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- [00:05]
A
Welcome to Green side Up, the perfect podcast for small business entrepreneurs looking to cultivate success in the landscaping and tree care industry. Join Jason Lee, a seasoned landscaper, and Jordan Upkavage, a true tree whisperer, as they share their wealth of experience and insights to navigate the challenges of growing your business. Get ready to hear real life stories, practical solutions, and invaluable advice that will empower you to thrive amidst the chaos of entrepreneurship. And now, let's keep the Green side Up with your host, Jason Lee and Jordan Upkevage. Jordan, welcome back to this. Are you interrupting my introduction? Dammit. Go ahead, proceed. Hello. Howdy, Jordan.
- [01:00]
B
Hey, man. I think you were going to say welcome back to this week's episode of Green side Up podcast.
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A
I was, I was.
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B
And we don't know whose turn it is to talk.
- [01:08]
A
I don't know. Let's figure it out. You want to do a coin toss? Too late. Episode's already started.
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B
Oh, all right. All right. Well, take us away, Jason, you are in a Sky Frog landscape recording studio and I'm in an independent tree service recording studio. So take us away. What are we going to talk about today?
- [01:29]
A
So, Jordan, we are recording live from the Sky Frog Kitchen and I have recruited a guest for us today. Our dear friend Aaron Alvarez is joining us.
- [01:39]
C
Hit me
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B
to the main stage. Aaron Alvarez, to the main stage. What? What's your stage song, Aaron? What are we opening to? What are you walking out to the floor on?
- [01:57]
C
That's a really good question. I would say something by Luda or Outkast given my Atlanta upbringing, but it might be Georgia Satellites. Keep your hands to yourself.
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B
Oh, don't give me no lines and keep your hands to yourself.
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C
There you go.
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B
That's good. That's a good one, right? Well then I couldn't go to that establishment because I have a hard time keeping my hands to myself.
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C
Hey, you're not alone.
- [02:19]
A
So I thought it would be appropriate, as we have recently completed the landscape rodeo as of last Friday, February 20, that Aaron was in the office and we are late doing our homework for Mr. Producer. And we are recording right now at 3:45 on Wednesday afternoon. And I'm going to send this over to him as soon as we're done. But I figured it would be an opportune time to bring in Aaron along as the co organizer of this event and talk about it. And then, well, I mean, we can recap at the end of it. We can talk about how the hell your truck has WI fi in it. I mean, that's pretty fancy. You know.
- [02:53]
B
Yeah, no chappy chappies here. So I think what you're talking about, Jason, is the landscape rodeo that we've talked about for a while that you have worked very hard on, that you have had Aaron work very hard on. We have just successfully completed and pulled off the first annual landscape rodeo at Ancient City Farmstead. So it happened. It's.
- [03:24]
A
It did, it did.
- [03:26]
B
Showed up. People showed up. It happened. So why don't you, why don't you tell us about it? Tell us about the prep that the beginning, the preparation before the event happened the day prior. The exhibitor deal on Thursday night and then the news, the flipping news. People with their microphones come in and the Star Spangled Banner and Aaron talking on a mic. Why don't you take the stage for a minute and give us a debrief.
- [03:58]
A
So obviously we've been working on this, as Jordan said, for months, months and months with preparation with Aaron and I leading the way and FNGLA frontrunners. And so we, last week we went on Wednesday to start the official prep on site. And so Wednesday we started finalizing our organization and scheduling and all the paperwork side of things. We landed event insurance, which there's nothing like sending that down to the last minute as equipment's landing on site and we're buying.
- [04:31]
B
That was kind of a big deal, right? Getting the insurance actually like, yeah, yeah, yeah, big deal.
- [04:37]
A
Yep. But we got it done. We figured it out and it all starts with just having good insurance people. So Robert Gonzalez with Farm Bureau insurance for commercial auto and general liability. Excellent. Neon keon for workers compensation who has now become part of Brown and Brown. Excellent. Whoever we had started our event insurance process with, not so much who we finished with.
- [04:59]
C
Good.
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A
So starting with a good insurance person is a strong recommendation for our listeners.
- [05:04]
B
So humor me. This being ignorant to the whole insurance deal and what it cost, what does it cost to ensure a. We call it a two day event. You have the setup and then you have the day. What's the premium on that?
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C
Well, say it's not just the event. It's the fact that we had an event. We had operators, we had equipment that they weren't used to seeing operate the way we were operating it. So we were kind of in this marginal event coverage.
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A
Nobody knew what the hell we were doing.
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C
Nobody, nobody knew what we were doing. Everyone thought it sounded cool. Everyone thought, sure, we can ensure that. But no.
- [05:44]
A
Anyway, we settled on, we settled on, on a policy to cover the venue, everyone involved, the organizers, the sponsors, the participants and it was two grand for the day, so.
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B
Well, that's not bad. Yeah.
- [05:59]
A
Now, some of our original quotes may have been a little bit higher, but no, we settled on two grand for the day. We banged it out, got the event covered. We started landing equipment on Wednesday of last week, so two days before the event, which was a great move. So a lot of, A lot of the sponsors and vendors took advantage of that. Some brought equipment in on Wednesday and Thursday. Some landed all their heavy equipment on Wednesday. We started laying out some of the courses and figuring that out since, you know, half of them we had never performed before and were conceptual. So Wednesday was a pretty. It was a very busy day, but it was great to have the second day or the first day of prep, I suppose you would say. So Thursday was our big day of setup. So Thursday was more hands on deck, volunteers coming from front runners still finalizing paperwork to be printed. Aaron's doing last minute radio spots. Or did you do the podcast on Wednesday?
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C
I did.
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A
Was it.
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C
I did a country music I could have morning show on a country station. Wednesday. Tuesday was the NPR station. Yeah, there were a couple different ones, but yeah.
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A
Yeah. So Aaron was doing some last minute pr. Got to be on an official video podcast with npr.
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C
Yes.
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A
Which we have a link for somewhere. Oh yeah, Video.
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C
First Coast Connect in a studio.
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A
Fancy.
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C
Very fancy. Not this fancy. Fancy.
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B
Nice.
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A
So as we're finishing up all the PR and last minute marketing, you know, everybody comes on Thursday and it's, it's starting to become a real, real deal. Real event of organization, getting people in their places, vendors set up, you land our. Or we send Yankee Dan to land or crawfish. And then as you arrive, you start preparations for our VIP dinner, which I think turned out pretty swell. Yeah. So Thursday was our final day of prep. So that's all set up, organizing more events. And I think we got. We got all but a couple, I think, lined up on Thursday, up until the Wii or to the late hours of the afternoon, which you, you, sir, jumped in and laid out the truck and trailer course.
