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The Mulder Life Podcast
Ep 157. Legacy Folders and Barn Fires: Preparing Your Business for the Unthinkable
01:02:15
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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. We are here. I have pressed, I have pressed record and we are live for another episode of the Mulder Life podcast. Hope everybody had a good, good week. I know we had a crazy week I guess. First let's, let's thank our sponsor. So our live sponsor today is synced up again. We had Weston on our show last week and that was a really good episode. We talked about everything to do with his software. So if you have never heard of his software, I would encourage you to go check it out. And I posted the live show on our Instagram, which is Alderoutdoors for those of you that will listen to this podcast later at Mulder Outdoors. And every week when we do our live show, after the live show I post the video on my Instagram for people to rewatch and you know, watch the video of it and then it gets the audio of this turns into what you guys are listening to on the podcast now. So yeah, it was a good episode. I encourage you to go back and listen to it and you can learn all about his software. So thanks to Weston and thanks to Synced up for being a sponsor of our what we're doing here. So Joe Harvey, what's going on man? Appreciate you being here. Scroll up here. I feel like I missed some stuff. Z Beaver, what's going on? I believe you are. Yeah, that's so zbever underscore. He came and bought a Salzburger for me this past Saturday and I told him about our what we do on Instagram. We got talking about the industry and stuff and so cool man. That's awesome. Awesome. Thanks for tuning in buddy. Glad you got sounds like you got home safe. So that's Good high landscape. Highland landscaping TX or Texas says. What's up, Andy? How do you like your Milwaukee toolboxes? I'm assuming you're talking about my toolboxes in the shop here. Let me know if that's what you're talking about and if that's what you're talking about. I have a lot of Milwaukee boxes of different things, but I. They're toolboxes. I have been super happy with them and absolutely love them. I have. Looking at them now, I have a big. I think it's a 54 inch one. And then I also have another 54 inch bottom. And I got the cabinet. They came out with a cabinet that kind of mounts to the side. That's really cool. I got that. And I've just loved everything that Milwaukee comes out with. Yeah, it's. They have great storage options and I've loved them in my shop here. And obviously we use lots of it in our landscape install trailer and anywhere I can utilize Pack Out. I'm trying to utilize Pack out just because it's so cool, but it's very functional and it's. It's really great in the shop here. I've really liked the toolboxes for all the tools. And a couple, I don't know, two months ago, I did a Mulder live show where I took my phone around and I did a shop tour. And then we ended up losing. Somehow I lost the connection while we were live and I lost that whole video. And so maybe I should do that another time. I don't know how. That wouldn't really translate very well into an actual podcast. So I don't know if I'll do that or not, but maybe one day I'll just do a live video of a shop walk around. And while I'm talking about that, I'm gonna transition really quick to something important about what I did with my shop. So Saturday I was in my shop here with my boys and a couple our friends. Kids were here. And then my nieces were here and my wife ended up stopping over and we were talking about. I don't know, she was talking about all the stuff that's in here. And like, what if I, you know, I think I said something like, you're gonna have a lot of stuff to get rid of if I ever pass away or when I pass away. And she says, have you. She said, have you ever taken a picture of everything in here? Like, everything, like in the drawers of the toolboxes and all that stuff. And then, you know, we talked about like how could I create some kind of inventory and values on things that would help her in the event that I would suddenly pass? And that all sounds really morbid and like oh man, why do you have to talk about that? But last October my dad died suddenly and they, my mom and dad, well mostly my mom had put together a folder kind of like a Dave Ramsey would call it the legacy folder or legacy drawer. We have something like that personally at home with all of our, which my wife is amazing and put all that together, all the passwords and all of our accounts and all the account numbers and all the policies and so on and so forth. But thinking about that for from a business standpoint, my mom had a bunch of stuff that they had put in there for my dad's trucking company business and that that folder came out the day he died. And I'll never forget that. I'll never forget my mom worrying about things that we didn't know about, but they were inside that folder after she opened it. And those are things that we don't like to think about but we really should. Especially those of you that are business owners listening to this. And I know I'm really getting serious here really quick, but I probably could do a better job now. It helps my sister in law does all of our financial stuff and so she has access and knows everything, everything within the business financially. But as far as like the items and things that I own within the company, yes, they're all listed. A lot of things are listed on the balance sheet but there's a lot of things that are not that are small like say a full toolbox full of tools or you know, I have shelves full of different types of hand tools and battery powered tools and stuff for my four wheeler. And I'm just looking at things, talking about stuff and it would be helpful if I had all that somewhere. And then also in the case of a fire, I think it could be really helpful. When I was still living at home, I was out of high school, my brother was home and my dad was working in the steel mill at that time he wasn't driving a truck for himself. And one night my parents barn started on fire and the whole thing burned to the ground. And my dad was at work and my brother had a semi that was parked. He was driving a semi at the time and it was parked next to my parents barn and it was me and my brother and my sister were home and my mom was home and the barn lit on fire. My mom saw a glow through her window and opened up the curtain and saw the barn was on fire. It's like one of the most traumatic events of my life other than my dad suddenly passing away. And I'll never forget the series of events that followed that. And then the months, you know, weeks, days, weeks, months