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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.
- [00:47]
B
Welcome back to this week's episode of Greenside up podcast. Jordan, long time no talk, buddy.
- [00:52]
C
That is one of the few times we had to do Take two to get this thing started. We kept fumbling over me pressing the record button and you doing the intro. So for the minority of times, Jason, Take two successful. Good to see you, dude. We are. We're earlier than normal. Yeah, right. Yeah.
- [01:15]
B
I mean, we're like. We are. We're late, but early.
- [01:18]
C
Yeah, we're like. So we're like seven hours early.
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B
Yeah.
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C
Because normally it's 5 o' clock or 5:15. It's only 10:24 at night right now, Jason.
- [01:31]
B
That's true.
- [01:32]
C
So we're. We are early, my friend. It is. It is good to see you, man. It's good to see you. Eating some pizza in your house there. I'm in my house. And I got to tell you, I'm a Dollywood brother now with you, Jason.
- [01:46]
B
I saw it. Congratulations.
- [01:49]
C
And heads up, everybody. We got some fun content that we're going to cover today. Really good topics. You know, I just got a little bit of BS to go over, but we're going to cover some exciting news with granum and single ops and we're going to cover some big bids and estimating processes that Jason and I use to come up with the bigger proposals. Whether it's five figures or six figure type proposals, we're going to cover that material. But, Jason, you were in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee a couple weeks ago.
- [02:24]
B
We were.
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C
And. And my wife Sydney. All of her or all of her cousins on her dad's side. Right. We vacation in the panhandle with all of her cousins from her mom's side, but we went with all of her cousins from her dad's side to Pigeon Forge and we went to Dollywood. And Jason, I used to work at a theme park. I worked at Adventure island in Tampa in food service. I sold churros and hot dogs and sodas and deep fried Twinkies.
- [02:56]
B
Yep.
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C
And I'm not a big fan of theme parks as much as I might have the privilege of going to them, but I gotta tell you, Dollywood might be my favorite. I liked, was clean.
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B
Yep.
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C
There was lovely shade. You mentioned shade?
- [03:13]
B
Yes.
- [03:14]
A
Trees.
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B
There's trees, there's shade.
- [03:16]
C
Little mountain, like there's a hill, like a big hill mountain thing with big trees on it. And I kept saying how well landscaped this place is. There were annuals everywhere. It was clean. So well groomed landscape wise. Good music playing. Everybody was pleasant, all the patrons were pleasant. And you don't have to like get hosed for an extra 200 a ticket for a fast pass or whatever it is. It was like, oh, this is a six minute wait for this little roller coaster thing.
- [03:52]
B
And we had it.
- [03:52]
C
We had a dandy of a time, man. And then I got that big old cinnamon bun thing, like a whole loaf of crap.
- [03:58]
B
I mean, I'm not, I'm not that much into that much sugar, but buddy, that was good. Cinnamon bread. Go to Dollywood. You have to get a loaf of cinnamon bread.
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C
We did, we got.
- [04:09]
B
You have the bad blood. You might need to take some medicine because it's, it's loaded and so.
- [04:16]
C
Or I tell you about random. I want to tell you a story about Callan, my two year old. It rained while we were there, so we were seeking shelter at a eating place and the kids are running around playing in the rain. Callan's two and a half years old, he's got a mullet running around in sandals. And we had like the oh no, where's Callan Moment. And we look over and he's standing on the curb by the sidewalk facing a landscape bed that faces a walkway, like a little peninsula landscape. I look over and he has his trousers down, he has his diaper pulled down to his knees. He's got his wang in his hand and he is just letting it rip. Taking a leak in a flower bed in front of God and everybody as people walk by and everybody saw like the innocent joy and like, it wasn't weird. It wasn't like, look at these rednecks. Not like taking their kid to the bathroom. It was like, oh, what do you.
- [05:17]
B
It's a successful body training woman. It's happening glorious for everyone there with the child. They understand. Yeah, yeah.
- [05:24]
C
So that was also part of my Dollywood experience is a public urination by a two and a half year old.
- [05:31]
B
When, when we go back, we need to go back together so that we can combine forces and enjoy theme parks together.
- [05:39]
C
When we have to go back. We will go back together.
- [05:41]
B
I like it. Yeah, I like it.
- [05:44]
C
All right, you ready to get to business?
- [05:46]
B
Let's do it.
- [05:47]
C
All right. So Amy Fine with Single Ops put me and Jason in touch with Abby from Granum. And Granum is the hub of Greenius Element and Single Ops, as many people in the industry are familiar with that firm software company. And Jason and I have been friends with SingleOps. We've talked about them plenty. We, we, they flew us up to Atlanta, Georgia to meet with their company for their company summit to see how me and Jason both as users of Single Ops are experience. We had the Chief Marketing officer and the CEO come to Tampa and spend a day with me. So we had both Taylor and Mark Sedgley come spend the day with us to see how we use the software. And we've been courting them to see if they would like to have some sort of a green side up Single Ops partnership. And we have a deal. Now, Jason, we had a meeting with Abby to go over what the relationship would look like. And I have the pleasure to announce to our audience here that Green side Up Jason Lee and Jordan Opkavage will be hosting the Tree Care Business webinars, which is going to be a monthly series for tree care and arborist business owners. So we have five sessions, one per month. It starts in August. Okay, so by the time you're hearing this, it is July 23rd.
- [07:29]
B
Coming up quick.
- [07:31]
C
It's coming up quick. We got what, 31 days in July. So that in eight days for from you hearing, this is the month that our webinar series starts. So the month, August, September, October, November, December, the topics are going to be paired with the seasonality of tree care and our industry and things that we deal with during these months. So August, the topic is storm ready turning storm work into your highest margin jobs. Hey buddy, I. Good lord, you guys know I got that up and down. We're going to be talking with Ace Tree Service about that going over pricing, staffing, scaling and how to deal with it when the phone won't stop. In September, it's fall into plant health care. So fall into phc and we're going to be building predictable reoccurring revenue from plant healthcare. So Jason, you're going to have some awesome PhD stuff to talk about for reoccurring. Ditto with me. And we're going to talk with Megan Townsend with Altitude Arborist. October, the numbers don't lie. Knowing your real job costs before winter. And Jason, you are going to Excel at this because you really know your numbers.
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B
Is this the one that we're going to do with Tim? Tim Walters, yes.
- [08:53]
A
Nice.
