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Foreign. You're now listening to the Fullerton Unfiltered podcast. Straightforward, no nonsense business advice, completely on unfiltered. Grow your business, grow your life. Now here's your host, Brian Fullerton. Hey, what's going on, guys? Welcome to another episode of the Fullerton Unfiltered podcast. It is your host, Brian Fullerton. Hey, that's the same intro I've done for like 960 episodes. My gosh, you think I change it up once in a freaking while, you know what I mean? Welcome back to the show. It's good to see you guys. Good to hear from all of you and hope you guys are welcoming a great Monday to the schedule, to the week, to the ethos like we are trying to do over here at Brian's. All maintenance. It is our first full week of mowing. That means anything that can happen will happen. Anything that will happen will continue to reveal itself. And whatever happens happens this week. Right? It's going to be an exciting couple of days over here. We've got a lot of new commercial sites that are part of the Rolodex. We have one or two big sites that came back online. I'm really, really excited about that. Go figure. We priced it pretty much where we were at last year and we ended up earning the big hoa that we lost last year back, which I'm really, really excited about that. That's just what happens when they go with a low ball, low bid guy who doesn't seem to perform very well on their fert work. And when you have a lot of Indian customers that don't want veeds Feeds, feeds, then that's a great way for you to get your foot back in the door to earn that work. And when you follow up and say, hey, what was the main reason for you guys coming back with us this year? They say, well, there's a lot of veeds everywhere. You can say, oh, well, like did you have any issue with our veeds last in 2024 when we were last performing the property? No, not that we can think of. Okay, fantastic. Well then I think as long as we just get the contract signed and get us over the finish line, then you won't have any issues going with us with the work that we intend to perform. Because if you're happy with us in 2024, then I think you're going to be happy with us in 2026 because not much has changed over here in terms of doing a good job because we always do a good job at Least we always try to do a good job. So anyway, a lot of great things coming online this week. It's going to be a weird Melga mesh. We're going to roll out with probably two teams of three and then the week after three teams of two. And the reason is because we have a whole lot of new sites. I want everybody to kind of consolidate so we can all get on as many new sites as possible. I want to throw as much muscle as at everything this week possible because everything's going to have to get edged. For the first time, some lawns are going to get a double cut. You know, the interesting thing is most of our bids are 27 weekly cuts. Oh my gosh. We could have easily done 28, 29 or 30 cuts this year here in Michigan. The problem with bidding against other folks, I was gonna say fools folks, is because when you know you're getting bit against 27 weeks or 26 weeks or 24 weeks, right. And a season where it should absolutely take 27, 28, 29 weeks, what happens is when you get an early spring like this and you're a couple of weeks deep, the grass is starting to grow and we're not coming early unless you are interested in paying for it. And you can't necessarily bump that schedule up to 27, 28, 29 weeks because you're going to get edge right out of your bidding process being, quote, unquote, more expensive. And that's just the game of commercial bidding work. And it's frustrating. But that being said, we were able to mow all of our residentials last week on Thursday, Friday, and then we were able to now start a commercial route this week. Shouldn't be anything super overwhelming or anything that we don't have the muscle for, but we have a new guy that is starting this week for us as well. Really excited about him carrying over into lawn season from snow. And that'll give us a team of six. And then we have our seventh man, Mr. Mark is floating around here and there. He's like a sabbatical for a different career move, which is really cool. But, uh, he is back a little bit here, there, uh, here and there part time and filling in a couple routes, doing some cleanup, doing some miscellaneous landscape work for us, which is really exciting. So we should have about six, if not seven full time guys in the field, plus anything that your boy is contributing to, which is really exciting. Folks, a lot of, lot of great stuff going on. We're really excited about kicking off the spring rush. The spring Mowing season up here in Michigan. Like I said, we've mowed my lawn for about two plus weeks now, maybe three if you, if you, if you will. It's been grown like crazy. All of our cleanups are done. Most of our mulch is done. We got a couple residential jobs that we're going to do this week, week and a half. Full blown mowing schedule. First round of, first done. Second round of firts going down. Another weed and broadleaf control app and things, things are cranking man. Things are moving and grooving. That's the lawn care business. Social and just so you guys know like social media world. Just so you guys know what you have access to. Element Granum workshops and tour shop tours are coming this summer. We've got six or seven spots across the country. I don't have the list in front of me but I know there's some in Washington like Arlington, Virginia whatever it is, Washington D.C. area. I think over in the greater Boston area there's, there's shop tours all across the country that elements hosting. It's like 800 plus bucks a ticket. Two day event, one day with Gamble. Second day shop tour with your boy as we go through a local company. You know most of these guys are doing 3 to 10 million which is really cool. Go to element.com/ I think it's the Break Records tour is what we're calling it Break dash Records. Check it out. There's like only limited number of seats per city. I don't know if it's like 25 or 30. Whatever it is, go check it out. Promo code Brian. 