after that where we had to go through and sift through the ash and the barn rubble and try and identify everything that was in the barn for the insurance company. I'll never forget that my grandpa came over. My dad's dad came over at that time and I remember him sitting in a chair and we would sift through the burnt barn and everything in it and identify what it was, remember what it was, and he would write it down and we would take a picture of it. And that went on for, I don't know, weeks. I really don't remember how long it went on for. It went on a long time. And then we were able to replace that stuff with the insurance and all that stuff. So anyways, my wife sitting here Saturday. So there's a long, drawn out answer and I'm not looking at any of the questions right now, but I think this is important to talk about. So. So anyways, my wife is in here Saturday and she's like, well, what if the barn would ever burn down? You know, do you have pictures of everything? And I didn't really think about that. And I said, well, I have pictures, but they're not like in really one place. And so anyways, like, immediately I'm like, well, why don't I just do it right now? So I took my phone out and I opened every single drawer on every single toolbox and everything that I own, all the doors and I took a picture of what was in each drawer. I took a picture of each wall on the barn. I took a picture of each cabinet, I took a picture of my compressor, I took a picture of my bolt B. And I have like a whole Milwaukee, like organizer stack where there's like 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12. There's like 20 bins of different fasteners and like pex fittings and copper fittings and different types of screws and nails and all that stuff. I opened up every single one and took a picture. And then I, you know, just the. A whole picture of a wall and each, each, all the four walls and all that stuff. And then I went up in the loft and took pictures of, you know, shelving units and stuff. And then I immediately created a folder in my Dropbox, which. My Dropbox, I run basically everything off My company, everything in the company is in my Dropbox. We run everything in there. So I can log on to my Dropbox anywhere, anytime and I can access every file within the company. And I created a folder called Shop Photos and I uploaded. There was like 350 pictures and I just uploaded and uploaded them in there. Excuse me. And now it's in there. So I would say the next step to that, which would push it another step further would be to go through and somehow quantify the items in there, which would take hours and hours and hours. I don't know if it's worth it. I think I have enough family around and support for my wife if something like that were. If say I were to pass away but the barn was still here, that they could help her value the tools that are in each one of the drawers and the cases and stuff that would. It'd be very easy for somebody to help her with that. But I don't know, I, I guess I have to think through that. The, the large value things like four wheelers and pressure washers and air compressors, all that stuff is all line item within the business as far as in the balance sheet and just our. Not the balance sheet, but just our. What am I looking, what word am I looking for? The item catalog within our company or equipment catalog. Anything that's over a thousand dollars is line item. And that goes for the insurance company as well. Anything which actually that changed this year. It used to be we had a thousand dollar threshold where anything that was valued or purchased over $1,000 had to be line itemed on the insurance policy. But now we've transitioned to a different. Now it's anything over 5,000. So that was something within the insurance company that they said, listen, we don't need to know. We don't need to know everything. Everything that's over a thousand now can be everything over 5,000 and everything below 5,000 doesn't need to be. What's the word I'm looking for that they use? Scheduled. That's the word I'm looking for. Scheduled. Let's grab a drink of water here. Sorry. Yeah. So I don't know, just a bunch of stuff that. Been that since my wife came here and, and we were just talking about that. Then I started thinking about how, you know, what would prevent and what would create a, a blessing. What would be a blessing for her, as if, if I were to pass. How could I bless her in a way by, by taking these photos or like what am I, you know, I don't want it to be messy. I want it to be easy for her. I want her to be able to sell everything easily, and I want her and keep what she wants to keep. And so I think having photos like that is a great thing, not only for insurance and not only for that kind of instance, but more so exactly, you know, for a fire. So, yeah, I'm gonna scroll up here and see. See if there's any other questions here. Mike, how to hardscape. What's up, buddy? You know, Mike Blitz, I gotta say. Um, I want to thank you personally, Mike, without your. We talked about this maybe a year or two ago or. Well, not a year ago. What am I talking about? I don't know. You. You told me you need. I need to turn this into a podcast. And now we're turning it into a podcast. When this episode drops. I don't know when the first one's gonna drop yet, technically. Is it live? I don't know. You guys can look it up if you want. Molder Life podcast on all your podcast platforms. Anyways, we haven't dropped. We dropped the intro, I believe, but we haven't. I haven't really made it official yet, but talking about it here sure tells about 90 people that it's up there. But anyways, Mike, I appreciate you pushing me to do something like this. It takes. It's taking me a long time. There's a lot of stuff that goes into a podcast. A lot of stuff. More than I anticipated. I have. Mr. Producer is helping me with the production of everything, and I could not have done this without him. He is absolute genius of this industry, and I am very thankful to have him helping me with this and getting this off the ground. I also have. Thank Steph, who does a lot more than just my finances. She helped me with getting this podcast off the ground, and it's a lot of work. There's still a couple things I need to. I need to record the intro a little bit better, and there's just things that I'm working on. But once That's. Once all the, like, the startup details are dialed in, then it's just. It's just recording them and. And post them, but it's a lot of work to get it off the ground. So anyways, Mike, thanks for pushing me to do that and encourage. Encouraging me to do that and. Yeah. So innovative. Lawn and landscape. What's up, buddy? Good evening from Delta Airlines over Maryland, homebound