Going Mowing - Learning the ropes.

I'm going mowing yeahoo I'm going to take you guys with me I'm mowing today you know what I want to cover everything you're just going to ride along we're going to have a good time today promise you I'm actually looking forward to this let me tell you a little bit something about my mowing crew I don't know jack [ __ ] about mo why do you think why do you think I don't say anything about mowing in videos cuz [ __ ] don't know anything about mowing all right I being completely honest with you after interviewing Jonathan pachnik and Ryan foudre and geek to freak and all these amazing people I'm like I want to start my own mowing company and I'll be honest with you I had to um it was basically I either had to invest in a lot of equipment at the end end of 2014 or I had to give the government a lot of money I don't like the government I don't like giving them my money I like earning my money and reinvesting it into the company and that's what I did and so that's where we bought this truck we bought a bunch of mowing equipment and we got started down a new venue and what I'm doing today I'm strapping on the work boots strap it getting the work shirt on and I go out and mow every chance I get because I'm a firm believer you have to totally know the the technical end of the business you got to know how to actually go out and snip snip snip cut grass before you can really run a business because that is that's the beginning you got to walk before you can run and just because I know how to Hardscape because I know how to knock down buildings and I can do Menard Superstores for Excavating work doesn't mean I know jack [ __ ] about mowing to be honest with you and that's what I'm learning my I'm teaching myself I'm going out every job I'm timing it I'm looking at cutting patterns I'm not just out mindlessly mowing I'm actually learning and I'm actually enjoying it I love learning [ __ ] excuse my language totally sorry check this out bam no plates five months I've gone five months on this truck I still don't have plates I'm going to see how long I can go back that's all I got now on the other hand the new trailer yeah I got all new equipment I bought new equipment because I had to I like I explained to you the IRS the the tax thing I had to buy new equipment and I can reinvest it but I put plates on my trailer ASAP there's you don't mess around with that the truck you can mess around with have some fun all right so what we got to do is we're gonna get pull out the 30 in we're going to be going bringing this this one two back two backpacks I think we'll bring and we'll get uh two trimmers and then we've got two of these we only need one uh we'll pull we got a brand new one and then we got a used one here that's my that's my classic snowmobile and literally have had that since I was a kid so this thing's ancient um okay so what at this 52 in Grand stand I think that's what you call it I don't know it's kind of fun though I like it cruise around I can get on the sides of hills and what I do is when I go on the side of a hill like stick my leg on the side like I'm riding a bow and like the machine will be tipping way over and I'm hanging on I'm like yeah I'm like surfing like surfing so this one's brand new we've never fired it up I'm not going to fire it up I'm going to keep it as new as possible I'm going to keep running the same one for right now we need more we need snow plowing lawn mowing reminds me a lot of snowplowing we need more lawn moing accounts then we're going to fire this one up and then we have a 60 in they're all Toros the 60 in is a ride on zero turn we got to check the oil on it Yen this one that that's yoken yen Ying yoking which one are we taking and that's Jake behind us looking at him what's the what's what's Jake doing wrong can you guys point out he's the new guy he's brand new to this morning he's never even seen lawnmower before in his life and the first thing he's doing wrong is he's standing in front of the boss with his hands in his pockets see that you see that right there oh oh he's also the father to my grandson so he's got a pretty good chance that he can't get his ass fired cuz and he lives with me so I think his job is probably safe unless he runs over a bunch of baby ducks or something then we'll have to have a conversation I'm taking the Mustang out to the job sites today for a couple reasons one is because of this because I can only shoot like 2 minutes worth of footage and then I have to run back to the office and download it I don't know what's going on with my phone it hasn't worked right for months and two it's by taking the Mustang it also allows me in between while the guys are out mowing I can grab brochures I can grab flyers and I can canvas the neighborhoods that I'm in so that while they're all busy getting out the work done and I'm learning all the ropes I can also drop off next door and go the block over and start handing stuff out so gives me a little Freedom today I'm going to take this normally I'd be just riding in the truck with them but I'm going to mix it up a little bit because I'm shooting this and let's get going let's quit talking let's quit yapping let's get going let's get stuff done looks like it's going to storm doesn't it Yen yeah they said couple sprinkles here and there but it's not supposed to be like an all day deal look look how careful Jake is the most overpaid people for being wrong you know what I mean okay this is first yard we're going to mall right here there's a weird sign on the door what does this sign say let's take check this out oh listen to the purr of the Toro actually it's not a Toro engine it's like a Kawasaki or something I don't know all right let's teach Jake how to mle okay um now you guys can correct me if I'm wrong this is the way I'm going to explain it to them we take the weed trimmers first and we go all the way all the way around while he's mowing he'll start mowing the field okay and we'll just hit all the edges you can see all the spots he can't hit Y and since there's going to be three of us we'll either use two weed trimmers or one of us can take one of this and do a you know do some edging as well we don't have to take a a very wide SWAT uh just going to weed we he's going to start weed whipping Yen okay you want me to do this one yeah you can do both whatever whatever's clever [Music] okay okay what do the sign on the door say oh I built this patio by the way yeah woo that's my real work one's real work but this is what I'm good at as patio and crap do not enter ozone in progress house was on fire the restoration company's cleaning it up let's go look at the damage before my camera shuts up we better hurry cuz I only got 2 minutes of recording time and I got to go pick up Fuel and then bring it back man you can smell it check it out this it's my mother-in-law's house started on fire lightning struck it I don't know what happened but check it out getting gas okay the easiest way I got to do premix the easiest way to do this since in my my container I already have some gas I'm going to just use the I got to only mix two gallons at a time right but I have gas in here so I'm going to use the output on the the nozzle to tell me when I hit 2 gallons that way I'm going to be