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Hey everyone, it's Mike Handys, and today we're gonna be walking through a $300,000 landscape job.
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This is a massive project that we've been working on for about a year and a half.
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And this is actually one of our owners inside of Augusta Lawn Care, and you're gonna actually see the real math and the numbers.
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The real question is, was it worth it?
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You constantly have to be one step ahead of all of your guys.
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All of that and more coming up.
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Hi, I'm Andrew.
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I'm the GM and co-owner of Augusta Delta, and I'm Matt Badala.
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I am the co-owner with Andrew of Augusta Delta.
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And I'm Lucas and I'm the future GM of Augusta Delta.
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Like I said, a year and a half ago on the front, couldn't even see through these trees to the dike at all.
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It was completely overgrown with brambles and blackberries and everything.
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So we started there and then we moved over to this, which we call the showcase garden, this kind of island garden with the driveway going around it.
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It goes around $100,000 in total to get it all renovated.
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It was a completely overgrown garden.
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We didn't do the retaining walls and the pathways.
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Kind of the structure was there when we got here, but
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It had been neglected for years and completely overgrown.
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So this garden over here, completely overgrown with cotoneaster, brambles, blackberries, random volunteer trees.
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And we gutted it.
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Lucas was on the mini excavator and the bobcat for months.
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And then we replanted all of this.
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And so we kind of lumped this, we call the berm, because there's a hillside over there, with this east garden over here.
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And those two combined were probably around $75,000 or so.
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Again, completely gutted.
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We had to redo the irrigation and then planted everything.
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Other than the trees, obviously, we didn't plant those.
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But the trees were the only things that were left in there.
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And yeah, so that was kind of the next phase.
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And just recently we finished the lawns here.
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So those are all kind of the finishing touches.
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They're just growing in.
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We just did the first mow today on these lawns.
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Our awesome crew did, I should say.
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The labor side of things, just trying to balance this project with having other jobs on the go.
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You know, we had a couple employees leave the company in the spring and we're short staffed.
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So it's tough because we have other jobs in the schedule that need to be fulfilled.
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And we still need six, seven, eight people out here.
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So there were some weeks where, you know, we only had two, three people out here and things really slowed down.
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So that was the tough part is trying to, for me to manage all the other mowing and small projects and stuff that we have going on along with labor out here for me.
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Sometimes, some days it was a little stressful, but I mean, you just kind of adapt and overcome.
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Yeah, I would say that was one of the bigger challenges.
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We kind of ended up being about a month past our deadline for finishing things up, and it was really because everything gets so busy in Spring Rush.
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You know, a couple of people leave here or there, and Andrew's got dozens of jobs scheduled.
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You know, labor leaves, we kind of pulled them from this site because it was like, well, what's a crew of seven versus a crew of four, and that ended up causing some delays.
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But, you know, a hundred plus hours of recurring maintenance out here every month.
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Just mowing is a full day.
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During the spring, it's a full day for three guys to maintain the three properties.
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Plus, now we've gone from the showcase garden with about 6,500 square feet, we're probably at about 50,000 square feet of garden.
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So that's a rough depth, but that's enough work for two gardeners, probably three days a week.
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Once we're out here full-time weeding.
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I mean, you start at one end, by the time you get through the garden bed, you're back to the first one and it's already overgrown with weeds.
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Right?
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So it's like, it's nonstop out here.
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So that's, that's a really nice part.
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And the client knew like, Hey, I'm increasing
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My garden is exponentially.
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I know it's going to cost a lot more money to maintain this.
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I know we're going to have to do this.
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So put the hours in.
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I want it to be.
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He never wants to think about it.
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He just wants to come in here and go.
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And then that's kind of a nice perk.
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We've created all this recurring maintenance for us, for ourselves.
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One of our controllers lost power and I found out yesterday and we have all these new plants and the sun is beating down on them and they're drying out.
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So we needed to, you know, get the water going kind of in an emergency situation.
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Yeah.
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Which we got it figured out.