to Connecticut. Wow, that's really cool that you're watching this while you're on an airplane. That's really cool. Caleb Leatherbury, do you think you could have used a larger machine on your big job site? Yeah, yeah, I'm sure I could have or I can could have had a bigger machine, but if I went any bigger than what I than that KX80, it definitely would not work on other job sites. This job site is very abnormal and I don't typically work on job sites this large. And so currently I'm happy with the machine. I definitely could use a bigger one, but we're making it happen and that's what matters. So Highland Landscaping, Texas says the packout. Sorry, should have specified. Well, I just spent a lot of time talking about my toolboxes, Highland Landscaping. But as far as packouts go, I love pack out. I love everything pack out. I'm a pack out fanboy and I intend to continue with that trajectory on my life because they constantly are improving the platform and it's just fantastic. And most things Milwaukee comes out with is pretty much amazing. So I still run all DeWalt power tools, battery power, power tools and the reason for that is I have like 100 batteries. I started with DeWalt power tools years ago and I consistently built on that platform. In hindsight, I'll be honest with you, in hindsight I wish I would have changed to Milwaukee because they do have more to offer. Not more that I really need, but honestly they're both very comparable though. They're both. I don't have a favorite brand. I love DeWalt stuff. I love Milwaukee stuff. Whatever. They they all make amazing stuff. So. Caleb Distant 24 don't forget to press record. I have pressed record. We are good to go. We are 17 minutes in on this podcast. So on site wi says innovated lawn landscape when you're going to get Andy in a switch and go. If I can respond to that, my goal at some point is to get a swap loader, not a switch and go. And my goal for that is getting that when I have a big enough yard to have space to put different size bins and flatbeds and all kinds of the goodies that go along with that kind of a system. And right now I do not have the space for that. So until I have the space for that, I will not be moving into that style of truck. Mountain Strong landscape. Asked what's your opinion on people booking a year or two at a time, I tried to stop after 12 weeks. Budget change is yearly.
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Growing a successful business isn't easy. Thankfully there's help Andy molder is making available to you the tools and resources that have propelled him to profitability. Don't let the financial health of your company be an afterthought. Visit the Resources link in the podcast description or in the bio of the Molder Outdoors Instagram account. There you'll be able to instantly access the programs, contracts, forms and worksheets to find better employees and clients, improve your job costing and cash flow, and even sign up for one on one business or financial consultations. There's a reason you're listening to this podcast. You know Andy's commitment to excellence and his track record of success. Now you can establish those foundations in your business with the methods Andy uses. When you click the link in the podcast description at checkout, use the Coupon code Molder LifePodcast that's all one word. Molder Life podcast to save 10% on
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everything Mountain Strong Landscape Asked what's your opinion on people booking a year or two at a time? I tried to stop after 12 weeks. Budget change is yearly. That's a good question because I'm going to be fighting that my whole year this year. And what are my thoughts on that? My thoughts are I don't have a problem. I'm looking at a very large project already for 2023. I've been in the design process of that for four or five months already. And the pricing on it. When I finally put a price on it, it's going to have a lot of disclaimers with it and that's just gonna have to be how it is. So if you're I'm gonna end up guaranteeing, I'm gonna end up booking jobs this year for next year and I'm going to be able, I'll be able to give them a price. But the contract and the proposal is going to say that all this pricing is subject to change based on 2023 pricing. Our labor rate is going to change based on based on our 2023 budget, which I won't be able to predict until we get to January, February of 2023. But at least it'll give them a baseline. And I most likely will have some kind of disclaimer that, you know, this year our pricing went up x amount of percentage on average and next year I would unless something changes, plan on something like that on that increase. But at least this is kind of a baseline. But you have to communicate that with them and they have to sign off on that and agree to that and know that and make sure it's in writing and make sure they you know, even on the contract, if they're going to sign a contract, make them initial that exact section because you have to protect yourself against that. And you know, it's very easy to get really worked up about pricing changing right now. And I caught myself in that a little bit this week mentally, I think, and just being worried about all the stuff and all the chatter that's going on. There was actually a point this week where I, I just had so much noise in my head I shut off my DMs on my, on my stories because I just needed to clear my head for a day and there was just a lot of stuff going on this week. And so if it's very easy to get wrapped up in the worry of all that, of the pricing changing and all that stuff, but just be calm, communicate with your customers, communicate in your contract what you need to communicate for fuel surcharges and all that stuff. All the stuff is out of our control and just make sure that you're covering your rear end basically, is what I'm saying. So that's what I'll say on that Mountain Strong. I hope that was helpful for you. Scroll up here a little bit. See what other questions came in. If there's anything. I have a few that came in earlier today. Innovative lawn landscape responding to on site wi talked with him back in January M I told he needs, I told him he needs to get on it. He's talking about the switch and go system. Innovative law. We got Z beavers talking to him. He had just ordered says he just ordered a cabin chassis after receiving he's getting a switch and go system. There's a lot of guys that like that. Switch and go system. Scroll up here a little bit. I am way behind on scrolling up here. Did you switch to synced up? Ccsmith96 I have not switched to sync up Synced up. If I'm going to sync. If I'm going to switch to synced up I'm not going to switch on. I'm not going to switch to it right now because I'm very overwhelmed and very with work and lack of team members and I don't have time to sit in the office and switch that up right now nor do I have the mental capacity to do that. We talked about that a little bit last week and kind of the reasons of why I'm holding back right now. Yeah. So. Let me see here. Oh, innovative long and landscape $5 Delta Wi Fi. That's so cool that you're watching that while you're flying. That's worth it. Did you switch for two foot for the block wall? Angel Velasquez I'm not. I'm not following what you're asking there. Ant underscore Mack. These live videos are like waiting on my favorite football team to come on. