Zoning Board Battle: My fight to build a deck!

all right guys Frankie's got her done not her but Frankie's got the deck done okay so how how many hours did that take you Frankie I guess approximately around 20 hours and that's with hand digging the the uh the post yeah the PO the holes for the Post How deep did you hand dig those three and half 4T 4 foot okay why did you hand dig them cuz it was just Sugar Sand and some bigger rocks but the ciran just would't come out of the well wouldn't come out of the hole so I I just hand dug them with the posto diggers I would put uh I soak the I pour water down the holes every time uhhuh that would keep the my mud or keep it okay how long do you think it would have taken to build that deck without doing all that Hassle and I don't know that probably took me probably the day I mean probably 6 hourss B and old so you probably would have got that deck done in 14 hours up sure yeah right couple days or yeah 14 yeah yeah I would say pretty F now in today's video it's going to look like we're building a deck next to a tiny home but for zoning purposes we're going to be calling this a ground level deer stand next to a portable ice fishing house and let me just clarify why we're doing this there's two things that are occurring there's zoning laws and there's building codes now I'm not a fan of zoning laws because those are enforced On You by a group of people that sit around make up rules and regulations that don't pay the taxes that have never seen your property that don't know what's going on building codes on the other hand are built by designers Engineers contractors to keep people safe we're not going to be breaking any building codes but we are going to manipulate the verbiage of what we're calling this so that we can get away from the zoning laws and the zoning laws are enforced by this group of people that sit around in meetings and they have nothing better to do with their time that's why they go on these commissions I swear to God it helps them pass time and they get to enforce their rules and regulations onto other people it's almost like a whole group of Karens and Kevin get together and tell you what you can and you can't do on your own property so in today's video you're going to see a lot of similarities between a deck and this ground level deer stand that we're going to be constructing sitting conveniently right next to our ice fishing house which that ice fishing house to call that an ice fishing house it has to be mobile so when we built that we built it on a set of skids now in Minnesota we could put it on skids or we could put it on axles that's how we can make what looks like a permanent structure mobile don't get this structure that this ground level deer stand is sitting next to confused with a permanent structure because it was built intentionally to be able to be mobile but let's back this up and let's see where this entire video started divide and conquer that's what we're going to do today Frankie I'm going to give you this camera to take up north and you're going to go build whatever kind of deck you want to build off the front of the Sheed up there all right Len right so I got it all set up for you so it'll be a surprise to me as well we'll see what Frank ferer decides to build and how he decides to build [Applause] it a man of few words and much action now this next tip was taught to me by another contractor and I tried it out and it worked let me just explain to you right there right down over there I had the city come to my property and want to do a random inspection because I had too much wood stockpiled on my land I was only allowed one cord of wood and I have a wood burning fireplace and that's how I heat my home and I stopped the building inspector at the corner of my property right on my property line and I stopped him before he started he was starting to walk in and I said whoa what gives you the right to enter my property and he looks he wasn't expecting me to ask that question he says so I don't and I says well then do your inspection from over there and I pointed right to that spot on the street I said if there's anything you need to inspect that's his far as you go what this contractor told me was it doesn't make a difference if it's a building inspector or not they cannot just walk into your property at any time even if you have a home under construction and you have to do a permit let's say you have to have an inspection for a permit that's why they set up times that's why they have to follow those times because if an inspector comes and it's not in that time spot time slot you you can stop them and you can bar them from having entrance onto your property this is an important thing for you guys to remember just because they have a badge and it says building inspector doesn't mean just anybody has access to your property we the people need to reserve our right to protect our own personal property and our own personal sovereignty now here's another fast easy cheat for you to know exactly what you can and can't do on your own personal property go to chat GPT it will tell you whatever you want so in this case I simply ask chat GPT hey in my area what is considered a portable deer stand and it will break down all of the regulations for you and sum it up for you in under 30 seconds so instead of you doing the research you have now an assistant that will scour the internet find the information and show you the resources and where it came from again that's chat GPT I've used that to