A Tour of Landscaping Jobs I have lost money on.

so you know you hear me talking about all these jobs where we make $2,000 in an afternoon or we do put two yards of mulch in and we make $1,100 in a couple hours those jobs do exist don't get me wrong but today we're going to actually talk about jobs that to take a big fat dooker on your profit margin because as contractors you're going to have almost as many of those opportunities as you have success stories and I want to make sure that we understand both sides of the story we cover a wide Grand wide range of uh issues today including uh a skid bloater that got buried in the bottom of a swimming pool uh commercial job that I did $90,000 retaining wall guess what I didn't get paid a nickel on that project about the city coming in and making your life living hell on another job and so on and so forth they don't always work out and today we're going to go over a few of those jobs I don't know if it's going to be beneficial to you guys or not but you see me doing these push-ups it's because if I didn't sometimes I feel like my head would explode because it drives me insane on some of these jobs they're just so stressful so tough this is how I get rid of it this video is for you guys to show you it's not all easy work all right I've talked to you about compartmentalizing your bids in the past I've talked to you about trying to build profit into each component of a job because they're not always going to go the way you want them this project right here is a prime example of how parts of this job went amazing and parts this job went South on us and we actually had a loss okay so I want to flip you around I want to show you the patio there used to be a swimming pool here this all went great we filled the swimming pool in went fine built this patio went amazing but as we look over here where I dropped the ball as the estimator was in bidding the removal of all the brush trees and shrubs this used to be a jungle back here and what happened was it grew I bid this in August of 2014 we got to the job in August of 2015 and in that time everything got bigger Fuller and expanded out I had originally about I had estimated three to four loads of brush and stumps coming out of this site and I think how many loads are we on right now Drew five five plus we've got one down there so we've got six loads out so we've almost doubled how much we're taking out so this is a great example you're not going to win on every part of the job plain and simple but you're not going to also go back to the customer and ask for an upcharge because of a mistake you make so don't expect to go through every project and have huge gains it's not going to happen you're going to have to learn to take the good with the bad this is a prime example when you compartmentalize a bid you'll have components of it that you come out okay on you're also going to have components that may not work so hot right here this is that this is one of those jobs where it just didn't work out for us okay we're at another site that we're currently working on we got a 16t tall Boulder wall again this is another one of those compartmentalized bids that not everything is going ex exactly as planned although the wall construction is going really well you can see that Tim is managing this just fine I underestimated by a ton on the amount of fill soil needed on this site this was a real hard site to measure real hard site to guesstimate how much dirt I had to bring into this thing where I originally thought about 40 truck loads 40 semi- loads I think now how many semi- TR loads you think we got in here Tim oh man it's hard to even tell probably we're sitting at the 40 mark right now if not more uh got 50 or 60 truck loads but in this case dirt Monnet has saved my butt because I would say 30 of those truckloads were brought in by another company for free in fact I think we had 20 25 of them brought in in one day you got you kind of got swamped but what H what's happening with this job site is rain rain has been killing us on this project and it's delaying how long it takes us to build this so although this job is going okay we've got a demo site coming up where we are going to potentially lose that project because we just can't get to it we can't leave this site because we can't jeopardize the structure of this house to go do that that's a $225,000 demo project that's on the boards that's on the verge of being a loss so scheduling is another one of those things the weather although it's hurting us here it's really hurting us down the line that's where we are going to be losing our butt on this job H site because we just can't get off from it fast enough and it has nothing to do with what's happening out here it has everything to do with what Mother Nature is hitting us with so you can see where he's got to try to skinny an excavator up and down this ramp it's almost impossible to do if it rains we've got rain coming again tonight and that's going to make his job even more difficult on Friday and it's going to shut him down completely tomorrow so not every job's going to be a loss some of it's going to be out of your control some of it is going to be your fault in this case I underestimated the amount of fill soil I needed on this site I was able to make up for it by getting free fill soil but the schedule because of the rain is delaying us enough that it's jeopardizing another project so it's not just about the loss on the job you're on it can also be about potentially losing projects down the line because of delays in schedule happens different story every single