Dodging Lawsuits and plowing snow

What a beautiful day in the neighborhood. What the heck did I just hit? I'll meet you down at the end of the street. Does that sound like a good game plan? Don't fall out. [Music] Two days ago, there was no snow. If you guys, some of you guys maybe remember in one of the uh previous snow plowing videos I made just recently, I said every time I leave, it snows. This is the largest snow we've had in March, according to the news, since 2007. Of course, I leave and it just it dumps on us. But the team, they performed beautifully. They got all the snow cleared and then last night they were hauling snow. And there's something I want to show you guys. There were more semis in the road than I've seen ever in my life. There was at least one or two semis in the ditch every 3 to 5 miles. This one, there's two semis put together in the ditch. cars, trailers, trucks, pickup trucks, mostly semis, though. Almost everything that was in the ditch, there's a car over there that was in the ditch was semi-truckss. And it was it was bad. It was a blizzard, but then it was a blizzard followed by 50 mph winds. So, you'd be driving down the road and all of a sudden you're just like and you're fighting it. It was very, very weird. One event I came up to, the truck went into the it was pull a pickup truck that was pulling a trailer. It went into the ditch sideways and the trailer was still on the highway. So, I'm going down the road at, you know, I was going slow by that time, 45, 50 m an hour. I'm going down the road and all of a sudden, here's a a trailer, like a utility trailer sideways in the middle of the freeway and it's like rink. Oh, it was it was crazy. This is a crazy snowstorm and it left a crazy amount of snow. So, we got to go up front and we're going to start clearing it out. So, we're going to get to fire up the cast loader. Um, and we're going to we're going to plow with that. This is the cast loader. I love this freaking loader. If you guys own acorage, if you own property, I have always said this. This is the perfect machine. So, my buddy Dan from Tools in Action, he had a K Cabota uh garden tractor, you know, with a backhoe attachment. So, you know, one of those little basically useless. I convinced him to sell that and he went to Top Notch and he bought a cast loader. Now, I got cast loaders for sale on my website. So, if you guys want to learn more information about him, you can go to the Dirt Monkey shop and check it out. But he bought himself a cast loader and he freaking loves it. And Dan from Tools in Action, he's one of my best friends. But I will say this because I'll say it right to his face. He's a diva. He's picky. He nitpicks everything. Oh, look at this. It could do that and it could do this and it could be this and it could be that and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Uh-uh. I've never heard him complain about the cast loader. Not even once. I don't even know how you can pull that off. For Dan not to complain about something. So, even though we got a lot of snow, it's March, it's wet, heavy, ground is absolutely in the worst state you could possibly ever have it. So, let's get this thing. Hopefully, it's not [Music] Hey, hey, hey. If you do end up getting yourself a little loader, you guys make sure it has a telescoping boom. Do not buy one without a telescoping boom. Don't waste your money. It's a waste. Don't. They're just they're useless. They're It's so much better with a telescoping boom. So much better. Boy, the snow is thick here. Now, I'm going to move all of the snow to the lower point of the property, and I'm just going to pick it up, scoop it, but I'm going to try to keep as much of it still on the gravel driveway, at the lowest point of the gravel driveway as possible, just so when the though melts. It doesn't flow over my gravel driveway and the gravel itself doesn't leave my property. So, a little method to the madness here. Equipment will flip on you. It's not as uh doesn't have as wide of a wheelbase as a car, truck, or vehicle for the most part, especially smaller equipment. And uh it has a shorter wheelbase, so and you're off-road with equipment, so it's pretty easy to hit something and not expect it. And as my dad would say, pretty soon you're ass over tea kettle. That basically means you're upside [Music] down. And I have been there. I had to get out here real fast to plow this snow cuz in a couple days it's going to melt. What the heck did I just hit? So yeah, if you are thinking about out running equipment and you've never had a chance, just go find a company and work for them. And they're not going to put you in a loader or piece of equipment right away. And they won't put you in one at all if you don't start speaking up and vouching for yourself. Be your own best advocate. Talk about you. Don't be don't be braggadocious, but just let people know that you're motivated. You're driven. You want to be you want to become more. You want to