make sure that I'm when I'm doing projects like this I'm doing them in a way that allows me to actually do them and in this case those footings that you see underneath there those are not attached to that deck that is well they are they're bolted so that way if we want to set a set of skids underneath that deck we can slide that temporary deer stand wherever we want it to go as as well as that ice fishing house if we had actually permanently attached it to that footing it now becomes a permanent structure and now it falls under a different set of regulations so everything that we're doing in this case we're using their own rules and regulations to make sure that we're complying but building what we want to build knowledge is power before you make your move make sure you have that knowledge and the worst part about knowledge is power is trying to figure out how to get the knowledge so that you get the power with chat GPT it'll do it for you don't believe me let's do it let's go there right now what are the building codes for a deck in St Paul Minnesota it tells me permits deck size setbacks guard rails handrails structural considerations deck material stair requirements electrical inspections how to get a permit how to even do a deck plan that fast that's all I needed to know that's the same thing you can use chat GPT it's I freaking love it especially to arm yourself with the knowledge so that you can do things that you want to do without bending over backwards see one of the areas that I have property in I have property in bunch of different locations and I'm not going to disclose this area it's not because I don't trust you guys it's because I don't trust the Zoning Board in that area and the Zoning Board in that area I think has a crooked system to put it simply because the Zoning Board in one of the areas that I work in requires you to pay $300 not to get a permit just to have them look at it and if they approve your permit well then you're good to go and if they don't approve your permit you're still out the $300 so you're not t paying for a permit you're paying a flat rate fee for a review whether you get a permit or you don't get a permit and I don't know about you but in my book that doesn't float because if you're not getting something I don't need to pay money to get nothing there's a difference now on this property I have to be especially careful because I have a person on the zoning board that loves loves to stop me every chance they get I get attacked over and over again and in fact the last zoning board meeting I went to on projects that I was doing they actually knew I was coming in because I had to pay the $300 fee they knew what I was coming in about and they had expert Witnesses ready to go up against me and refute what I was doing so it was as if the zoning board had prepared ahead of time to turn me down now I when I walked into this thing it was a packed house I've been in many zoning board meetings before and there's usually five other people besides the zoning board there and in this case it was standing room only people were coming to watch the show and that's why I say I felt like I was getting attacked by a group of Karen and Kevin that just wanted to stop my plans before they even knew what those plans were and that's why you need to protect yourself because although it's supposed to be here's the rules here's the regulations just follow this and we're all good to go there's always that gray area that allows people to interpret those rules and regulations in whatever way benefits them the most and this ground level deck is one of those example I'm interpreting this as a ground level deck that I could put a set of skids on and move out if I needed to do I want to flip no but I'm protecting myself and if you guys want to do any projects just know that it might be smart for you guys to take the extra precautions to do whatever you need to do to be able to protect yourself as well because way back in the day I used to do a podcast and in that podcast I learned so many things that I could could apply to being a contractor and owning a business and um one of the people that I interviewed I don't know if you guys have ever heard of a guy named zigg Ziggler well I didn't interview him but I did did interview his son and Tom Ziggler taught me something that I still use to this day a lot of guys don't place money as the value of their job and this sounds weird meaning they don't go to work for money because that's not their main motivator they need money they want money but for a lot of guys money is confusing they don't know how to manage it and it's not the main driver they go to work for Frankie he doesn't go to work for money Frankie Goes to work for personal satisfaction and for a whole bunch of reasons and what the reason I bring this story up is because I've had like Frankie's been with me for 15 10 15 years more I don't know how long he's been with me I don't I don't keep track Timmy's been with me for 20 25 years Alex has been with me John has been with me forever these guys I have guys that are with me forever and the reason they're with me forever is because I understood from Tom Ziggler that the way to keep the guys you want around is to understand what motivates them to stick around and Tom gave me a great example that I'm going to give to you so this is you can hear it right in the podcast whatever episode that is way back in the day if you can find it great for you if you can't well here it is I'm going to sum it up for