← The Mulder Life Podcast
The Mulder Life Podcast
Ep 162. Nightmare Clients: Surviving Litigation Threats, Irrigation Disasters, and High-Conflict Personalities
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Welcome to this week's episode of the Molded Life Podcast, a live show featuring your questions about all things landscaping, equipment, business and life. Join our live show weekly on Instagram Older outdoors Monday nights, 8:30pm Central Standard Time to ask your questions or tune in here for the replay.
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And now from the Incon Studios Incon, a world leading manufacturer of tilt rotators and attachments enhancing your business. Here's your host, Andy Mulder.
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What's going on everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Motor Life podcast. We are live here Monday night in the N Con Studios and I am excited to be here with you all. Big thoughts, big big shout out to our sponsors. Synced up, synced up project management software code. Go check them out. You will not be disappointed. Ad Equipment they are where we have gotten our rotostar screening bucket from and I thoroughly enjoy that screening bucket. Unfortunately the weather has been not good to be using it in quite some time, but soon we will have better weather and we will be using it again. We use that bucket to screen our dirt at our yard and we can use it on our skid loader or we can use it on our excavator. And if you're interested in anything like that, go talk to Donna or Anthony over at Ad Equipment and I thank you for thank them for their support of the podcast. Guys. It's been a couple of quite a few weeks since I did a podcast without any guests. I guess we've had two or three, four guests. Three guests if you're new to the podcast. I used to for the last two years, really two or three years, I didn't have any guests. I randomly would have a guest. But having more guests this year, that's kind of my goal. I did not set one up for tonight, but I figured it'd be good to just do it like we always normally used to do it. So we'll take questions in the live chat and we could talk about anything. Landscaping, equipment, business, life. I have a lot of things we could talk about in our shop and job site stuff and equipment stuff that we've been doing for the last really the guests. We've been going pretty hard back on job sites and for the last, I would say two to three weeks. Three weeks really. I guess we had some crazy weather roll in today last night and today and we're down back in the 20s and we had about an inch of snow today and it really, really is frustrating because we just have, we've just been going hard in the landscaping. It's been kind of awesome. We have a big natural stone outcropping job going on with a bunch of weathered limestone we have. We are still out there working on our, on our landscape job that we started last fall, which is a big hardscape landscape, irrigation, lighting. It's a massive project and we will be on that job for I don't know how much longer, but quite a bit longer. But that all got shut down this morning with the terrible weather and, and snow. So Graham says, what's your prediction on more snow for the region this season? Do I think it's over? I do think it's over after this. I really do. I mean obviously I've been proven wrong before with weather, but I think it's going to be hard pressed to get some more, get some more snow. I mean we salted this morning. We're going to salt again tomorrow morning and then I'm really hoping after that we're done. I'm just ready to get going, man. I'm not ready. We have been going so it kind of stinks to, to pause like this for. But you know what it is, what it is. I'm thankful that we have the salting work and, and snow work and still able to get things done and, and make money. So. Hendrick Outdoor Services open cell or closed cell foam on the new shop and why that is a big taboo, taboo subject in the barn building world. I hired Indiana Spray Foam which is a very, very well known spray foam company around us. They are very local to us. They do Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio. I don't know how far they go, but they do go quite a. They do go pretty far. Anyways, I hired them to do this building that I'm in right now. I've been using this building which is actually my sister in law's building and brother in law. We've been using their building to work on things. I use it as a place to do my podcast, a place to work on equipment when we need to. We don't keep any trucks over here. But I kind of rehabbed this building. It was, nobody was using it and it needed work. This was eight years ago now. Put a new roof on it, insulated it did a concrete floor, electric, the whole thing. It basically, it basically kicked the can down the road to really needing to go rent a shop. And they were kind enough to let us use this building and for the last, like I said, seven or eight years. And so anyways I did, I did, I did open cell phone on foam on this shop and it's Been amazing. I have zero complaints about it. And so we ended up doing open cell spray foam on our new building. It is significantly cheaper and there's different, obviously massive amount of different opinions on the open cell. I am covering up all the walls with metal and so I don't care about it being rigid or not rigid. I'm not relying on my insulation to hold my building up or to make it stronger. We had a windstorm last week. Thursday was 60, 70 mile an hour winds all day long and the building still stayed standing. So I think that that is a, a good testament to the strength of the building. I'm being kind of funny Hendrick Outdoor Services because I've gotten a lot of hate over doing open cells foam. But it's thick. I mean my ceiling is probably 10 inches thick, 8 to 10 inches thick, I would guess. And my walls are 6 to 8 inches thick, I would say. Like I said, I've had great success with it in this building. And the, the price, you know, it's great. And Indiana spray foam has a lifetime