100 by the way. Saves 100 bucks on your ticket if you want to save 100 bucks. If you're going to go check out these different tour spots. So that's exciting. Equip Expos coming down the pike. Promo code Brian saved you 50 there. Launch winner Academy Live tickets are going to go on sale tail end of May into June. We've got some great speakers already lined up for that. November 7th. Save the Date together in the trades. Mid to late July I think is the dates. We've got about 30 or so couples left that we can get tickets for going to the Grand Canyon. Come check it out. Super awesome time together in the trades.com and oh my gosh. What else folks? It's just a busy time of the year like spring rush is here. A lot of great events coming down the pike in the summer. In the fall there's going to be an Element Hardscape webinar Coming up here in May or June as well. I'm hosting that with Pat Murray and Ken Diemer and Alec from Teco. It's going to be an awesome time there for all your hardscape landscape guys. There's just a lot of great stuff going on, folks. So don't just get so lost in the field with just doing work that you don't take time to breathe. Take some time to have some education, jump on some webinars, some conferences, all that fun stuff. I know leanscapers got their weekly intensives that they do if you're part of the accelerator course. All right, there's. There's a lot going on in the lawn and landscaping world and it's just a good time right now. It's good mojo. It's a good time. What I wanted to do for one last quick announcement. Oh, by the way, duh. SOP bundle launching on Thursday. All right. All the content is getting uploaded and organized as we speak. Holy cow, have I been putting in some muscle to get that thing ready to go. And we are finally putting the final bows and final touches on it as we speak. Thousand bucks. One time investment. Thousand bucks. Lifetime updates, lifetime upgrades. I have to actually count how many document sops that we have built for you guys. And it's not just sops in the name of sops. These are documents and resources for situations and scenarios and growth that you will experience as your business revenue grows past three or four hundred grand of revenue and beyond. Incident reports, corrective action reports. Job description. Job ads. Job descriptions for crew members, for crew leads, for supervisors, job descriptions for those roles. Job ads for those roles. Editable Photoshop job ads. So you can take it to your graphic design person or girl or fiverr or upwork person. Take our template, give them your brand style guide, swap colors, swap logos, and you can have a job ad done in literally 30 minutes to an hour. Paying somebody 45 bucks. Take ours, make it yours. I spent a thousand dollars just on those. And you can swap them and have job descriptions and job ads ready to go on. Indeed. Hire bus, Facebook, LinkedIn, social. Because we give you all the templates, all the sizing, right? Just that alone, worth a thousand bucks. That's part of the program. There's about 40 or 50 SOP documents, just documents. We've got another 60 videos, training videos in the field to help you guys with onboarding, new team members to give them the lay of the land for lawn and snow. And then we've got another dozen video screen record clips that are SOP training videos on element and gusto and attentive and how to do a newsletter. Okay. How to, how to simple as an element, how to add a charge card on file and everything else in between. And by the way, this is what we're launching with, all right? There's going to be dozens and dozens and hundreds of more videos, documents and SOPs to come, all right? And so we are really trying to asphalt the road here, pave the way for all of you guys that are growing to and past multiple crews and looking to add office admin help. This is what that SOP bundle is for. 100%. I can say slam dunk. Count it. It's ready to go. All right, Content's going to publish Thursday. You'll be able to check all that out. You'll get a newsletter. Once it's all live, all we got to do is flip the switch. We're putting the final bows on it right now. We have been working our fingers to the bone to get it done and getting it done. We have. And we're really, really excited about revealing all that to you guys. This will be the new big thing for the indefinite near year or two that your boy is going to promote for all of you guys that are looking to grow in scale. And by the way, if you need a training video done, you email it on the submission form or shoot me an email. I'll go out in the field the next day or the day after, film it, edit it, chop it up, upload it into the bundle and we'll make it a generic training video for whatever situation you need. As long as I've got access to that piece of equipment or that scenario, whatever it takes, we'll get it filmed, we'll get it done, and we'll make it happen. And that is going to be an investment that I'm going to make into that bundle. So 9.99. It's available. Launchprintercademy.com store. I had to mention that because it's coming down the pike Thursday and you guys are going to be pumped. Especially for all of you guys that did the pre order. We're super excited about that. And thank you, thank you, thank you for the investment into what you guys are making into us. Okay? This is about 15 or 16 months of very, very diligent work and effort that we've documented into Brian's Law Maintenance. This is what we're utilizing every single day. And I'm telling you, once you get your hands on the library of the documents, courses, resources, and videos, you're going to be like, damn, like, this is awesome. And I'm telling you, it is awesome. All of those videos, all those documents are all downloadable. Take them wherever you want after that. Put them in your drive, put them in your Lean Docs or leanscaper, put them in your green use account for lmn, put them wherever, whatever, however you guys utilize them. But they're yours to take with you. Okay? Very, very excited about that. All right, let's do this really quick. I want to pivot and actually talk about something that is going to seem a little like, A little, I don't say controversial, maybe something that's a little bit less talked about in the industry. And that is the topic of always being on and what that can feel like and what that can do to you and for you. And the reason I wanted to talk about this is, you know, I was sick