you there was a big company that had a main maintenance supervisor that was leaving their organization and this guy had skills that paid the bills so they didn't want to lose them and they asked him what it would take to get this guy to stick around and they found out that money didn't make a difference what kind of raise they offered him money wasn't the motivator his goal was to set up a college fund for his daughter that's all he wanted to do and he couldn't manage the money himself so what Tom's company did was they set up the college fund for him for his daughter and then every week instead of giving him the money to put into that college fund they did it for him they took the weight off from his shoulders they found out what D what drove him to come to work what motivated him and they helped make his dreams come true so although it wasn't necessarily a raise it was still something that kept this guy coming back for more and that's the thing with Frankie with Frankie it's not necessarily about money it's about a whole lot more and feeling appreciated and knowing that what he does is important and I found that for the guys that I want to be around the guys that I like going to work with every day it has nothing to do with money we're not doing this for money and the guys that are Money Motivated are on kind of a diff different level they're in a different area it's not bad but it's not the same motivation as it is for the team the core group of team that I've worked with for decades and built everything off from it goes way beyond that you know what let me just give you example here in a minute [Music] so we've got got more project coming up but before we start on the next one Frankie this is yours I got you I got you the M trap system Merry Christmas hey hey that's great I can use this yes so um if you guys want to see this is a really cool tool storage system really really really phenomenally cool it's not like the Milwaukee that Stacks vertically although it will it's designed to slide underneath a truck bed cover and you have a truck bed cover on yeah so sweet so check out my Instagram we'll do that one and then while I got you guys here um I do uh all of my tool reviews the one minute tool reviews on a new channel called dirt monkey favorite finds yeah I know that's a really kind of a not manly name but it is it is what it is uh so if you look up the short dirt monkey favorite finds you'll find that but the next video that we've got coming out is building a trailer so we're going to be building the Harbor Freight $999 trailer and there it is right there and that's going to be Frankie's too so Frankie is a little bit of a different Beast he loves projects he can build everything from Cars and Trucks rebuild Transmissions to building decks to building ground level deer stands to putting siding on Windows etc etc but he doesn't like to do any one thing too long so for Frankie I always try to have multiple projects going at the same time so that he doesn't burn out on any one project Timmy on the other hand he just loves doing really top level work for customers he loves satisfying customers he loves making sure that the people we work for are completely and utterly satisfied and what that told me is with a guy like Timmy I needed to back off I couldn't worry so much about productivity and I had to if I wanted to keep him around I had to give him enough Freedom that he could take the time to connect with the customer and create something that he knew that the customer wanted now Alex he's a completely different Beast as well he has a lot of the same traits as Frankie and Timmy but Alex's real motivator and Driver the thing that he really likes is is equipment he has a lot of pride in his equipment and so we had to give him him enough Freedom that allowed him to just do what he wanted to with our equipment and I'll tell you right now our equipment has never been cleaner it's never been shinier it's never been more better maintained than when we've allowed Alex to take whatever time he needs to make sure that the equipment is the way he wants it so instead of having this one way fits all like it's got to be my way or the highway type of a mentality I look at each one of these guys and goes how can what you want what I want match up and it's a little bit of give and it's a little bit of take but making that balance is the most important thing you can do because I've had the blessing you guys to be able to go behind the scenes to so many hyper successful companies so many amazing companies out there and they all have one thing in common it's about building their team and when they found their team the guys that make it worthwhile to get up and go to work in the morning those are the companies that have thrived and the companies that have not found that that that real good stride that that kind of like a dance right where everybody's in sync everybody's doing the thing that they enjoy well those companies haven't been quite as successful but I hope you guys have enjoyed watching us work on this deck in this video and as always God bless and go get [Music] them okay yep so that's it for for this video hope you guys enjoyed going along for the ride watching Frankie do all that hard work getting that deck built um and then hit that subscribe button come back for more because the next thing we're going to be building is this trailer and uh checking out that tool system and having some more fun so God bless and go get them we'll catch you guys on another one