warranty. They, they told me they do 90% of their pole barns they do with that style of spray foam. And so I'm not going to argue with them. That's what I decided to go with. And I've been pleased with it so far and I can't wait to get a heater in there. And it will stay cooler in the summer, it'll stay warmer in the winter. It's going to be amazing. So Graham Bryce says, love the hoodie. Looks great. Thanks man. I appreciate that. This is the brunt. What is this? This is like their tech hoodie. I think it's the all heart tech hoodie. I can't remember what the exact name is, but it's like a midweight hoodie, I would call it. This is by far my favorite hoodie right now. I, I have a bunch of them in black, couple of them in this high viz. Really like this hoodie. It's kind of waterproof. The water kind of beads off of it. It fits nice. The hood is plenty big. The pocket in the front is big. It's not too thick, not too thin. I'm, I just think it's amazing. So Clifford says, do you see economic growth or decline in your area? I think it's growing a lot in our area. There's lots of building going on, both commercial and residential. Lots of subdivisions going up. Lots of people moving from Illinois and Indiana. We have tons of work. I have a lot of great leads coming in. I don't know. I don't know how everybody else is sitting work wise, but we had some work, a fair amount of work that carried through the fall from last year. And then we got this natural stone job, the spring that we kind of jumped on. Typically, I wouldn't. I in the past have not run two crews, but we started kind of a second crew to do this job, this natural stone job, because I really wanted to take advantage of the low water levels right now on the pond that we're working on. And so that's the reason that we kind of jumped on the job and really wanted to get it going. So I would say we're probably a little over a third, maybe a third of the way done with the project. We had. We weren't able to work there last week two days because we had no material. We ran out of material and the trucking had. Has been a nightmare to get semis to deliver the material. And then this week, now we're going to lose today and we lost today and we're going to probably lose tomorrow because of weather. And so that's kind of a bummer. It's two short weeks that we lost now. But, you know, it is what it is. You do the best that you can. And. Yeah. So Breck Shred said, yeah, I did go to Con Expo last week. Sorry I didn't see you, man. I was only at Con Expo for two days, so it was a short trip. Con Expo was really cool. I really wish I could have gone for longer, but we just had too much work going on and too many things that I. Well, it wasn't last week. It was the week before last, actually. Man, time flies. It was awesome. I. I again wish I could have spent more time, but I was exhausted just after two days. I walked so much in two days. It was nuts. But just a great show. It's really cool. At the ad, Breckstrad says, I met the AD guys and we're going to try and order a Roadstar bucket. Awesome, man. That's. That's great. Graham says, I'm in northwest in the area and I'm doing good on leads and work for the spring. That's great, dude. I. That's what I think. Like, there's a lot of work in this area. There's a lot of growth. There's also a lot of landscapers and a lot of hardscapers and so. But somehow we all seem to have tons of work and it's really great.
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I'd love to give you guys an update on our shop and what's been going on with that. I haven't talked about that in a while. So for those of you that don't know, we're building a 60 by 150 foot pole barn. I've been developing this property. We bought 12 acres about a year and a half ago and we've been developing this property over that time and we're building a shop on it. Before that, I was running our company out of our house out of my backyard for 10 years. And so anyways, we're developing this property. The shop is going really good. This past week, insulation got done and drywall got started and all the drywall got done on Saturday. As far as it's all installed, it's not taped or mudded. So they came and hung all the drywall. Plumbers were back today trying to get the furnace dialed in and hooked up because one of the problems that we're having is obviously we need to. It's gotten cold again. And the mud and tape company finishers or whatever you want to call it, they need heat in the offices, obviously. And so I don't have heat because I don't have a gas meter. And I don't have a gas meter because they don't have a working appliance. And the only way for them to get put my gas meter is if they can get an appliance hooked up and ready to go. And so the H Vac guys were there today finishing up a little bit of ducting work in the mechanical room. And then they have a little bit of gas line work to do tomorrow. And then I'm hoping by then we can call our Nipsco, our gas company, and see if what it's going to take to get the meter installed. I have heard that that can take longer than you'd like it to. It's not something where they just hurry up and run out and get it. But how to hardscape Mike. What's up dude? He said, amazing to see the progress of the yard. Andy. Amazing to follow you from 2019 as MMS and to Molder outdoors. Thanks Ben. I appreciate that. I, I still, every time I pull in the yard I'm just like this is a literal dream come true. It's just the coolest thing. Yeah, they're, they're trying to get some, a working appliance in the shop so we can get gas from the power from the, whatever power company we have power but we need, we need gas meter. And yeah, Nipsco does take forever. It's unbelievable. So I'm really praying that that doesn't take like a crazy amount of time to get done. A few things that I've changed I guess on the shop I recently added, I recently hired a company to come in. So when I designed the offices I was thinking to myself, you know what, I don't know if I really want to put like a bunch of money into flooring. I don't think I want to put like carpet