- [08:53]
C
My man, my man. Tim Walters, Miller's Tree Service, Tallahassee, Florida. I've been buddies with Tim for over a decade and Miller's is running. They're probably north of 10 million a year. They got cranes, piles of people. And Tim is on the ball and he is on the board of the Florida chapter ISA with me. He's been on the board for a couple years. He has been the tree climbing championship, like head judge guy like handling the, you know, and help organize in the tcc. So look really looking forward to that November hiring right. For spring. So building the crew before you need it. Everybody knows if it's springtime, it starts getting hot, you got work to do. If you don't have people on staff, you can't keep up. And we're going to talk with West Tree Service in November for that. And then December we're going to end it with more profit, less stress, smart money moves before year end. And we're going to talk with Joshua Tree Service so we can talk about how to hedge some of your tax burden with some reinvestment and what you can and can't write off in a business and how to best efficiently use your capital to better your business and not give it all to Uncle Sam at the end of the year. So that is the 2026 lineup, August through December and it will be the Single Ops Tree Care business webinars. You'll be able to sign up for those on granum.com so G-R-A-N u m.com and once this formally launches from Single Ops and Granum, I am sure you will hear all about it and we'll give you a link for it.
- [10:47]
B
So yeah, whenever, whenever, whenever it launches officially, we'll make sure to put links in the show notes you want to join us. And it will be running podcast style, similar to the last webinar we did for them with Priscilla, correct?
- [11:01]
C
Yes, Priscilla. And that was hosted by tcia.
- [11:04]
B
Yes. Like when did you go to New York?
- [11:10]
C
That was spring break. I will tell you here and I will tell you in just here a moment there, sir. Plan healthcare seems to be all the buzz in the green industry right now. Are you like many business owners that don't how or where to start or are you looking to add a new tool to your PHC toolbox?
- [11:30]
B
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.
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C
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 mitigro 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.
- [12:03]
B
Give Mitigro a shot for yourself. Their product is easy to apply and no special licenses are needed. Visit mitigrow pro.com to learn more. That's M I T O G-R-O-W P R O.com and okay, here it is. It's episode 118. Spring doesn't create operational problems in tree care, it exposes them. So that's the episode that we did with it was a partnership with TCIA and Granum and yes.
- [12:31]
C
Yep, episode 118. You hit that on the on the nose. That was in June.
- [12:39]
B
We aired it in April, so.
- [12:41]
C
Oh well, spring break. Sorry, school wasn't out yet. Yeah, April. So. Yeah, so it'd be very similar to 118 if you want to go back and listen to that Pretty, pretty, pretty solid episode, I think covered a lot of material and we stayed on track and didn't dive too deep in in rabbit holes. That can be easy to do when, when you're on some good discussion topics.
- [13:06]
B
If you're listening now and you want to catch those webinars, definitely sign up and listen. We may air a few of them here and there on the show. Not to duplicate too much content, but definitely want to diversify. And for those that aren't watching webinars live, make sure we get the useful information out on our episodes.
- [13:26]
C
And what's fun is when we do those live webinars, the listeners, as you're watching, you can ask questions. So we'll be fielding questions in the chat throughout the duration and then at the end we can touch on any topics that you want some more more detail on or know what our opinion is. So there's that live chat. Instead of just, you know, listening to it after the fact, you can catch it live. And there's a lot of people there's, you know, right around a thousand people per webinar that are in live attendance. So we should be starting with some good numbers and looking to grow that as well so we can touch the hearts and minds of more people there. Jason, I like it so, all right, you want to do some big bids here? Talk about some big stuff.
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B
Yeah. We are entering commercial maintenance bidding season, so that's very applicable to what's going on in my world.
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C
Yeah, it's what? October is a hot month.
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B
Yeah. But it starts now. It starts now. Everybody's, you know, they're checking pricing. They want to know what the price increase is going to be. So it's a combination of we're chasing new work, but then we also have to watch our backs on the contracts that we have, because in the pricing world that we're in and everything's increasing for the majority, most people are shopping or checking prices. So we just got to stay in line. And we're just trying to do an extra good job of communication with our current customers and just doing good, quality work. And I think, for the most part, I don't know, we're doing probably the best work we've been doing in the past few years. So,
- [15:09]
C
like, good food. You're feeding your guys in the morning.
- [15:11]
B
Hey, you know, we gotta. You gotta do what we can do. So. Yeah. And we've been doing. And we've been doing. We've been doing every other week. Breakfast is now on a more regular basis instead of just sporadic as the wind blows. And really focusing on training with the guys. We are in the process of. We're gonna get some of the methangile certified, quite a few of them, shared interest in that. And then just going over general plan ID and safety topics and housekeeping issues. So it's been a good time and not doing it every week so that we're just pounding it into people. But I think every other week's a pretty good pace, you know, 30, 40 minutes in the morning, good food, cover whatever topics we're going to cover.
- [15:56]
C
You're just a better leader than I am, Jason. I mean, we do every other week safety meetings on Wednesdays where we use the TCIA tailgate safety reading book. And Curtis is certified arborist. Been a crew leader. He's been with the company 24, 25 years, and he leads those. It's every other Wednesday, so it's not drawn out and mundane, and we talk about topics that are relevant for that period of time. So if it's the tussock. Tussock moth caterpillars, they got like three little cotton balls on their back, and they have antlers in the front and antlers in the back, and it's in the late spring, they're all over the place, and they hurt. They May hurt. So we'll talk about stinging insects. Heat stroke is a big one now. It's hotter than hell. Everybody knows that. I had a guy fall out for like pseudo heatstroke two weeks ago. We had to put him in the truck stop sweating. Skin was like cool to the touch. So we ended up getting him picked up from the job site. He had his mental wits about him, so didn't require, you know, er type stuff. This was a Thursday. So we sent him home and of course he got paid the rest of the day and we rested him the next day, which was Friday. Paid him to stay home. Look, dude, I'm not fooling around with this heat stroke stuff. And he was back ready to rip on Monday and he's doing good, but the concept of staying hydrated and then we gotta supplement ourselves. We're leaking out so much salt, potassium. We buy like the little Gatorade packets of powder. Like, you know, Celsius sells the powder singles or you can have like the powder thing you put in a water bottle. Well, we buy boxes of that powdery stuff, whether it's the orange or the red or the yellow one. And that way you're not tainting the whole water, the whole five gallon water cooler with Gatorade because sometimes just want water. And we're staying on those electrolytes and those salts to help keep you replenished. And then kind of like one of the things we're going to talk about staffing wise with the webinars. I hired another ground guy who is the son of Manny, one of our climbers. And I find it a compliment when a crew member wants to bring in a friend, a family member or especially like the child. Right. So we've had three or four sons of existing employees that have worked for us. I had my neighbor, I had his son and daughter work for me for a period of time. So I look at that as really flattering. But we, we brought on an extra just entry level ground person just because it's so damn hot. Like, you know, the raking and the groundwork, you know, we adding a little extra labor to compensate for heat and fatigue. That wouldn't necessarily be the case in May.