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Yeah.
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It's yeah.
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It forces you to learn things quickly and learn things that you didn't think you would have to.
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This is kind of our herb culinary garden with a peach tree there.
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This is one of the gardens that didn't get enough water.
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So things are looking a little sad, but they'll come back.
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We've got it.
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We've got it dialed in now.
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This slope used to be a lot more like a lot harsher.
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cut this slope down a ton with the excavator and in the process took out basically from the stairs till almost that first riser, the whole part of the wall came out.
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So we did have to rebuild the whole thing in which we found out that they had built this wall and it was not backfilled with anything.
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Yeah.
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There was no material inside of it.
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So we repaired it and did it properly.
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And then down to the end, we actually had a water issue and it actually almost wiped out about
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six or eight feet of the wall.
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So we had, again, same thing, had to rebuild that.
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And again, there was no material inside of it at all.
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Except we did find out recently that there is a nice big beehive in the middle of it.
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One of the girls got stung there the other day.
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Top of these were all capped off.
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So you can see here, these have these like concrete, they're capped.
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These ones, I think it was Lucas's idea actually, to bust them all out and put the time in it and the time will grow and kind of like
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flow out over top of the sides.
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It's going to look really cool.
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How many of these will flow out over time?
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Like over time?
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Very good.
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I'm pretty sure our client made that same joke when we were walking around with them last week.
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When you become an owner inside of Augusta Lawn Care, you get daily masterminds and live streams with me.
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You get weekly office hours with your owner's success manager.
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You get monthly one-on-one coaching from a coach, and every quarter you get together with all of Augusta Nation.
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This sort of camaraderie, community, and support is what you'll need to take your business to the next level.
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If that's of interest, go to AugustaLawnCareServices.com slash franchise.
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Originally this was just lawn, so the field lawn just extended around here.
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And there's still a bit of tweaking to do.
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It's a bit messy here, but basically, yeah, Lucas excavated it all, and then we filled it with gravel.
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We did drainage and, you know, crusher dust for the top.
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And then we installed this granite border around the whole thing, created these gardens.
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These first gardens we call the pollinator garden.
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So it's got a lot of things that bees like.
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So it'll be buzzing in the summer, and that'll help with our berries.
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So inside, literally.
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So then let's walk in here.
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So yeah, this is all from scratch.
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We've got the, it's kind of a rustic feel to it.
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So we've got the split rail fence installed and then the planter boxes all have different types of berries.
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Which berries do we have in these gardens?
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You remember better than I do.
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There's sassetune berries, there's raspberries, there's blackberries, there's hascap berries, and then we've got these despaulier apples.
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Strawberries there too.
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The thing area with a fire pit in there, so it should be a cool hangout spot.
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Somewhere between 60 and 80.
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Yeah, we still have to install irrigation, so that'll put it up closer to 80 probably.
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We're going to put some lighting in too.
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I've actually put some big posts in and patio lanterns.
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Yeah.
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So it's not quite finished, but it's usable.
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Yeah, it's usable.
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And then next year we're probably gonna have to put netting over top of the berries.
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We're not gonna worry about that this year because we're kinda past the season.
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I was probably like 40 hours plus on just the proposal and the budget and the planning and all that.
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I mean, easily more than that.
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Our initial plan was back there where there's, you know, we had a chain link fence there.
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We were gonna put a labyrinth in kind of a third of that whole space.
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And then we were talking to a drainage guy.
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This was above our pay grade as far as, or experience level as far as drainage goes.
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So we had a drainage guy come in.
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He estimated somewhere north of $100,000 just to do the drainage.
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And yeah, so our client decided, let's hold off on that for now.
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We may still do it.
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We're gonna clean out these paddocks though, and turn this into like a horse riding ring.
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So I don't know if we'll be really involved in the horse part, but we're at least gonna get it all cleaned up.
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put in hog fuel and wood chips.
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I would say that's one of the hardest things though, is just all the unforeseen extra things that come up.