anywhere. It's a shop. Like it's going to get dirty but I still want to be able to clean it of course. And so I didn't plan on any flooring in the offices but as we've gone along I've thought a lot more about that and thought a lot more about what it's going to take to add flooring later if I wanted to add it. And then as I'm watching the construction go, go along, of course the flooring has crack. The floor concrete has like saw cut joints in it and, and those are filling with junk. And I'm like okay, well maybe I could just fill the cracks so they don't fill with junk. Of course you could do that. And anyways I, I decided to look into polishing the floor in the offices so the hallways, the, the conference room, everything. And so I called out a company to do that. And upon talking with them and going back and forth and him showing me pictures of different places that they've done and I was kind of drawn towards the epoxy flooring instead of a polished concrete flooring and how that would look and how that would perform. I ended up going to their office actually and seeing their office space and ended up picking the flooring that is in their office that they just built a new office. And. And it was funny because I went into the office and they have the exact color scheme, literally the same wall color that I'm gonna paint in my offices. And that just came up by chance. I was like, hey, do you by chance know what color this gray is on this wall? And he was kind enough to go in the back and look for the paint can. And it was the exact color me and my wife had picked out for the walls in the shop, which I thought was so cool. So anyways, yeah, we're gonna do an epoxy flooring in the offices. It's gonna have a little flake in it. It will be amazing to clean. It will be slip resistant. It will be. It will flex with the floor a little bit if there's any movement on the floor, which we don't anticipate, but you know what I'm saying. So I just signed up with them last week. That was a cool thing that we decided to do. I also decided to change the drop ceiling that the offices are going to have a drop ceiling. I decided to change that to a black drop ceiling. And that came because I went to their office. When I went to the flooring people's office, they had black ceilings and I just thought it looked amazing. And so that of course costs more money. Why wouldn't it? I mean anything you change of course is going to cost more money. But yeah, so I changed it to black and it's going to be so cool. I'm. I'm really excited about the stuff that I changed in the offices recently and thankful that we could do that. And yeah, so otherwise out in the shop there hasn't been a lot of stuff that has gone on in the shop. Frankly, I think our builder is waiting on their subcontractor to come back. And so I like I hired a gc. The GC has hired different trades of course to do the project. They do not erect the building themselves. They hired an Amish crew to do that. They are waiting for that crew to come back now to now that all the electrical is done. We have rough in inspections done. And so now they're waiting for the barn building company to come back to put the ceiling up so that the electrician can continue on. They also have to put the interior girts up. The two by fours on the walls. They have to put all those up. And so that's what they're waiting on. I don't know. I don't understand. You know, I guess why it's taking so long. But you know, I don't. That's not my problem I guess to worry about ultimately. If it took takes too long, I guess it is my problem. But that's kind of the reason there hasn't been any real progress going on in the shop. They're waiting on the ceiling to get done before they can finish the garage doors and they're waiting on the girts in the shop before the electrician can finish the rough in. There's all kinds of stuff that can get done once they get that ceiling up and once they get the wall girts up. Because in my shop all the electrical work will be behind the walls. It won't be surface mounted conduit, it'll be romex in the walls. But all the plumbing work, gas pipe, air lines, water lines, all of that will be run on surface mount. And I think it's going to look really awesome. But, but you kind of have to do things in order to be able to do that. So yeah, the girts need to go up, electrician finishes, rough in, then plywood can go on the walls, metal can go on the walls, then plumbing can come back and do gas, water, all that stuff. So it's kind of a back and forth kind of thing. And maybe that takes it a little bit long, takes things a little bit longer. And it does take more to coordinate. But that was part of the plan from the beginning. That's. That's what I hired them to do and that's what they have to do. So my GC doesn't hire everything out. They do a few things in house. But yeah, it's. Do I wish it was going a little faster? Meh, of course. But I can't change anything. And at this point I've just decided like people keep asking me when is it going to be done? Do you have a completion date? No, I don't. And I don't know if it's even fair to ask for one because I've added things as they've gone along. I've changed different things. Not a ton of stuff, but some, you know, it makes a little difference here and there. And then what? Weather has played a factor in it as we went through the winter, but now that we're like really busy and we're working, like I'm not going to get in there tomorrow. If I was able to get in there tomorrow, I'd be like, let's go, let's go. I want to move in before we really get busy. But that's not gonna happen. And I've just come to grips with that and there's nothing not. We're not even close to that kind of a thing. So now I just. It'll get done when it gets done and it'll be great when it's done and I'm not gonna rush it. And I want it to be exactly how I want it to be. And that's what I've been planning for and saving for. And that's what it's gonna be. So Enhanced landscape says. Oh, Graham says, you deserve everything you got, brother. Thank you, Graham. I really appreciate