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B
Yeah, it's the hottest part. To me, the hottest part of the summer here is like mid June to mid July. Like even this week has been cooler than last week. You know, we're in the low 90s, there's cloud cover, there's some sporadic rain. Whereas the past two weeks has been bumping like 96, 90, 800, whatever with no cloud cover, we had a guy, pseudo fallout also, and perfectly fine. Now back to work. But we keep electrolyte popsicles in a freezer in the office. So we got a little mini chest freezer. And so they grab popsicles in the morning and afternoon for whatever it's worth.
- [19:42]
C
You're doing your best, man. Okay, bids. So this is not the main event, but you guys know or in a bit. Jason, you definitely know that I trim a bunch of trees in downtown Tampa every July. It's an area called Water street. And we normally trim that assignment at night due to traffic, sidewalks, what have you. And last year I got spanked by the right of way people for not having a right of way permit at 7:15 in the morning, trimming in an area where nobody was. So I got spanked last year. And so I had to do MoT permits this year. And there are seven different paying entities, seven different buildings with those buckets of money. So I had to include my tree price and I had to include the MOT price for buying the parking spaces, furnishing the flaggers, furnishing the road signs, and purchasing the permits for the right of way. So I like using subcontractors for work that I am not the best at, but still within my field. For my project, I don't really use a lot of subs, but I like people that are excellent at what they do. So I don't want to learn how to do mot. And I hired a gentleman named Bill Flynn with BF Consulting here in Tampa. He's done right away permit stuff for us for a very long time. So I walked the the whole block with with him. And we kind of came up with a scheme of how much money per area. And at the end of the assignment, it was $27,000 for the per the permits, the detour signs, the closure signs, the buying the parking spaces, and then the labor to have flag people stop pedestrians. Hey, despair. K did don't come in here. You know, we're in safety Chileco safety vests. There's 27,000. So I divided that up amongst the seven buckets of money. And my tree price to do the work was like just under 35k. So my labor to trim all this stuff is 35k. We're spending almost that on MOT, right? So last year I charged them. I increased the price a little bit this year, but I probably charged them close to 30 grand last year. This year, $61,730 is the invoice because you had $27,000 fat with the MOT. So my team said, Jordan, we really prefer doing this at night. It was such a pain in the ass with pedestrians. Even though we had it all closed. People are jumping barricades and going under caution tape and there's a frickin shit show of dealing with it during the day. They said, but these elms, there's these big winged elms on the north side of some buildings off of Cumberland and they're probably 12 inches in diameter, 35ft tall. They, and we know winged elms need a ton of structural pruning. They're just frickin stubborn. And we learned that at nighttime we have a hard time seeing the defects, seeing the crossing branches, seeing some aspect ratio because so those winged elms can be very, very dense. So it's very hard to see when you're in a limited light situation. The other trees have better ambient lighting from street lights and they're live oaks and bald cypress and a couple of maples. And it's easier to get your live folk on your central leader train compared to a very combative winged elm that just wants to fight you. And the biggest trees are the winged elms that we're dealing with. So for next year, and you mentioned it's, it's budget season. I need my 2027 price in by the beginning of August. So I have 12 days to get my 2027 price in to get into their budget season. So what I'm going to propose to them is nighttime work for everything except the big winged elms. But the labor rate of MoT is higher for nighttime because we're working in odd hours. And so I need to propose the nighttime assignment plus the inflated price for the or the nighttime inflated price plus the regular price for the daytime elms and whatever price increases that I'm going to experience. It's, it's time to budget it. So how to approach it I really look at. There's different ways to estimate. Jason. I learned some ways from going to Tony Bass of Profit Builder. I like looking at it is how much money do I want a crew to make in a day. And then when I look at an assignment I say, okay, I can go from this spot to this spot in a day and I do a tally mark and I can go from this spot to that spot in a day and I'll do a tally mark and I'll have a separate column which is a debris mark. It's this much per load of debris and I'll do a tally mark and I'll calculate debris, you add it all together, and voila. That's how you get your price with the MOT stuff. Normally I would mark it up and that $27,000 was marked up, but my invoice came in higher than what we ballparky did because the permit fees that he had to buy to the city were more expensive, more expensive than what was estimated because we had multiple governing authorities. Okay. We had the City of Tampa roads, I had the Expressway authority, because there's the trolley that runs from Ybor City to the Port of Tampa cruise ship area, and there's Riverwalk, like this big sidewalky thing. And to do like five trees. Jason, I had to buy an $800 permit to take a sidewalk because it's, because it's part of the riverwalk. And it was absurd. So all of my markup, I ended up paying bill because it was unforeseen circumstances and it was like, hurry up offense to get this in. So we'll be approaching 20, 27, a little more methodical with some less risk because we, we learned a few things.
- [26:46]
B
That's good. We have to have a fudge factor in there to cover stuff like that. So.
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C
And we used it. We used the fudge factor. I needed to use it. So I, I, I got a really good one that I put together this morning. Do you want me to jump on that one, or do you got something you want to fire at me first?
- [27:08]
B
I would just go back to saying, like, the way you're. And I think in your world, you know, it comes with more experience. When we were at Profit Builder, and we're estimating with Tony and the way we estimate maintenance, I mean, there's more production rates and finite, I guess, scopes of work. You know, we're going to go mow this square footage of grass. We're going to go mow an acre of grass. Like that's an acre, and it's not going to change. And then we know what lawnmower we're going to use and how fast it can go. And there are some variables of if it's flat or if it's sloped and what type of grass it is. But there's, there's much more ambiguity in what you're doing of now, you know, that you can get from this point to this point in a day with a crew. But for some people that are going out to look at tree work, it might not be as an experience of an estimator as you. I mean, it's not, it's kind of hard to judge that production in my mind.
- [28:05]
C
Well, you got to do it, do it first, you know, be on a crew. And it's not, it's not rocket science. You know, you can kind of figure out, you know, if it's a real big pain in the ass and we got to throw all this crap over a chain link fence and you know, or access is a pinch, you can kind of feel it out. But I think if you do it first, then it's easier to estimate because you see those variables.