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C
As a savior, you were an mvp,
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B
which was super fun. You gave me a rough sketch on the back of a piece of paper of a few dashed lines of I think we can do something like this. And then you asked me if I could make it happen and I said, of course I can make that happen. So there was an avant sitting there and there was a pallet full of cones and I just got in the machine and made. Set up all my cones. And then I realized I Didn't have enough cones for what I laid out. So I drove the machine and I found another pallet of cones and just took them and made my course. And then I dry ran the truck and trailer slash zuzu box truck course in the avant articulating wheel loader to just make sure it was doable. And then I got with Keith and I stole the pin to your trailer hitch so I could put a trailer hitch on a ford ranger with a 16 foot landscape trailer behind it. And then me and Keith both dry ran the course to see if it was doable. And we actually made it a little skinnier because it was too doable. And then we had like a Out of the gate, you got a arc to the left. Make a right hand turn, a 90 degree right hand turn. Go through a little serpentine. You gotta take a right to a hairpin, like 180 degree left hand turn. What puts you straight. And then you got to back down into the same starting point. And then I said, hey, instead of backing down straight, that's too easy. Let's make you have to back down like a banana. A curve into the chute that you would launch out of. And that way, when we conclude the race, the truck's in the same starting position to head forward for heat number two and the next driver. And that was a lot of fun. And I do want to tell you, Jason, that Ben, your employee, won first place in truck and trailer.
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A
He did.
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B
He ripped dicks through the course and did not hit a single cone. It was a minute and 19 seconds. And then I ran the race and I got it done in like 54 seconds. And Jason, I was ripping dicks through this course and the truck and trailer. I was drifting this thing through there. But I nicked a cone and knocked off a tennis ball on the hairpin 180 degree turn. And that dinged me into second place. Ben 1 first place. Because as Aaron told us on the mic at the opening ceremony, this is a game of precision. Precision will prevail. And time is merely a tiebreaker of precision. And my haste dinged me into second place.
- [11:13]
A
It happens. But it was.
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B
And then the same course, I ran it in a brand new isuzu box truck by super lawn trucks, Tony bass. It had 1183 miles on it, Brand new truck. And I sent it through the course. And it was so fun. And then Justin Williams and had all the time.
- [11:37]
A
Have you. And you had never driven an azuzu.
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B
Never driven an azusa box truck. I have never driven a cab over truck before. Not once. I did pretty damn good. I had pretty damn good. And then Justin gets in this thing and he. I I guess they have posse track. They must because he. If you stomp on it, it'll go. He lit into this thing. He peeled out for 20 yards blowing dust behind him. But then he got lost in the course and didn't. He got off track and couldn't run the course correctly because he's that genius idiot and can't follow cone. So he was disqualified. But I actually let. How old is meet Dan's son?
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A
12.
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B
12. I got in the passenger seat. I put a 12 year old in the driver's seat and I had meat run the course. I don't know if you know this but I had meat ripping through there and he didn't hit a single cone he was a little slower than a grown man. Not caring and me he did. A 12 year old can drive a isuzu box truck. But what a. What a fun. What a fun event that was. Man.
- [12:50]
A
That's awesome. And we very much appreciate Mr. Tony Bass and Mr. Max Bass and crew coming down and being a title sponsor for the landscape rodeo and letting us look at some trucks. I think our maintenance sales are not happening as fast anyway. We don't need to get sidetracked on sky frog business. But anyway, I had Keith checking out one of the super contractor trucks because I don't think. I think we'll be good on maintenance trucks for at least the first half of this year. But the construction work we're going to be getting into, I think. I think one of the supercontractor trucks might be in our future, so.
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C
Oh yeah.
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A
Yeah. We just got to pick. Pick out the details.
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B
So tell me about the exhibitor deal we with a crawfish boil and talk to me about that.
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A
So we had peas and carrots catering come in and cater a charcuterie table and fixings.
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C
We can't sell that short though.
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A
It was epic.
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C
It was epic. It was beyond whatever the next step over charcuterie is. Charcuterie, however you want to say was something else. I've never seen something like that laid out. It was amazing and it was good. It wasn't just pretty, it tasted good.
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A
And then there were meatballs and pigs
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C
in a blanket and little sliders, barbecue
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A
pulled pork sliders and jalapeno poppers which are always a crowd favorite. And then yours truly, Mr. Jordan Upcavage said tree guy pulled off an official crawfish race as you were doing the
- [14:23]
B
seafood boil yeah, so that was fun. I went to Home Depot earlier in that day, and I got a sheet of plywood, a 4 by 8 sheet of plywood, and I measured the center of the board. And I slammed my pocket knife into the center of the board and like a bullseye. And then I needed concentric circles to the perimeter of the sheet of plywood. Now to make it fair, it was perfect circles. So we have a two foot radius equals a four foot wide sheet of plywood. And so how do you make concentric circles around a pocket knife that's at the center of the board? Well, conveniently, I had my overnight bag and I had my dental floss. And so I tied my dental floss to the tip of my pocket knife. And then I tied a sharpie marker to the dental floss. And I was able to do nice perfect circles concentrically around the bullseye. So we painted the bullseye red. We had concentric circles around it. And the name of the game is we're going to put our crawfish in the middle. And I got a paint marker, a white Milwaukee paint marker, so we could put numbers on the back of the crawfish and then add a little like a two gallon bucket. And I cut the bottom of the bucket off so it's just a hollow cylinder. And I put that right in the middle of the bullseye. We all put our numbers on the back of a crawfish. You pick a big one, pick a little one, whichever, whatever you want to race. And it was five dollars a heat. And so pony up five bucks, you pick your crawdaddy. Yeah, you mark it and you put it in the bucket with no bottom. And then when it's go time, we lift the bucket and there's a pile of crawfish in the middle. And if you want to get them to dance, you start slapping on the table, like drumming on the table. And that'll, that'll make them dance. And we had hit the table and we're yelling at them. And then the crawfish would go across and the, the winner would be the first crawfish to cross the furthest out concentric circle, which happened to be the blue line. So when your crawfish breached the blue line, contest over. That's the winner. And we did several heats. I do want to tell you that my. I picked a little crawfish. I did not pick a big one. My little crawfish won the first heat, but he was the first to cross the blue line. But in the excitement, in the habitual beating of the plywood. The crawfish got bounce house bounce back inside the blue line. And then Pablo, Pablo, son Pablo with Black Sheep lawn service, his crawfish was the second one to get out of the blue line and stay out of the blue line. So in the discrepancy of lack of rules that I established, I took my wad of money that I rightfully won. And I had already celebrated like automatica grammatica, field goal guy from the Bucks. I had already jumped up in the air about pulled a ligament celebrating. I took my winning purse and I handed it to Pablo and I said, you know what? You're younger than I am. You win. Now we have a new rule. When you're between the red circle and the blue circle, you got to stop beating the table. And so we ran our consecutive heats after we established that rule from discovering how this process is going to work. So that was the race and ton of fun. And then Jason, this was not a crawfish boil in a big stainless steel pot. This was a crawfish boil and a gigantic cooker looking thing with a hinge. And you hinge this huge basket and they slide down a chute into a big bucket or a cooler or a pot. And it would, you know, like the big stainless steel pots. It was probably like two to two and a half of those.