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And it's like, the saving grace for us is that we did have that contingency in the budget.
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and maybe a little bit of luck, honestly.
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Like it could very easily have spun out of control, I think, and been a disaster.
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No astronomical major issues.
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Everything was just kind of minor little things.
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They do add up over time, but you know, luckily we're able to kind of just fix the minor issues as they come up and just carry on.
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And like I said, a lot of it is you have to fix this thing.
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small issue before you can carry on to the next big part of the project, right?
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But certainly something with these big projects, like we've been dependent on some subcontractors.
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One of the owners of one of our subcontracting companies had to be in the hospital for a couple weeks, and then his head crew chief hurt his back and is out three weeks.
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So in the middle of this project, we're waiting on these guys.
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We ended up, you know, calling other subs, we're doing some of the stuff ourselves and just waiting on things.
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So there's so many different moving parts and they all kind of have to line up.
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And if anything goes wrong, then you're delayed on everything that's past it.
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You know, that's one of the reasons why we may not do huge projects in the future.
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It's so complex.
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And I think we've delivered pretty well here, but there's always the risk that, you know, the client sees what you've done and they're like, hmm, that's not what I expected or that's not good enough or whatever.
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And then what do you do?
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Like, thanks for that.
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It hasn't happened here.
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Yeah.
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As far as ideas on this project, though, yeah, we came up with a ton of cool ideas.
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And then you kind of look at it and it's like, well, how complex is this going to be?
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You really want to pare it down to make it as easy as possible because we're already going to be a little bit in over our heads doing a project of this size.
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So it kind of came down to, you know, obviously we want to make client happy, present some ideas, but also try to make it as simple as possible for us and the crew.
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So it's kind of that trying to find that balance.
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And I would say, again, we leaned on Cheryl, the designer, a lot to just help, like,
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with this, you know, with these variables, with, you know, all these ideas, like, let's narrow it down.
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Like, she kind of has a really good eye for things and what works and what will work.
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And that helped a lot.
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We didn't have to think too hard about, you know, all the different ideas.
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Is there any advice that you guys would give a crew that have, like, similar experience with you that is looking at one of these?
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Like, maybe they have it on the books and they're looking at it.
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Be weird.
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Yeah, I'd say don't do it.
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I'd say build up to it if you're gonna do it.
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Like we kinda jumped in, and full scope, I would say this is about 10 times bigger than our previous biggest project around that.
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So yeah, it was a bit of a jump.
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Make sure your client's amazing.
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Make sure you put a contingency into your budget.
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Wow.
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And I don't know, just have good relationships with subs.
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Don't be afraid to get on the phone and call experts in your local area.
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Like if you're, you know, for example, us here, like we could have tried to do the irrigation install ourselves, but then that's a whole nother thing that we're learning that we have base knowledge of, but we just hired an amazing sub and they've handled it for us.
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How much it's going to cost you to figure out how to do it versus seven calls from the snow crew.
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So one second.
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I'll seem to do it, right?
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So, I mean, like Matt said, we could have figured out the irrigation.
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We could have done that.
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It probably would have cost us twice as much money to do it that way, right?
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And twice as much time.
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Yeah, twice as much time, right?
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It's our labor of time.
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Like, it's, you know, figure out what you can do and what, you know, versus what you think you can do.
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I think look at it like a general contractor maybe, you know how people build houses, like they're not doing all the actual work.
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They've got a network of preferred subs that they trust.
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So I think if you're really going to go into it, you want to build up that network so that you can execute through them and kind of just focus on your core competencies.
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So for us, like planting and gardens, we're great at that.
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We're great at maintenance.
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You know, that's kind of the bulk of it is mostly plants and moving plants around and creating new beds.
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Like, we didn't do a lot of stuff that we weren't comfortable with.
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No, I just, we're looking forward to cutting out multi-day projects as Mike recommended.
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And go back to simplifying now, it's gonna be nice.
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It's stressful to be honest, but the finished result is super nice to see and rewarding at the end.