- [28:31]
B
Yeah, it's the same with us. I mean we have production rates for mowing and hard edging and soft edging and string trimming and blowing of hardscapes, blowing of sidewalks, Policing of the job site for us sometimes that's a big, I mean that's a huge policing of a job site compared to where you might walk around a residential yard and have to pick up some sticks and maybe a toy or two and throw them wherever it's not going to get chopped up by a lawnmower versus doing a shopping center or an apartment complex, having the police around their dumpsters or pick up trash in the parking lot. That's a huge deal. We've had some shopping center contracts where we spend more time just picking up trash than we do doing the landscape maintenance. That's a killer and not budgeting for that. And so that's been a killer in the past for us. And so then that was a very quick lesson for me to learn and ask during the bidding process, do you have a porter service? Oh, you don't have a porter service. Do you have lot sweeping? Oh, you don't have a porter and you don't sweep lots. Then we are fixing to get hosed and we are going to spend hours picking up trash in your parking lot once a week.
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C
Well, if you ask them, if you don't have those, is that service? In my scope of work I do now, yes, absolutely.
- [29:46]
B
I've had my lessons with age cups wisdom.
- [29:49]
C
Jason?
- [29:50]
B
Yes, those are lessons learned working for Divisions Inc. A decade ago of how hard are we going to get screwed. So yeah,
- [30:03]
C
well, talk about production based pricing. Talk about like. So Tony talked about like linear footage for hard edging and that there's a book. Who is the guy that.
- [30:16]
B
Charles Vanderko. Charles vandercoy.
- [30:19]
C
Thank you. See, I'm looking around at my bookshelf to see if I can see it. Charles vandercoy wrote this book about production based estimating that it should take however many minutes for however many Linear feet, the hard edge. However many minutes to plant a three gallon, how long it is for a three inch tree, like man minutes, whether it's 90 man minutes to plant a three inch tree or whatever it is. And you could have your man hour price. You look at how many 7 gallons, 1 gallons, 45 gallon trees are installed, multiply it by the minutes in that production based book, that's likely a pretty good average. And then you get your labor rate plus cost of material delivery markup plus fudge factor, plus profit margin, right? So you take all that in your fudge factor everything. And then what Tony suggested is you work between 10 and 20%, right? You can't go under 10%, can't go over 20. 20% markup is I don't really need this job. And it's a bitch. You get 20%.
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B
Yep. It's a difficulty factor. Whether it's or it's difficulty in need. I can't remember the four, four check boxes, but.
- [31:51]
C
Right, right. Or it could be the client of difficulty. It could be access, it could be topography. Right. And then down at 10 is I want this job low risk, not that difficult. Then you get that lower profit margin multiplier after everything is factored in. That way, even if you're working for a neighbor, you know what your break even is. And you could, if you wanted to, you could put it at A$0 profit, which is crazy. Or you could put it at going against Tony at 5, at 5 or 10. And you stick to your rules, hey, neighbor, I'm gonna do this job for you. I'll make 10% profit margin on it because I got to deal with it. And you know, my mortgage payment doesn't get paid with hearty handshakes and thank yous. And maybe you don't hit them with the 20. Or it's your neighbor you don't like. Like my, my HOA neighbor president who's not the president anymore.
- [32:50]
B
Congratulations. Is Travis the president? No.
- [32:54]
C
The board meeting is tomorrow, Jason. Oh.
- [32:56]
B
So next episode we're gonna have election news. I like it.
- [33:00]
C
Do you know who's running?
- [33:01]
B
Who's running?
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C
Election.
- [33:03]
B
Let's take a sidebar on the production rates. Who's running?
- [33:08]
C
Well, it would be better if. If I show you.
- [33:16]
B
Oh, nice. Sydney's running for president.
- [33:19]
C
Sydney up cabbage for president.
- [33:22]
B
I love it. I love it.
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C
Strong leadership, real solutions, a brighter future. Faith, family, freedom. Leading with heart, serving our nation. Vote Sidney up cabbage for president.
- [33:33]
B
I love it.
- [33:34]
C
So Sydney's on the docket for our community wide vote for president of our community tomorrow at 7pm that's perfect.
- [33:43]
B
All right. So production based estimating. So we, so we obviously can have, we have pretty accurate production rates for 85% of the things we do. So in our world, like doing a landscape cleanup is the hardest thing for us to predict. We go into a yard that's just overgrown with vines and saplings and weeds and beds and just hasn't been maintained and Jumanji's taken over. That's for us. That's, you know, that's more of a go with your gut estimate. But for landscape installation like you were talking about for plants, I mean, you get down to the minute. And I think that we've been doing more production based estimating now that we've got a new salesman than we have in the past. I don't 100% we have. But then I think we've been lacking on some of our bids for installation where we're not accounting for the mobilization and demobilization from job sites is a real thing. So. And for us, material procurement. So we might have to go through all the steps of material, the same steps for material procurement on an installation job for a $5,000 job. It's all the same steps as a $25,000 job. And it might not take much more time than the difference between the two. So we have to account for things like that. And I think for us, that's one thing that we haven't been accounting for. And anybody that's starting out and doing, you know, smaller installations, that's something that you have to account for. Even if you're an owner operator, going by yourself in the truck, that still counts. You know, it's. You can't forget that time or just sending somebody down to get 10 yards of mulch. And it takes an extra hour. I mean, that's an extra hour that you're going to make sure you're billing. It's not just how long it takes to put the mulch on the ground, but for us, for maintenance or any of it. I mean, we're basing it all on our hours and then our hourly rate that we figured out through working our budget backwards of what we need to accomplish to meet our sales goal at the end of the year that has our profit margins included in that. So like for us, for a commercial maintenance bid, since that's the season that we're in, we were looking at one today, and it's an apartment complex in town. And it was, we ran the production rates and it was 14 man hours. It's like, okay, well do we really want this job? Now we're in the world of where we need to sell some revenue and our goal is to grow. So I was like, well, we don't have to have the job, but we'd like to get the job to grow. It's like, well, could we do it for 12 man hours? It's like, well, we could probably do it for 12 man hours, but is it worth the risk? It's a high profile property. You know, clients might be a little bit more on the needy side. So 14 hours fits in better with us sending a three man. Then we're also going through and who's going to do the work. So is it going to be a one man crew? Well, we don't have one man crews, so is it going to be a two man crew? Well, no, we wouldn't do that property with a two man crew because it doesn't fit in the area of town that we're going with Si's crew. And the closest crew that we have on schedule to that site was a three man crew. So it's like, okay, well that actually fits. 14 man hours fits well for a three man crew to come in for a half a day and with a little variance of man hours might be a little or under, over, under that and have them come in and work half a day and then go to lunch and then go somewhere else. So we're also, as we're doing it, we're trying to account for our crews preferably in like half day increments or quarter day increments or not. They really go below on a commercial job. And we're still doing some small commercial jobs, but on bigger ones, really focusing our bids on trying to hit that either like quarter or half day or full day mark. So. And it gets really hard. The hardest one for us to fill or the hardest one for me to work in my head is a job that's like three quarters of a day. So it's like, all right, this job's three quarters of a day and then we got to add on just a little bit just to fill it out. And that little bit's always just a pain in the ass. So that's one thing we're working on.