become the best version of yourself. You want an opportunity. An opportunity is never lost. Here's a great saying. I love this saying. An opportunity is never lost. Someone will always find it. Meaning, if there's a chance to make money off of Bitcoin, or if there's a chance to start a bakery in your town, or if there's a chance to take over as the lead role in a at a construction company, you may not find that opportunity, but somebody will. So, why won't it be you? Why can't it be you? Go out and make it. You make it yours. Don't be afraid. I think fear is the worst thing that you can ever have in this life. You will not go to the grave. Now, think about this. You will not go to the grave with thinking about all of the opportunities that you were afraid of. You will as you get older. Think about all of the things you wish you had tried. You wish you had done. You wish. You wish. You wish. I wish I would have tried to do this. I wish I would have done that. I wish I wish I wish. But your fear held you back. Don't Don't let that fear hold you back. Please don't let that fear hold you back. Even if you fail, strive to fail greatly or succeed. Strive to fail greatly or succeed. Just try. Please, please, please just try. And if you fail, learn. I love learning. I remember Timmy asked me. He's like, "God, you really handle stress really well. How do you do it?" This was back when he was just first starting to take over the the business for me. He couldn't understand it. stuff would go wrong. An engine would blow up on a truck. Somebody wouldn't show up and you'd look at me and my mood wouldn't change because in that moment I knew it was stressful. But I also knew if I held on, if I just held on, I would be able to find the value. the value in that lesson, in that harsh moment in time. I can look at you right now and say, "Nothing bad has ever happened to me." That's a bold statement. You know how somebody can say something like that as if they've been able to find the good out of everything that's bad that has happened. And there's a lot of things that would that held me back. And hell, I built a retaining wall for a company and was a $100,000 retaining wall and was a pretty bad company. I built they I didn't know they were bad, but turned out they were they were a schneister company and got the wall finished, turned in my invoice, and they refused to pay me. $100,000. What a bitter pill to swallow. So, I started going after them cuz you'd go after them, too, right? You're not going to let some company not pay you. And of course, in typical fashion, what a general contractor will do is they'll first point the finger, and then they threaten. And did they? Absolutely. They pointed the finger, said, "I did this wrong, that wrong, and this wrong." And then they threaten to sue me for the price of the retaining wall because that's a a legal technique that people do. They threaten to sue. General contractors are really good at this. They know how to do this. They know how to screw their subcontractors. Okay? And uh I mean I was young in business and a h 100red grand is a bitter pill to swallow. But now having the company tell you not only are we not going to pay you, we're going to sue you for the value of the retaining wall. And in court in Minnesota, it's a very liberal type of a situation. And so you never know which way a judge is going to go. You just don't know if you're going to win or lose. You can think you have an airtight case and if a judge doesn't like the way you look, smell, or taste, you're not necessarily going to win. And I hate to say this, but you guys do know that there's two judicial systems, one for them and one for us. And so, it's not unusual to have a judicial system where you think you're right and find out you're not. I did not want to go to court. I didn't want to risk it, but I was being forced into the situation. And this contractor was so such a bad general contractor that when he tried to sue me, I reached out to his project manager on the site I worked with. His name was Chuck. He was a good dude. And I told him what was going on. And Chuck told me that he would go to court for me against his own company because his boss, he was sick of seeing his boss do this to people. Wowzer. Chuck saved my butt. Good old Chuck. Good dude. He saved my butt. But I learned a lot of valuable lessons. Was that a Was that a stressful situation? Absolutely. It was a stressful situation. But did I learn? Oh, you know it, baby. You know it. I handled all of my commercial accounts differently after that. All of my documentation improved. I verified facts on site. I recorded conditions. that improved my processes so much. But I had to go through it to come out better on the other side. I had to live that freaking nightmare of watching my business almost get taken away from me because if he had if we had gone to court, the Chuck decided to go work in my favor and that just shut his general contractor down, quit suing