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Another question about did you run synced up? I just answered that hall underscore lawn underscore landscape asked, do you ever run the DeWalt 8 inch concrete saw? Yes, we have that in our job trailer. The. It's a Flexvolt concrete saw and I very much love that saw. I got it last summer when we were working on a commercial project for Albany's Candy Factory. We were working on their employee center entrance and I bought it after I borrowed the electricians or the plumber. Plumber let me borrow his Milwaukee one to cut off some bolts that were some like, it doesn't matter what it was. We were cutting some metal and I needed to cut it. And he grabbed his saw because it had a metal cutting blade on it. Mine had a concrete blade. And so anyways, I zipped them off and like, okay, that thing's sweet. I ended up going to buy one that day. I knew where I could get one and so I went and bought one and I ended up really, really loving that saw. It's not for everything. Don't expect it to cut all your pavers on the job site. That's a ridiculous expectation. But what you can expect is to use it for really, really tight radiuses because it's a, you know, the blade is almost half the size of your typical 14 inch blade. And also it's very lightweight. So I really have come to love scoring the patio before you cut it in and because it's easier on the back because I can hold that thing with one hand, stand up straight and just walk my score line everywhere. And it's just. Oh, man, I just love it. It's. It's amazing. I actually bought another one. I have it in a box. I bought it last fall. It was a really big sale on Acme tools.com and I have it. I haven't even opened it. It's in my garage. I bought another one because the sale was so good and I thought sometimes it might be nice to have two and so. And I wanted to have one around the shop and if we ever needed to keep one on the trailer and then if we needed another one to go and run, do something real quick, I could just grab that extra one. That's at the shop and go do something or whatever. So yeah, I, I really, really, really like it. Most things Flexvolt. Flexvolt are amazing. Let me scroll down here a little bit. Have you ever filled, have you filled any of your positions open in your company? Angel, that's a great question. I had a really rough week with that kind of a thing. Feel very defeated going into this week. A little bit. I had, I had an interview. I had a guy that inter. That I talked to either Friday of last week or Monday. We talked on the phone. I was happy with the conversation. He had experience. He knew where our shop was. He knew what we did. He wanted to do exactly what I was hiring for as a maintenance position. He came to the shop two days later in the morning, was there early. Seemed like he'd be a solid guy. I told him I'd let him know by the end of the day or the next morning. I decided I want to hire him. I texted him and told him, hey, I would like to move forward with hiring you. We're going to email you all the paperwork you need to fill out and if you want, you could start Thursday and we start at 7am and he said, okay, sounds great. The next day I, because we didn't get all the paperwork back and I didn't hear anything back, started texting them, no response. Called him twice, left a message, nothing. And I've never heard from him since. Never showed up and totally ghosted me. It's very, very defeating. I just, I can't believe the guy actually came to the shop and I met him and he still, and he still did this. It's just employees are the. In my opinion, employees are one of the hardest things about this. This, about owning your own business. It's the most exhausting. It's the most. I don't know, it's just a lot. It's. It's exhausting. And I have a lot of work that we're doing. I have a lot of maintenance work that's coming. I need to hire one or two more guys and I. We had an add on indeed for two months or something. Maybe it's still up. That was a bust. I have a guy that I am talking with about getting on a phone interview for maybe this week. It's just exhausting and I just, I don't know. It's just a struggle that I'm having. I haven't filled out. I haven't filled any of our positions. I really, really need to hire two more people. What was so frustrating is I was willing to pay the guy exactly what he wanted to get paid. I mean, everything was how it needed to be and he just ghosted me. It's just like, you know, why, why does it have to be like this? I don't know. It's just exhausting. So. So that's where I'm at on that. I don't like to be Mr. Debbie Downer, but man, that really, really frustrating Earth Care underscore. Kentucky or ky. I'm assuming that's Kentucky. When you're several months booked out, what percentage to do you take to hold their spot on the schedule and is it refundable if 2023 pricing exceed exceeds their budget? I would still require a 50% deposit. That's what we require on basically all of our jobs after that. You know, I've said, you know, side note on that, if it's over 50,000, I usually will break it up into multiple payments or a few more like project progress payments throughout the job. But 50,000 and on the under, I typically do 50% down, 50% when we're completed. And in the past I've done like 10% to hold the spot or whatever. You know, like, I'm not going to do that anymore. And I don't think you should do that because right now the spots in our schedule are so important and so valued because lack of people, more work than we can do, and just sheer demand. So if somebody really wants you to do the job, they need to be fully committed. And fully committed for me would be 50% down. And, and that's that signing of the contract. You can decide for yourself what you feel comfortable with. But I don't have a single problem with that. Also, you need to be ordering materials so far in advance. So even if they're, even if you're booking them several months out, you should probably be ordering their material right now anyway. So you got, you got money on the