- [37:50]
C
So I have the Excel spreadsheet of daily rate worksheets. This is how I estimate, right? I don't do how many minutes to plant a seven gallon. Right. I don't do how many minutes to trim a palm tree typically. Sometimes I do some weird Chinese math on minutes to trim palm trees. But that was a bad example. I don't do linear footage, production rate, pricing. I do daily rate worksheets. And for me, running a three man crew with a nifty lift and a zoning on one trailer towed behind a F350. Before going to profit builder, I thought that we were aiming for about 3,000, 3,000 in revenue plus debris. Where those numbers came from, Gut and wisdom. When I was in high school on a bucket truck, the crew's goal was to make eighteen hundred dollars plus debris. But on the bucket truck there was no debris charge because there was a wood chipper and we wouldn't charge for debris, we just throw it on the wood chipper. We'd only charge if the grapple truck had to go. So I remember eighteen hundred dollars was the goal for the three man bucket truck. Bucket operator, climber, groundman. And then it jumped to 2100, then 22. Oh, 2200 bucks, we're doing good. Then 2400 dollars. And it slowly escalated with just gut and prices and cost of goods sold. So going to Atlanta for profit builder, I thought I wanted about three grand. But I didn't have any numbers to validate the gut. So we went through every piece of equipment. A nifty lift. How many hours a day is that lift going to be on? Okay, how many man hours are you going to have? Three guys, eight hours. That's 24 man hours. Even though you're not having 24 man hours of production. Right? The zon, how many hours a day? How many hours is the two cycle equipment, the F350 and trailer? Any materials dump fee. Okay, so we run through our labor rate, the cost per hour of the nifty lift zon. So I figured a nifty lift's gonna run for four hours a day. Zon's gonna run for four hours. The two cycle equipment, how long is that chainsaw gonna be on? I said two, two and a quarter hours. The F350 and trailer, that's eight hours. You know, clock in, clock out, truck and trailer, eight hours. So we know our cost per hour from purchase price. Fuel, insurance, tires, oil changes, all that goes into the cost per hour. And then we go to, you know, tax on material. Don't have that labor burden. Okay, so I know my average wage. What's my labor burden to do unemployment. What's my labor burden for gl? What's my labor burden for auto and work comp. Okay, so factored in the percentage for labor burden, then Overhead recovery. We gotta, we have to do the overhead for my pay for the power bill, for my office manager's bill, my operations manager's bill, rent, taxes, all the overhead that goes into the business actually working. Software is overhead, computers is overhead. So the overhead recovery, the equipment overhead recovery of getting that back. So after we put all this stuff in the spreadsheets, the machine pumped out that my day rate without debris, $2,922. Holy crap. Gut is working pretty good. But it was so awesome to see that my gut was working like this. Our gut was on. And then with the debris, you know, that went to the subcontractor category because it's similar. So we have $450 for debris. And now we're going to. So that, that puts me at $3044 or whatever. And then we go to the profit markup. Four questions. Need, risk, size, market. So it's 8, 10, 10, 15. You're averaging 10.75. So you pick your, your profit margin that you want and you multiply that. Everything out the door comes to $3,372. So total nut, three grand in labor, 372 in debris. Dude, we are, we're spot on. If not, my numbers are like $100 higher than that. So it was just super refreshing to run all this ridiculous algebra to vet my numbers. And if you go to, if any listeners are interested in this, if you go to Profit Builder, it's described as drinking from a fire hose, which it is. And they're long days, man. It's what, 8:00am to 5:00pm Six.
- [43:30]
B
Five or six.
- [43:30]
C
Yeah, five, 6:00pm you know, it's Friday, Saturday, and half a day Sunday. I mean, you're running the gauntlet. But I found it fascinating. It wasn't the 2 o'. Clock. You're like, you need a shot of caffeine because you're falling asleep. I, I was, it was fascinating to me. Just over the moon, excited to do these exercises. So that's how we do the way I approach thing is daily rate worksheets. So the project I bid an assignment that in a way I had to hunt. It was handed to me, but not handed to me. So this is a government job. This is a city of Tampa job. So I went to a website called opengov.com and you can do this in Tampa, you can do this in Gainesville, you can do this in Arkansas. Wherever you are, you go to, to opengov.com and register your account. I don't think it costs anything and you pick what type of a business you're running. I'm running a tree service. Jason runs landscape. You could sell office chairs. There's an office chair section. You could be a painter, a plumber, H Vac, concrete person. Hey, you could do it. Admin. Any widget of business can go into open Gov and when you log in and you select what you do in your region, anytime a government entity needs this work done and it you filter through the need, you'll get emailed. Here's a bid opportunity. So I'm clicking along. Nothing, nothing. Hey, email bid opportunity. And I get a lot of them. Like asphalt paving. I don't do that. Maybe I'm checked in some boxes that
- [45:29]
B
I clicked a box for Pembroke Pines. I get all sorts of stuff for Pembroke Pines and that is somewhere in south Florida. So yes, be careful the boxes you click.
- [45:41]
C
I think that's north Miami. Is it? Or west. West Miami, affluent area from what I understand.
- [45:48]
B
Maybe we need to take field trips. You never know.
- [45:50]
C
Yeah, because there's a. There was a guest on Family Feud from Pembroke Prines and then I googled it and then they. Yeah, there's a lot of money there. Anyways, so this bid opportunity came up that was released on June 29 and it is city wide Invasive Plant Removal and Control. So for this assignment you click follow and in the sheets here there is a mandatory meeting. You have to go to the City of Tampa Parks and Recreations Municipal Office Building on Columbus Thursday, July 29th at 9:00am if you are not in that door by 9:00am you cannot bid the job. You have to be in that door, sign your name and be in by 9 and 9:01 you walk in the door, you cannot bid the job, you have to be there. So at nine o' clock we go over what the scope of work is. And the city has areas with invasive plants. Brazilian pepper, lead trees, guinea grass, bunch of herbaceous stuff, Caesar's weed. And they said we got $180,000 bucket and we gotta spend it by October. By October 1st I gotta spend this money or it's gone. So they said we don't know, we don't know where we want to spend the money in the city of Tampa. So what we're asking from you is a price per quarter acre to cut down all the woody invasives, treat the stumps, treat all the herbaceous material. After your initial visit, you're going to get 60% of your money. And six months later we do an inspection to make sure that you have excellent results. If you pass inspection, you're going to get 20% of your money. And then in six more months. So this is 12 months after your initial visit inspection, you pass muster, you get your remaining 20%, which totals 100%. So I have to bid a price unknown site per quarter acre to treat this and keep it maintained for 12 months.
