← The Mulder Life Podcast
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Today's episode is a Best of the Molder Life Podcast. While Andy takes a short break, he wants to make sure that you're still getting valuable insights to help you start the year strong. Live podcasts from the Incon Studio will return in February. In the meantime, if you're looking for resources, courses and training videos, visit molderoutdoors.com youm'll find an easy to use link in the description. Now let's head to the Incon Studio for today's Best of the Molder Life Podcast.
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Hey guys, welcome to this week's episode of the Molder Life Podcast, a live show featuring your questions about all things landscaping, equipment, business and life. Join our live show Weekly on Instagram alderoutdoors Sunday nights at 8:30pm Central Time to ask your questions or tune in here for the replay. Thanks for joining us. What's going on everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Mobile Life Podcast. We are live here Sunday night, 8:30pm Central Standard Time and I am excited to be here tonight. Guys, Big shout out to Unilock for being a sponsor this week. Unilock Authorized Contractor is a program that I'm part of through Unilocked. If you have never checked that out, I'd encourage you to go check that out. So big shout out to Unilock for being a sponsor of the Motorlife podcast. Really appreciate their partnership and their products and it's about 95% of or 100% of the pavers that we install and and so big shout out to them. Also Brunt Workwear bruntworkware.com Big thanks to them for being a sponsor this week. They just released a really cool boot, the Marin boot, which is the one that you see in the banner here but in a wheat color. And I got it this week and it is honestly it's a really really nice looking boot. I wore it today. Really just like all the other Marin's, always super comfortable and they'll be coming out with all kinds of new stuff coming soon. And big shout out to Brunt Workwear for being our sponsor. Appreciate all the brands that have chosen to support what we're doing here and without them we couldn't be able to do this week in and week out. Thank you to them. I just got back from the synced up Summit synced up Contractor Summit. I got back Saturday morning and you know what, before we go any further, I also forgot as always, Albany's Candy Factory, the official candy of the Molded Life podcast. If you have never tried any of their 12 flavored gummies. You should try these. They also have sour gummies. They have all kinds of different types of candy. And if you're local to me, you should go check out the factory store or you can get these all over the world. So big shout out to them for continuing to sponsor the Molded Life podcast. Yeah, so I got back from the synced up contractor summit. That was. I flew. I flew out Wednesday afternoon and I was there all day Thursday, all day Friday, and then flew home Saturday morning. And there was lots of people that asked me questions about. They wanted to know what my takeaways were from that. So we'll cover that at some point here. Call me Sponsorship God. Well, you know what? Without our sponsors for this podcast, we would not be able to keep doing this day in and day out. It's not free. Mr. Producer is not free. I have a producer that produces the show and gets it uploaded and adds commercials and makes it all happen. And without him, I couldn't get this done. And all of that has to get paid for. And yeah, so we're just trying to make this, make this happen. So anybody that's willing to sponsor the Molder Life podcast, I am more than willing to talk to you about it and would love the support as we continue to keep this podcast going. So MGM Services says always throws me off because there's no background noise. You mean because. What do you mean no background noise? You mean like the opening of the podcast or something? Porcupine Lawn and Snow Care says, are you going to the Equip Expo? I am not going to the Equip Expo this year. I have gone every year for the last, oh man, I don't know, eight or nine years. But this year I am not going. We have a family thing that we're going to be going on together. My boys Fall break is that exact same week. And because of that we have decided or I've decided to skip the Equip Expo this year. I've gone to a lot of different things already this year that I typically wouldn't have gone on. One of them being the Con Expo back in March. I was gone a week for that and then I just went to this Contractor summit with synced up and different things that I've chosen to spend my time doing. And this year I've decided to skip out on the Equip Expo. I'm sure it'll be great. Maybe I'll be able to be there next year. Northern landscape says Andy equals goat. Well, I really appreciate that I. That's very kind. I don't know if I would agree with that, but thank you. Eagle One Industries has cool boots. Absolutely brought workwear. Also if you need a coupon code for anything From Brunt Workwear Molder 10 and you can get $10 off anything you buy there. And one of my favorite things from Brunt actually is their socks and also their Costello work pants and shorts. Phenomenal work pants. Also they have a really nice sun shirt that I always wear on vacation. Phenomenal sun shirt. Eagle One Industries. Do they supply boots in Australia? I do not know that. I don't know if I. Yeah, I don't know. It's possible but I kind of doubt it. I don't know if they're that big of a company yet. Ben's Lawn and Landscape says how does a company start running the numbers to recoup tools and equipment costs? That is a really great, great question. Ben's Lawn and Landscaping and if I were to give you an answer on here it would be take up the entire podcast. But if you want something that you can that doesn't cost a lot of money that can help you exactly with what you are looking to do, you should go to howtoprice my job.com and go check out the course that me and Weston from Synced up developed and put on that it's for. It's exactly for what you're trying to do here. It's a beginner's thing to help you start learning how to recoup your tools and equipment costs and your overhead and it's very low cost program and it's got free calculators that come with it and it will help you to learn how to recoup the cost of those kinds of things. So I don't think I could do a good job of extend spending a bunch of the time on the podcast explaining that. But I will tell you Ben Ben's Lawn and Landscape that if you go to that website again it's how to price my job.com and the resort the resource that we develop there is not a gimmick. It's a real thing and it will help you greatly. I you're going to get more from it