accurate with my mix so that's a good way to get it done you know what seems to happen I just pulled the fuel tanks out of the back of the Mustang here and you spill fuel all over that I do that on purpose I don't spill fuel in the back of my Mustang but what I do is I leave the top off the mix the the fuel that I need to mix because I always seem to forget to get back to the yard or get back to the job site to actually put the mix in so I learned I got to do something to remember so I just let the let the top kind of jiggle on there a little bit keep it Loose cuz I'll tell you what I would rather dump two gallons of gas on the ground than to burn out my engines because I forgot to stick this in here so one of the little tricks maybe it'll help you guys what do you guys do put it in the comments how do you know what you know what else I want to know how do you guys strap down cuz I still haven't figured that crap out takes me forever takes me longer to strap down than it does for me to get a job done all right let's fire up this Echo SRM 225 let's start whacking some weeds all right let's see how this hasn't been ran yet today so Yeehaw third pull not bad I'll take a three puller I'll do three pulls any day let's see can I whack weeds and vide tape oh Rob let's see how did we get around here y all know starting to drizzle we're starting job number two starting to rain St to rain stop a keep going not raining that bad what's a little Dill will hurt long as the grass doesn't Clump up I want to show you something something we do I know you guys probably do it but this is the order that we do all these jobs we have it all routed and scheduled that way we can Buzz around from one to the next to the ne see what we got to do grab a trimmer and go touch up some [Music] edging got to be careful when it's wet like this you kind of tend to skin the grass on these Zero Turns not ideal see what height he's mowing at we don't want to go too y all right take a tour of this property we're going to do for this gal blow off her deck it's got a bunch of looks like this tree puked all over her deck touch that up for her we'll go from there onto the next I just got a call from a customer who wasn't happy he's an older fellow and so I'm loading the weed whip into the Mustang and I'm going to head over to his house and what it boils down to is he wants company to be totally honest with you he wants somebody that when he we're out working on his yard we will come out and chitchat with him and stop and the problem is last time we were mowing we were behind we were we had a tight schedule that day and I just didn't have time to chitchat with them and so I'm going to make an extra effort I'm just going to go over oh it Rees in here that two stroke in here just RS anyway we're getting rained out unfortunately rains are coming in and uh we're just not we're not going to be able to continue so we're going to this will be the last lawn for today we're going to bag this one up making sure that we get all the grass clippings off this one this thing this yard right here it grows like it's on steroids it's just terrible so we're bagging it we got to do some trimming here we got blow this off they're trimming this backyard we actually just Trimm this whole backyard up it's just so [Music] skinny it's almost not worth look at this thing little teeny tiny baby [Music] backyard come back here get this maybe we'll blow up off their deck Forum call it a day I guess I was hoping to work all day long Mother Nature's not going to let us right we wrapped up this yard and what we're going to do is we're going to teach the new guy how to do a walkthrough and as we're teaching him we're going to probably pick up a few tips and tricks we're going to discuss it between the three of us one of the things that I want to look for when we're done with every single job I want to actually before we leave go just not set the equipment down and just walk the property and a couple of the things that I've noticed that I want to pay particular attention to is make sure the sidewalks are clear there's no clumping grass in any of the Yards like we have a little bit of clumping here but this thing was looked like a Hayfield before another thing Yen and Jake would I want to look for is um when it's wet like this I noticed we're getting grass sticking to the to the houses to the retaining walls to the other structures okay so we want to make sure that we get that all blown off and then when we're done looking there I want to look at the still working just raining off and on sometimes hard sometimes not we've got one account in this city we just can't keep mowing it if we don't pick more up so here's our brochures check them out I'm canvasing the neighborhood what do they call that boot leing it I guess I don't know whatever just going through the neighborhoods and getting uh information out to every account that I possibly can I want to go back to the story about the uh customer complaint um had an old guy and he just called just a complain he said we did a good job the point was we didn't stop and talk with them and I'm going to tell you something some of these older people when you mold their lawn it isn't as much about the service as about the customer relations so I called them up on the the phone and I said hey Dave how you doing and he good good we started chitchatting and he's like yeah I might go do some volunteer work you know it's just you get older you get lonely and you got to get out of the house and he's kind of confessing a little bit how he feels and I says you know what Dave next time we're in the neighborhood you want to come mle with us and he's starts laughing he's like well I had open heart surgery he's like 87 or something like that like no Dave you're not going to actually mold just ride along with us just get out for the day go out and cruise around and hang out with us and I mean I was on the phone with him but you would have thought I I he was tickled pink and it's just about interacting with the customers so his complaint was we didn't have we didn't talk with them enough you see how just stopping taking the time that makes a big difference now before I run out of tape and got to go back to my house let's check out this yard this one's hell this hill is crazy it's like straight up and down look at this thing it's all Hill the whole yard is nothing but Hill you hear me talk about the two components of a business one being the technical end of it the second being the business end of it today's Journey was the technical end of it perfecting the crap ra I hope you enjoyed the process it's a learning curve for me I got the the business end of it down but for mowing lawns maintaining them when those question questions come up from the customers I have to be able to give them an answer and the only way that can happen is if I have practical in the- field experience that's what today was about the systems are in place I know how to bid use Google Earth Pro everything else now is time for me to get the boots on the ground and make it happen I love you guys put your comments down below I want to hear from you I want to know what your thoughts are and if you got a good way of strapping down your equipment put it down below I want to hear how you