table and your vendors need to be paid within 30 days. The vendors are not your bank. Don't treat your vendors like they're the bank because they're not. They're vendors. So after they sell you material, pay your bill and don't rob Peter to pay Paul. And don't overextend yourself. And you don't overextend yourself by running your business off of the deposits that people give you if you need to order materials. And I could spend an hour and maybe one day I will, talking about how people should deal with their vendors and the disaster that it's become in our industry in my opinion. But anyways, I digress about that. It's just don't feel bad for asking for your full deposit. And as far as is it refundable if 2023 pricing exceeds their budget? That is probably, I don't know, you need to have some type of amount of money if you're going to book out to 2023. It probably could be something in your contract that a percentage of the deposit is non refundable, especially on ordered materials. It's very important that you put in there any materials that have been ordered and paid for. If you decide to cancel the job or whatever, that money should not be refunded. This is just the world we live in. You know, like we me and my wife ordered a fridge for our house and they required a 50% deposit and I probably won't see that fridge for six months. And what if in six months I decide I don't want the fridge? Too bad. Like you're taking the fridge or I mean that's what that should be your. That's the commitment level. I mean I guess life, things can change and stuff happens but there needs to be some kind of plan and something in writing that that kind of spells that out. I don't know. I could see that get it becoming a sticky situation. I guess I meant maybe that's on a case by case basis. I guess I don't know. Those are hard questions because these are real issues that we're going to deal with this year and I will deal with them. Especially with the way our season is booked and it's, you know, middle of March already. So these are, these are great questions and things that I'll have to work through personally and maybe when I start working through them I'll talk about them and what I decided to do. But these are my first, I guess my first thoughts on. On these questions. Just sitting here right now with no really, no really preparation on answering that. But pride hardscape communication is key and make sure it's in your contracts. That's right. It's basically what we were talking about right there. Scroll up here a little bit more. Anthony Pisa Peza8 asked what do you use to dig drill your bases for pergolas? We have a auger for our mini excavator. I didn't always have that. We've in the past I've either rented an auger for my skid loader or I rented an auger for my mini skid. But I very rarely if ever dig holes by hand. That's what we use now. I mean, now I have a auger for my mini excavator, so that's what we use. Superiorhardscaped asked, what's your next equipment purchase? What is my next equipment purchase? That's a good question. I don't know if I really have anything on my radar right now. I'm waiting on some things to come in. I'm waiting for my fork, my hydraulic fork attachment for my Kubota. I'm waiting on my ripper attachment for my Kubota. I am waiting on my Ram 5500, my gas Ram 5500 that I bought last October or November to get the dump body put on. I believe that comes in maybe this week or maybe it came in last week. I was hoping to have that truck by February and now we're middle of the March and it hasn't even been started to work on. So that's something that, I mean, that's been paid for. I'm not purchasing that. That's all paid for now, but I'm still waiting on it. So that'll be exciting when I finally get it. I don't, I don't really have anything planned, you know, right now. I really don't. I'm happy with the things that we're doing. I will say last week I was really wishing I had an extra full size skid loader and maybe a bigger one like a TL12. And I've been searching Facebook marketplace for a good used TL12. And strictly just there was times last week where I wanted to move more material While our Takahoochi TL10 was moving other material. But again, this, this job site that we're on is so rare for us. I'm trying to not make fast or unwise decisions and buy things that we don't need typically and just it's just gonna take us a little bit longer. And really, once are my maintenance guys get rolling, I won't have so many guys on this job site. And so there really. There will not be enough guys to drive two track machines. There's just times when I wish I had another one. And you know, this, this, this job has maxed out the capacity of the TL10. There's times when it'd be nice for unloading the semis. Some of the boulders are so heavy. Oh my word. That the. We've been able to unload everything so far. I haven't not been able to get a pallet off the semi. But you know, we are like maxed out. We're like teeter totter and getting off the semi. And so sometimes it'd be nice to have a TL12, like a bigger one to lift more weight. But again, I'm not, I don't. Not that the pricing on use equipment is so crazy. Every time I find one, it's like 50, 60 grand and I'm like, Man. Or even 70. It's like, I just. I don't know. It doesn't excite me enough to get me to want to buy another one. And that's a lot of. That's another chunk of money to shell out. And I'm just, I'm. I don't know, I don't want to make. I don't want to buy something and let that sucker sit there too much. And I really think once we get going on maintenance and I. Two of my guys go back to do that, I'm not gonna have enough guys to run that much equipment. And so what's the point? I don't know. I just, I. I'm going back and forth on that. So that's the long answer. I seem to be having a lot of long answers tonight, but whatever Z Beaver underscore asks, any recommendations for new new guys getting into hardscapes? If I was new getting into hardscapes, I would. I would spend as much time finding good channels on Instagram to go and watch. I would probably get Caleb almonds. How to hard Not Hard to hardscape the hardscape academy.com shameless plug for them. Caleb and Brittany put together a bunch of really good training videos and I would encourage you to go check that out. It's on the hardscape academy.com and they have lots of how to videos and they know how to install things correctly and how to talk about compaction equipment and how to compact appropriately and how to install and how to cut and all that stuff. I just think there's a lot of resources on Instagram and Facebook that if you spend enough time, you can find some really good stuff and learn some really good stuff. I highly encourage you to be going