than just what you're looking for. But it's going to do exactly what you need it to do. Promo Landscape said should have my new Bobcat E60 with NCon 296. I don't know what 296 is. Maybe that meant to say 206 up and running by next week I want some kind of grade control 2D 3D Rover. Let me know your thoughts. That is super exciting promo landscape. Congratulations. That is going to be a phenomenal machine. A friend of mine, Zach Turno, they recently got rid of their E42 and got an E60 with the 206, the ncon EC206 and they absolutely love it. It's going to be a very similar size to my KX phenomenal size machine. And you're gonna absolutely love it. I would encourage you to go check out Trimble Earthworks 2D. You could. What you need to do is find your local scitech dealer. I. I would assume you should just go to Google scitech. That's S I T E C H. And you should be able to maybe find, maybe they have a locator on there that you could find your dealer closest to you and then they, you can call them and you can tell them what you're doing. The only thing I will tell you right now is I have not been able to get Earthworks 2D on my new Kubota 57 with the EC206 because the tilt rotator, it was redesigned and it has the tilt and the rotate sensor already built in. And Trimble is still working out the software to sync with this new rotator and the sensors that are already built in instead of. It's phenomenal. Like you don't have to mount any sensors on it. It's all ready to go. They just haven't gotten the software developed enough to be able to work with that yet. So you might have to wait a little while for that because I know I'm waiting. But you could also talk to them about a rover and I would go and check that out. Hope that helps you. Porcupine lawn landscape. I just answered that. Precision outdoor. Do you install Perma Edge before or after doing final compaction in your pavers? We install it before we do any kind of compaction. So Perma Edge, I believe, advertises that you can put it in and they want you to compact it before it gets hard or I don't quote me on what they actually recommend. I'll tell you what I've done is I've compacted. I put the perm edge before we do any compaction. Now that doesn't mean it's many times that we put it in and we don't compact or we compact once and then we put sand and then compact again. But if I'm putting poly sand, I very typically will do the edging and then Sweep the poly sand in and then do our final compaction. So yeah, that's what we do. Mountain, strong landscape. What's going on man? It was nice to see you this past weekend and Absolutely. What did I think about PA we might as well talk about that. So everybody, I had a lot of questions earlier today about what were my takeaways from the synced up contractor summit and I will give those to you. So just a couple things that stuck out to me. Number one, the event as the whole at as a whole was really good. I really appreciated all of Weston's team and all of their passion for what they're doing. I don't think I met a single person on the synced up team. The engineers, the salesman, the onboarders, the financial coach that he has on staff. I'm about to sneeze. I think. Excuse me. I don't think I met anyone. Excuse me. I don't think that I met anybody that on his team that wasn't super passionate or awesome to talk to or cared about what they were that didn't care about what they were doing. It was just. I really and I think everybody that went would agree that everybody there has a lot of passion for the industry and what they're doing and that's infectious in my opinion and it is inspiring and I really appreciated so so I really liked the keynote speaker that spoke. I thought he did a good job. I really liked. We were and we were able to go to the Tussie Landscape shop. So Tussie Landscaping is the company that Weston used to work at and also the owner is the owner of Tussie Landscape is a co owner or founder of synced up Software. So we were able to go to their shop and do a shop tour and look around everything that they have and I really, really gleaned a lot of great information from that. It was actually really, really awesome to walk around their shop and see what, how they do things, how their, their traffic flow is, where they have their fue up, why they have it set up, where they do, why they park the trailers like they do, why they park the trucks, where they do, why they have. They don't actually have that big of a shop because, because they have a lot of stuff in buildings or covered areas that for things that don't need to be in the shop and so it keeps their shop less cluttered and also means they don't have to have such a big shop. So I really liked that there was a lot of different things that I took pictures of Little, little things here, there that I really liked. So that was really great because again, we're in the process of trying to find something, right, Find some, some kind of shop. And so a lot of great ideas. I took a bunch of pictures that was really good. And then we had dinner there the first night after that and then, which all the food was just phenomenal and huge shout out to the synced up team. And the food that provided us was just great. The next day was we had an influencer panel which I ended up being a part of. I did not know I was going to be part of that, which maybe that's just my fault, but I got to be a part of that and that was really cool. I think. I'll be honest, I feel like those kinds of things could go longer because I think that not only myself, I enjoyed the questions that were asked. And then listening to other people and listening to the other guys that were on the panel with me, I always learn a lot from those situations and I think a lot of people do. When you have the ability to have five or six or whatever, 10 people up, being able to answer questions that the audience asks, I think that's really great. So that was a really fun time and appreciated being a part of that and appreciate Weston including me in that. And then the Tussie team, the, the, the. The two brothers from Tussie that our partners were up on stage and they gave a talk on culture and how they lead their team and the things that they do that kind of sets them apart. And then some of their staff actually came up there and talked for a while and took questions. I thought that was really great. And then the rest of the day was talked. Going through different things with synced up program and lots of, lots of opportunity to ask questions and have some actual dialogue and discussion. And those are some of the. Again, like I said, some of my favorite times when you can just sit there and listen to other people ask questions and then kind of just have a conversation. I just. It was great