Chad has always been a very hands-on and visual learner.  In school, he struggled with bookwork but excelled when it came to building and doing.  No matter how you think and solve problems, you have to adapt that to your business.

Chad has dyslexia and has learned how to use his "disability" to his advantage when it comes to solving and anticipating problems on the job site.

When the customer is wrong

Now we know that the customer isn't always right. On today's project, I'm going to actually take you with me when we walk through a job where the customer is clearly wrong. So, this is going to be removing the swimming pool and building a paver patio, in this courtyard area. In fact, I'm going to challenge you to start to understand that the majority of the time, the customer, they don't know what's going on in their project, but you are the expert. They're relying and depending on your expertise to guide them and direct them to the point where you've also got to protect them from themselves. On today's job site we're going to show you exactly where this happened. So let's get into it. Now in this specific case, the customer wanted us to remove a swimming pool, then he wanted a remote patio installed. See this permit? It's orange; it should be gold. It took me two weeks to get this permit to remove the swimming pool when it should have taken me two hours....

Marvin with Wis-Coat

Stan: I am with Marvin with Wis-Coat today. He's going to talk about sealcoating. It is a very lucrative additional business that you can get into. It can be either be a solo business, or it can be an additional service onto whatever outdoor service business you're already doing.

Marvin: True.

Stan: Marvin was eighteen years old. He saved up enough money to start his own seal coating business and now he's doing up to eight thousand dollars a day in seal coating driveways. He's going to teach us how you can do it as well.

Stan: Before we get started, Marvin, can you just tell us what exactly is seal coating?

What is Seal Coating?

Marvin: So your asphalt over time loses some of the essential aggregate that's on top. You'll notice that it goes from smooth to a little bit rough, and then if you look across your neighbors and theirs is cracked and has potholes, that's from lack of seal coating. So what a seal coating does, this goes on top. We use a product, either...

Most people would get pretty excited if they were told they had to spend $54,000 in three days.  But, in all honesty, nothing could be further from the truth when you own your own small business. Today's story doesn't start on January 1st when the fiscal year ends. My story actually starts three months prior to that, around October 1st. That's when I begin my end of year budgeting. This year I planned it a little too tight.

Start Planning October 1

What am I talking about? On October 1st I start to forecast where my gross revenue is going to be and where my expenses are then I try to get those to match up as close as possible to eliminate as much profit as I can from the company. The reason I do that is, Uncle Sam will take 30% of all the profit my company shows. Don't get me wrong, I love what Uncle Sam's doing but I don't feel like giving them 30% of all my hard-earned labour....

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I’m with Zane Hill, he is 16 years old. He started his mowing company with $0 he is gonna share. Thank you for coming on the air.  I absolutely love this story. Can you tell us how you got started, Zane?

Chick-Fil-A

In summer 2016 I searched and searched for jobs young kids. I didn't have my driver's licence and stuff, so I was going to work at Chick-Fil-A, but I decided not to because it was so much work to get there and back every day. I actually never mowed before. Never even my yard.  My dad told me to go cut the grass, so I cut the grass and it was kind of fun. I liked what I did and you could see the final result that was where it got all started. So you were 15 when you started cutting grass for the first time? Yes sir. You are 16 now?? Yes, I turned 16 over the summer. And you have your own company called the Young Man and His Mower?? Yes sir. How did you get started? How did you get mower??

Bike Carrier Trailer

Luckily my parents had two mowers.  My dad...

Interviewer: I'm with Matt Dardening and he started cut short landscaping when he was eleven years old he's nineteen years old and he just purchased out East Ridge Landscaping and he's grossing over one point two million dollars a year, we're going to find out how Matt got started, we're going to look at the journey they got into where he's at right now we're going to share some of that, some of the Matt's best, best things that he's learned over these years.   Matt: We up sale everything Edges exoneration, tree fork, landscape fork . Everything you can think of, we know what our clients will pay, we know what our clients will allow us to do, how far we can push them. I was trading all that money I had  saved up into actual equipment. I was going on a spending spree to the point where my parents actually said if you’re going to live in our house...   Interviewer: Matt, how you doing today buddy?   Matt:`Pretty good, how are you. Interviewer:  I'm good...

So we've been called out to take a look at a commercial drainage project and I want to walk you through what the solution is. So, I'm going to start kind of at the end of this line. On this building, we've got a large commercial building, we have four points on this building which really technically isn't enough, so a lot of water is coming out at two points on the left side of the building, two points on the right side of the building through what's called a scupper, which is basically a roof drain that will discharge towards the top and this water will rush out of the top of the building onto the ground like a waterfall. Once that water flows down this way by gravity on top of the surface there is a large drain basin existing in the ground during basin is re about here about 10ft behind me and that during Basin discharges with a 6inch corrugated pipe that only comes partially way down the hill and there still it has to run over all of this dirt and gravel area before it hits a...

.Drainage Swale

I was called out to address a problem in drainage and erosion. Years ago, we did a drainage erosion project for a property you can’t see right now, but it sits behind this fence in a very nice neighborhood. It was to address water that was coming from this adjacent trailer park area.  I want to go through a problem that we recently had. Last night, there were some horrendous rain storms that came through this area, and as a result, they flooded over a large drainage swale that we had installed using rip-rap rock.  We had excavated out of very nice swale going down the hillside with the intent of capturing this water.  That drainage system has been in place for probably close to 2years now and it's worked with good results and until now.

Heavy Rains

Recently, we had this heavy rain and it crested over the drainage system. I came back here to this trailer park behind the property to identify the cause of this problem, and here's what I found. There...

Should I Collect a Down Payment?

Today, I want to talk to you about project payment terms. The number one question that I get asked is should I take a project deposit? And the answer to that question is, "Yes, Yes, Yes!" You should get a deposit on every job whether it's a $100, $1,000 or $10,000 job. You should definitely get a deposit on any job. The amount of the deposit is going to be somewhat dependent on a few different factors here. Anywhere from 10% to 50% down.  A lot of times you're going to be purchasing the materials upfront. A very common amount to take down would be a 10% deposit if the project is going to run longer than 30 days. If the first day of that job is longer than 30 days out, you might want to consider taking a 10% down payment or deposit. It's important that you don't spend it on anything except items related to that project. You should have an account at your bank strictly for deposits. Until that job starts to run, that money is not an asset....