Martin Skarra

Local SMB owner (3x) Searching for more businesses to buy around Seattle. Tuckie, 🇳🇴 farm raised, Former in-house attorney, 🌐 🇺🇸

[Martin Skarra @MSkarra]

@guessworkinvest @GustoHQ Remitly is quite easy to set up and has been working great for us. They’re local here too

[Martin Skarra @MSkarra]

@guessworkinvest @GustoHQ Aha! Trying to run your drug smuggling side-hustle under the guise of a suburban tree care enterprise. Crafty, but Gusto have you beat!

[Martin Skarra @MSkarra]

@dylthorn You could! Same with roofers doing roof cleaning and Christmas lights. Ads a bunch of complexity though. Easier for a painting company to start selling exterior cleaning than the other way around I think(?)

[Martin Skarra @MSkarra]

@einarvollset Good observation! It tends to be risk adverse and choose the “safe” position on a lot of things, and that doesn’t match well with entrepreneurial pursuits. I’ve been throwing out 70-80% of the suggested edits lately

[Martin Skarra @MSkarra]

@CaryHawkins_ You might get the hallucinations too! Coming down from alpine climbs, I’ve seen marching bands, gold paners, German WW2 soldiers, etc. I thought it was more the physical exertion, but is it the sleep deprivation that does it?

[Martin Skarra @MSkarra]

@Vondersupporter @jonny_suds Could be! Does it work Jonathan? Are you happy with it?

[Martin Skarra @MSkarra]

@NotoriousAKG Nice how a bunch of the comments say “well then take your family to that other country and hang out while your visa processes” - as if that other country doesn’t have it’s own immigration rules. Just assumes that an American can show up anywhere and hang out indefinitely

[Martin Skarra @MSkarra]

@sourcesandmuses Localfalcon is for tracking the Google business page & the map section, Semrush and Ahrefs does that too + they show how you do in the regular organic results. How useful they are depends on the trade. I’ll send you a DM

[Martin Skarra @MSkarra]

That’s a solid list though. Not on Servicetitan, but we use Nicejob and Callrail. Lately we switched to Openphone, which may or might not be better than the built in VOIP in Servicetitan. Sure beats what we used before.

Oh and Rilla, or a similar AI based way to coach people who do in person sales is gold

[Martin Skarra @MSkarra]

@sourcesandmuses Back-office organization; Monday, Clickup, Smartsheet, or Notion

Marketing; Localfalcon, and Semrush or Ahrefs

Payroll; Gusto

[Martin Skarra @MSkarra]

@guessworkinvest @Sam_Rosati You should make Sam chug a beer every time he asks why you can’t make money off the wood chips 😅

[Martin Skarra @MSkarra]

Rough. I’ve had 4-5 employees so far struggle with stable housing, and first time it happened I put the guy up on my couch for a month. Not very scalable.. Challenge is to make it so that they can solve their problems, without making it your problems, but it’s hard. They didn’t talk about this in the CIM, huh?

[Martin Skarra @MSkarra]

I ended up moving continents, going back to school, changing my industry and profession at age 35. Starting over is hard, but fwiw; the fire also burns brighter when you have some catching up to do

[Elizabeth🦒 @oceana_roll]

No one tells you what to do if your career completely collapses around you in your late thirties

[Martin Skarra @MSkarra]

@Vondersupporter @davidmccary2 @SMB_Attorney Yep. Shouldn't do it, but got to start somewhere.

[Martin Skarra @MSkarra]

@Vondersupporter @blueprintsmb22 I fed it a bunch of credit card statements the other day and it asked why we are spending so much on AI subscriptions. Is it really necessary? 😅

[Martin Skarra @MSkarra]

@sohaventures A lot of things get easier with size and a larger organization. It allows you to spend more time on the things that you actually enjoy inside the business. And if it adds gross margin without a lot of extra overhead, that’s great too

[Martin Skarra @MSkarra]

I’m so upset by all this in part because I spent a decade working in the maritime industry in Europe & Asia, and then I moved to the US and realized my experience had almost 0 value because of how the industry here is structured.

I looked at a bunch of companies in the US maritime space, but it’s just hard to get inspired by working on 40 year old rusting ships, and seeing the total number of vessels declining year after year

[Martin Skarra @MSkarra]

Here is what shipbuilding in Europe looks like. The logistics and coordination required to put together a large cruise-ship like this is insane.

Everything from large sections to smaller cabins prefabricated and brought together like a big lego set. >100,000 individual i/o’s that needs to be controlled, every cabin has individual lights, plumbing, climate control. Thousands of workers in different trades and hundreds of contractors that need to be coordinated so everything gets delivered on schedule.

No yard in China has built a large cruise-ship for the western market yet. Meyer, the German yard in the video, has been around since 1795 and has orders until 2033.

Here in the US they make barges, the simplest of vessels. Basically a rudder and a hull. And it takes twice as many labor hours to do that here as it does in Asia..

And then people are surprised welders at a yard here gets paid $24/hour?

https://t.co/SIOyfXcYOI

[Martin Skarra @MSkarra]

The issue is they’re employed welding together some of the simplest vessels one can build, using decades old tools & techniques. How much can an employer reasonably pay for that?

[Jason Premo • Acclaim Aerospace @JasonPremoMFG]

Employers: "lack of skilled labor! Gaww!"

Also employers: $24/hr for SKILLED welder

Feels. Bad. Man.