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A
It's about two of them. It's like 150, 160 quarts.
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B
Yeah, it was big.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And when we dumped the buy and we had everything we had, I'm just gonna go in the order that it goes in the water. So I don't forget, we had garlic, we had potatoes, we had onions, we had lemons, we had oranges, we had corn, we had sausage, we had crawfish, we had shrimp. And all of that big brewing cauldron to the brim filled this thing up. And then when we dumped it out down the chute, the big stainless steel pot, it filled the entire pot up up with no water, just all biomass from like 2 inches from the rim of just solid biomass. And then me and Justin Williams carried that pot because it was a two man pot to carry. It was so heavy and it was a two man pot to dump. Normally when I dump a pot, I can handle it, but this was so damn heavy, me and Justin dumped it down. I would. Those were what, 10 foot long tables and there were three of them. It was, yeah, it was 30ft long, 30 foot long Runway of low country boil. And it was really cute to see people get their Black plastic plates and a set of tongs and make a plate. And then they would go to the picnic tables and eat. And I said, nay. Jason said nay to that. I walked up to a picnic table, I grabbed a chair, and I sat that chair right at the Jesus table, right at the last supper table. And I sat and I feasted. And I was sitting there by myself for five or six minutes, just ripping lips and sucking heads. And then another chair comes floating in next to me. Then another chair, and, oh, boy, do you got the idea. Next thing I know, I got five dudes sitting around me sucking heads and eating food. And oh, my gosh, that was.
- [20:35]
A
It was amazing.
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B
It's my life. If I'm going to be on death row and have a last meal, it's an lcb, dude. It's a. It's a low country boil. That's what I'm going to do. And so the charcuterie and the pigs in a blanket and the peas and carrots catering with the pork sliders, I didn't have any of it. I didn't want to give up that stomach content room because I am going to overdose on capsaicin and. And cholesterol. And I think I succeeded in that.
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A
I think that the charcuterie and handhelds were an awesome beginning to the boiling process to have something to graze on, something to entertain yourself while you're waiting on this giant pot of goodness to come hit the table.
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C
It was because the boil smelled so good. We needed to eat some. Because if people haven't had. Listeners haven't had a low country boil, the ingredients you listed are one thing, but there's. It's seasoned. It's seasoned to within an inch of its life. Like you. It's not just stuff in a pot.
- [21:37]
B
Oh, no. Yeah, we got Zataran's crab boil mix in there. And it's a sampling like, well, how much to use. I don't want to make it Jordan up cabbage hot, my personal preference. And other people not be able to eat it. I like to. I like it to where, like, your lips burn and don't touch your eyes with your hands. That's my preference. But I had to make it for everybody because I'm such a. A generous manager of people.
- [21:59]
C
You are.
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B
I made it perfect. And for that quantity, it was about five pounds of seasoning that went into it for it to be not too hot, not too cold, but just right.
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C
It was perfect. And I tell you, the service method you used. I watched everybody because I've been With y' all for low country. Like, we've had boils together casually, the way you're supposed to stand belly up to the table and you just eat off the table. All of us together, one big family. But everyone was being polite, you know, because it was. Had their. Their company manners on. And I watched. I watched you longingly, like, scoop. You were scooping it the way one ought to scoop it with the plate right at the serving. And I was like, that's what we need to be doing. That's. And somebody, I think Brian was sitting next to me and he's like, did you see what Jordan did? I'm like, that's how you should do it. You don't. You don't individually serve low country boil. But no, it was also epic. The charcuterie was epic. The boil was beyond.
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A
I was missing my Blackstone shovel. Got a giant shovel spatula. It looks like a snow shove sub. It would be the equivalent of a snow shovel for scooping mulch, but it's for the Blackstone griddle. And so when I fill up 10 to 12 to 15 pounds of stuff on the griddle, you come in and you scoop it up and you put it in the aluminum trays and that. Even though I brought my cooking cart with utensils and all the goodies that was here at the shop, which we found this morning as we were cooking sausage dogs and cheese grits and did not make it. But if we would have had the shovel, that would have been a very good shoveling utensil off the table.
- [23:34]
B
So, yeah, so that was great. Then we hung out with Dan and I got to watch you and Dan get into an argument. However, you agreed on everything. You ever watch two friends argue, but they can't stop agreeing with each other? But they're still arguing? Yeah, that happened later. And then we all had a sleepover in Dan's living room and we respectfully got up at. I think we got to sleep in till like 5:50.
- [24:02]
C
Oh, dang lazy.
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B
Right?
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A
Yeah. Yeah.
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B
Because we were back at Ancient City before sunrise. We were there at 6:30 in the morning, day of. And we were up in the. The war room of Dan's office with our computers and our coffees and our bing bong, bing. Make sure that, you know, our product production life of career actually continues because it was a work day. And then the show started. And Aaron, you did a beautiful job. You ran the mic and did the introductory deal. Thank you.
- [24:35]
C
I stepped in.
- [24:36]
A
Tell me how that I. Well, I lost. I lost. I lost My voice. I started to lose my voice before dinner, and my voice started cracking. And then by the time Dan and I got done yelling at each other and arguing that in full agreement with what we were talking about, we agreed so hard that I lost my voice. So I had definitely tapped here. And I would have probably tried to tap Aaron in any way to do with the announcements, but it's like, hey, I can't talk.
- [25:04]
C
Yeah, no, it was a pleasure. Thank you, Jordan.
- [25:06]
A
Yeah.
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C
I was only there because you couldn't, but yeah, that's. It's. I was. Yeah, it was. It was good because it was the. We've been doing this for over a year. We've been planning this.
- [25:14]
A
Yeah.
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C
And so it was the kind of the culmination of everything. But no, it was great. Get to announce. Just the energy was so wonderful. Everyone coming. And we'd spent two days there with everybody staffing it and volunteers. And then as we were up, as you said, in Dan's office doing our little ticky tacky, getting ready for the day. I get the radio call. People are here. It's like, oh, it's registration time. We got to go down there and make it happen. So it was great wrangling everybody. The energy was good. Everyone was there to support and have a good time and check out the equipment and do some racing and.
- [25:44]
A
And we hit overall and then we can keep. We can keep going through details, but overall, we hit our marks of the people we wanted to come. And we had. We hit the FFA students and younger generations of exposing them to the industry. We had two FFA groups come from Baldwin.
- [26:03]
C
Three, we had Baldwin, Oak Leaf, and like, there was a third one. Maybe there's just the two for sure.
- [26:14]
A
Definitely Baldwin and Oak Leaf. So they came and they brought kids and they competed and they had a grand time. And Oak Leaf dominated on the three on three backpack blower soccer course against Baldwin High School.
- [26:27]
B
Those boys, the overall boys.
