Lazar reported the addressable market as ~40 prospects with our ICP filter. To test that, I ran an independent Sales Navigator pass with the locked filter (tree care + 8 owner-level personas + 7 target geos). Result count:
That's roughly 37x his number — and that's a single-keyword search. The 40-prospect ceiling is an artifact of how the search has been pointed, not a property of the market.
Geography: California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, British Columbia (Canada). All 7 included.
Current job title (8): Owner, Founder, President, Chief Executive Officer, Co-Owner, Co-Founder, Principal, Partner.
Keyword: tree care
No other filters applied. No company-size, industry, function, or seniority filters — those would tighten the count further but are not necessary to debunk the 40 number.
The 1,500+ count came back instantly with no profile-quality filtering. After applying the active-profile screen (50+ connections, current employer, recent activity), the qualified pool will be smaller — but order-of-magnitude still puts us well above 40.
Two likely causes, based on how his v1 and v2 lists came together:
Either explanation collapses the gap between 40 and 1,500. Both are simple search-string fixes, not ICP loosening problems.
I scraped the top 4 pages (~64 deduplicated results) and triaged for clear ICP fits. Below are the 18 strongest candidates — owner-level operators at tree care or tree-and-landscape combo firms in the target geos. The full list of 1,500+ is one Sales Nav export away.
| # | Name | Title | Company | Location | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Andy LaVelle | President and CEO | Arbor MD Tree Care, Inc | Orinda, CA | Tree care, owner-level, CA — clean fit. |
| 2 | Eddie Aguirre | Owner | Evergreen Tree Services | Sherwood, OR | 17 yrs in role. Clean fit. |
| 3 | Krystle Reneer | President | Brush Hog Tree Care Inc. | SF Bay Area, CA | 7+ yrs. Clean fit. |
| 4 | Kevin Goddard | Business Owner | TK Tree Pro | (US — verify) | ISA certified arborist. Clean fit. |
| 5 | Shaeffer (Tree Solutions) | Company Owner | Shaeffer Tree Solutions | Eugene, OR | Same town as Sperry. Direct local peer. |
| 6 | Alex Carey | Business Owner | B&C Tree Service | Greater Phoenix Area, AZ | Clean fit. |
| 7 | Tony Valenti | President | First Choice Tree Service | Las Vegas, NV | Also confirmed by Lazar v2. |
| 8 | Del Real (Tree Service) | Company Owner | Del Real Tree Service | Fontana, CA | "Family-owned, 25 yrs experience" per about. Clean fit. |
| 9 | Curt Peterson | Owner | Arborman Tree Care | Boise, ID | 30+ yrs in role. Clean fit. |
| 10 | Ryan A. | Owner | Tree Talk Arbor Society | Beaverton, OR | ISA-TRAQ Certified Arborist. Clean fit. |
| 11 | Valdovinos (Tree Care) | Owner | Valdovinos Tree Care | Fresno, CA | Family-owned. Clean fit. |
| 12 | Lila-Mae White, MBA, CHE, PMP | Business Owner | Tree Toad Consulting | Kelowna, BC | Senior ops/strategy. Clean fit. |
| 13 | Christopher Campbell | Owner CEO | CC Tree Design | San Francisco, CA | Certified Arborist 2002, Tree Risk Assessor. Clean fit. |
| 14 | Bailey Bright | Owner | Bee's Trees | Sparks, NV | Dedicated arborist. Clean fit. |
| 15 | Kelsey Gruenwoldt | Co-Owner | Seattle Tree Care | Seattle, WA | Clean fit. Note: she was the v2 "Maybe" entry where I couldn't see her role — turns out she's Co-Owner of Seattle Tree Care. Promote to Yes. |
| 16 | Brian Brown, LEED AP | President / CEO | Estate Landscape & Tree Service | Incline Village, NV | Combo business — in scope under the rule. |
| 17 | Furrukh Sohail | Owner & CEO | BloomsGreen | Greater Reno Area, NV | Verify tree care focus vs landscape primary; possible combo. |
| 18 | Edgar Larios | President | High End Companies LLC (formerly First Choice Tree Service) | Las Vegas, NV | Verify current company is tree care; was Cert. Treecare Safety Pro at FCTS. |
Lazar's reported scarcity is a search-construction problem, not a market problem. The fix is enforcing the geo and title filters at the Sales Nav level, not relaxing the ICP. With the locked filter above, the v3 list should easily produce 80–120 active, owner-level, in-geo candidates — and that's still only a fraction of the total pool.
The locked filter is documented above. Open Sales Navigator → Search → set Geography to the seven listed → set Current job title to the eight listed → Keyword tree care → save the search. Every batch from here pulls from this saved view, then layers profile-quality screens (50+ connections, current employer listed, recent activity, no Open-to-Work).
"tree care" alone returns 1,500+. Run the same filter swap with arborist, tree service, arboriculture, and tree experts as keyword variants — each will surface a partly-overlapping set. Net deduplicated pool is likely 3,000–5,000 active LinkedIn profiles in the target footprint.
Kelsey Gruenwoldt was a "Maybe" in the v2 memo because her LinkedIn profile only showed a tagline ("people & trees through business growth") with no operator role visible. The Sales Nav view shows her actual role: Co-Owner of Seattle Tree Care. Promote her to Yes. That makes the v2 Yes count 7 instead of 6.
The Sales Navigator search is live at this URL while the session is active. It does not survive across sessions, so re-create the filter using the spec above for permanence:
arborist and tree service as keyword variants in subsequent rounds. Dedupe across runs.