to any kind of like Teco showcase or the Unilock Contractor Advantage seminars, which those kind of just finished a lot of that stuff. All just finished. But just look at those major brands of pavers and see if they have training stuff online. What else? Just there's a lot of information out there. If you spend some time and search out and seek out good people on social media to follow, you can learn a lot I show, I try and show a lot on my channel and I'm not. I don't claim to be the best hardscaper in all the lands, but I do try and show how to do things the right way. I don't specifically do that every day, but if you watch enough, you'll pick up on a lot and ask questions. Don't be afraid to ask questions to people. Don't be afraid to send DMS and ask questions. Hey, how do you do this? Or I've never done this before. How do you do that? And just seek out good advice like that. It's all out there. It really is. There's so much good information out there. There's bad information. Yes. But you, you can, you can, you know, smell out the bad stuff pretty easily. So. Yeah, that's kind of a. I hope that's helpful. Zbeaver underscore. I hope that's helpful for you, buddy. And DM me if you have any other questions. Man. Great info. Halls underscore. Lawn landscape. Great info. Thanks. I have a Milwaukee on my list for a fire pit radius. He's referring to, I believe the, the 8 inch demo saw. I believe that's what we were talking about. Yeah, small radiuses like that are. That saw comes in clutch. Let me keep scrolling up here. Green dreams landscape. What is permeable base? Great question. What is permeable base? So what he's referring to is a base system under your pavers that allows water to drain through and filter and percolate through the ground. For us we use a three quarter clean stone. It's, it's fully washed, there's no fines in it. So it allows water to drain all the way through. And then on top of that we use an inch of bedding stone or like a number nine or some people call it HBPB around here. A number nine stone, it's like a quarter inch chip. Again, it's a wash stone and we're using that for our bedding course on our pavers. And that's usually about one inch, one inch thick. And that is of course below your three quarter clean. You're using a geotextile fabric. Some applications can be woven, some applications can be non woven. I've used both. I have jobs that have been in for eight years with non woven fabric and nothing's moved an inch. And I've used woven fabric on stuff that's really. Most of the time it's a soil separator. It's not so much, it's not so Much a ground stabilization. If you have mushy ground or you know, which Caleb Allman had talked about that this week, actually you can beat stone into that and you know, firm up the soil with a jumping jab compactor. We also use a product called Drive Grid. It's like a Triax geogrid, basically that's by tensar. Unilock calls it Drive Grid and we use that in our pavers. We usually put that in our middle of our base or about 4 to 6 inches below the top of the paver. That's just cheap insurance. It's the cheapest insurance I think you could put on a paver patio in my opinion. But permit that's that the permeable base is the open graded base, the open graded stone open graded bedding for your pavers. And if you use a permeable paver, your water within the paver or the joints or however you're doing your permeable system will drain into your base and percolate through the ground. It's also important on any, any kind of permeable base to give the, to give the base a place to drain out. So if you put an X, they would call it an exfiltration pipe to a lower point. Sometimes we do it to a pop up, sometimes we daylight it somewhere, depending on what's possible within the property. Sometimes I don't do it if the property is all sand, like what we're working on right now. I'm going to use a permeable base system and as far as I can dig over there is all sand. I'm not worried about needing that exfiltration pipe because the water will never ever, ever get to it because it will filter into the ground. But in a clay soil type it's very important to do that, especially when you're up near a house. Now we install a permeable base system on all of our patios, but most of the time our pavers and our joint material is not permeable. So the patio is not technically permeable. But still, if any water does penetrate the joints in any way, shape or form, that water can drain through the base and not sit in the base. And the main reason in my opinion for having that is I think you have better joint life out of your poly sands because you're not holding moisture in the stone. And then for our climate we have freeze thaw climate. Not everybody has that, but for us the base doesn't hold moisture. And so in a freeze thaw climate that your road grade base that people typically would use in the past and even with your sand bedding, which I've never used sand bedding ever. There's a fly here anyways, that would hold water and every winter it would hold water. It would freeze, thaw, freeze, thaw throughout the winter and then keep expanding and keep pushing and then heaving your patio and breaking your joints and thus creating more of a problem. And since I've switched to a permeable based system regardless of if the pavers are permeable, I have never had a pal. I have never had a patio failure since I switched to that ever. And I can say that with confidence. So that's that is the gist of that. He also asked Green Dream Landscape says can I lay porcelain Can I lay porcelain on a permeable base 2 by 3 by 3 so 3 quarter inch thick, 2 foot by 3 foot? I'm guessing I have done that. I have laid Unilocks natural stone, the Black river natural stone which is 78 of an inch thick and I have laid that on a permeable base and it has hold held up perfectly. And yeah, I that's the. I've done that in a small. A small. It was a landing for somebody's house and we that's the system we used. And like I said, we're going on year three or four and I believe I mean let's change this spring. It looks perfect. Let's see here. Scrolling up here a little bit. Pride Hardscape. No respect. No respect about what? Dude? What am I? What did I miss? I must have missed something. SL Mitchell 91 gotta say, appreciate all your posts and live feeds. Even though we have different lines of work, it's been helping with purchases and decision making in the moderate modernizing of my grandfather's business. That is so cool. I really appreciate that. Thanks for the encouragement. I really appreciate all of you watching week in and week out and that's really cool. That's encouraging to hear that Ant underscore Mac said there isn't too many people who enjoy this industry anymore, which