- [26:32]
A
So they. They showed some domination there. And so, man, we hit it with. With that generation. That was one of our primary objectives of this. We had owner operators come in either individually or bring a few people, you know, with them from smaller companies. And, you know, it seemed like, well, obviously Pablo and Pablo came and BNX lawn care, and I believe it was Tyler with peaceful palms. He brought his family up and competed. So, man, it's like, where.
- [26:58]
B
Oh, the assassin in the cowboy hat. Y. Yeah, he looked. I saw him first doing the pallet stack challenge. And you got this dude with a manicured beard but not like pretty beard but you tell like that boy works but a clean cut beard, shirt tucked in, cowboy hat on earbuds, all business, straight faced. And he was Jedi stacking pallets. And then when he'd comp finish with his event, he'd go kiss his wife and kids. And I was sitting next to my, standing next to Gideon and Jake and Jake from GS Track me that were there as sponsors or vendors and competitors. And I looked at him was like dude, this guy looks like a hired killer. He just looks like an assassin. All business and he's crushing events and yeah, he did great. I had fun talking to him.
- [27:52]
A
Like the GS track me guys, they abandoned their booth. Well, the one one of them wanted to run the zero turn bar racing. I was like go do it man. Just go sign up, get a number, just go do it. And I think by the end of it they were all just, I don't know, we're all. I don't know if all of them were competing or doing events or what, but they were having a good old, good old time. And so then you know, of course Sky Frog brought competitors as being an organizer of the event and our guys like competing at what we do here at the shop. And we had one of our local competitors, Masters Lawn Care send over some crews from their Gainesville. Well I guess it would be their headquartering operation here. And then some people from their St. Augustine branch, Vertigo sent some guys. So we hit the marks with some larger businesses. And overall man, the feedback from everyone was extremely good. So it's great to have that.
- [28:45]
C
Yeah, UF sent people, we had a, they had a team of 20 high 20s, that's one thing. Next year we tried real hard to get more municipalities out. City, county, bulk. So next year hopefully more people will come out. But it was a good showing, nice cross. Cross demographic. Lots of different groups we were hoping to get.
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B
Yeah, it was cool to see UF there. Like UF proper or whoever from them. They had UF shirts on.
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A
That was kind of cool.
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C
I feel like we had a couple tree companies too. It wasn't just you, Jordan. There were a couple tree guys there.
- [29:13]
B
Yeah, well, independent tree service, of course. Day one. This belt buckle, you see this?
- [29:22]
C
I do, right here, it's shiny.
- [29:24]
B
It says 2026 landscape rodeo. I'm a first place winner. This is a gold medal, Jason. And you know what? This bonafide arborist tree guy, no calluses because I have this $90,000 steering wheel in front of me. You know what this guy got first Place in wheelbarrow. All right. Yeah, I don't need to operate anything. There's a wheelbarrow and there's some grit, and there's a contest. Who can put this heavy thing in that and push it over there the fastest? I'm gonna win. I even slipped in my cowboy boots and hit a knee on the ground and got back up and shimmied this thing across. And I have successfully picked up a bunch of pavers, stacked them in the wheelbarrow, ran a serpentine course through Viburnum Odoratissimum, took all the pavers out of my wheelbarrow and put them on a pallet. And then I took some flavor of a juniper, one gallon. And I put those in a wheelbarrow, and I hauled ass in a straight line back to the starting point. And your boy took first place. Took gold medal right here. Like the hockey, I almost got invited to the state of Union last night. That's how famous this is. All right, but only half of it's perfect.
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C
It's perfect. You're going back to your roots. That's probably the first event you did in college, basically, that wheelbarrow obstacle course.
- [30:48]
B
Well, you know, the memories clouded from that time here.
- [30:51]
C
I get it. It's funny, the one of the reporters that came out to get footage, she was great. I think her name was Madison. If I'm getting her name wrong, I apologize. But they got video footage of her on her newscast running the wheelbarrow course, and she was. She self. Admittedly was too fragile to run the pavers, but she ran the course with an empty wheelbarrow. Not as fast as Jordan, though.
- [31:14]
B
Plant healthcare seems to be all the buzz in the green industry right now. Are you like many business owners that don't know how or where to start, or are you looking to add a new tool to your PHC toolbox?
- [31:25]
A
Mitigro is an innovative product that focuses on root and soil health. A different approach than loading up the ground with more npk. Mitigro is a blend of mycorrhizae, fungi, bacteria, vitamin B and iba, which is a rooting hormone.
- [31:38]
B
The concept is simple. More roots equals a healthier and more robust plant. This simple concept is exactly why both Jason and I have incorporated mitagro into our PhD programs. Deep Root applications on my end for mature or struggling trees, soil drenches, and spray applications. For when Jason installs trees and installs new sod.
- [31:58]
A
Give Mitigro a shot for yourself. Their product is easy to apply and their special licenses are needed. Visit mitogrowpro.com to learn more. That's M I T O G-R-O-W P R O.com do you want your office
- [32:13]
B
phone to ring more and increase service requests to your inbox? Want to push the gas pedal on your lead volume?
- [32:20]
A
Looking for a marketing company is daunting and who knows how to select a marketing company that really works? No business owner wants to spend their hard earned money on empty promises.
- [32:28]
B
Intrigue Media is your solution. Both Jason and I have partnered with Intrigue to help grow our businesses by simply making our phone ring more. Intrigue will build you an up to date website in record time. They had my website live on the Internet start to finish in under seven days. Intrigue will crank up SEO for your business, increase your organic Google ranking and even handle your paid Google Ads.
- [32:52]
A
Intrigue Media is fast tracking lead volume for both Skyfrog landscape and independent tree service. You should give them a try for your business. Visit intriguemedia.com if you want to make more money and crush your competitors online.
- [33:03]
B
That's intriguemedia.com welcome back from that commercial break. We'll pick up where we left off. Your show continues.
- [33:14]
A
Did your fancy wi fi crap out on you or what happened there?
- [33:19]
B
You know there's an old Navy commercial, it's probably 15 years old and there were selling hoodies, right? Pullover hoodies. And the tagline to be trendy was you in the hood now baby. And it stuck with my dad. You, Aaron, you're going, yes, you know what I'm talking about. So my dad would all be like,
- [33:46]
A
you live in the hood now babies.
- [33:49]
B
And so maybe my wi fi dropped because I'm in the hood now baby. I am in Ybor City at a construction site that requires chain link fencing to go around trees and they have exported a pile of soil because it was contaminated for a Habitat for Humanity development. That is going to happen. So I need to erect chain link fence around grand trees that have to be preserved. And this piece of property looks like a fricking bomb went off because there's giant craters and soil missing everywhere. But I can't see it because it's all past that chain link fence behind a screen. So I'm sitting here until I walk the property and I think I have 271ft of chain link fence to put in the ground and I'm putting eyes on it before my guys show up. I've already sold the job, sold it from the computer and I'm looking at it, see, like can I even do it. That's what I'm here. So that's why I'm at Old Navy.