that. Enhanced landscape. How do you get most of your leads? Google. I do not get. I don't even think I have a Google my business page at all. I don't think I do. I have never made one before. Maybe I have one just. Maybe they just make one for me. But I do not have. I do not get leads from Google. I get a few leads from our website. I get leads from social media. And for the most part, all my leads are word of mouth and. Yeah. So Wynwood Property Services. I like that hoodie. Yes, Wynwood. We talked about that earlier, buddy. This is the Brunt. I think it's the Allard. Like I said, Allard. Al Herd. I should know this. Let me look it up. Tech hoodie by Brunt. I'll look it up for you guys right now. Brunt work wear. I do have a code to Brunt. It's Mulder Outdoors 10 I believe. And you can get save 10 bucks off your purchase. I believe. Apparel hoodies. I'm gonna tell you right now what this hoodie is because like I said before, it's my favorite hoodie. It's the Allard Tech hoodie. Yeah. A L L a R D tech hoodie. And you can get it in gray and black. You can get it in all black and you can get it in high vis like this. And I wish they made like a. Like a heather gray one of these. But this hoodie is by far, by far my favorite hoodie. It's honestly the only hood I only hoodie I go for to wear anymore. That's for sure. Superior Hardscapes. What's going on, buddy? Thank you. I appreciate that. Dude, Clifford says, would you develop land again or buy existing? That's a very good question. I think it. It depends on the property. In the case of what I purchased with the pond and the things that it gives our family and you know, more, it's more than just a commercial property. Yes, it's all zone commercial and yes, that was why I wanted it so bad. But ultimately half of the property is not buildable and I knew that when I bought it. But I knew that it could be beautiful after we were done, after we cleaned it up and we landscape it and we do all this stuff to it, I knew it could be beautiful. And so because of that, I mean I already got two jobs last year just from people seeing our, what we're doing to the property. And it is been a phenomenal, just brand awareness advertising tool more than I ever thought it would be. And so for that point, I think it, I would do it again if it was a piece of property that I really liked and it was, it was worth doing it myself because it's a lot of work and it's a lot of money. I don't remember, I mean I can look it up, but how much I have in civil engineer work and like what it costs to get to the point of building, it just takes a lot of work and a lot of money and a lot of time and another piece to this, like it would take even longer if you didn't, if it wasn't zoned correctly and ours was zoned correctly, which is crazy. So yeah, I mean I have like $45,000 in IDEM work, civil engineering, septic field design stuff, permits, just whatever, whatever it takes to get the design to just get it approved from the county. Like it's crazy, right?
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this is small potatoes in hindsight. Small potatoes in what I'm trying to do, I guess. I think if you were in a smaller piece of property, it would obviously cost less. If you were in a place of property that didn't have a. I think some of it costs a little more because I was. I had a pond on my property that ended up being kind of a pain. I also had some wetlands on my property, which was a pain and that cost money to get those delineated. The elevation on my property. I didn't know this when I bought it, but it's rather low in the area. Not concerned at all about it anymore. But it did turn out to be kind of. It was a hassle to get the grading right and all that stuff. That doesn't count. My soil boring test or my wet that I get. Yeah, that doesn't even. I have another $12,000 in wetland delineation, septic design and soil testing. That doesn't count Nipsco. That doesn't count earthwork. Nothing. Right. So. And then we did a lot of the clearing and prep work prior to earthwork happening. I don't know. It costs a lot of money to do it yourself. But now that we're where we're at and I mean, I haven't even started to talk about what we did in the yard last week and I have really hardly shown it at all on Instagram because we were just. I was just really busy last week. But it is one. It was 100% worth it. I love the property. I think it's the. It will probably be one of the best investments I ever make. It's going to be amazing for the business. There's tons of room for growth. It's just. It's such a blessing. And then we have the pond and all of that is just. It's. It was worth it about if I. If I was going to just look for a shop in an industrial park or develop an industrial park. I don't know. I think it's better just to go somewhere that's already developed and just buy a lot. That's. You can literally. All the sewer work is done, all the grading is done, all the retention ponds, all that stuff is done. You definitely will save time, that's for sure. I don't know if you will save money because the value of those lots is a lot of money. And the Reason they're so valuable is because somebody already did all the work to get it ready for you to build. So I see a lot of. Now I get. I get the value in these lots now where they're charging $500,000 or $250,000 for 2 acres in an industrial park or whatever they're charging. I don't know what industrial lots go for that are ready to go. But all I know is. All I know is I'm glad that I did it. It has cost me. Definitely cost me more than I thought it was going to, But I don't think anybody has built something like what I'm trying to do, and it cost them less than what they thought. I don't know. There's a lot of things that just come up as you go along. Things that you need to do that you don't have a choice, Things that you want to do because it will cost way more to do it later. Uh, there's been a lot of stuff in the shop that I've. I've added stuff that I really didn't expect. I. I knew. What am I trying to say? There's a bunch of stuff in the shop. There's probably