is sad. Yeah, I don't know. I mean I'm in this what we've been doing here and Instagram as a whole. There's a huge community that love the outdoor green industry and go to Gie and you'll see how many people like the green industry and hardscaping as a whole. But it's not like, you know, I understand what you're saying, but I also would argue that there is a huge amount of people that enjoy this industry and people that care about this industry and that are pushing this industry forward. So, you know, I don't know. I agree, but I also don't agree. Reverend Jamal at least call and say, hey, I'm not interested. Very unprofessional. He's talking about the guy that didn't call me or show up. I would agree. Widener landscape. Can you talk about the system you are going to with opposed to switch and go? So we were talking about that earlier about why I would go to a swap loader. So if you never heard of a swap loader. It's a hydraulically driven system. Well, actually they make a really small one now that would go on a 5500 size truck or a 550 that I believe is electric. So basically it's like a. You see them on like big. We see them on all size trucks now, but you see them on big dumpster companies. And it's like a big hook. It's a hook lift. Swap loader is actually a brand. It's not the, it's a hook lift system. So you have like a big arm and it has a big C hook, you know, kind of a C shaped hook. And then the bin has like a big U bar and it comes in and it hooks the, hooks the box. And then, you know, it's actually down like this when it's off the truck and then it lifts the box up onto the truck and then slides forward to the cabin. I just like that system. I think it's way stronger. I have my, my, my good friend Paul who builds all of our dump trucks, installs those and they're just phenomenal systems and super, super strong. And there's no cables, excuse me, no cables to break or anything like that. And that's just the style system I'd like to go with. So. Yeah. Jaden Riviera, three five one. Sorry, I'm trying to read the question at the same time as reading your name. You didn't pull the trigger fast enough for the hire. At this point, you need to hire them on the spot. Yeah, I wondered about that. Like, was I, was I too, Like, I don't know. I mean it was the, the day that I met him in person. Like that evening, that late afternoon that evening I texted him, I said, I would like to hire you. And two days later he could have started like, I don't know. I mean, how much faster do I need to be? And if it needed to be so fast, why didn't he tell me? Hey, I'm really trying to Make a decision. Can you let me know as soon as possible? There's nothing like that synced up. Weston, what's going on? There he is, guys. The man, the myth, the legend. He was here live last week. Big sponsor of our show, as you can see. He says. Exactly. Buy materials with deposit money. That's what we were talking about earlier. I am way behind on these comments, I think. Let me scroll up here a little bit more. Alberto D50 asked any advice for starting a landscape business? Man, that's a big, huge question. I would say do your best and just worry about yourself. Be a man of your word or a woman of your word and just don't get stressed with what other people are doing. Do really good work. Be where you're going to be when you say you need to be there. Call people back and just be a man of your word. Like I said, a lot of business stuff boils down to those couple of things and why I see a lot of. I think some of the success we've had is by just doing those things. And I don't always. I'm not. I fail at that sometimes. I really do. It's very hard to keep up and to call everybody back and to do everything. But as much as you can do those things and you will. You will grow, you can grow slowly. Don't over commit, under promise, over deliver. And just take that to heart and think about that when. When things get busy and. And just remain calm. I've talked about that before. My uncle told me, but when I was starting my business, like, just remain calm. And anytime I've made a poor decision within my company, it's because I wasn't calm and I wasn't thinking clearly and I was in a hurry. So, yeah, that's. I guess, what I would say. Landscape, underscore machine. What's going on, buddy? Does your machine cost per hour go up when you have your trimble installed? If that makes sense, I completely understand. Yes, it should go up because the cost of that trimble should be worked into your daily rate and, Or. And then that could be obviously broken out into your hourly rate, and you could simply do that by, you know, if the trimble system costs you 25,000 bucks, you're going to add $25,000 in value to that machine. You can project that out as long as you think you're going to keep the machine. So say that's 10 years. Say, I want to keep this. I'm projecting. I want to recoup the cost of this machine. Say Five years, not how long you're going to keep it, how fast you want to recoup the cost of the machine. And technically you could say, okay, I'm going to keep this machine for say it's five years. So if your machine cost is X, you know how long you're going to keep the machine or you want to buy how long you want to, how long you want it to take for you to recoup the cost of the machine. You, you can, you can figure out how much your, your maintenance costs are going to be on the machine. Say that's 2000, 5000, whatever you think it's going to be, you can work that into the yearly price. You can then break that out. You know, your cost of the machine plus the trimble system, plus the tilt rotator. If you have that add all that together, you divide that by five. If it's going to be five years, you can then divide that by 12 if you work 12 months out of the year, or divide that by eight if you work eight months out of the year. That becomes your monthly rate that you need to make sure you're recouping at a minimum with your maintenance costs worked in. Then from that you can work that down into five days a week if you wanted to. So then you get your daily rate. And then from that you can work that down into how many hours a day you think you will run that machine. And this is obviously estimating. You have to try and estimate and be realistic. I'm actually, maybe I'm only going to actually use this machine three days a week. You can easily figure that out. Then you're going to get your cost per day. And then you can figure out your cost per hour if you want. And then from there you can decide how much you want to make off of that piece of equipment. Some equipment will come in at $150 a day at your cost, or $70 a day or $250 a day. It's up to you then how much you want to make and recoup. You know, in these, a lot