day had an operator bury a skid loader in the bottom of a swimming pool and then it pours pours rain on us just Pours Down we'll see if we can get this sucker out let's see how bad it is I already know for you unfortunately don't know [Music] stuck that one it's dry out when we got here it's not dry anymore that's going to have zero pulling power so we're going to do is put the chain up this motor to this one give it yank I don't think it's going to work we'll find out won't [Music] we this is a commercial site we worked on that is a prime example of nothing more than getting screwed by the general contractor on a job on this site what you see behind me here and then across the S across the way there about 7,000 square ft of retaining walls all along down through here as well that we built valued at over $90,000 that we didn't collect a nickel on we completed all of this work this is a prime example of a commercial contract and understanding the nuances of a commercial site cuz if you don't if you don't get it it's easy to get screwed and the general contractor in this case did exactly that to my company we completed all of this work this retaining wall all the way down and had it done before the dedicated pay period even arrived so we were com done completely finished with the project before we even knew that the general contractor was going to give us any problems what happened was when we found out that the general contractor refused to pay us we went through the court process now first thing I'm going to tell you is you're never going to win going to court so don't bother doing it if you don't have to but in this case the general contractor's project Foreman on this site actually agreed to go to court in our favor even with that being said I want to tell you how dedicated I am to a avoid going to court at all costs even with their project Foreman agreeing that we did everything right and that the general contractor owed us the $90,000 that we were due on this job I opted to skip going to court and here's the reason why when you go to court they were suing us that's a that's a way General Contractors try to get out of paying their bills plain and simple they try to sue you counter sue you for whatever you owe them okay so when you go to court you have a suit and a counter suit and you have a judge that doesn't know Jack about construction and what unfortunate truth is is a lot of those times because there's so many details in a project like this and so many things to understand the judge will look at the middle ground now in this case I had no middle ground I had built this entire retaining wall all the way down I had paid for for all the rock I paid for all the labor I had completed all of the work on this job site and I had no extra money left over I was basically out $90,000 and 60 days of Labor Prime Mater prime time during the summer and so I what I wanted to avoid was going to court at any any expense because I knew that middle ground would be the death which would mean I would hire an attorney I would be paying the attorney $225 an hour the attorney loved it he said this was a slam dunk case but he was the one that had nothing to fear he had nothing on the nothing to lose where I on the other hand had all this work that we completed all the way around this site as a potential loss long story short we settled out of court for zip the general contractor collected nothing from us we collected nothing from the general contractor because I knew what was on the line I I will have a video at some point coming out about commercial versus residential sit to be mean when I say judges Don't Know Jack about a lot of the construction details well here's some of the details that I figured would be lost if we went to court the surveyors hired by the general contractor mistakenly staked the top of the retaining wall instead of the the bottom of the retaining wall which threw the actual positioning of the retaining wall off on top of that the general contractor was obligated to give us control points in the field Zone control points means dedicated Stakes that aren't ever moved that we can take a tape off and then we can determine if the surveyors are right or wrong in their work those control points weren't on the site those control points didn't exist list for us to double check it so we were relying on the general contractor's surveyor to provide us with accurate information that didn't happen that can be a gray area those types of things don't weigh in your favor even though they're outside of your own control that can mean a loss for you in this case it meant we lost $90,000 on this job sometimes there's conditions out of your out of your reach in this case this is a prime example of what can happen if you're working with a general contractor that has it in for has their own interest in her what am I saying they all have their own interests at heart I've never don't think I've ever met a general contractor that cares more about you than they do about themselves that's part of being in the the commercial industry that I hate okay I'll tell you straight up I am not a fan of commercial work anymore I've done commercial work my entire life I've worked on projects like this I've had four or five Crews running and it's just not fun big profits big uh uh big jobs but um big problems very big problems when you get involved in a project like this it can go south on you and when it does it can go south in a very big way this is an example where we took a $90,000 loss on one single job okay the job behind me is a great example of of two things