five things in the shop so far that I knew we could do, But I didn't include them originally because, number one, we didn't have the money at the time. When I was putting the whole plan together, I knew how much I wanted to spend at the time, and I knew that I didn't want to design something that I didn't have the money to build. I didn't want to design something that I needed to work towards affording. I wanted to afford it when I signed the contract. And so we were able to do that. And then as we've been able to go along it, the process just took way longer than I thought. And so that allows us to continue to save money. And the business continued to make money through all of last year. And then we had a really awesome winner. And all that stuff then has allowed us to continue to save money and invest more into the shop and maybe add some things that I wasn't planning on adding because we could. And I'm super excited about that. So hometown850 said. Where is Evan and Nicholas? Are those men not in hardscaping anymore? I miss seeing their stories on job sites. Evan, are you talking about Prime? Is it Prime Outdoor Living? I think that's what it was. No, he sold his company. He is a car salesman now for a dealership in Washington. I Think. I think that's where he's from. He sold this company like two or three years ago actually. And then he worked for them. He worked for them for a year or two or something and then was done. Yeah, Pride, hardscapes. And then now he's a car salesman for commercial trucks and he changed his page to that Nicholas. Which Nicholas? I don't know which. I mean, I don't know exact. Are you talking about Earthworks? Is it Earthwork Landscaping? That's a Nicholas that. I don't know if that's the Nicholas you're talking about. He and I actually talked a fair amount. And now that you say that, I don't remember. I haven't seen anything from him on Instagram in a long time. I don't know what his deal is. That's a great question. I would be really surprised because I believe that's a second generation business. I'd be pretty surprised if he is no longer in the game. Andy, how are the roads? You know, this morning the roads were crazy, actually. It was terrible. Oh my goodness. What material? Enhanced Landscape says, what materials do you use to backfill to get the patio height? To get to patio height? You mean sub base material or base material below the patio? Like what, what do you mean a backfill? The backfill. The sub base, subgrade, whatever Your. It depends on your site. I mean we have sites by us that are all sand and so we'll use sand as a. As a sub base and build that up in lifts. And then we will put our geotextile down and we will go to a open graded three quarter clean stone. And we will use that in lifts up until our bedding course, which is a number nine bedding stone, an open graded bedding stone. And we put about an inch and a half of that and then we lay our pavers. That's typically what we do. If we're in a clay area, we'll build up with clay and then fabric and then the same stone system. So I guess it depends on subbase. It depends on. It depends on your area. You don't want to use any kind of organic material, of course, so clay sand. It depends on your area. I mean, you need to make sure you have a good, solid, strong sub base without organic topsoil or anything on that, you know, so. Hometown 850 says Nicholas. Tecton. Tecton. I don't. Man, I don't. I don't know who that is. Maybe I do and I'm not remembering it, but I don't know. Intracoastal landscape says. Are you, are you considering adding the John Deere 135? We haven't even talked about that. Maybe we have and a couple couple weeks ago. I am currently renting a John Deere 135 from Westside Tractor. So thanks shout out to them and am I gonna consider adding it? Okay. I want to. I really do. It's very awesome. It is the perfect size machine for boulder work. The 80 could have done this job for sure, but it would have been stretching it big time. And some of the rocks that I chose for this job, I chose some bigger material that we could handle with a bigger machine. If I had, if I knew that I was going to only have the 80, I would not have. I would have chosen some smaller material. So having the bigger machine allows you to have bigger rocks which ultimately makes the job go faster because the bigger the rock, the more face feet you lay with that rock at a time and it looks really cool with some big material. So I think that machine is amazing. I don't have a ton of seat time in it. My guys have been running it. But I think it's awesome. The reach is awesome. It's just so sick. It has an encon on it. I mean why wouldn't. I would not have a machine on my job site without an incon. But I do not. I am not going to buy one this year. I can assure you. I don't have. That's not what I'm going to spend money on right now. I really don't know what our priority is spending wise on equipment right now because there's. It just, it never stops. It's always the next thing. You always think like, oh, I'm not going to. I'm not going to buy anything or oh, I'm good for a while or whatever. It's like now I'm like maybe it'd be cool to have like one of those really mini loaders. Like, like a, like a giant or my buddy Jeremy got one of these case SL12s or whatever. They're real small, super super cool. You can drive it all over a yard. It doesn't mess anything up. Brian Fullerton is selling like this. His John Deere. No, his Bobcat mini Loader. Like that kind of a thing, right? And I don't know like, is that the next thing I should buy instead? Obviously that's much cheaper than The John Deere 135 excavator with an N con. But the fact that I can go and rent that stuff now with an ncon on it. It's kind of a game changer because I don't have to own it all the time. I can just rent it when I need it. Like, I rented this machine for a month. It has all the attachments, has everything I need. And then when I'm done, it goes back and I don't have to keep owning this machine. So I. I do. I want one. Of course I want one. I want one of every size excavator. But