me. But if we had gone to court and I lost, I would have lost everything I owned. I would have lost it all. So, it also taught me to separate business from personal. It taught me to keep a a legal uh separation so that if we had a bad contractor that wanted to create havoc, I would actually not have to worry about it. There was a lot of great lessons that came out of that. Look at the front. There's just no way of even getting in and out very safely. We got to clean this all up. But I need a co-pilot. We're gonna go get a co-pilot for this part. I got the roof dumped all the snow. Dented my other van. Dented my wife's. She had it parked too close while I was gone. I'll show you. And it came. It comes down all at once, just like you seen in them videos where the snow falls all at once. Look it. She won't park that close next time, will she? But look how high this snow is. I got to clear all this out. Let's do that. Hey, real quick. I also want to share something with you. One of my dreams has finally is finally starting to come true. It's called the Dirt Monkey Shop. And for the last couple years, you guys know that I've been going to a lot of trade shows. And if you look at my Instagram, I got tons of followers over there. And all I do is every day I try to show something nobody's ever seen before. I try to highlight and feature the small guys, the bluecollar guys that maybe got a dream. They got a vision. They build a cool tool and you look at and you're like, "Oh man, that's a great idea." But these guys, these visionaries, these guys, these inventors, they don't know how to market it. They don't know how to sell it. They don't know how to do anything else. So, I created the dirt monkey shop, which is one spot for all I can put all of these guys together for you guys. So, if you see this cool gadget over here, you see something cool over there, you can go to one place and you can go, "Oh, there there it is for sale. Oh, there's this also for sale. There's that also for sale." So, I'm helping young or old inventors, just just guys that don't that got something cool that they want to get it out on the market, and I'm helping connect them with you guys. Guys that want cool things, guys that want stuff maybe you haven't seen before or other cool things that you have seen before, but I got them all over at the Dirt Monkey Shop. Plus, I'm going to be putting up contracts, proposals free, just free for you guys. I'm going to have a whole free section just stuff for you guys to download so that if you guys are like, "Man, I need to I want to see how the dirt monkey does his contracts." I got them over there. Just go over there, you'll find a free section. You can download them. You can get them. You can put them in or proposals or whatever else. And if there's anything you guys want to see, let me know in the comments down below. If you're like, "Hey, I'd love to see uh how you do uh snow how a snowplow contract looks or how a you know a lawn care contract looks or how do you bid a patio? What do you what does that look like?" I'm going to give I'm going to create continue creating content and uploading that to the library over at the Dirt Monkey shop. But go check it out. Please show me an equipment operator that is uh that doesn't make mistakes and I'll show you a liar. cuz we all do. It's just that sometimes when you watch YouTube videos and you watch some of these equipment operators, there's a level of arrogance to them. It's like, do you not remember when you first started? Do you not remember not knowing what all the bells, whistles, and buttons did? Do you not remember the time when you didn't even know where to check the oil? Because you were there once. So, if you guys are watching this, don't ever, please don't ever get intimidated by running equipment. It's an amazing way to make a living. It's fun. It's lucrative. You can make a lot of money. And there's a ton of job security. We need equipment operators. America needs equipment operators. And if you like playing video games, you are going to love running a piece of equipment. Just imagine that this is a a freaking one of them seats that move and rotate and one of them virtual simulators. Those kids that play them video games, hop in a piece of equipment. So much better than somebody that never has. their reflexes, their coordination, their ability to see ahead. If that sounds like it's you and you don't know what to do in life, try running equipment. Oh, but dear monkey, how do I do that? Just go apply it at anywhere. Apply anywhere and be the kid that doesn't shut up. Like, ask questions. Tell people, tell the boss, tell your superiors, tell whoever gives a crap that you want a chance to go run the skid loader. You want a chance to go hop in the ex mini excavator. You want a chance to do this. You want a chance at personal growth. The squeaky wheel gets greased. Don't be obnoxious. Do not be obnoxious, but don't be a wallflower. Don't be a little church, a little