- [34:47]
A
Nice.
- [34:49]
B
What were we talking about?
- [34:52]
C
You working all day for three days to help us make the rodeo happen. All I know is I showed up from getting a whole bunch of stuff done in Gainesville after having been out there and back and out there and back. And I don't know how many times you went out and back that week. And I pull up and I've got like a van load of stuff and I start unloading and I just see some guy who looks familiar at the cooking area and some other guy I don't know at all who I came to know later. And I'm like, who are those guys over there? I guess the boil has started and Jason has outsourced the boil to someone I don't know. And then I hear, oh, I didn't think the dancer was going to get here till later. Then it's George.
- [35:28]
B
That was me.
- [35:28]
C
You were there cleaning crawfish and cutting up. Cutting up veg and making it happen for the rest of us.
- [35:35]
B
Yeah. So I remember what my question was before Russia took my Internet. My question was, Jason, success. Well done. What was something that you like? You like your key takeaways from putting this event on? From nothing. Like what worked the best and what would you change for next time?
- [36:01]
A
What worked the best is that we pulled it off. I mean, I've never run an event that's been part of this as we've been organizing the stuff and with the group from front runners. Like, I've never done this before. Like Aaron's never done. Well, Aaron's run the poinsettia sale. That's an event. That's a legitimate event.
- [36:16]
C
Right. But I didn't create it. I inherited it. It was a well oiled machine. But yeah, it's a nightmare. And I had a feeling from it's not a nightmare. It's a. Excuse me. It's a lot of moving parts to put together. And I knew from that that this was going to be even more moving parts.
- [36:31]
A
But yeah, no, it wasn't a lot of moving parts. But it's identifying what you have to do and then figuring out how you're going to do it and accomplish it and then doing it within the time frame you have to do it and all that sounds a little bit easy, but it's not. Then you find a thousand other things that you have to do that manipulate and change the things you have already identified. And so from the event side of it, lots of planning. I mean, I don't even know we got, between Aaron and I, we got 800 hours in this, I don't know, thousand hours. Probably not more than a thousand hours, but like, that's a legitimate thing. Hell, we ended up hiring Mikey from Upwork.com and she put in, I don't know, 160 hours. And she was doing VA Workforce and Mining email lists and emailing municipalities and searching landscape companies and trying to do some direct, direct marketing. So it's a lot of man hours that go into putting on the event. And so, I mean, I think that the greatest takeaway is that we pulled it off and it was success and that we hit the goals that we. And obviously in the future we would like to expand on the event with competitors and spectators and make it, you know, make it an industry staple to be a recurring event here in Florida. Or if you want to come down from St. John's Michigan, like Kevin did, then you can come join us from the far north and escape the cold. And Mr. Edwin from Intrigue Media. But I would say that's my biggest takeaway of having a successful event that hit the metrics we were looking for and set the bones for the future.
- [38:05]
C
Yeah. And happy faces, smiling. People were happy. People had a good time. Vendors had a good time. One of the biggest takeaways for me that I think about when I think back on the event is the success of it. Yeah. To Jason's point, overwhelmingly, we got it done. Like it. It got done. Everyone pulled together. We got it done. But also that quote from that student that.
- [38:26]
A
Yes. So in the news clip. And I sent you the news clip, right, Jordan, or showed you the news clip.
- [38:33]
B
Not that I know of.
- [38:34]
A
You haven't seen the news clip. So anyway, there's a great, there's a great news clip. I'll send you that. We'll send you the news clip. And if I can find, if I can send this to Mr. Producer in the 10 minutes, I'm going to try to put it in 8 or A. I get a US pick a title and send it to him when we're done recording. If I can link it in the show notes, we'll link it.
- [38:53]
B
Send it to me now and I'll
- [38:54]
A
play it on my phone. Oh, okay. Well, that works extremely well. So anyway, so I'm not going to quote it because you're going to play it from your phone and no pressure
- [39:07]
C
now I got to find it, man.
- [39:08]
A
And the hands on. So I guess with the setting up event, I Mean, yes, there's tons and tons of planning that goes into it, but then just the setup time. I mean, we set up on Wednesday. And what, Harry crushed it with his two guys, Grant and. What was. What's his other. I don't know. Grant and Guy. I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name.
- [39:27]
C
The fast one.
- [39:28]
A
Yeah, but Harry. Harry and his two guys, man, they came out and they're just natural born killers of. Of production and getting work done. And Harry is our el presidente of Front Runners with Rhodes ground cover. So you will. You've met Harry before. So for our listeners, you know, the. The amount of hours that goes into it and obviously the day of, the day before, the day of slamming, as many volunteers as you can in, you know, getting everything set up. And then, like, mystery volunteers like Cody from Ocala popped up out of nowhere. Heather.
- [40:01]
B
Cody.
- [40:01]
C
Talk about an fa.
- [40:03]
A
Heather, you know, Heather Blake from Front Runner. She sent out an email, you know, just asking for volunteers and saying, hey, we could use some more help. And, you know, obviously most of us were a pretty small organization. You know, most everybody already knew about it and who was coming had. Had been planned. But then Cody pops up out of nowhere and like, he brought some guys to compete. And then I said, were you competing tomorrow? He's like, no, I just want to help. And so, all right, if you want to help, you're a judge. So, like, he was great. And I mean, it was.
- [40:32]
C
And he brought people.
- [40:33]
A
And he brought people to compete.
- [40:36]
B
I got. I got the clip.
- [40:37]
A
Okay, let's play it
- [40:41]
C
back. We're happening now. Landscapers from all over the country are in St. Augustine. This is so Florida. They are competing in a landscape rodeo. Action News Jackson, Madison Foglio live from ancient city farmstead where that event is happening. Madison, you talk with some of the competitors out there who are fierce, very, very fierce. In fact, some of them are in local FFAs and high schools here. And they tell me not only is this great way to get their competitive spirit out, but it's also a great way to network for their future. Welcome to the first landscape Rodeo. Hosted by the Florida Nursery Growers and Landscape Association. The landscape Rodeo features over 22 events using landscaping equipment. So it's a whole bunch of equipment that we put out and have different courses set up so people can test their skills with the equipment. Erin Alvarez is a co organizer for the Landscape Rodeo. She says the purpose of the event is to raise awareness about the landscape, let people know how much fun it is to be in the green Industry, but also to get the next generation up and seeing what kind of jobs, positions, skills are available and needed for this type of work. Morgan Wisham with Baldwin Middle Senior High School FFA has been landscaping frontiers. She says events like this are very helpful. They're really important for us to, like, make connections and, like, build relationships with other companies.
- [42:11]
B
Do I go on start or do you start when I move?