that Weston created the event to be like that. Even with, you know, over 100 plus people, I think attended and to still be able to do that, I think was really, really a great thing that they did and will keep me wanting to go back. So yeah, Cycle CPA did a thing. I thought they shared a lot of really good information. Overall, it was just a really good event. And I think one of my favorite parts was just the networking of it. I think we got to meet a lot of people and talk to A lot of different people and just sit and have lunch and talk and, and dinner and discuss things, talk about what we do. Of course, we all do the same thing. So you have a lot of common interest, and so immediately you can have good conversation. And it was just. It was a great event. It was great weather. We really were blessed with great weather. We got to go see a job site, one of a. One of the big job sites that Tussie finished up this year. That was a nice, really beautiful project. And yeah, it was. I'm happy I went shout out to Weston and his team. They. They really care about what they do they're doing, and that's one of the reasons I enjoy and am happy to have them as a sponsor on the Molded Life podcast and do things with Weston. And he truly cares about the industry and his passion comes through and everything that he does. A couple things that I wrote down, things that I want to kind of do from, you know, things that I want to either implement or work on or whatever. I. I would really, as a company, full disclosure, I have never made a mission statement for my company. It's something that I've written down that I want to do before, but I kind of have a revived desire to do that. And that really came from the Tussie team talking about their mission, their mission and their mission statement and. And how they communicate that with their team. And then also Weston kind of presented, which he and I talked about on the podcast a couple weeks ago. And if you haven't listened to that, go back and listen to that episode. It was a really good episode. And he kind of quote, unquote, unveiled that new mission statement for Synced Up. And I don't have it written down here what it was, but it was just really good and it was inspiring, and I think I. I need to create that. I would like our whole team to kind of gather around that and to know again, communicating our why, why we do what we do. I talk about that all the time with why I don't run my company debt free. And if you're trying to get out of debt, it's most important to have the why. That's. The why is more important than the what. And so I would like to create that for my own company. And I don't even know where to begin with that. I have no idea where to start, but that's something I want to work on. Another thing that it took away again from the Tussie team and what. How they. How they run their business, they have Morning roundtable discussions where they kind of stand around, talk about what they're going to do for the day. I don't know. I can't remember if he said they do that every day. I think they do. We kind of do that informally now. It's. It's not that formal, but we do stand around and we talk about what the plan is and kind of get on the same page. So I want to continue to build on that, build on what we do now. And I really like that. I'd like to create a welcome video to send to my clients. So that's something that they do. I thought that was really great. They have a. Like, the salesman has a video, kind of introduces himself and talks about the company a little bit, and they send that to their customers before they. Before they go and meet with them before the consult time. So I thought that was a really great thing. I'd like to. I really enjoyed the keynote. Talked about. There was a quote that I kind of paraphrased. I wrote it down. But as a leader, I have a responsibility and obligation to steward my team well, and I thought that was a really good section of his talk. And so it's just important that we as business owners take the responsibility of leadership seriously and realize that, you know, all of our team are actual people with actual problems and. And life's outside of work and. And just treat them as such. And so there was a. That was a lot of really good things talked about then. And then just one thing, and you might have seen this. Different people share this that had gone to the event. No cold pizza. So Weston had a really good session where he talked about. I think it was when he was talking about his mission statement and he showed a picture of a. Of a. Of his kitchen table, and it was some leftover pizza and it was cold. And he said that he wanted to try and remind everybody, and himself included, that he doesn't want to have any more cold pizza, meaning not getting home in time for dinner and committing to those kinds of things and realizing that life's not all about work and, and that should go for all your team as well, Remembering again that they have a family and yes, there's work to get done. And there's also times in your business when you need to work longer and sacrifice more, but just to keep in perspective that at the end of the day, you know, I've said this many times, when you get to the end of your life, you're never going to wish that you worked more. And so I Think on that. That's kind of all along the same lines of, you know, no cold pizza. And so just a good thing to remember as we go through the, you know, the, the end of our season here and push hard to get things done and have a busy schedule and just remember that, you know, getting home to everybody, getting home to their families is more important than just getting an extra two hours in on the job site or whatever. And. And again, sometimes you have to do that stuff and everybody's. And it's a team effort and. But it's not forever. And so those are some of my key takeaways, I guess. And I hope that answers, you know, a lot of people were asking me about that. Hey, everybody. We wanted to thank Unilock, the sponsor of today's PODC. UniLock has been a hardscape industry pioneer for 50 years, creating genuine connections with the very best installers and providing a service that remains unmatched by their competitors. As a Unilock authorized contractor, I can tell you that partnering with Unilock has been amazing for my business. As a reliable partner, I trust Unilock to show up and support. Hardscape contractors like myself and their experienced team of local territory managers are the best in the business. From design assistance to crew training, Unilock has continued to support me and my business from start to finish. And they can help you too. So don't wait. Visit unilock.com or phone 1-800-unilock to find a local territory manager near you and learn what a