of these estimating softwares synced up to be an example, they will help you with that because it will then take your overhead and it will put your over. If you're doing a multiple overhead recovery system like what we do, you spreads your overhead across labor, equipment and materials. And so there's be percentage of your overhead that gets split between those things so that you're, you're, you're spreading your overhead across all the items you're Adding to your estimate and then on top of that you can decide how much profit you want to add to that. So that's again a really long answer that I hope is helpful. But you need to, you know, if you're adding those types of things to your equipment, there's no reason you can't charge for reduces your man hours. And so just because it reduces man hours, you should be as an owner, if you're investing in that piece of equipment, you are, you're being, you're going to be able to reduce your man hour rate because you don't need so many men, say to hold men or women to hold your, say your grade rod on an excavating job. You can now move those hours into your equipment that make you more money as an owner and also allows you to do more work because you can do it faster. So there's the efficiency level of it. There's the opportunity cost by the more work you're doing, you do, the more you're able to go and do. And then there's also the actual labor costs that you're saving by not having to have that guy there. But there's no reason that you can't. You're the one that took the risk and spent the money to invest in a piece of technology. There's no reason you can't make more money off of that because you took the risk. It's not just we have this set up on our excavator and just because of that we can do jobs faster, which I guess you could think about it that way, but I don't think it should be like that. I'm the one that took the risk to do all this and to get this equipment. So instead of me having to spend money on labor, now I'm putting that money back in my pocket by investing in this type of equipment. And that's how I think about it. So I mean, I guess you can argue with me if you don't agree, but that's what I think. When you invest in things like tilt rotators and laser guided systems and any piece of equipment that you're investing in to reduce labor, it will in turn make you more money because you're the one that's taking the risk and you have to be charging for that appropriately in my opinion. So part two, Paul Jansen, part two question. What was your part one? Sorry, I don't remember. Anyways, what made you decide gas over diesel for the new 5500? And second question. Oh, two part question. Sorry. What made you decide to go gas over diesel for the new 5500. And second question. Why didn't you bring the case skid steer to the big job site? Why don't you bring the case skid steer. Why don't I bring the case? I'll start with that. This may be the last one. I. I never even looked at these questions. I'm sorry, guys. We had a lot of participation tonight, and this was so cool. Really, really appreciate it. Why don't I bring the case kid steer. So I thought about that Saturday when I was driving. I'm like, why don't I just bring this thing to the job site? 1, because it will lift a third of what I need to lift, does not have a big lift capacity. And second, it will not do well in the sand at all. It's all sand out there. And that thing would be stuck in like five seconds. I gotta have tracks out there and I gotta have. I. If I were to have two machines, it would be strictly for lift capacity. And there's no way that that tire machine will do nothing in the sand. It will just spin the tires and get stuck. Why did I decide gas over diesel for the new 5500? I did that because, one, I couldn't. I didn't know I wanted to try gas. I want to see if we can get away with gas because it saves me about $12,000 on the truck to go with gas. They had one in stock last fall. The price was right. And part of me is thinking it was a great move because now we're paying five bucks a gallon for diesel. And if I don't need to be driving the diesel around, why drive it? I can. We can be driving the gas and save a little bit of money. I mean, it's really not that much, but whatever. So I. I basically did it because sometimes I look at that Cummins diesel and I love towing with that thing. Don't get me wrong, I love towing with it. It's one of. It's the best vehicle I've ever owned, that best towing vehicle I have ever driven. It's phenomenal. But this truck will most likely be hauling our landscape trailer everywhere. It doesn't need to have a giant diesel engine. It's going to be totally fine to haul that trailer around. And we're going to use the diesel to haul, to move equipment around. And I potentially will buy another diesel down the road. But I wanted to try gas, and I was able to save $12,000 at least by going that route. And we're going to give it a try. So I just, I couldn't swallow another diesel last fall. I. But I, I want, I needed to buy another dump truck. I wanted to get another upgrade in our fleet, and that's what I decided. So we'll see. And if it does what I needed to do and it tows, then what. What I needed to. To just buy another gas because. And I don't know, sometimes I, when I change the oil, I'm like, man, this is really expensive to change oil. And every time I put definite, I'm like, I'm really annoyed that I had to put def in this thing and blah, blah, blah, you know? So do the benefits outweigh the, the, the, you know, the, the, the negative, you know, the positives outweigh the negatives? I don't know. We're gonna find out. And that's why I'm excited to get it back. So. All right, guys, that's gonna wrap up another, another episode of the Molder Life podcast recorded live here on Instagram every week. Usually every week, Sunday nights at 8:30pm and I really want to thank our sponsors synced up for being a great sponsor of the show, of the live show. And I, I'm looking forward to another week at work. We got a bunch of stuff coming. It's going to be a great week of continuing to stack boulders. And for those of you that don't know, we have a YouTube channel. And I've been trying to put a video up there every week, kind of an update video. And then sometimes I get a little ambitious and I edit other videos, just random excavating or whatever kind of videos I feel like. And that's, that's also molder outdoors on YouTube. So I'd appreciate you guys going to check that out and maybe subscribing or whatever you think. And yeah, guys, so have a great night. Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next time.
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This has been a molder outdoors and Mr. Producer production.