I don't think that's in the cards for us this year. Especially with building the shop and other priorities that I have going on right now. I don't know if I'm going to continue on with two crews. If that's the case, I probably need to. I might need to invest in another truck. And so I just need to. I need to be wise with my spending because as I've said on this podcast, for the last however many years I've been recording this podcast and my entire business career, we do not grow unless we can pay cash for it. So we grow at the speed of cash. So if that means that I can't afford to, you know, right away outfit a second crew with everything they need, then we'll figure it out. Like I said, with a rental machine or whatever that looks like, I think I have enough other equipment to be able to make it happen. I have two track machines. I have three excavators. We probably could make it work with the trucks that we have. But anyways, those are all things that I have to. I have to run through in my head before I think, how cool would it be to own a 135? It would be really cool. But is that the right thing to spend money on right now? I personally don't think so. We are also demoing a John Deere 333p right now from westside tractor, which is super cool. We've been. We've had that for a couple days. We've been using it in the yard to move some heavy things around. That thing is a absolute beast. The technology on that thing is very impressive. The camera system is the. It's the best camera system I've ever seen on a machine before. It has a 360 camera. It is really, really cool. We're going to bring it out to our job site and see how it does lifting material. I'm not unhappy with my Kubota 97. 3. I just bought that last year. Westside was like, hey, I spent some Time in the John Deere Bo Con Expo and they said hey, we'd love to bring you one of these out to try see what you think. And whatever. There was no pressure and so they were able to bring one out and I thought that was really kind. And we're going to use it. I'm going to film a little bit with it. I'll probably do a post about it or something and kind of explain the things that I like about it. Things that I don't like about it. It is a beast of a machine. It lifts more than my 97. I don't know the exact spec comparison and I can look that up at some point and just see. But it will lift two of our big Mo Mafia blocks at the same time and it can just move them around. It's heavy for it, but it can move it around. The 97 will not pick up two of them. I think it has like a hydraulic relief valve in it that was not allowing it to because I think it could do it. And there's just a lot of technology in that, in that track machine. It's very. It's a very nice cab, heated acc. Air ride or whatever. Dude, it's. There's all kinds of cool stuff on the machine. It's wild. It actually has 2D grade control on it that they brought the dozer blade for. But I have not figured that out yet. They're going to come and spend some time showing me that, I guess. But how to hard Skip says Can you share your worst experience with a client after a job was done? Yeah, sure. So we did a job. It was a trying to think if this is the worth. I would say this is the worst, worst experience. I guess. I have two stories I could tell. The first one that comes to mind is we did a job for somebody where we had to put in a French drain for them and it was in their backyard and it was like 150ft long right through the middle of their yard. They had an irrigation system and so we installed this French drain. It ran out to their ditch to daylight. It was working great, no problem. Then we planted like six or eight hemlocks, maybe Norway spruce. I don't remember exactly what we planted. That's irrelevant really to the story. But during this project it was really wet because that was the reason we were putting in the French drainage because their yard was very wet. I don't remember what time of year it was. Could have been the spring. I don't know. I did know this guy was an Attorney. And so, you know, take that for what you think I mean by that. And he was pretty nitpicky of the proposal and the details on the proposal. But that comes with the territory. And I. I can work with just about anyone. I'm very easygoing. I don't make enemies. I can work with people. And so he asked a fair amount of questions about the proposal. From the beginning, I knew he was an attorney. You can tell by everything about it, everything about his emails, everything. And that's fine. Signed the contract, got the deposit, did the job. And then I don't remember the exact timeline. All I remember is we missed. We had to cut a bunch of irrigation lines to do this job. And in doing so, we missed one of the lines and either didn't connect it, or it was buried in dirt and we didn't see it. I don't remember how it went. All I know is his irrigation system went on the next day, and water did not spray out of a head. It, like, came out of the ground. And it wasn't in the main line. It was just on a. On a zone. He went ballistic. Like, he was belligerent. I And I went there with my guys. We started. He was fired up when we got there. And I'm like, I don't remember his name. It doesn't matter. I probably shouldn't say it in case he finds this, I guess, but he was just crazy when we got there and super mad. Said he couldn't believe that we call ourselves. Ourselves professionals. Like, he just went nuts. And I finally had to tell him, like, listen, we made a mistake. We're literally here the same day that you called us. Or the next. It was probably in the evening, I think. He. I don't know. We came the next day and I said, we're gonna fix it. It's just water. It's not. Nothing is gonna die. Well, then three months later, one of his spruce died. And he immediately then blamed it on us. Blamed it. The main reason was in the beginning, there was too much water because the irrigation line. It was a whole thing. I fixed it. I fixed. I replaced his tree that died. Two or three trees, I don't know. I don't remember. And I. It was. I have never felt he. He was