true partnership looks like. Tell them I sent you. We'll go back to some of these questions here that were live. I haven't been looking at them, but MGM services, when you first started the live, I always think the audio isn't working because I can't hear anything until you start talking. Oh, okay, gotcha. That was from earlier, like a while ago. Pavs construction says gonna order some Brunt boots and pants. Love the pair I have now. Awesome, man. Don't forget to use the coupon code. Nick Mitch 7 says, if you had no sponsors, what would be your. If you had no sponsors, what would be your first skid steer for landscape construction? Man, I, I mean, I didn't have any sponsors when I started. I, I don't really have any sponsors now for equipment. I. I would say something that you can afford to pay for. Our first machine was $13,000 and it was a case 1845C, which I still have, and that was a phenomenal machine that got A lot of work done and made me a lot of money until I was able to afford a track machine. And. And then. And then we kept moving on up. So I. I guess if I was to start over, I probably would try. I might even go that same route. Some kind of inexpensive tire skid loader that can lift a pallet of pavers. Now, the case could not lift a full pallet of pavers, and we unloaded lots of pallets halfway to get them off trucks. And. But that's what we had to do. And you might have to do the same thing. So don't be afraid to do that kind of a thing. Or a mini skid loader. I mean, ideally, the best thing to start out with would be the ditch, which 1550, in my opinion, because it can move. It can move almost basically move a pallet of pavers and it's small and you can do a lot of work with it. But those things are not cheap either. So, you know, for me to say, like, if I was starting out, I would get a ditch, which 1550, it's like, well, that's like a $60,000 mini skid. And of course you can find them used. And so maybe that's the option you need to go. But. But it's not really fair for me to say you should just go out and buy one. Because if I was starting out, I would do exactly what I did and I wouldn't go into debt, and that would mean that I probably couldn't afford a ditch, which 1550. So that's what my thoughts are on that. Alpha Outdoors 417 says it was nice seeing you again at the summit. What was your top takeaways from the event? There we go. We covered that already. I'm sure that was asked a while ago before I went over them. AP Cover 22 1. Roughly how far along is the big job? That's a great question. How far along are we? Well, this week the guys pretty much finished laying all the pavers inside the pool house and got a lot of the cutting done. I was obviously not there most of our half of Wednesday and then Thursday and Friday. So Monday we have to go back. Tomorrow we have to go back and finish cuts. And there's I guess probably one more day inside the pool house for now, and then we're gonna work on the patio outside. So I. I don't know. We have a lot more pavers to lay yet. I would say we have another week in the front of the house on pavers. Then we have. I Don't know, a week or two in the back doing that patio. Then we have a week doing steps in the front sidewalk. So that's three weeks, four weeks. I, I don't know. I. I can't say. I, I think we're halfway. I don't know if I could say that yet. It's hard to say. There's been a bunch of scope of work added and so I can't even really. It's hard for me to say that we're halfway when it's just. I don't know. I'm going to do a progress report for myself this week. Most likely as far as percentage of job tasks completed. We do that on bigger jobs and that's how we bring cash into the business from deposits and there's a whole way that we go about running these big jobs financially. And that's something which I'm just going to plug it here because it's a great place to plug it. We're going to go through all of that at the Hardscape Mastery Summit this coming winter. And we have only 10 seats left for that. That's the. We already filled, sold out the entire first, the first dates of those. The second dates are out. It's the beginning of March and there's only 10 seats left. And me and my CPA and finance manager are gonna do a. Two, two, two. At least we're gonna have two sessions each one of them is at least going to be two hours each. An hour of presentation and an hour of discussion each time. And we're going to walk you through how we do all of our. How every, how all the money moves within our business, how we manage everything, how we manage small jobs, how we manage big jobs, how we do job costing, how we look at our, our P L How we look at our balance sheet sheet. How we deal with everything that has to do with money. I'm going to show, I'm going to lay it all out. Everything. It will be very much real time, real numbers and I'm going to show you exactly what we do. And you will have to sign an NDA. You'll have to sign a, A non compete like Caleb Almond has been talking about. It's not. It's going to be a lot of information shared and it's going to be really, really awesome. And that's just what me and Stephanie are going to share. Jeremy's going to do a bunch of stuff on job site layout and how they do all that. A lot of. A bunch of equipment stuff. Caleb's going to share a bunch of stuff. It's a lot of the details are still being ironed out. But I'm just telling you that we're going to, it's going to. And what's going to blow your mind? I think it's going to be absolutely phenomenal and super in depth and lots of time for discussion and questions and we're gonna just lay it all out there. So anyways, back to like how far the big job is going. I think it's going well and I think we're around halfway and I'll, I'll know that more like I said this week when I do my, my percentage of job completed spreadsheet and kind of see how we're doing from there. And, and yeah, so, so if, and, and if you're interested in going to that event, you can go to the hardscapeacademy.com and, or you can send me a DM and I'll send you the link or whatever. It's not cheap. It's a two day event and it's going to be a massive amount of information and I hope you drink from a fire hose when we're there. And it's going to. I really think it will be. There is nothing. I know everybody says this but I'm telling you, I don't think there's anything out there right now that is going to be like what we're going to put on. So I'm just going to say that. And we, we sold out the first event in two weeks and the second one only has 10 seats left. So get on board. Mountain Strong says you won't find better value. Only 500 for the event. Oh, so he's talking about the synced up event. It was a great value. Mountain Strong and it was great seeing you there, man. Absolutely. Weston did a great job. Yes. The networking was amazing. Talking about the synced up again synced up event again, Caleb Leatherberry says any new equipment or attachments coming? Not at this time. Pretty much attachment attachmented out right now. I don't need to have anything like that currently probably for the rest of the year, I think. But who knows? You know, I've been wrong before.