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Hey everyone, it's Mike Handys, and today we're gonna be walking through a $300,000 landscape job.
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This is a massive project that we've been working on for about a year and a half.
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And this is actually one of our owners inside of Augusta Lawn Care, and you're gonna actually see the real math and the numbers.
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The real question is, was it worth it?
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You constantly have to be one step ahead of all of your guys.
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All of that and more coming up.
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Hi, I'm Andrew.
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I'm the GM and co-owner of Augusta Delta, and I'm Matt Badala.
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I am the co-owner with Andrew of Augusta Delta.
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And I'm Lucas and I'm the future GM of Augusta Delta.
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Like I said, a year and a half ago on the front, couldn't even see through these trees to the dike at all.
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It was completely overgrown with brambles and blackberries and everything.
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So we started there and then we moved over to this, which we call the showcase garden, this kind of island garden with the driveway going around it.
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It goes around $100,000 in total to get it all renovated.
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It was a completely overgrown garden.
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We didn't do the retaining walls and the pathways.
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Kind of the structure was there when we got here, but
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It had been neglected for years and completely overgrown.
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So this garden over here, completely overgrown with cotoneaster, brambles, blackberries, random volunteer trees.
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And we gutted it.
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Lucas was on the mini excavator and the bobcat for months.
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And then we replanted all of this.
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And so we kind of lumped this, we call the berm, because there's a hillside over there, with this east garden over here.
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And those two combined were probably around $75,000 or so.
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Again, completely gutted.
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We had to redo the irrigation and then planted everything.
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Other than the trees, obviously, we didn't plant those.
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But the trees were the only things that were left in there.
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And yeah, so that was kind of the next phase.
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And just recently we finished the lawns here.
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So those are all kind of the finishing touches.
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They're just growing in.
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We just did the first mow today on these lawns.
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Our awesome crew did, I should say.
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The labor side of things, just trying to balance this project with having other jobs on the go.
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You know, we had a couple employees leave the company in the spring and we're short staffed.
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So it's tough because we have other jobs in the schedule that need to be fulfilled.
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And we still need six, seven, eight people out here.
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So there were some weeks where, you know, we only had two, three people out here and things really slowed down.
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So that was the tough part is trying to, for me to manage all the other mowing and small projects and stuff that we have going on along with labor out here for me.
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Sometimes, some days it was a little stressful, but I mean, you just kind of adapt and overcome.
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Yeah, I would say that was one of the bigger challenges.
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We kind of ended up being about a month past our deadline for finishing things up, and it was really because everything gets so busy in Spring Rush.
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You know, a couple of people leave here or there, and Andrew's got dozens of jobs scheduled.
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You know, labor leaves, we kind of pulled them from this site because it was like, well, what's a crew of seven versus a crew of four, and that ended up causing some delays.
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But, you know, a hundred plus hours of recurring maintenance out here every month.
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Just mowing is a full day.
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During the spring, it's a full day for three guys to maintain the three properties.
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Plus, now we've gone from the showcase garden with about 6,500 square feet, we're probably at about 50,000 square feet of garden.
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So that's a rough depth, but that's enough work for two gardeners, probably three days a week.
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Once we're out here full-time weeding.
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I mean, you start at one end, by the time you get through the garden bed, you're back to the first one and it's already overgrown with weeds.
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Right?
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So it's like, it's nonstop out here.
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So that's, that's a really nice part.
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And the client knew like, Hey, I'm increasing
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My garden is exponentially.
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I know it's going to cost a lot more money to maintain this.
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I know we're going to have to do this.
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So put the hours in.
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I want it to be.
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He never wants to think about it.
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He just wants to come in here and go.
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And then that's kind of a nice perk.
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We've created all this recurring maintenance for us, for ourselves.
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One of our controllers lost power and I found out yesterday and we have all these new plants and the sun is beating down on them and they're drying out.
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So we needed to, you know, get the water going kind of in an emergency situation.
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Yeah.
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Which we got it figured out.