so good at making you feel like a piece of garbage. And really, that's the story of another customer that I have too, is how some people just have this ability to knock you down. It's quite sad, frankly. Anyways, I never would work for him again. And I Told him that. I said, listen, obviously this relationship is not working out. We're here, we're going to fix it. But after this, our relationship, our working relationship is over. I'll never forget that day. He was super rude to my guys. And I just. I stayed there the whole day because I couldn't trust this guy with leaving these guys, my guys, with him. I needed to stay there. And funny story, then I don't know how many years later he emailed me and wanted to know if I could quote him on some other work at his house or something. I don't remember what it was, but I believe I emailed him back and said, no, I'm sorry, we're not interested. And I never heard from him again. What does it look like now? Maybe they sold the house. I don't know anything about the story anymore, but that was one of the worst experiences I've had with a client. Another one was after the job was done. We did this beautiful project. I'm not going to describe it because I've shared it before and it's irrelevant. It was a beautiful project. We worked on it quite a while. It. Yeah, great project. And when I went to go get the final payment for the job, I had to meet him there. He wanted to go over it in person, which at that point in the job, I had already known that it was. He was sour about the change orders that he had added in, the price of. Which they added up to. Even though he had approved them. He got really cranky at the end and we sat in his kitchen and all I remember is him telling me that, you're good, but you're not this good. When he gave me the check and he still paid me, but he totally, like, degraded me. And just. I'll never forget him saying that I'm like, you added work. Look at this project. There's not anybody that I. Any landscaper in my area that could come over here and not tell me that this project isn't gorgeous and completely dialed and you have the guts to say that I'm good, but not this good. And I just. Yeah, that was really, really rude. So I don't know. I try not to work for people that say things like that. But that was after the job was done. So we had gone through months and months of work and, you know, all this stuff, and then he had. He. Then that was the lasting taste in his mouth. And I have done work for him in the past after that, which is always a very interesting thing. It's like. But you still want to call us for work. And I guess, shame on me for continuing to work for him, But I don't know. It's. You know, sometimes you don't know what people have going on internally or if they have something going on. We've had great. I should say, like, we've. With this instance, this past one. I have worked for him after that for many years. We've done different work for them. And there's been times when he's been very pleasant and complimentary and all this stuff. And then there's been other times when it's like, I don't know, it's interesting, but again, you don't know what people have going on. And maybe that day when that sprinkler line broke and the guy went off on us, for all I know, he could have had some kind of terminal illness that he just found out about or something with his wife was wrong or something with his kids, and you just don't know, but you hope that you don't. In 11 years, those are two things that stand. Stand out to me of really bad client experiences. I've had times when people have screwed me out of money. Mike says, yeah, thanks for sharing those stories, Andy, Going through myself where I just can't make this client happy. Yeah, man. Like, I, Dude, I've been there. I. I'm trying to think of. There's another story that I probably won't share much of because it's too telling, but there was a project that we have well over 100 man hours in fixing these little minor details on something because the client was not happy. And I am the type of business owner that, like, I can't sleep at night knowing that I have clients that are, like, upset at us or, like, I try to run a business where when we're done with jobs, people are happy and they. They are happy with what they did, and they feel like they got value. And so when I finish a job and the client basically says, you're we. I didn't get the value from you. That ate me up. Like, I had a hard time with that. And then this other project where I have, like, I said, maybe even 200 man hours, I quit tracking it because I. I didn't want to know how much time we had put back into fixing what this client was saying. They didn't. Like, I just decided in my head, like, I'm gonna make this right until they're happy, because I felt I knew that I could get it how they wanted it. And again, I'm not gonna explain the project. I'm not gonna say anything more about it. All I know is we fixed it and he's happy and we moved on. And those are super hard situations. They really are. And arguably, I would say for the most part, I think it's worth it to try and try everything you can to make them happy. Because like, yes, there are times when you have to say, sorry, this is how it's going to be, and I'm done. Like, you have to wash your hands of it. In the case of what I just told you about, like, I need. I wanted to make sure that they were happy because I knew that it would be worth it. They weren't threatening anything. He kept asking about it and I wouldn't even say he was mean about it. I just knew that he wasn't happy. And whenever he was calling about it, I'm like, yep, we're gonna come back and we'll spend a little more time on it. And I just, I wanted it to be right and I needed it to be right. And there was times when I was like, maybe this is the time. I tell him I'm not doing it anymore. But it's already been. It's been time. I'm not going to say how long either. It's been some time since that's kind of finished. And it's. All I'm saying is I'm glad that I did it. That's all I'm saying. I'm glad that I fixed it.