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The Molder Life podcast is sponsored in part by Brunt Workwear. We all know the value of having the best tools and the right tools for the job. Brunt makes the tools you wear. You deserve high quality boots at an affordable price. These boots are designed for comfort from the inside out. Your feet will love the cushy triple layer insoles and shocker absorbent midsoles. Our entire line of boots will hold up withstanding tough work day in and day out. All of our products are constructed with high quality abrasion resistant materials and double stitching where it matters most. Brunt Workwear is made to meet the demands of your hard working lifestyle. From our boots to our apparel, flexibility is key for those that are constantly on the move. No more feeling restricted by your work wear or stiff boots causing aches. Brunt Workwear allows you to work with ease and comfort even on your toughest days. Visit bruntworkwear.com or use the link in the podcast description to see our full line of tools you wear. Use the coupon code molder10 and you get $10 off your first pair of boots.
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Mountain Strong says his patio his house patio is pretty incredible. They packed a lot into smaller spaces and great design. Yeah, it was we got to go to Weston's house Friday night and have dinner. It was great to see his backyard space and again a phenomenal dinner. It was awesome. So the the I'm gonna butcher butcher that name the Ben Ste fan. Oh man, I'm sorry the first time I'm catching the live now what I'm gonna what am I going to listen to this week man? Yeah, I appreciate you catching the live. I appreciate everybody that tunes in this live. Our listenership on the podcast is keeps going up and up and up. We're up to about 4,500down downloads per month and I appreciate everybody that chooses to download our podcast. If anybody would be like to leave a review that always helps us a lot. I've never ever asked for that before. It feels weird even asking that. But the, the, the reviews are always super helpful. Of course positive reviews if you like the show. And yeah it's it's super cool to see our listenership growing and we consistently have about 40 to 60, sometimes 80 people tuning in live. But I think that everybody really likes the podcast in podcast format to be able to listen to it when they're working or whatever they're doing and so but without you guys listening to this live we can't keep doing this. So I appreciate everybody that does this and submits questions and and does this weekend and week out with us. So thank you. See if there's any other questions here or comments. Austin Reed Pick says downloaded you Vision Friday and love the program. Thanks for the recommendation. Awesome Austin. That's great. I'm I'm glad it's working out for you. It's a great program that doesn't cost a lot of money and is not impossible to learn. I can promise you if I was able to learn it, anybody can learn it. Coat Maintenance Services says have you heard about the core MIDI brand, mini skid or that is modular, can use loader, cement mixer, rotating dump and even Spider man lift. I have never heard of that before. Interesting. I have not heard of that. Promo Landscape says does your IQ saw still cut straight? Any news on the 220 volt saw? I know nothing about IQ's 220 volt saw except that it's been at three different the last two or three Gies or Hardscape North America shows and it still is not a release which is classic. Who knows what's going on, why that hasn't been released. But I don't know the reason is my IQ saw, does it still cut straight? Well, we haven't really used our IQ saw as much this year because we just haven't needed them. We've been doing a lot of work with the demo saw. Like the job that I went on right now I don't think we're going to use it at all or need it at all because there's no border block. It's all bigger slabs and I can't cut the huge slabs in the IQ saw so but for the most part it cuts straight. But like I've said before, if you own one IQ saw you should own two because one's always broken and that's why we always have two IQ Source AP Cover so essentially you will likely be on that big job until the middle of November. We will likely be on that big job until the end of the season. I can't say for sure. We're going to do a few other things here and there that I have to go do. I am still designing some work that potentially would do late fall or push into the early spring and I am designing things for the spring as well. I got a couple of really nice things that are in the works so we'll see how that goes. But I yes, I'm foreseeing that we're going to be there for the rest of the year, which I'm fine with. Excuse me. Jacob Martin says 23:10 where do you buy tickets? I believe you're talking about the Hardscape Mastery Summit. That is going to be. You can go to the hardscapeacademy.com and you will be able to find it there and purchase tickets. Like I said, Only 10 seats left for that. As a New contractor. How much should I plan to spend on a good compactor for base material? That's a great question. I don't know exact current prices because I haven't bought one in probably seven years. Six years. I think I've had my CR7. My CR. My Weber CR7 compactor was, when I bought it was 17 or $16,000. It's a diesel vibratory plate reversible plate compactor. And it has Computrol on it. So it tells, it has a gauge on it that tells you when something is fully compacted. It is a lot of money. The thing weighs a thousand pounds. If I were to do it again, I don't know if I really would need the CR7. I think I could get by with the CR6 and I believe now they make the CR6 with computrol. I think you should definitely. It's very. If you're going to invest in a big reversible plate compactor, having the ability to see what your compaction level is at is 100% worth the money. That's one of the reasons I love Weber. Now I believe Wacker makes a compactor that has that. But don't quote me something like that, but I, you know, you may be able to find one for, I mean somewhere between 10 and $20,000. I think that's probably how much it's going to cost, which maybe you can find one for significantly cheaper on marketplace. So don't quote me on that. But you need to have something that is reversible plate and needs to be big. And