for like a month, the last month or so. I've got a lot of pressure on me to like do a lot of big things in my personal family life. Like we want to make a bunch of money to accomplish a couple of near dreams and goals and of course, long term dreams and goals. You know, I'm building this SOP bundle for the last really, like year or so, really putting it together, last four or five months, really having everything come together in the last, you know, three or four weeks, the last couple of days, the next couple of days, like when you launch anything big, very stressful time of year that can bleed into your family life, it can bleed into your mental health, it can affect your sleep schedule. Imagine like snow, right? Like when you know it's gonna snow the, the night before. Dude, you don't sleep, you don't sleep at all, no matter how much you try, because you don't want to miss your alarm, you know, at three in the morning, four in the morning, five in the morning for assault, run, right? And get caught with your pants down. Like, it's just stressful. And something I wanted to talk about for a couple of minutes was the idea or the cost of like always being on, because Liz was asking me. And this is what, like the. It kind of stemmed from a little tiff that Liz and I had. And the other day I said, like, I just need some time. I just need some quiet time. And dude, we've got three kids, two kids under four, you know, four years old, three years old, a baby that's almost a year old. It's like, it's never quiet around here. I'm not Complaining. I'm just saying it's. It's stressful, dude. Like, from. From an element or an environment where you want to, like, get stuff done. You just need some quiet time, and you just need some space. It's hard to do that because that has got a teeter now and teeter totter, and the pendulum swings to your significant other, your spouse, your partner, and they're gonna, like, take the brunt of it because somebody's got to watch the kids, right? And it's. It can be a challenging situation because I barked at my wife the other day, and I said, I just don't feel like I'm being supported right now. And she's like, you don't feel like you're being supported? Because I'm the most supportive person on planet Earth right now. I'm like, I know. It's just hard for me to articulate. It's probably a little bit of stress, a little bit of anxiety when I launch something, you know, Launchpad Academy. Like, I can't even begin to describe how much I want something to be as great as it can be because I'm charging money for it, right? It's not like a shtick to make a buck. It's like, if you're gonna drop 50 bucks, 100 bucks, 250 bucks, or a thousand bucks with me, you better believe that I want to deliver on that product, that service, that whatever, right? Like, last year, we did the commercial Bidding Made simple training program. And, like, folks like, that thing is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, literally dollars and cents. I've done probably close to 50 to 70, I don't know, takeoffs and people that have invested in that program and the amount of bids and estimates that we've done for lawn and snow and education along the way and clips and zooms and, you know, obviously, new conversations via email and text and phone calls, or people that made that investment, like, absolutely paid dividends into that person's career. And so I get, like, hyper. Did I just get stressed out? I don't know why. Like, I just. I want to do a good job. I don't want to sell something and it not be of value. And I know the stuff that we're putting together is good. It's going to be awesome. It's going to be great. But I just. I'm like, man, I just want to do a good job. I don't want to ever look slimy or grimy or, you know, not deliver on what I propose, that this thing is going to be awesome. About. And so the other day, like, the kids were just ragging on us like crazy. It's been a tough couple of days, tough couple of weeks. Everybody's just getting out from being sick. I'm still, like, getting over this cough. I. I can barely, you know, have a. A lengthy conversation and not, like, hack to death still, you know, it's like five weeks into this, you know, freaking plague that I got from Florida, and I. I barked at my wife and I said, I just don't feel supported right now. I just need to, like, have a little bit of time to put on some bows on this program, film the last couple of videos in the field and in the office. And you know what I realized? Like, it was this pressure. Artificial, right? As always, artificial pressure or even direct pressure. Like, maybe it's legitimate pressure of, like, always being on. Because, like, all I do is go from one exciting thing to the next exciting thing to the next exciting thing, because it's progress, it's growth. It's me feeling like I'm being given more value. And me, hopefully, whatever I'm deciding to do, feel like I'm delivering more value. And we get into this potential trap where we only find, like, worth in what we do and who we are is if we're getting value and giving value. And it made me kind of, like, hit the brakes for a quick second and realize, hey, wait a minute. Like, first off, like, she didn't ask for any of this. She's not, like, you know, holding you back. She's not trying to bother you or hamstring you in any way, right? But at the same time, I'm thinking to myself, dude, I'm carrying this massive responsibility. I want to make sure that I'm showing up for folks. I'm trying to solve problems. I'm trying to perform at a high level. Can be a leader, right? Trying to be a provider, right? Trying to be a content creator, trying to be a business owner, right? Try to be a leader to my guys. And I had just realized, and I'm sure we've all realized, that there is a cost of, like, always being on. Because I know I'm not the only one out there that feels this, right? I know a lot of you guys, and this is what I just wanted to talk about, real talk, for a couple of minutes today, is I know I'm not the only one that feels this burden, this, like, invisible weight of always being on. Now, I will say this. We'll. We'll talk for another five or 10 minutes. And I Hope to wrap it up with a nice little bow, but I will just tell you, like, this is something that I have not personally solved just yet.