- [48:23]
B
So you're going to go back and make multiple applications. Boom.
- [48:26]
C
And I gotta charge them for that.
- [48:27]
B
Okay.
- [48:28]
C
In my bid.
- [48:29]
B
So I say there's some Chinese math where you're gonna get screwed if you don't do that.
- [48:33]
C
Yes.
- [48:33]
B
Yeah.
- [48:34]
C
Right. So. But we don't know where the site is. They have 180 grand to spend. They said the first site that we're probably gonna do, we have to go to the mandatory site inspection. So after we leave this building, all of the bidders have to go to the mandatory site inspection or you cannot submit a bid. So you got to show up twice, same day, but you've got to drive there to the, to the site. They said, we're going to take you to an alternate site. This is our second priority and we can walk it. But you may actually never work here because we're probably going to run out of money before we ever get here. But the site that we really want you to do, we can't go to that because it's a construction site right now and we're not allowed in the construction site. And it's along the Hillsborough river behind Blake High School. So they said you can go to this restaurant called Rick's on the river and look to the right, which is to the south, and you can kind of like see it's from here to the bridge. It's all that Brazilian pepper and shit growing out of the riprap and overhanging the river, mixed in with mangroves. That's what you got to do. And I said, well, okay, well, how much is it? So how much total? I'm bidding price per quarter acre. So on Google Map. Not Google Maps, but Google Earth, you can like drop pins and make a polygon, not a parallelogram, but a polygon. And it will calculate the acreage of the polygon that you just made. And I did my polygon and it's, it's not, let's say I have a park. It's not the entire acreage of the park, it's the acreage where the treatment's going to be. So if it's a 30 acre park, it could only be 2 acres in that 30 acre park. So you have to approach this bid of your quarter acre price is in Vietnam, just blasted with invasives and it's atrocious. And each nuance is going to be different. And we're responsible for all permits. If I have to close roads, close part of Riverwalk, that's in my price. If I have to get a wetland permit, EPC permit, FWC permit, because there's waterfowl roosting in the trees, I'm responsible for all that and my cost per quarter acre. Knowing some might have those challenges or none at all will have the challenges. We don't know. So they told us it's going to be from Rick's on the river to the North Boulevard bridge on the south side of the river behind Blake High School. But you can't go there because it's a construction site. So I figured it out. It was 1.81 acres using my polygon stuff on Google Earth. And I said, damn it, I'm going to go there. So I met my cousin Miles. My cousin Miles and I partner up on this stuff. He is kind of a wetland guy and he does herbicides. He has special licenses to apply herbicides and wetlands. And like can say, nope, that vine thing is a native. Like don't kill the sugar apple, whatever the hell this tree is, or don't kill the railroad vine. That's good. But all this guinea grass stuff and this, this rosary pea, we got to kill this. So he's like IDing what's got to go and what doesn't have to go because it's all invasive, woody and herbaceous. So I meet miles at 8 o' clock this morning at the boat ramp with my boat. We launch, we cruise down the Hillsborough river and we scout from Bricks on the river downriver to North Boulevard. And we're like counting, okay, this is production based stuff. I'm looking at it here. I was like, I can go from here to here in a day, here to here in a day. And there's a sidewalk on the other side. I was like, oh, sweet. I have avant giant wheel loader access. And where do I put the grapple truck? Oh, double gate here at the North Boulevard bridge. Sweet. That's my staging area. So we actually nosed the boat up to like this rock near some mangroves, tied the bow of the boat off and like went into the construction site. So we blatantly trespassed. But like I'm walking this sidewalk, right? And I'm. It's brand new concrete, but I'm like looking at any defects or tire Marks from construction and like documenting stuff. So we walked the entire assignment and when I walked it from the boat, I thought I'd do it in four days. When I walked it on foot in a bathing suit and flip flops this morning, I thought it was going to take me five days to do and at production raised pricing. I said, you know what, I'm going to go at $4,500 per day to accomplish the mission. That's going to take me five days. And then I go, I need some fudge factor. What if we get rained on? What if whatever the hell happens, I said I'm going to throw another day on it. Okay, so it's going to take me, I'm going to charge for six days at 4,500 is too cheap because this is a pain in the ass. Maybe there's some permit fee I got to buy or some wetland crap. I said, hell with it. I'm going to make it fifty five hundred dollars per day times six days for my initial app. That so six times five thousand five hundred is thirty three grand. Okay, I got that number. Now I got to make all my debris go away. Like, well, it's probably only going to be two or three 50 cubic yard grapple trucks, but I don't know if I can hoard a huge pile of crap here and it sit overnight. Like, well, I don't know what's going to happen. So I'm going to assume I got to haul away all this debris every day. So I said, you know what, for me to fill up a 50 cubic yard grapple truck and get rid of it, I'm going to charge eleven hundred dollars times six days. That's 6,600 bucks. So my initial visit is $39,600 for this two acre site. Okay, I measured 1.8 in the questions. On open Gov you can ask questions and they everyone gets to see your question and everybody gets to see the answer. 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- [55:17]
B
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- [55:26]
C
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- [55:49]
B
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- [56:04]
C
what's the acreage that you measured for this parcel? And the response was two acres. Perfect. It's in writing, public record, two acres. And then I'm thinking here, it's Blake High School. The bid is due tomorrow, July 23, by 3pm if you don't have all of your paperwork. The amount of paperwork that I had to submit, I was up to like 11:30 last night. Shit. Had to get notarized. All these documents, I uploaded all that last night. If everything's not in by 3pm tomorrow, done. You can't do it. If you miss one document in the upload, you're out. It's all got to be there by 3pm tomorrow. So I go, okay, so that's app 1 39, 600. And I go with Miles. Okay, Miles, you're gonna do the herbicide. Said, how much do you need per day? And he says, I don't know, two grand. 