if you can move it, if you can't move it without a machine, then it's, it's in the range where you, that you need to be. If you can move it and lift it and whatever with like your hands or two guys, it's not a big enough play. Come back here. I remember, I remember Tom Gardaki's dad, Bill got. Bill Gardaki. He. It's Bill, right? I believe it's Bill. Yeah. He. I was, I used to attend some of the classes that he would teach at H and A and different landscape shows that I go to. And he always said in the class that if you're pulling up to a job site and you can move your compactor, if you can lift your compactor out of the bed of a truck with two or three guys, you have the wrong size compactor. He used to say, don't be cheap, buy a good compactor. Compaction is the most important thing. And that guy was, he was an awesome teacher. I always loved all his classes. So big shout out to Mr. Gardaki and Tom as well. Both of those guys are legends in excavation and hardscaping and paved the way, no pun intended, for lots of hardscapers to do a better job in, in their, in their craft. So yeah, I just, you know, a Whacker 1550 compactor, it can get the job done if you do 2 inch lifts and that's what you'd have to put in. But you need to get a big reversible plate compactor and it needs to be, you know, seven hundred to a thousand pounds plus and that's going to be the best thing you could possibly do for your installs and I truly mean that. And if you can't afford to do something like that, you can rent one or you can, like I said, if you have a smaller one, just know you need to do 2 to 3 inch lifts or 1 to 2 inch lifts depending on the size of the compactor. And that's the only way you're going to get true proper compaction. So, Anthony Group Hardscape says, pleasure meeting you at the summit. Yeah man, absolutely. You too. 100%. I said thanks for the swag. Absolutely. I had bought a, brought a bunch of hats for guys and handed them out. Sabal landscape contractor says, how do you estimate natural stone materials, square footage, just like walls? Well, I don't estimate anything based on square footage or face feet and I would encourage you not to do that as well. Everything should be bid out just like you would, you know, everything would be bid out where it's basically time and materials and equipment and overhead and all those things go together to give you your price. Not just a thousand square feet is times $75 a square foot and that's the price. Don't do that. But yes, most suppliers, if you're, wherever you're buying your natural stone from, should be able to give you some type of tons per square foot or how you know how far, how many, how many face feet you can get out of a ton. So I would be asking questions like that. And every natural stone is going to have a different yield and you know the bed depth on that on, on your product is going to play a big role in that. But they should usually be able to give you some kind of average of say, hey, you know what, plan on $5 or 5, 5 face feet per ton or whatever it is. Again, every natural stone is different. So, so talk to your suppliers if you have a product that you want to Use and you've seen somebody else used that maybe isn't in your market. See if maybe you can ask some questions, send some DMs to people based on the material that you're using. Hey, you know how much, what kind of yield were you getting on this material? Would you be able to help me out or whatever? Don't be afraid to ask questions like that again. I. You know, a local compact competitor probably wouldn't be who you're going to want to ask for that. But you know what I'm saying. So every natural stone is going to be a different kind of yield. So you got to figure that out first. Hillside landscaping design what paver cutting saw would you Recommend for the first time buy stuck with still. Yeah, I have 3 still ts. 420s. I think that's what they are. 14 inch concrete demo saws. I would love to get a 16 inch demo saw at some point with the rear handle. Probably the next time I need to buy one. I probably will get that. They've been phenomenal sauce. I don't know. That's what we started out with. My first one was one I bought off of Craigslist for four or five hundred bucks and it still is running today. And I have two other ones that I've bought brand new at different times when we needed more saws. Creations design and build is ram your go to for dump trucks? Currently it is. I don't know if it'll be my go to forever. I like them right now. I actually really really like them. I think the cabs are great. I think you have a really good cost to value ratio. I guess. I love the interiors. I love the seats there. We have like heavy duty vinyl, like HD vinyl. It's called all rubber floors. Can basically pressure wash the inside. They've been just great trucks. I have nothing but good things to say about them so far. Just looked up the CR6 around $7,000. Interesting. Is that with a gas engine or a diesel? I don't know. Sabal landscape I'm talking about materials on natural stone walls. I don't know if I answered your question or not. 1 ton per meter square of face stone is standard here. Bjornson Magnus One square. One ton per meter. Square per square meter. There you go. I will tell you that the weather limestone that we installed is basically 5 face. No, 5.5 face feet per ton I believe is what I had kind of estimated. I think that's what I asked. Yeah, that was. Yeah, it was about that. Breck Strad. What's up, Andy. Happy Sunday. Yeah, man, you too, buddy. Hope you're doing good. Thanks for being here tonight. Aching acres. What's going on, man? Thanks for being here. He. If. If you want to know anything about land, natural stone and the yield, Dan for making acres would be the man. He says, yep, you're right. Meaning that 5.5 tons per face foot on weather limestone. That's what I had bid for originally and Dan is confirming that. And yeah, that is what I did before. So hope that helps somebody out there that's listening. Dan, I don't know if you. Is that any kind of natural stone? You. You kind of figure that or is it only weather Weather limestone? I mean, we're giving out really good information here, guys, providing the value. I need to get Dan. Dan, I need to get you on the podcast formally. You neither need to come up here. I need to come down by you and we need to do a podcast together. Dan from Making Acres. Great guy. Phenomenal company. Does incredible natural stone work. Like, incredible. He's doing a job right now as just. It's just. Well, actually, I think they just finished it. It's just awesome. Aching acres, he says only limestone brush shred says 7 to 10 face feet per ton for siloam stone slabs, similar to the big pond job stone. Well, there you go. Interesting. Like