church mouse in the corner watching everybody else do it. Be the squeaky wheel, the one that lets people know, I want to do this. And you may not be good at it at first, and if your job doesn't respect you, then get a different job. Do not work for someone that's an Do not work for a douchebag. Do not if I don't care if you're an adult, a kid, who you are right now. I'm telling you, if you work for someone that's a jerk, don't do it, man. It's your life. It's too precious. You are going to be dead a lot longer than you're going to be alive. All right, guys. Well, I think that looks pretty good. We got a mess out here that we got to clean up. And look, I hit my step. Pulled that out. That's actually retaining wall block. I'll just push that in. And I found another rug. But the driveway looks good. I got to clean up this mess. And I think what we'll do is we'll hop over there and we'll see if we can't clean up the neighbors. They they like to park right there. We'll see if we can't do that for them. One of the things I'm using, this is a snow bucket slash loose material litter bucket. It's not a dirt bucket. Um, this is made by TNA attachments. The guy's name is Tyler. That's where the tea comes from. And TNA. And this is a good company. I do have this for sale on my website, the Dirt Monkey Shop. Um, and all of Tyler's attachments and tools. And they're made right in Minnesota. uh a couple hundred miles away from here. I've known Tyler for years. He's a good dude and he works hard to make a good product. So, that's why I have no problems listing his stuff up for sale over there because I'd buy it myself as you can see. All right, let's clean up the rest of this mess. And I know that doesn't sound like a revelation, but if you actually just let that sink in, every single moment of your life needs to be something that you like to do because your time is the most precious precious thing you have. And don't trade the most precious thing you have for a few extra dollars or some security. You know, a lot of people are like, "Oh, I need a job. I got to do this, that." Yeah, I can't get it. If you got a wife and kids and family, but if you don't, man, this world is an amazing place. Make it amazing. Means go out and get your opportunities. Don't wait for them to come to you. At the end of every video, you hear me say, "God bless and go get them." Well, God bless means, I hope God blesses everything you do. But I also want you to go get it. I want you to go get your dreams. I want you to go get whatever it is you want that's going to make your life better. Don't freaking wait for it. Don't think it's going to be spoonfed to you, cuz it's not. It's not going to be spoonfed to you. You need to go out and make it happen. And when God and whoever else sees you making an effort to be the best version of yourself possible, it's amazing how things fall in line. And let's just talk more uh down to earth for a moment. If your boss sees you trying to do amazing things and he's a good dude, you will get rewarded. People will reward you for trying. Now, my neighbor also has a gravel driveway. And so, to avoid gouging their driveway up, I back drag the whole thing because I'm not going forward and and getting that bucket tip to go underneath and then popping that ground up. I'm just getting that bucket tip to shave. Takes a little longer. Doesn't do quite as good of a job, but it's not my property. I don't want to dig up their driveway and leave them with a mess. I don't mind doing it on my own back there. Yeah, it looks my own backyard. You guys can criticize me. I don't really care. uh back there because I was just having fun. It gives me the opportunity in the spring to regrade that sucker out and make her I have which I have to do anyway after the end of a winter season. I got to regrade it. So, it didn't make a difference to me how my driveway looked, but it makes a difference to me how my drive my neighbor's driveway looks because I want to do a good job for them. You know, they're not paying me, but you still want to do a good job. You do. What I've learned is practice makes permanent. You don't do a job one level for somebody and a different level for somebody else. Whether they're paying, not paying, whether you like them or you don't like them, you always do the best you possibly can because that's how you just learn to operate no matter what. No excuses asked. This street looks like a mess. Let's clean that up next. We'll reward you for trying. Not everybody. Oh, there's some bad apples in this world. There's some people you don't want to be around. Learn to learn to identify those energy vampires, those suckers of life, and get them gone. Don't hang out with them. Let them be miserable by themselves. Cuz all they all people that are miserable do want to do, they want to make other people miserable so they're not lonely. So, if you know someone that's miserable, do your best to make their life awesome, but don't dwell on where…