2,500 for chemical and labor and side by side with a 30 gallon sprayer in it, you know? He said, I don't know. I said, how about 2,500 bucks? He said, Good, 2,500 bucks sounds good. So I said, we're going to charge it for six days. It might take us four. I'm estimating five. But we're charging your rate at six. Six days because you got to treat the stumps within minutes of me cutting it. Like we're working side by side in this. So Miles's first app is 15 grand, and I have to have all this paperwork that he's my subcontractor. Okay. So app two, six months later. Well, we learned from the biofuel removal we did at the lower 48 acre site that we cut down a bunch of stuff that was invasive. So much sunlight came down onto what used to be a shaded forest floor. The amount of air potato was Jumanji. The house came alive with Jumanji plants. It was like, oh, my God, this is crazy. What grew with the newfound sunlight? So I said, miles, well, app two, six months from now, you know, if we're going to hit six days initially, let's bid three days of herbicide six months later. So three times 2500, 7500 bucks. Now I might have to be with you and maybe we miss some stuff, you know, who knows what the hell I'm walking into. So my labor, I'm going to say, you know what, I'm going to be here for three days. I'm going to have a crew here for three days. During the second app working with you, maybe I have to cut down 3 foot tall guinea grass, cut all that shit so you can spray it. That's my labor to manually remove it. And I said, well, it's going to be less lifting. We already figured the site out. So I'm going to charge it at three days, at 4,500 a day, that's 13,5. And my debris, all the big stuff is gone. I might just be dealing with vines and grasses that I gotta haul away. So instead of 1100 a load, I'm charging 900 a load times three days is $2700. So my second app is 16,002 miles. The second app is 7500. Now I need a follow up for my last 20%. This is like 11 months, 12 months after original. And we said, well, we could probably do it in like two days. But we said, buddy, we don't know what we're getting into. This is like cost per quarter acre on it could be other sites. So let's put a little fluff in here. So we did. My labor rate, four grand a day at three days. 12 grand. 900 debris times three days, 2700. My second visit, 14,700. So my total labor and debris over the course of 12 months, $70,500 divided by eight because it's two acres and I have to give price per quarter acre. So 70,500 divided by 8 is $8,812.50. My price, labor and debris per quarter acre miles is he's $30,000 on the nose divided by eight. Okay? You add them all together, the total nut for this site, which is two acres, $100,500. Miles is money. My money. I got three visits in there. Plenty of wiggly stuff there with extra labor that might be needed for MOT or sidewalk closure or permits. 100,500 divided by 8. $12,562.50 is my price per quarter acre. I got to that dollar figure in 10 minutes. In 10 minutes sitting at my steering wheel on my boat under the North Boulevard bridge with a pencil. This one page of chicken scratch is how I got To a hundred thousand five hundred dollars. So I was talking with Miles and said, look man, we're going to be bidding against other people and it's low bid. The low bid wins. So I said, the lowest qualif.
- [61:15]
B
The lowest qualified bid?
- [61:17]
C
Yes. So I said, all right, where can I beat this up? Maybe on app 2 and app 3 I can delete my debris hauling because maybe there's no debris to haul. I'm going to keep my labor there, but let me delete my debris hauling. And I deleted. I leaned it down as much as I could. I was at 100,500. I got down to 91,500. My price per quarter acre originally 12562.50. After I leaned it down as much as I could, it was 11,437. I said, am I going to submit my bid price per quarter acre at 11,437 and I'm shortchanging myself about a grand per quarter acre or am I going to go back with my original number? And I'm talking with Miles and he goes, man, we can't get screwed. I said, that's right. If I win this job, I don't want to go, oh shit, I won this job. Oh man, oh man, now I got to do it. Did I bid it right? And be uncertain. I need confidence in this. So the message here is when you're bidding big jobs or you're bidding risky jobs or you're bidding something that's just weird, if you win the job, there has to be enough money that you go hail, yeah, I won the job. Not you win the job and your gut kind of sinks and you go like, oh shit, I won the job. Oh, now I got to do it. It's got to be home run with all the variables of risk. And if this goes off without a hitch, we're going to kill it. Well, good for me, right? I'm taking all the risk in all of this. And if we don't kill it and we have a rain out entire day or a phantom whatever the hell permit thing I got to deal with, there's enough fat in these numbers I can pull from labor or debris and I can figure it out. So they got 180 grand to spend if they do this site, I'm only going to use a hundred thousand five hundred of those dollars if I win. So that means there's like $79,500 left onto a site that I don't know what it's going to be. And the logistics of that site, like, I got to think about tide, low tide, high tide, is the herbicide treatment in the water, out of the water, you know, all the variables. So that's how I approached it, was with what, what do we call it? Daily, late, daily rate pricing? Is that the term? It was daily rate worksheets. So I approached this job with the fundamentals of daily rate worksheets, plus all of the fudge and contingencies that we're thinking of. Oh, and one of my questions in this, Jason, in the open question area is this is going to be awarded in August, performed in September, money spent by October 1st. School's in session in September, and I'm working right behind Blake High School. So I had to ask, do we need Jessa Jessica Lums? Yeah, like, who thought of that? Does everyone have to get background checked and have badges? And the answer came back, it's outside the fence of Blake High School, public walkway. Jessica Lumsford, badges not needed. I was like, oh, cool. Nobody else asked that question.
- [64:53]
B
Yeah.
- [64:54]
C
Like, what's this white tape that we're going to have? Red tape stuff that we're going to have to go through that you vet in the questions. So if you. If you wanted to try something like this, get on open gov.com and give it a whirl and you can see what's out there. And nobody knows my price right now. I submitted everything today. Done. It's in 12,005, 62, 50 per quarter acre. They're going to unseal the bids tomorrow and then within a week, all of the bids from all of the estimators that qualified are going to be public. Right.
- [65:33]
B
Are you going to go to the bid? Are you going to go to the bid opening?
- [65:36]
C
No, it's online.
- [65:37]
B
It's online.
- [65:39]
C
Normally, I don't. I don't know, I read like 36 pages.
- [65:45]
B
Go back and check the. A lot of times they'll do. Like when I turned in the flexi pave bid north of a half a million dollars and then got hosed by Flexipave and did not get that work in St. John's county, at least St. John's county and the city of Gainesville. Well, in the city of Alachua, most of the government jobs we have, they have public bid openings. So if you don't want to wait for the tabulation sheet to come out, you drive your ass down there at 3 o' clock when they're going to open it up and then you're going to see what the bidders are and they'll hand you a handwritten sheet of what the initial tabulations are, the unqualified tabulation sheet. So then they spend the next week going back and making sure the bidders are qualified and going through all the rigamaroo of all of that. But I very much being impatient, I like knowing if I'm in the ball game or not.
- [66:31]
C
Yeah, I won't have that ability at 3 o' clock tomorrow because I will be in the custody of three children.
- [66:35]
B
There you go.