I said. Yeah, Dan's right. Just like I said, everything is different. I'm not getting that. I. Man, what are we doing? The stuff I'm doing right now from Amborn stone, I'm gonna have to look back. I. I bid this stuff so long ago, it's like I forget I had a question. Oh, somebody asked me earlier. This is a good question. And, and you know, this, this question that I'm gonna read somebody asked earlier, I'd love to see hear other people's responses to this question and feel free to share and I'll read your answers. This person, I didn't write down who it was. It's irrelevant. Not that they're irrelevant. It doesn't matter who asked it. What matters is what they asked. So they asked. When going through a period when it feels like nothing is going right in your business, how do you push through? When you are going through a period when it feels like nothing is going right in your business, how do you push through? So I'd love to hear other people out there that own a business that have gone through periods when they feel like nothing is going right, how do you push through? And while we're waiting for people to share their Answers if they would like to share. I. I'll tell you, I haven't written down any responses to this. So I'm just going to kind of go off the cuff here. I'm trying to think through the last time when I felt like that, because there's definitely been weeks where it's just been one thing after another. I remember a week last year during the big job when my. We had a rock fall off another rock and smashed the wellhead at the client's house. That same week we. We had. I think we had a track come off the machine. I believe we had the back hatch on my track machine got stuck up and then got smashed by the arms on the track machine because it wasn't shut properly. And that happened not only once but twice. So I smashed. We smashed the lid and then we got a new lid that was in stock. It's like the engine lid on the top. So on a Takahoochi you have the back lid that can come up and then you open the main engine hatch. So that back lid. Something was up with that back. That back hatch. And we had it one time in the winter previous, we fixed it and we smashed the. I believe it was the AC condenser. So we had gotten a new AC condenser and we got a new hatch, put that in. It was fine all year until for some reason that day it popped open. And when you would lift up your arms, it would come even farther open. And then when you'd come down, you just smush it. Just a. Honestly, I think it's poor design. But anyways, so it got smashed and then we fixed it because they had the panel in stock. And then that later that week it opened again and we did it again. I'm not even kidding you. This is for real. It was a thousand dollars each? No, no. $700 each time the panel and what we had to fix was 700. That happened two times in one week. Then that same week, I believe it was the same week we were on the. The. We blew a hose in the track machine. There was a bunch of stuff that happened in the track machine that week. Holy cow. It was pouring down rain. I had to leave early to go home. The guys stayed late to unload a load of weathered limestone that was coming late. It's pouring down rain. They bust a hydraulic hose. Hydraulic oil goes all over the street. And then they. Because of that, the. Something happened. I can't remember. I don't know if the. The boulder was too heavy, but the boulder smashed the Guy's semi and bent the rail. He had one of those semis that had a tarp that like a big roll. Like it was like a van trailer, but the, the sides in the back or the sides and this top could roll back, right? It was like a. I don't know what those are called, but anyways, smash the rail that, that rid on. So the guys call me. I'm like, okay, I'm just going to come back there. I could just tell that I needed to go back there. I drove back 30 minutes to the job site. It's getting dark. We spent an hour getting this rail back so he could close his semi. And then we had to unload the rest of the semi with the excavator and then we had oil on the street. It was just like all of this happened in a week and just felt like nothing could go right. And when I have weeks like that, I often have to just pause and think about what really matters, right? Nobody got hurt in all of those instances, which thank goodness somebody could have got hurt in every single situation, nobody got hurt. And tomorrow's a new day. And I know that sounds like ridiculous, but I think some of us can get caught up in the day to day grind and the day to day hustle and bustle of our work and think that the most important thing is our business and the most important thing is our equipment and our stuff and, and the next job and our client and all this stuff. And. And you have to stop and say this is not everything in life, right? As a Christian, I know not everybody's a Christian and not everybody believes in God. I personally do. And I know that he's in control and I know that he doesn't give me more things that I can handle. And I know that at the end of the day he has my best interest in mind and I know that it's his plan. And in some of these things that go on, there's always a lesson, right? There's always something that I look back during these times and I say that's why that stuff happened. Or because of that we learned this or because of that we now do this. And I think anybody can relate that you learn from these kinds of things. They're learning experiences. And that's why I think the big thing is for me is nobody got hurt and everybody went home to their family that night. And in instances where they don't, like I haven't had something like that, I have had employees get hurt on the job and it literally just tears me to pieces to know that something like that happened. We had a guy that got his finger smashed by the skid loader bucket on a trailer. Just. It just happened and it just made me sick to my stomach. I never want to see my team get hurt working here. I just don't. Nobody does.