- [42:14]
C
And for others, it's eye opening. I mean, I wasn't thinking about landscaping. I was thinking more about H Vac and trades like that. But after seeing, you know, the money in it and all the equipment, I'm actually really interested. This is one of the events here. You load it up with these pavers. However, unfortunately. Well, not really unfortunately for me. I'm a little fragile, so I don't really have any pavers here, but that's how it's done. I look like a champ right now. But hey, all of the money raised here actually goes to scholarships to fund local landscaper streams in here in Jacksonville and also all throughout Florida here, wherever they select to put that scholarship. But it's a really heartwarming event. And like you said, Jay Taylor's very Florida coverage you can count on. I'm Madison Foglio, actually, Jacks. It is a beautiful day to go embrace.
- [43:06]
B
Whoa. That was pretty damn cool. The kid thinking he wanted to go H Vac and now he might go Green industry.
- [43:15]
A
That's.
- [43:16]
B
That's it. How do we get new employees in this industry that everyone bitches about? Bam.
- [43:22]
C
Yep.
- [43:23]
A
Just crack the code. Landscape radio. So, no, but that's the proof of concept. Like, that's the bones right there. The kid nailed it. Like, that's. That's it. Now, obviously the news. The news had some focus there for the high school side of it and FFA side of it and scholarships and then coming into the green industry, which is great, but I mean, the event from that aspect to having a place for owner operators to come and relax and have fun and demo and try new equipment. I mean, for demo areas, we had Gravely, we had Hustler lawnmowers, we had Dynamic Equipment Group, which is a Bobcat dealer, Alta Equipment, who sells all sorts of stuff and is our favorite Avant dealer. And Takuchi or Takahoochee or however you want to say it, we have had been having a giant debate on. On that. And then Crystal Tractor came out with Fox Loaders. Fox Loaders was our many articulated loader sponsor for that event. And so, you know, having that opportunity to come out and drive equipment and Touch it or at least turn it on and see how it roars. You know, currently, until the Equip Expo comes to the Orlando Convention center in 2029, there is not an open to the public trade show type scenario that has equipment demos like that that I am aware of now. Independent dealers, you know, Crystal Tractor had a heck of a showing forth. I went over there to Chiefland where I guess the owner has. Has a very large piece of property. And like, I went to one of their events. And I mean, that is, that is for Crystal Tractors customers and potential customers. But buddy, if you want to run. And if you want to run equipment and touch equipment of all sizes, they had real excavators of giant sizes and all the tractors and all the, all the machines you could think of with all the attachments, you know, I would definitely check with Crystal Tractor and see when that event's going to be next year because it was quite impressive. But for a whole, for an industry event, you know, this is one of the first ones that I've seen that actually puts. Puts equipment in an area where you can go run it and touch and feel it. So. Hitting a lot of marks there.
- [45:36]
C
Yeah. And it wasn't just the students. I heard people at registration, you know, elbowing each other and joking around, but dead serious, like, oh, we'll usually run this machine. How about you try that one out? And then they'd come back and they'd say, can I register for this event? Because I checked it out at the demo and I'm going to give it a try. So, yeah. Really, that was rewarding. That was cool to see people trying new things.
- [45:55]
B
Yeah.
- [45:57]
A
And then you ask what we could do better. Everybody. There's a laundry list of things. I mean, as things are happening live, it's like, okay, all right. Yep, we can do this different. This different. I mean, from top to bottom, there's a laundry list. You know, it's, you know, a few people mentioned. All right, well, let's have fewer competitions. It's like, well, let's start with running, you know, and we're somewhat limited by volunteers we have. So, like, we built out our schedule based on the number of volunteers we have, and so it made it a little choppy. Well, next year we'll just get a few more people, even if we got hired from some event staff, and it'll be less choppy and we'll just run more events for longer time frames and. And then if you can go around and just as you flow through the event, you know, compete in whatever you want to compete in and not have to try to run back and forth so much. So that's a very simple thing to fix. But, man, one of the biggest things is Eric at Gravely Mowers and I've already talked to him, but Eric at Gravely Mowers has been awesome from day one, helping us out from the beginning. Coming up for media day, bringing mowers, coming to the bunker, doing a podcast, and man, when I laid out the event, I, I did not count account for where their placement for their demo area was and they ended up kind of out on an island in the back 40. Like it was for the flow. It worked for the flow of traffic and event in my head, but it didn't work out as good as what I would want for anyway for a vendor. So, Eric, I can apologize come next year and we're going to make sure you're well taken care of.
- [47:19]
C
That was one of the things that we didn't know till we, till we started because it looked like a primo location. It looked like it was going to be right in the heart of everything and everyone would be walking by and until you see people flowing through the site. Yeah.
- [47:28]
A
And then next year, if it's at the same venue, I would like for it to be just since we've already figured the venue out and not have to start from scratch with some of the logistics. But you know, I think they're going to put some drainage in in the big open field out there because it rained on Sunday, they got like an inch of rain there on Sunday. So like Monday they were standing water in the arena. So some of the demo area choices were based on, you know, that area being wet. But anyway, next year, hopefully we won't. And if we get more sponsors, we're going to need more area for demos. So, you know, I think I see us with that field being dry, moving, moving a lot of the demo areas out there and being able to have some more elbow room to run some more equipment. So yeah, Eric, being on an island. Eric, if you're listening again, I apologize. We'll make sure you're taking care of the Ultra Pro Stance 52. Well, my guys. So Sky Frog took home eight first place buckles.
- [48:25]
C
Yep. And 20 something place showings.
- [48:29]
B
Yep.
- [48:29]
A
And so Keith and Devin, they were used to running our hustler Super S's buddy. Keith got on that, that Ultra Pro stance and he's like, with the wide tires, he got done with these like, boss, that thing's a beast. And I said, no it is. It is a beast. And I said, that's those wide tires. I said, that thing's going to kill it on some slopes. So, yeah, Keith and Devin took home the buckle on Eric's mower relay course.
- [48:58]
C
So to all the competitors who were complaining that they didn't have their usual equipment. Invalid.
- [49:03]
A
Yes. Yeah. No, that's true. Yeah. Keith, they'd never been on. Yeah. Nope, nope. Yeah. Running outside of the equipment, getting used to everybody's equipment.
- [49:11]
C
I will say one regret, though, one thing I will definitely do differently next year year is I will run a few events myself. I didn't have any time to compete and put up or put up. I had to shut up because I couldn't put up where I was bragging on social media and challenging tree guys to who's the better Avant driver. I didn't even have a chance to show myself. But, yeah, we were busy.
- [49:33]
B
I got to compete and I registered for like 12 of them. And I think I competed in five.
- [49:39]
C
Yeah.
