01 The Story
Learned The Trade From The Supply Side
Jacob Hastings learned the tree-care industry from the supply side before he ever wrote an ad for it. He grew up in McKinney, Texas, the same town as Blue Mountain Equipment, the company that supplies every STIHL dealer in Texas and Oklahoma. His dad ran sales there. From 2013 to 2022 Jacob worked on and off inside that operation, everything from pulling parts in the warehouse to shipping out the saws themselves, and he got to know the rhythm of the trade: what moves in spring versus fall, what dealers across two states scramble for when storms hit, and what it takes to keep thousands of parts flowing to the crews that depend on them.
Then he switched to the other side of the counter at Plano Power Equipment, a Platinum-level STIHL dealer, the highest rating STIHL gives a shop. He sold and serviced equipment for the commercial tree and landscape crews who make up most of that store's business. That is where he learned the buyer he now markets to: what a crew leader actually cares about, what an owner will pay for, and how the people who do tree work make decisions.
He took all of that into marketing. Over the last four years he has managed more than $6 million in ad spend across Google, Meta, Microsoft, and LinkedIn. In 2025 he co-founded Growth Ring Media with Alex Makarski, a marketing agency that works only with tree-service companies and backs its work with a guarantee: clients make more than they pay. He also writes The Backcut, a weekly newsletter read by 1,850 tree-service owners, and hosts Stumped Again, a podcast where he sits down with the owners, arborists, and operators who run this industry.
Most marketers learn an industry from its keywords. Jacob learned tree care from its supply chain.