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You're listening to the Molder Life podcast because you want to get better at your craft. Andy is always working hard to improve himself and pass on that knowledge to you. He's even improved his molder outdoors.com website to make it easier to use and to give you several ways to support the podcast. When you visit molder outdoors.com click on the shop link to pick up some of the coolest merch around. Choose from camo hats and beanies to fluorescent work shirts and super warm hoodies. While on that page, scroll down and check out the video courses, contracts and worksheets to make you and your company highly effective and profitable. I recommend the Everything bundle which gives you access to all the training and forms while saving you money. If you need to book a one on one consultation, you can do that as well@molderoutdoors.com support the show while growing your business. There's also a link you can use in the show description.
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Johnson Construction says the clients that complain over stupid little pointless things have an internal issue we can't understand. And yeah, it could be. I think there's so many situations have little nuances to them and little reasons why. And again, we don't know what's going on with them personally. But ultimately my goal as a business owner is I want our clients to be happy with what we gave them. And I want them to feel like they got value for the money that they spent. And I want them to feel that they. I want them to have a good taste in their mouth working with us. And then because of that, I want them to overflow with gratitude and promote to their friends and family. Because when their friends and family come over, they're immediately going to be like, wow, this is beautiful. Who did it? And I want them to happily say molder outdoors. I don't want them to say molder outdoors. But we wouldn't use them again because we had a few of these issues and they just, they didn't want to come fix it. They're going to always tell their side of the story. They're never going to tell your side of the story. And so I'm not saying that you need to just, you know, just take it all the time. It's such a. It's such a nuanced thing. It just is. And I'm trying to work in a niche group of people and there's a lot of people that we work for that are all connected and I don't want to. And I. That comes with a lot of responsibility and a lot of weight that I think I carry because I want that, that word of mouth train to keep on going down the tracks. And I don't, you know, I'm not worried about it because I know, I know we're going to bring the value and I know it's going to be good. But there is part of it where the client, I mean, they don't say it, nobody really says it, but they could ruin. If I didn't do a good job and I didn't have good customer service, they can ruin my reputation. But ultimately it's my fault. I guess. It's a very interesting conversation to have because there are times when it's unreasonable. But I also, in some of the projects we do, I think it's fair for me to say that for the price that some of these things that we're doing and the size of these projects, they've earned, they've earned the right to be as picky as they want to be. But I'm also there to provide them with a product that is, it's worthy of nitpicking because I want it to be really, really good. And the clients that are hiring us are, they're hiring us because they want it to be perfect. And so we have to deliver on that. And so I'm kind of like you have to kind of thread the needle, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. I don't know if I'm making any sense on that, but it's an interesting dynamic and ultimately we're trying to provide a luxury, quality, high end, boutique style experience and install and with that you have to be prepared to. And I've said it before, when you have do big projects or high end stuff, you are married to these clients and you need to answer your phone and you need to follow through and you need to, you need to do what they want you to do. It's not about how much it costs, it's what they would like to them to do. And so you serve them in that way by doing what they'd like to do and doing it well. And, and, and follow through with what you say. There's just so much to talk about with this. It's a lot. But we're literally coming up in an hour here. But CD Landscaping says this would probably be the last question we take. Would you ever do a podcast or YouTube bid with Blue Collar Business Accelerator if you're familiar with them. So, okay, those guys sent me a sweatshirt and a T shirt this past winter. I don't know anything about their story. I don't know anything about the guys. I messaged them and said hey, thanks for this, for the swag. That's super cool. But I know nothing about them or their podcast or YouTube videos. I don't know who they are or what they're about. So maybe I need to look that up. But I, I'm, you know, I'd have to check it out and see if that's something I'd be interested in. I don't know. So guys, we're going to wrap this one up. I really appreciate you guys tuning in this week. Great conversation. I want to thank synced up project management software, synced up.com. go check them out. AD equipment, the rotostar screening bucket, go check them out. Also ENCON for being our studio sponsor. And guys, we will catch you on the next one. Thanks.
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This has been a molder outdoors and Mr. Producer production.