- [49:39]
B
Because then, like, I'm holding a clipboard around a stopwatch. I just, like registered for a bunch of them. But articulating wheel loader, fox loader. I got second place. Okay. And I had first place. I was the winner. And I got off of the machine and I lost one half inch of water out of the bucket. So I get off of the machine. There's this tall guy, probably 10 years his senior. I go, look, buddy, if you run this course and it takes you 10 minutes or 15 minutes, and if you don't spill anything, you're going to beat me. So my guidance to you is go slower than I went. And he went like a minute and a half or two minutes slower than I went. And he only spilled out one quarter inch of water from the bucket. So the purpose of this statement, as I was trying to bestow the wisdom that I've earned in the 47 gray hairs in my beard and three children tried to bestow that wisdom and give the gold torch to the next generation so they can take it and be the champion. And I feel like I have succeeded and done a little bit of my part to, you know what, let's not have secrets and let's embolden the guy that's going behind you and see if he can beat you. And damn it, he took the gold, then I got the silver.
- [51:05]
C
There you go. You put a hand out to give a hand up.
- [51:09]
B
That's exactly what happened.
- [51:10]
C
It's the name of the game. I feel like the American flag should be flying behind you and the Battle Hymn of the Republic should start, like, swelling while you're describing it is. Yeah.
- [51:18]
B
If I had this keyed up, I would do like instant green screen to do it. Oh, I was like, I gotta have an American flag in this truck. Here we go, America. There it is. Love it. Oh, yeah. Love you, bubba. Oh, yeah.
- [51:35]
C
It's the name of the game.
- [51:38]
B
All right, what's next?
- [51:42]
A
So Keith, with Sky Frog Landscape was the decathlon winner. So that's a final. A final note of winning. I kept messing with them because a few of the guys came up and, you know, they were kind of telling me some of the events that they ran well and throughout the day. Hey, boss, I got this on this. Hey, I'm leading in this. It's like, cool, man. And one of them, Avery, came up, he's like, hey, I beat Keith on, you know, on whatever walk behind. I said, awesome. Good job, Avery. And then I told Keith, I said, what are you doing, man? I said, you're letting Avery beat you on the walk? Because normally Keith doesn't. You know, we run some of our races here at the shop and do it. We, you know, we've anyway pioneered a few of these events and. But Keith never competes. Like, he'll help me set him up and stuff, but, like, he doesn't. He doesn't compete in any of the stuff at the shop, so he's got the least reps out of anybody. And so I said, what are you doing letting Avery beat you? He's like, don't worry, boss, I got a plan. And so then after the tally comes up, Aaron hands me the sheet and his keystone. I said, no, it's a good job, Keith. So.
- [52:35]
C
And he did more than 10. He did like 13 events. I think we. We threw out his lowest three and took his 10 best. And yeah, no, Keith.
- [52:43]
A
Keith did a good job, man. He brought him the belt, but handed out buckles to the guys this morning because they left before, you know, at the end of the event is obviously, it was a natural ending of an event. So people are leaving, you know, time the kids got to get back home. The UF guys got to get back to get back to Gainesville. So it was very naturally ending event at about 4:00'.
- [53:01]
B
Clock.
- [53:02]
A
And so then, you know, people that wanted to stay for the award ceremony, you know, we just told them, hey, we're not having an official award ceremony. Come in the barn, come join us, sit down and we'll tally up the scores and we'll have them as soon as they're done. So we had some people stick around for the, for the scores, but most of our guys headed back. So we had our buckle ceremony with some nettle sausage dogs and cheese grits this morning. Hear the shop, so.
- [53:24]
B
But it was tired, man. Come about 3:30, 4:00', clock, I was tired, you know, on my feet all day. We do the awards thing. Then there's still some oysters in the cooler. So Edwin from Canada flew in from, from Winnipeg to Orlando with a three hour plane delay and then an hour and a half delay at the Orlando airport to get his rental car to then drive to ancient city farmstead. So he shows up during the award ceremony, hand him a beer, sits down, we do the deal, we go out, we eat oysters and steam oysters. And then it's like the last of the Mohicans that are still standing there kicking the ground. And we said, all right, I'm gonna go to the hotel, we're get cleaned up, we're gonna go to dinner. And then we did just that. We got a hotel at the Royal Golf Village thing and we got cleaned up. We met Edwin at the hotel bar. And this guy had three espresso Martin landed on the table when we got there and we had espresso martinis. Then we backed it with another espresso martinis and a couple of beers. And it was about 12:15 in the morning and I was like, all right, I'm done, I'm out of gas. So we go to bed. And during check in, I know this about me. I'm really good at ignoring a phone alarm. I'm an expert at ignoring a cell phone alarm. And I had somewhere to be Saturday morning. So Friday night, checking in, I say, can you give me a 4:15am wake up call, please? So then I set my alarm for 4:15 and 4:30 we go to bed. Phone rings at 4:15, it's my wake up call. Get out of bed, pack my stuff. I am on the road at 4:30 in the morning. Okay, I got a, I got a big celsius, not a 12 ounce Celsius, but the big one, the 270 milligram Celsius. And I'm feeling great. 4:15, 4:30 in the morning, I'm on fire. 4:45, 5:15 and listen to Jimmy Buffett on XM. I said, I need something more. So I'm flipping on xm and it was XM Turbo, which is like the metal one. And it was a Rammstein song. And I was like, I'm gonna Text this to Aaron like it's 4:50 in the morning. Maybe I shouldn't text it to Aaron.
- [55:43]
C
Always text so.
- [55:45]
B
And then System of A Down comes on and I'm like oh yeah, everybody go into the desert, have a real good time. And I sing that and videotape while driving and it is now like 5:30 in the morning and I text it to you Aaron and it's like the I'm awake. Who's awake? Who can all I text this to? And so then I changed it to Spotify and I had a two hour relationship. Very loud music with System of a Down all the way to Tampa. I make it to my driveway at 7:15 in the morning because I have an 8:30 soccer game and I am going to coach a bunch of 8, 9 and 10 year olds during a soccer game. And damn it I made it into my driveway at 7:15am Happy get the kids up, make them breakfast. We go out the Red Dragons play a hell of a game and crushed that. And then we went home and we put Callan the two year old down for a nap. And around 1:45 in the afternoon daddy took a nap and I needed it because I was, I hit a wall there for a minute but that was important to me. I am not going to miss my kids soccer game and I'm not going to let my team down. Damn it. I was there with bells on and
- [57:05]
A
they actually scheduled the phone call to the room and it went off at 4:15.
- [57:09]
C
Nice.
- [57:09]
A
And then the little bastard alarm clock on the nightstand started going off at 6 and I couldn't figure out to shut it off. So I finally just got up says screwed. I'm leaving this place.
- [57:19]
C
Getting out of here.
- [57:19]
A
Getting out of here. Yeah. So anyway, so that is the behind the scenes episode of the landscape rodeo. So yeah, but it was a success.
