Host:

You want a bright green lawn but you don't want to wear a hazmat suit to go outside into your own yard, I get it! We know chemicals work but chemicals also work their way down through the groundwater and into your local ponds and streams, turning your local ponds into fluorescent green mats of algae that look like something out of a Shrek movie. So let's talk about natural ways you can accomplish the same result without using chemicals, let’s get started. Now let's get into fertilization; natural fertilization comes in three forms. The first form is feather meal, the second form is peat moss, and the third form is worm castings.

Speaker 1:

So peat moss is basically just accumulated bio matter, so this comes from peat bogs and then is used as a grower by just drying some stuff out of it. Sometimes it's like in a brick, and you break it up, you add water to it, you kind of mix it and then you can plant into it. All of these are safe, natural alternatives that your grass...

Chuck Bowen, editor of Lawn and Landscape Magazine, talks about how to grow your business with fewer growing pains.

Set yourself apart from other companies with excellent customer service.  Customers want someone who is going to call them back and do a good job.

Solve the "labor problem" by creating a culture that makes people want to work for you.

What can people do to take themselves from a small to medium sized company?  "What got you here, won't get you there."  It requires the owner to step back into different rolls.  The owner needs to hire people to do the work he/she was doing and do different work (sales and business building).  What systems do we need to put into place so we can effectively scale it.  Get everything that's in the owner's head on paper so their employees know exactly what to do.  The owner who doesn't eventually step back, becomes the limiting factor in the company.

In the off-season, you should be stepping back and...

New Equipment

So you are looking at buying a piece of equipment. Well, there's three generalizations that you should examine before making any purchase decision and this will cover everything from lawn mowers, to bale loader, to skid loader, to excavators. The first is power in productivity. When you purchase that machine, is it actually going to deliver what you expect it to? Number two is quality. When you purchase that machine, is it going to continue to deliver results long after it's paid off? That’s when the machine gets profitable. Number three is so absolutely important, that it is broken into two separate subcategories. That's serviceability; how well can you dig into the machine and maintain it, and then if you do have a breakdown what is the local shop like that you have to bring it into. That is a key factor in making a purchase decision. I'm going to be using CASE equipment as my guinea pig today and we're going to see how they hold up to these three important...

Retaining Wall Blowout

Well, this is not a sight that you want to see on your property. As you can see, we have a retaining wall failure. I was given a call by this client of ours to come out and take a look at this wall and see what we could do to help them with it. This is not a wall that we built. This wall is seven years old and the remainder of the wall runs down the side of the driveway looks to be in pretty good shape. So, they came home one day after a hard rain storm and noticed that this wall had fallen down. Let's take a look at why this wall failed. If we look into the next door neighbor's yard, we will see a beautiful new landscape. Look at all that nice rock work and those nice rocks stairs. However several weeks ago this was all wooded and this hillside was not clean and pine straw. Rather this hillside had a lot of vegetation on it. That vegetation prevented a lot of silt sediment from washing downstream. So, you can see this water comes downstream into this low...

The house behind me has been on fire and these are typically the worst ones to go in and explore. Falling apart. The ceiling is coming off. That was probably the wrong thing. To do. Just. OK standing in something really slimy.

Walls and Floors

You've got a number of factors: A. You never know what walls or floors are about to collapse at any given time. And when I was telling you you've got to be careful on the floor? Squishy parts like this take you all the way down.  B. The smell is a combination of soot and mold. When they put the fire out what usually happens, is the hose doesn't get a chance to dry and then it becomes a habitat for mold, and it becomes also a natural habitat for animals. Something's dead, something died. So we don't know what we're going to get into, when we go into this house. Of all the homes you get into, the smell in these usually stays with you the longest. Because it just gets into every crevice of your body. How bad is the mold in a place like this....

As business owners, we find ourselves focusing and devoting A LOT of time to growing.  At the end of the day, many contractors find they have eaten the easiest and fastest thing with little concern for how that will affect our future.  Ross Aubrey, owner of Higher Purpose Fitness, discusses how to stay healthy when running your business.

Common excuses contractors have when it comes to taking the time to exercise:

"I have had an injury in the past, so I can't exercise."  There are plenty of variations of exercises that you can do that won't re-injure or irritate past problems.  There is always a way.

"I work out in the field all day, isn't that enough exercise?"  Focus on intensity instead of duration.  You don't need to spend an hour on a treadmill.  An intense 5-10 minute can be much more effective than a long, drawn out workout.

How do we fuel our bodies when we're on the run all day and don't have a lot of time? Get in tune with if...

Snow Wolf Paws

Today we're going to talk about one of the simplest modifications you can make to almost any skid loader that will dramatically improve its performance for snow removal.  You're also going to see a demonstration that under any circumstances, I do not want you to attempt to duplicate. I shouldn't have let it be done for this video, but I wanted to show you how dramatic this slight modification makes to its performance. It doesn't matter if you run case, New Holland, Bobcat, Caterpillar. All skid loaders suffer from one common weak point and that is their tires on the ground. They're designed for mud.  They're designed to help the machine flow, but in a snow removal application, that same design becomes its Achilles heal. Now allowing the tires to properly grip the pavement, I strapped a set wolf paws under one of my Bobcats. The change was like night and day. Look at how it just holds it in place.

Spinning Tires

You see that? You see how those tires are...

D.E.F. Regulations

Stan: The lawn care landscaping construction industry has dramatically changed in the last five years and the problem is we have more rules, restrictions, and regulations than ever before and this is the tip of the iceberg. It's only going to get worse. Luckily we have small companies out there that are helping contractors like you and I deal with these new regulations that the EPA likes to put on us. I want to introduce you guys to Thunder Creek, first they're going to teach us what DEF. is. And then they're going to show us some unique ways they're helping contractors like us work around the new regulations. So let's get started. Alright guys what we're going to be talking about today is that we want to de-mystify it. DEF is a new regulation that the government has imposed on all of us. And that's going to impact you, it's going to impact me. If it hasn't caught up to you yet, it eventually will. Luke is going to tell us a little bit more about these regs and...