinding services to residential and commercial clients in the Twin Cities.
It is another frigid morning when I pull up to Chris Mehrkens’ home, a two-story split that is tucked away in a comfortable suburb.
As we sit down in his living room, Mehrkens hands me a glass of ice water, and with that the dryness of my throat subsides.
Cue the recording device.
“Where did you grow up?” I ask.
“Columbia Heights,” Mehrkens answers. “It was okay.”
For context, Mehrkens never graduated high school, but he did earn his GED.
“I just wanted to get out into the world,” he says.
Right away, Mehrkens did just that, selling cell phones in an era when mobile devices elicited curiosity, and weren’t attracting the gaze of every human being on the planet.
“As an eighteen-year-old, I was making a few hundred bucks a day,” Mehrkens remarks, and soon after he went into marketing, selling ads for popular radio stations around the Twin Cities.
“This was right when a lot of radio stations started developing websites too.”
From there, Mehrkens graduated to selling digital ads for the Star Tribune, the area’s preeminent newspaper.
Calm and calculated, Mehrkens thrived as a sales rep, and he didn’t think he was going to leave the Star Tribune, but then his father recruited him to work for his business, Product Testing Services.
“We provided surveys and market research opportunities for website traffic,” Mehrkens says, and of course, he did well in this role.
So well that he had a preponderance of free time and discretionary capital, and even though he was an avid golfer, there were only so many birdies he could chase before a purpose deficit ensued.
“At 29 years old, I felt like I was semi-retired,” Mehrkens recalls, which may sound like a good problem to have, but ask any of your aunts and uncles who spend their days listlessly scrolling through cable TV, and they will tell you that free time often gives way to perpetual boredom.
Says Mehrkens:
“I wanted to find something more rewarding than sending surveys out online. I wanted to do something meaningful that would also tap into my soul.”
Seeking a jolt, but not a paycheck, Mehrkens went to work for the city of Plymouth.
It was there that he started digging stumps, among other things.
“I love driving heavy machinery,” Mehrkens enthusiastically explains, the passion in his voice evident.
“There is something about operating a bulldozer that gets me excited.”
Not long after he started working for the city, Mehrkens found and purchased a used stump grinder for $300.
“I then threw a couple ads up online and people began inviting me out to their house to take care of a tree stump,” he says.
“That was the birth of ByeBye Stumps.”
Today, Mehrkens has become a fixture in the Twin Cities, grinding pesky tree stumps into wood chips and alleviating homeowners of an eyesore on their lawn.
For reference, ByeBye Stumps only eradicates stumps, meaning they won’t come out and chop down that aging maple hanging over your roof.
While someone as ignorant as myself assumed tree companies could remove all aspects of a tree, they don’t, and the reason comes down to the fact that shredding stumps requires specific machinery that many tree trimmers/removers simply can’t justify purchasing.
“For a tree company that is producing a couple stumps per day, the price that it would cost them to buy the machine that I use simply wouldn’t make sense,” explains Mehrkens, who now uses a $110,000 machine to remove tree stumps.
In other words, efficiency is paramount in the tree business, whether you’re on the vertical side, or the stumps side, like Mehrkens.
“It’s about more than just buying the machine,” Mehrkens shares.
“There is also the time and labor that goes into it, and the reality is that it is easier for companies to focus exclusively on different parts of the tree.”
As for the cost of working with ByeBye Stumps, that number varies, depending on factors such as stump size, and whether a client simply wants the stump removed, or if they would also like the wood chips cleaned up and replaced with topsoil so that grass can grow in the vacant area.
“Most people don’t speak fluent stump, so it’s my job to educate them and find out what exactly they are looking for when it comes to removing their stump,” Mehrkens says.
That commitment to consulting the homeowner on what kind of service they are looking for is crucial, because where some stump companies just want to remove the stump and leave, ByeBye Stumps wants to offer a more comprehensive solution.
“Just removing the stump is the least expensive option for the homeowner,” Mehrkens notes, “but I think only doing that is a disservice to the client.”
“Why?” I interject.
Mehrkens then proceeds to explain that the debris created by removing a stump can be sizable.
For some clients, they may not mind needing to discard bags of wood chips from their property and then regenerate the surrounding soil, but others would prefer that their four-figure investment includes a complete revamp of the affected area.
“If the debris is the size of a Honda Civic, how does the average person get rid of that?” Mehrkens rhetorically asks, before turning more serious.
“The truth is they don’t, and so while one problem has been solved, in many ways, other problems have been created.”
Adds Mehrkens:
“That’s why we offer a complete service that revolves around the removal of the debris and laying down topsoil. It’s not something that we push on our clients, but it’s something we certainly present so that the homeowner can make an informed decision that works best for them.”
Beyond educating their clients and having arguably the coolest and most apropos name in the business, ByeBye Stumps makes a concerted effort to communicate with their customers at every step of the process, leveraging software and intentionality to ensure their clients never are left clamoring for key updates on their projects.
“There are not many things that get me more upset than a contractor communicating poorly and wasting my time,” Mehrkens says, which is why he always makes the time to connect with his clients whenever it is necessary or requested.
“People are understanding of change when you communicate that to them, because life happens, and while we always plan for things to go smoothly, sometimes they don’t.”
Adds Mehrkens:
“Instead of panicking when things come up, I simply communicate what’s going on to my clients so that they can be aware, and know that I’m looking out for their home and respecting their time.”
If Mehrkens’ approach to business seems straightforward, that’s because it is.
There are no frills or gimmicky coupons that he offers.
Instead, it’s as simple as offering a quality service at a fair price, supplemented by exceptional communication and customer support.
That recipe has now brought ByeBye Stumps to the next phase in their evolution, that being franchising the company and offering territories to like-minded business owners ready to work for themselves under the ByeBye Stumps brand.
“Being with my family and providing for them is important, but I also want to give other people the chance to build an amazing life. In this industry, you can make a lot of money if you are professional and take care of your clients,” Mehrkens says, highlighting some of the reasons why he is making ByeBye Stumps franchises available to the masses.
“There are a lot of smart people out there who are stuck reading spreadsheets or analyzing data, and if I can appeal to them by offering an opportunity that will simultaneously give them professional autonomy and financial freedom, then I can see ByeBye Stumps flourishing under the franchise model.” QS
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