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Yeah.
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It's yeah.
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It forces you to learn things quickly and learn things that you didn't think you would have to.
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This is kind of our herb culinary garden with a peach tree there.
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This is one of the gardens that didn't get enough water.
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So things are looking a little sad, but they'll come back.
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We've got it.
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We've got it dialed in now.
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This slope used to be a lot more like a lot harsher.
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cut this slope down a ton with the excavator and in the process took out basically from the stairs till almost that first riser, the whole part of the wall came out.
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So we did have to rebuild the whole thing in which we found out that they had built this wall and it was not backfilled with anything.
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Yeah.
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There was no material inside of it.
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So we repaired it and did it properly.
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And then down to the end, we actually had a water issue and it actually almost wiped out about
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six or eight feet of the wall.
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So we had, again, same thing, had to rebuild that.
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And again, there was no material inside of it at all.
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Except we did find out recently that there is a nice big beehive in the middle of it.
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One of the girls got stung there the other day.
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Top of these were all capped off.
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So you can see here, these have these like concrete, they're capped.
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These ones, I think it was Lucas's idea actually, to bust them all out and put the time in it and the time will grow and kind of like
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flow out over top of the sides.
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It's going to look really cool.
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How many of these will flow out over time?
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Like over time?
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Very good.
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I'm pretty sure our client made that same joke when we were walking around with them last week.
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When you become an owner inside of Augusta Lawn Care, you get daily masterminds and live streams with me.
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You get weekly office hours with your owner's success manager.
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You get monthly one-on-one coaching from a coach, and every quarter you get together with all of Augusta Nation.
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This sort of camaraderie, community, and support is what you'll need to take your business to the next level.
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If that's of interest, go to AugustaLawnCareServices.com slash franchise.
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Originally this was just lawn, so the field lawn just extended around here.
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And there's still a bit of tweaking to do.
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It's a bit messy here, but basically, yeah, Lucas excavated it all, and then we filled it with gravel.
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We did drainage and, you know, crusher dust for the top.
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And then we installed this granite border around the whole thing, created these gardens.
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These first gardens we call the pollinator garden.
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So it's got a lot of things that bees like.
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So it'll be buzzing in the summer, and that'll help with our berries.
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So inside, literally.
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So then let's walk in here.
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So yeah, this is all from scratch.
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We've got the, it's kind of a rustic feel to it.
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So we've got the split rail fence installed and then the planter boxes all have different types of berries.
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Which berries do we have in these gardens?
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You remember better than I do.
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There's sassetune berries, there's raspberries, there's blackberries, there's hascap berries, and then we've got these despaulier apples.
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Strawberries there too.
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The thing area with a fire pit in there, so it should be a cool hangout spot.
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Somewhere between 60 and 80.
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Yeah, we still have to install irrigation, so that'll put it up closer to 80 probably.
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We're going to put some lighting in too.
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I've actually put some big posts in and patio lanterns.
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Yeah.
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So it's not quite finished, but it's usable.
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Yeah, it's usable.
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And then next year we're probably gonna have to put netting over top of the berries.
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We're not gonna worry about that this year because we're kinda past the season.
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I was probably like 40 hours plus on just the proposal and the budget and the planning and all that.
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I mean, easily more than that.
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Our initial plan was back there where there's, you know, we had a chain link fence there.
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We were gonna put a labyrinth in kind of a third of that whole space.
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And then we were talking to a drainage guy.
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This was above our pay grade as far as, or experience level as far as drainage goes.
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So we had a drainage guy come in.
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He estimated somewhere north of $100,000 just to do the drainage.
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And yeah, so our client decided, let's hold off on that for now.
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We may still do it.
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We're gonna clean out these paddocks though, and turn this into like a horse riding ring.
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So I don't know if we'll be really involved in the horse part, but we're at least gonna get it all cleaned up.
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put in hog fuel and wood chips.
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I would say that's one of the hardest things though, is just all the unforeseen extra things that come up.