- [66:36]
C
But yeah, I'll get to see. So I'm bidding against some environmental people that Miles knows them I don't. But the tree people I'm bid against is Pete and Ron's Tree Service. They were there at both the mandatory bid meeting and the field visit. And then a guy named LJ with Tucker Enterprise, Tree guy, he was there bidding it. I'm just so curious to see the spread. Oh, that's why price per quarter acre. I am very confident with my numbers, but I'm. I don't want to do it for less. And then I'm so curious is someone coming in like it's something stupid like 5 grand a quarter acre or is someone coming in at 28000 a quarter acre? I don't know where it's coming from, but I put in the work. I had to have letters of reference. I had to have three letters of reference of similar invasive plant removal and herbicide application within the past two years. And I had to have letters of reference. So Kimmin's Contracting, where I did all that biofuel, where Jumanji came with air potato, they wrote me a letter. Edgewater Valor, where I did mangrove pruning and Brazilian pepper removal and treatment, where I sub. I sub Miles at Kimmins, I sub Miles at Edgewater Valor and Clearwater. And then I needed a third one within 24 months or. And like I don't know. But there was a job I did where I was Miles sub. He was the prime on the contract. I was Miles's sub. So I actually got a letter of reference by Miles's previous employer, Wetland Studies and Solutions wrote Independent Tree Service a letter of reference for their project because arguably I. They were my client for a municipal job. And what was super cool is in the reference that Wetland Studies wrote me. Miles previous employer. It referenced the other two recommendation letters that I got. It referenced those projects of we worked together doing not only these three projects, but we did three other projects in Sarasota county and the other ones throughout town, like smeared out like six assignments that we did together. So I think we got a great shot. And I had to upload like my pesticide license. I had to upload all of Miles's core applicator stuff. I had to upload safety training manuals for our business, how to upload a whole list of equipment that we have. And their, their model was like two landscape trucks, three chainsaws, four blowers, three rakes per crew. And so I took my whole inland marine list of every wheel loader, all the non tagged equipment that we have, every nifty lift VIN number, everything, bam. Every vehicle that we have, every bucket truck, grapple truck, F350 estimator vehicles, wham. And then when it came to two cycle, I was like chainsaws, 30 to 40 of them, you know, and it was, it was just a awesome massive flex when I was able to list all of the gear that we have and that we don't rent it. That's part of it. Do you rent equipment or do you own equipment? Like we own all. So we have a very comprehensive bid package that's put together and I think,
- [70:02]
B
I think some key points that you made because we've bid a fair amount of government work, we've won government work. I've gone to the initial bid openings. We had a couple of. It was probably back in like 21 or 22 when we were doing more commercial installs, but we won two commercial landscape installations for St. John's County. I think one, I was actually the low bidder, but then the second one I was probably like the third low. And so it's just like, oh well, whatever, I didn't get it. You know, my price was my price just like you said. But then the other two bids got thrown out. So then I got a call a couple of weeks later, hey, check your email. You get awarded the job. It's like, oh cool, that's going to work out pretty good. But what I like is going to government jobs. I don't like going to government bids that don't have mandatory bid meetings. If there's no mandatory meeting, you are 90% of the time. Sure, roll the dice. If you want, really want the work or if it's, you know, you want to put the effort in. But everything you just described is a massive amount of effort to get all of the paperwork and all of that stuff done. It takes hours to get all of that done. And you not knowing who you're bidding against, it's to me it's not worth it. But we'll still go to the city of Gainesville. Puts out all these maintenance, maintenance bids all the time. And half of them I don't go to. If it has a mandatory bid meeting every now and then, I'll just go and show up. And many it's anybody with a lawnmower in a truck and it's. I just like to see who's going to do it for the lowest price. And it's just like they'll have. We're showing up to cut the grass at this place that has to take anybody 30 minutes to drive. And we're going to do it for 20 bucks. It's like, I just want to see how I go to the things just to get on the bid, just to get on the bid list so I can get the bid results. And then knowing that every now and then you show up and it's just like, huh, maybe I'll throw my name in the hat because there's only a couple of people here. Like, maybe I will bid this one. But I do it personally for landscape maintenance of just seeing how low someone's willing to go. So just personal.
- [72:14]
C
Well, Jason, we gotta, we gotta wrap it up, man. We're a little over an hour here.
- [72:19]
B
Um, so last last week, we won't go into the Crest deal now, but last week did an episode with Mike Garvey while you were in Dollywood. Mike is side Hustle podcast. Mike's great, dude. He was down at the Crest event. We went. I am thoroughly impressed with everything that I saw. I've been thoroughly impressed with what I've seen and heard with Crest equipment. But now after seeing their fully autonomous zero turns in person, I'm very intrigued. So we're going to be setting up and Carlos with Positech, who was at the landscape radio, and then Tony and Tony with Autolon, they invited me down. So we're going to be having them come up and do a demo. But it's, it's pretty impressive. And talking about the efficiencies and production rates and what you can do with crews with these autonomous mowers and battery powered equipment and cutting costs and it's very. Anyway, it's very impressive. So we can debrief that later.
- [73:20]
C
But yeah, you got to pivot with the times, man. Get your edge. So. Well, thank you for listening, everybody. If you have. I'd love an email. I would love an email. Let me know what you think. Tell me I'm totally wrong or tell me I'm amazing or let me know how you do your stuff. Because I am forever evolving and learning and tweaking my approach on things. GreenSideUp podcastmail.com and stay posted. I will let you know the results of this bid when I get this job or when I get the results. And we'll see. We'll see where the numbers fall. That's all I got, bro.
- [74:05]
B
Awesome.
- [74:06]
C
Oh, and get ready for our Tree Care webinar series with Single Ops via
- [74:12]
B
Granum and come see us at the Landscape show in Orlando, August 19th through the 21st. We'll be roaming the show floor. Talk to Billy Deal again. Billy's got us. If we need a quiet room, he'll carve us out a quiet room somewhere to record some episodes. And if not, maybe we're gonna go squat in one of Tony's super contractor trucks again. But we'll be at the Landscape show podcasting.
- [74:37]
C
So yeah, buddy, right. When I come back with hurt fingers from the Keys and and a suntan from being down in the in the keys catching lobsters, bro.
- [74:48]
B
I like it. Well, George, next week, man.
- [74:51]
C
You have a good evening, man. I'll talk to you tomorrow.
- [74:54]
B
All right, later.
- [74:55]
A
As you continue your journey toward entrepreneurial success, let Jason and Jordan be your trusted companions on this upcoming 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.
- [75:28]
C
Sam.