happening that can really make a job go south although this project itself is a gorgeous looking retaining wall um this job was scheduled to be built in two weeks and this job went into two months and there's two reasons why that happened weather again affected the overall schedule this job but that wasn't the only component what happened is during the process of this build this homeowner actually added this entire second floor onto this house during that construction the contractor that was building the house and the city didn't see eye to eye and so everybody else that was on this job tended to pay the price and this retaining wall is a great example of what I'm actually referring to what you'll see is the fence line on top of this wall I'm going to walk up there the fence line on top of this wall had to be precisely no closer than 4 ft from the retaining wall and so what the city would do because they were torqued about some things happening they would come out and take a tape measure from the boulders to the fence line and every single Stone had to meet their very specific requirements or it wouldn't pass so now we have an exceptionally wet spring we're fighting the weather and then on top of it we're fighting the city those two things made a two- week job bump out into two months so another example you can't control that you don't know what's going to happen you got to eat it up what do I do on these jobs did I charge the customer more oh heck no this job sucked I hate it every moment of it love the customer great customer he's the announcer for the Minnesota Twins in fact he text me randomly out of the blue you want to go to a Twins game in fact when I was driving here he was over playing in the ball fields with the the little Leaguers but you don't charge more you eat it up it sucks it is what it is here's another retaining wall we built down here on this job site um this is a dou here now you're going to see we switched it up we went from boulders to modular block but that's because the idea was to create a flat play area here and we needed to absolutely maximize the space when you look at this these walls were measured to the inch from the back of the cap to the next tier cu the city was being that particular about this job site place that's supposed to go in here and if we went with Boulders the length and the width of the boulders themselves would have made it almost impossible to gain as much flat ground as possible to put a a playground in so that's this job site another example can be weather can be the city can be a contractor screwing you can be your own fault lots of different variables and they don't all work out I tell you that straight up okay it doesn't look like much but this hole in the ground cost me $44,000 here's an existing window well here's the one we built to rep replicate that window well this job was originally bid at $44,000 and I had it scheduled to have two guys come in here and complete this project in about a week is what I anticipated to get it done but because the footings on this window well went so deep we had to dig this whole area out extra wide we had to moove the air conditioning unit then we had to build it back up I lost time I lost material I lost extra saw on the outside replacing irrigation heads doing repair work and this job for us was a complete loss we lost as much money as we charged them on this job so this is the what we call the I call it the hole from Hell a complete loss on this project here's the original you can see where it looks like it would be an easy cheesy get in get out get it done no big deal but whoever put these buildings in place tied the footings down at bottom of wall bottom of footing elevation an extra four feet deep when that comes out it it makes it makes your dig instead of being right along this line right here you have to start digging out here to get the soil the taper down to get the footings out so here's a great example of how a bid can go south on you unknown conditions it just plain and simply happens I hope after you see some of the hardships and trials and things that I go through in my company maybe just maybe it'll put in perspective what challenges you guys will face as you're going through your daily jobs because I'll tell you straight up the five jobs six jobs that we looked at today that's just a tip of the iceberg a lot of the stuff we faces contractors just you get hit from all different sides and trust me you can't anticipate you can't guess where it's going to come from you just basically have to do it you have to learn to bounce back being successful as a businessman as an entrepreneur has absolutely nothing to do with how you respond when times are going well and it is every everything absolutely everything to do with how you handle the stress how you handle the turmoil and how you respond that when you can handle that that is a sure sign that you're on the right path to success so one of the things that I do to keep from bringing it home is work out I work out for my family I work out so when the day is done they don't feel any of the stress that I feel during the day so I want you guys to have an outlet I want you guys to have some way that when the world's taking a big dooker on you you don't bring it home to the family your wife your kids your friends your loved ones they never see it they never feel it they don't know what's happening and they think you are one cool dude or one cool gal I love you guys I hope watching me go through some stress some of the stuff I've done will help you guys out take care my friends [Applause] [Music]