- [57:29]
B
We may be getting to the the close of this episode but I do want to brag on my wonderful, beautiful loving wife Sidney Upcavage who is a distinguished and published author. So my wife has written a children's book and for years this was in her head. And for the last year she worked with a publishing company, she worked with an illustrator and she has published a children's book that is called Looking for Bunny Flies. And her father, Colonel Terry Stanger, colonel in the Army, Army Ranger, led a tank battalion through Desert Gulf Storm War. American hero Guy love him to death. He died 10, 11, 12 years ago. He would always tell a bedtime story to my wife when she was a little girl about Bunny flies, which is half bunny, half butterfly. Think about a bunny with butterfly wings and they hop around. And he would say, look for those bunny flies. They're out there. So for her high school graduation, he commissioned artwork of a painting of a bunch of bunny flies flopping around a field. And that hangs on the wall above my children's bed in their bedroom. And so she wrote a book called Looking for Bunny Flies, and it is set in our backyard. And it's the magic of looking for bunny flies. Now, it's like a seek and find book where it's the image of the backyard and the dog running around, but then there's a bunny fly hiding in the cattails or a bunny fly hiding behind the canna lilies. And the children never get to see the bunny fly, but they look at the magic of nature. Look at the moon, look at the spider web. Look at the coots swimming around. Look at the off of the dock. And it's all the magic of nature that you can appreciate while you're looking for bunny flies. So you can go on Amazon and you can type in Looking for Bunny Flies and you can order for 1999, 1995, a Sydney upcavage authored book called Looking for Bunny Flies, and that launched this past Tuesday. So it is launched, it is live, pre order is over and done with. You can get it in one to two days on Amazon now. So Looking for Bunny Flies. You can support your local Florida author, my wonderful wife, and get to know that story and then teach that of looking at the miracles that are in front of us every single day. We just have to take a little bit of time to appreciate those.
- [60:20]
C
That's amazing. Congrats. Yeah, congrats to Sydney. That's incredible.
- [60:26]
A
She's a baller.
- [60:27]
C
Yeah. And legit like this is getting more legit than that story her dad told her. And then she turned it into an
- [60:32]
A
original and probably three, what, three years in the making. She's been working on it a long time.
- [60:38]
B
Been in her head for seven years.
- [60:40]
C
I know I'm a tender little vittles, but that got me choked up. That's really sweet.
- [60:45]
B
It's real. That's amazing. Jason, you and Aaron, you may not have seen a. But you may not have known that you've seen a bunny fly today, but I saw one, and it's happening right now. I am looking at two bunny flies through this computer. Look at you two, y' all in this time that we're spending together. Damn it. That's a bunny fly that I'M looking at right now.
- [61:07]
A
That's true.
- [61:09]
C
Beautiful. It's beautiful. You're a bunny fly, Jordan.
- [61:12]
B
Oh, shucks, you are.
- [61:14]
C
You're the most beautiful bunny fly of them all.
- [61:16]
A
I have my Looking for Bunny fly book on the way from Amazon.
- [61:19]
C
I'm going to order mine as soon as we get off this podcast.
- [61:22]
B
Boom.
- [61:22]
C
Yep.
- [61:23]
A
So, all right. So all right. Are we wrapping it up?
- [61:27]
B
Wrap it up.
- [61:27]
A
Okay, so to wrap it up, thank you everyone who attended the Landscape Rodeo last Friday. Thank you very much to our title sponsors, Super Lawn Truck and Hustler Turf. Our platinum sponsors, Gravely Lawn Mowers, Dynamic Equipment Group. Let me not mess this up. Dynamic Equipment Group, Alta Equipment, Crystal Tractor, Box Loaders. I think those are all platinums. And then moving down the line, we will be. I can't go all the way down the line, so we'll stop there. We'll be putting out some thank you social media posts here coming up. We've got lots of content that was captured from the day. We're dissecting that and we will get back on the media social media train as soon as we can gather that all up from all of our videographers and participants that were videoing. Thank you so much for all the volunteers that came out to help FNGLA frontrunners. And it was a hell of event. Thank you very much to Brooke and Sloan with Ancient City Farmstead, the professional event coordinators. They did a heck of a lot of stuff to help us out and get us ready and move us through the process.
- [62:41]
C
We would not have been able to do it without them the way we were able to do it for sure.
- [62:45]
B
And a thank you to Yankee Dan, the owner of Ancient City Farmstead, for allowing this to happen. And I asked him on the way home or Saturday or Sunday and I was like, well, how was he goes well, it was a great event. Definitely the biggest footprint out of all the events we've ever had here, but. But nonetheless a great event. So Dan was a gem too.
- [63:07]
C
It's a rousing endorsement for him.
- [63:08]
A
That's right. So. And they have a. If you are in northeast Florida and you want to go to a real rodeo with all of the animals roking, roping and bucking, I believe. March 20th, 21st and 22nd, Ancient City Farmstead, they're gonna have a rodeo. I think we might try to go on Saturday night. Paul said that Saturday night's probably the best night to go. He said the nighttime vibes are very fun.
- [63:33]
B
Like an 8 seconds rodeo.
- [63:34]
A
Oh, yeah. Bulls. Bronx Roping glitter boots. You guys want to take a field trip? You can wear your belt buckle tassels. Bring the kids.
- [63:46]
B
Yeah. Heck yeah.
- [63:48]
A
So anyway, so again, thank you everybody. Thank you, sponsors, volunteers, attendees. We will be doing it again next year and we will keep you updated as we start to make plans. And that's it. If you want to stay updated with what happened, follow us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube. The Landscape Rodeo and see what. See what happens.
- [64:11]
C
And tag us if you've got things you recorded that you're posting, tag us so we can post it too and everyone can see.
- [64:17]
B
And I had the opportunity when I drove the SLT lawn truck through the course. I had the privilege of Sky Palm Studios in the passenger seat with me videotaping it. So I would very much like to see that, Jason. So when you get that content back from them, that would be cool to watch.
- [64:36]
A
Is this going to be a new. Will Tony Bass have a new SLT endorsement commercial slash video?
- [64:43]
B
He does. Yes. I. I shot from the hip and I treated him right.
- [64:48]
A
All right, Max, if you're listening or Tony, if you're listening. When Sky Palms get said digested, I'll make sure you guys are the first ones, second ones to see. After I sing to the Jordan, get ready.
- [64:56]
B
Boom. Boom.
- [64:58]
A
Awesome.
- [64:59]
B
All right, y'.
- [64:59]
C
All.
- [64:59]
A
Thank you, man.
- [65:00]
B
I'm gonna go. I'm in the hood. I'm gonna go look for a bunny fly on this across this chain link fence here.
- [65:05]
C
Have fun.
- [65:06]
B
See y'. All.
- [65:07]
C
Bye.
- [65:08]
A
As you continue your journey toward entrepreneurial success, let Jason and Jordan be your trusted companions on this uphill climb. Don't miss out on future episodes of the Green side Up podcast. Make sure to hit that follow button to stay updated. For more ways to connect with the guys, check out the podcast description. Thank you for tuning in. And remember, keep working hard so you can play even harder and keep the green side up.
- [65:52]
B
Sam.