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What I'm trying to say is keep it in. Keep things in perspective. Keep your business in perspective. Keep your equipment in perspective. Keep you know, the most important thing is that everybody's going home at the end of the day and tomorrow's another day and it's gonna stop raining and the equipment's gonna get fixed and you're gonna be okay. That the key is you don't need. You know, I don't think quitting is ever the answer. Nobody has gone into business that is a quitter. If you're a quitter, you're not gonna ever own a business, because there's lots of times in business where you want to quit and you just can't quit. You have a responsibility to your team not to quit, a responsibility to yourself not to quit. Because if you don't get up and do something, nothing's gonna happen. Right? That's what I love about business ownership, is because if I don't get up and do something, it just doesn't happen by itself. Right. I'm not punching a time clock. I'm. I. It's. It's. It's all on my shoulders. And you can get caught up in that. I think a lot, but I've just learned that tomorrow's a new day. I've had enough experiences where when I thought everything was falling apart. And in hindsight, looking back on those experiences, I know that everything turned out exactly how it should have turned out. Daily scapes. One says, get out and sell more jobs. There you go. But Jordan says, daily. Go daily. Goals and rigidity and time off and boundaries between business time and personal. I agree with that. And I actually meant to say that when I was. When I wrote that question now was when you feel like that's another thing I've done is when you feel overwhelmed about things. My wife is always like, andy, make a list. Just make. When I've been super stressed this year, I haven't had any of those moments. And I don't know if that's because just it's just been that type of year or I'm just getting better at it. I just don't feel as stressed. I've had times where I just get so much in my head and I just can't figure it out. And she's always like, why don't we just make a list? Let's just talk through what you have to do and make a list. And I can't tell you how helpful that is. And you have a team. Like, if you have a team, try and unload some of that on a team. Sometimes I'll even have a conversation with either my wife or I'll have a conversation with my office manager or have a conversation with my finance manager and talked about everything that I have to do and ask and see, like, how can I offload some of these things on them to help everybody. You know, it's a team here, right? You don't have to handle everything if you can't Dan Achingacre says, get up every day and grind. Do what you say you're gonna do and execute it and communicate with the clients and clients waiting for you. Do those and you will persevere. Dan. I couldn't agree more. Sometimes I think we get in our heads and think that we don't want to communicate for some reason, we don't want to pick up the phone and tell somebody the bad news that, you know, we're going to be late or whatever. Sometimes there's phone calls that I don't want to make, and then when I make them, it wasn't as bad as I thought or whatever. Right. Breckstrad says when things are going wrong, it's important to find or remember your why, meaning why did you start your business also take time for yourself and then get back to work and problem solve. And that. That's what I was trying to say. Right. Like life's more important about than work. And maybe, you know, I'm just thinking through this. Maybe some of the reason I haven't felt the stress at different times this year, I just haven't felt it this year is because I've taken enough time off and taking some time to be with my family and done different things and trying to find. Create more margin in my life. And yeah, I'm just kind of thinking through that. But again, then when you do that, you get back to work and you fix the problem. I really, really like what you said there. I think that's really great. Marvel's Landscaping says just got. Just has to. Just got to keep grinding. There's always going to be something that happens. Just got to keep pushing forward. And I would agree there's days when you just have to push through, and that is part of owning a business. Things are hard. Days are going to be hard. I can always, you know, I can be positive and say that it's always going to be sunshine and roses and just have a better mindset. And I'm just not going to say it because I think that's ridiculous. I think there's some days. I'm not saying the mindset thing is wrong. I'm just saying that there's going to be days when this is hard and there's going to be days when you have to just do the stuff you don't want to do. You have to do your best to create margin in your life to keep things in perspective, to realize that tomorrow's a new day. And during those times, you still have to just sometimes get it done. You Just have to get it done. Not every day is going to be easy. Edmonds and son says. Does God not give his children more than we can handle or does he give us more than we can handle to stretch us and grow us to be like him? That is a very good statement and I think there's probably a little bit of everything in that. I think that some of the lessons that I've learned, even just from my dad dying suddenly two years ago. Coming up on the two year anniversary here, October 5th, I got the worst call of my life from my brother. And I'll never forget that day. And if you want to talk about a time in my life when I thought everything was falling apart, it would have been that time. And I look back at that now and I can see the ways that it was meant to be and the ways that I've grown since then and the lessons that I've learned from that. I still hate it with everything that I have. I still wish he was here every day. I wish I could call him. But I know that I, I guess I can see clear that obviously it was. Maybe I won't ever understand, but obviously that was what God's plan was and it has stretched me and grown me and pushed me to be a better person and a better man and a better husband and a better dad. And I'll just, I don't know. I, I appreciate that, Edmonds and Sons. Thanks for sharing that. I think you're right. Scrolling up here a little bit more. Calco Partners, what's going on? Yeah, I don't know. I think we might wrap it up on that, guys. I don't know what we're going to title this show. I think we kind of bounced all over the place, but maybe we'll title it. There's going to be some, or, you know, I don't know, hard days in business or something like that. I always struggle with what to title these shows, but we might call it something like that. So I appreciate everybody's input on that. I think that created a lot of good conversation and I appreciate everybody's support and everybody's participation. But yeah. So big shout out to Albany's Candy Factory. The official candy of the molded life podcast. Unilock Paving stones, Unilock, their authorized contractor program. And Unilock as a company, I appreciate their support and sponsorship of this episode and as well, Brunt Workwear, BruntWorkwear.com go check out their products, their workwear products and use coupon code MOLDER10 at checkout and guys. We will. We'll catch you on the next one. I hope everybody has a great week. See ya.
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This has been a molder outdoors and Mr. Producer production.