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And it's like, the saving grace for us is that we did have that contingency in the budget.
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and maybe a little bit of luck, honestly.
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Like it could very easily have spun out of control, I think, and been a disaster.
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No astronomical major issues.
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Everything was just kind of minor little things.
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They do add up over time, but you know, luckily we're able to kind of just fix the minor issues as they come up and just carry on.
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And like I said, a lot of it is you have to fix this thing.
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small issue before you can carry on to the next big part of the project, right?
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But certainly something with these big projects, like we've been dependent on some subcontractors.
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One of the owners of one of our subcontracting companies had to be in the hospital for a couple weeks, and then his head crew chief hurt his back and is out three weeks.
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So in the middle of this project, we're waiting on these guys.
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We ended up, you know, calling other subs, we're doing some of the stuff ourselves and just waiting on things.
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So there's so many different moving parts and they all kind of have to line up.
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And if anything goes wrong, then you're delayed on everything that's past it.
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You know, that's one of the reasons why we may not do huge projects in the future.
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It's so complex.
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And I think we've delivered pretty well here, but there's always the risk that, you know, the client sees what you've done and they're like, hmm, that's not what I expected or that's not good enough or whatever.
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And then what do you do?
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Like, thanks for that.
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It hasn't happened here.
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Yeah.
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As far as ideas on this project, though, yeah, we came up with a ton of cool ideas.
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And then you kind of look at it and it's like, well, how complex is this going to be?
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You really want to pare it down to make it as easy as possible because we're already going to be a little bit in over our heads doing a project of this size.
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So it kind of came down to, you know, obviously we want to make client happy, present some ideas, but also try to make it as simple as possible for us and the crew.
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So it's kind of that trying to find that balance.
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And I would say, again, we leaned on Cheryl, the designer, a lot to just help, like,
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with this, you know, with these variables, with, you know, all these ideas, like, let's narrow it down.
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Like, she kind of has a really good eye for things and what works and what will work.
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And that helped a lot.
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We didn't have to think too hard about, you know, all the different ideas.
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Is there any advice that you guys would give a crew that have, like, similar experience with you that is looking at one of these?
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Like, maybe they have it on the books and they're looking at it.
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Be weird.
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Yeah, I'd say don't do it.
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I'd say build up to it if you're gonna do it.
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Like we kinda jumped in, and full scope, I would say this is about 10 times bigger than our previous biggest project around that.
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So yeah, it was a bit of a jump.
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Make sure your client's amazing.
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Make sure you put a contingency into your budget.
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Wow.
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And I don't know, just have good relationships with subs.
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Don't be afraid to get on the phone and call experts in your local area.
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Like if you're, you know, for example, us here, like we could have tried to do the irrigation install ourselves, but then that's a whole nother thing that we're learning that we have base knowledge of, but we just hired an amazing sub and they've handled it for us.
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How much it's going to cost you to figure out how to do it versus seven calls from the snow crew.
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So one second.
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I'll seem to do it, right?
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So, I mean, like Matt said, we could have figured out the irrigation.
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We could have done that.
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It probably would have cost us twice as much money to do it that way, right?
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And twice as much time.
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Yeah, twice as much time, right?
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It's our labor of time.
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Like, it's, you know, figure out what you can do and what, you know, versus what you think you can do.
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I think look at it like a general contractor maybe, you know how people build houses, like they're not doing all the actual work.
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They've got a network of preferred subs that they trust.
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So I think if you're really going to go into it, you want to build up that network so that you can execute through them and kind of just focus on your core competencies.
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So for us, like planting and gardens, we're great at that.
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We're great at maintenance.
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You know, that's kind of the bulk of it is mostly plants and moving plants around and creating new beds.
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Like, we didn't do a lot of stuff that we weren't comfortable with.
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No, I just, we're looking forward to cutting out multi-day projects as Mike recommended.
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And go back to simplifying now, it's gonna be nice.
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It's stressful to be honest, but the finished result is super nice to see and rewarding at the end.
