OVERGROWN MOW ($3.3M project!)

This stuff ain't no joke, man. It's a good solid five to six feet tall. I know I'm not that tall and I'm five and a half mouse. Perfect.

Now today we have a mission. The mission is to mow five acres of overgrown tall grass to be able to prepare for this coming Monday when we're gonna have the metal frame building of our construction project showing up and being delivered. We got a mow the grass and you're coming along for the ride. Let's go.

Alright, so we made it to the Belly Hip shop. Most crew's actually wrapping up. It's Friday and it wasn't a super long day for them. So we're picking up one of this one of these trucks here. It's another P8 and we're gonna go pick up the trailer from. The dealer has the mower get started. First I need to find a 2 inch ball hitch because we usually use 2 and 5 16. But this bad boy, this is what I'm looking for. Smaller trailer than we usually use for this mower I'm picking up. So 2 inch ball it is. Let's roll.

Seriously guys, these guys are the best. Carl's Mower and saw in Ferndale, Washington is letting us use this. It's. They're not even here. I'm literally in the back of their shop picking this up because they're out vacation this week and they're letting me use this bad boy over here. Shout out to Josh, Clayton, all the guys. I really appreciate it letting us use this bad boy for the day. I really appreciate Exmark for letting them do this. You gotta find yourself a good dealer. That's the main thing when it comes to choosing what type of equipment you use. I don't care about the brand, I don't care how new it is. Get yourself a good dealer like Carl's mower saw in Ferndale.

Locked and loaded, baby. Wait. Over the axle. Let's do this and check it out. Carl's Mower is building this brand new building. Why would you not patronize this business? Let's go.

Now I've gotta say Exmark. I was on the mower a few times and it turned off on me. And I sure hope it's not because I'm too small and I don't weigh enough because I feel like I'm being discriminated against. Small people need to have rights to have mowers stay on and the motor to stay running even when they're going over potholes and bumps. So I sure Hope it doesn't keep turning off on me. Speaking of discrimination, let me just say that we're very inclusive at Augusta Lawn Care when it comes to trucks. We have GMCs, we have Chevys, we have Fords, we even have Dodges. We haven't got quite inclusive enough to include Toyotas. But eventually you gotta get some of those minorities in there. And so maybe one day we'll mix those in too. We are an equal opportunity truck provider.

All right, now this is the project. This is the five acres where we're building our headquarters. And we need this place cleared out because Monday the metal building structure is being delivered. Now Kent has already done a fantastic job of this entire ditch. Kent works at the local shop. He did a phenomenal job. But we got to get all the rest of this. Shout out to Kent. Thank you. All right. This is why we need an exmark. We're not going to do no push mower action on this bad boy. This needs a real mower. And nothing runs like an exmark or a deer or whatever the saying is.

This stuff ain't no joke, man. It's a good solid five to six feet tall. I know I'm not that tall and I'm five and a half.

Mouse. Get him, get him, get him. Convicted.

Welcome ladies and gentlemen.

Augusta HQ1. Alright, so we just got started on the mowing. We have a lot to go. But I kind of cut out where the building's gonna be at and the approximate dimensions. It's gonna be a hundred linear feet long and 75ft wide. The entrance is gonna be approximately right there. So what's gonna happen is people will drive in and then there'll be a parking spaces over there. The doors to the bad boys gonna look right here. We got command center. Here you go through the doors in the back. This is where the Bellingham shop, the local shop is going to be. This back area, they're going to have access to some big roll up doors on the side. The second story up above, that's where all the training is going to happen for the franchisees. And it's also going to where all the media happens and where I'm going to be living. So this is it. This is where the building is going to be at. And honestly this is kind of why, why I do all the media stuff. I think it's pretty cool that we're able to get this on film. And when you think about there's not too many other companies that you are able to find their very first building and like their Headquarters them mowing the field when it's five to six feet tall. So I think it's a cool journey and a cool opportunity for us to be able to document that journey and hopefully inspire the person that I was when I was 15, 16, 17 years old to go do something cool and put in the hard work. So hopefully that is what happens over the next few months as we document all this.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, that's all she wrote the front, like acre, acre and a half for them to be able to put that pole building in all the deliveries that come in next Monday. So let me just say though, this laser Z, this is a 16 inch mower from zero turn. Absolutely crushed it. Obviously they let me use it. So maybe a little biased, but they didn't pay me a single dollar and they literally got this out to me within a couple days. So shout out to this bad boy. It went through this like butter. And this is no grass alone. This is BlackBerry bushes, trees. Like, it was incredible. So big shout out to EXMARK for letting us use this Carl's mower. I really do appreciate it, but it's a little bit surreal to think that in eight months it's gonna be a massive building and parking and probably having 60, 70 employees here once it's all done and said next spring. But yeah, this is the beginning of something cool, hopefully. And I really appreciate everyone that's allowed me get this far. And I hope that the journey ahead is something you can learn from as well.

My dad always taught me that if someone allows you to use their piece of equipment or especially their vehicle, that you keep you return it cleaner and with more gas than when you got it. So we're going to clean this bad boy out right now.

All right? So this truck that I'm driving right now, I think it's like a 2008, 2009 Chevy Silverado. We bought this. I still remember buying this a few years back. And it was like the most expensive truck we've ever purchased because we couldn't buy up in Canada and we needed to buy something right away. We were in a pinch. You're growing quickly. And I spent like $8,500 on this truck. And I just remember thinking like, this is crazy. I've always only spent like four or $5,000. But let's just run the math. This is how I personally. Not the right way. This is how I personally look at buying trucks. Okay? The difference in holding that truck, because the cost of the truck, the value of that truck goes down in Time, it's depreciating. It's depreciating asset. Okay, great. So if I take a truck that's, let's just say $8,000 and I use it for 10 years and the cost of that truck, the value of it at the end of the 10 years is zero. Because a used truck, I get 10 years of life out of it and it dead like scrap, worth absolutely nothing. Because this thing, I think we had 110,000 miles on it when we got it. And so decent deal. Now the same truck is probably worth more than I bought it for and it has 165,000 miles on it. Now let's say the $8,000 truck, 10 years, that's $800 per year in loss or depreciation. Let's just say another $500 per year in just fixing the thing up. Because used a little bit older, let's just use $500 per year as an example. So $800 per year in depreciation, $500 for fixing up the truck, that's $1,300 per year in actual cost to me as the business owner. Now if I take a brand spanking new truck, let's say it's $60,000, I use it for 10 years, it's probably going to be worth, let's just call it $25,000 after that. So it went down what, $35,000 over the course of those same 10 years. So if you take the $35,000 in loss, let's assume no maintenance, no repairs. Now the cost per year of that truck is $3,500 compared to 1,300 for a used truck. Now the argument to be had is, well, the maintenance on that older truck, if it's sitting there, I can't be making money and therefore if it breaks down, it's really, really bad. I agree with that. But the thing is, if you grow the company to the point you can have multiple backups of trucks and still come out net positive. I could have two trucks for the price of the brand new one and still have less than the annual cost of the brand new truck. So when we have say 15, 16 trucks, we have one or two extras that are sitting at the shop so that if one of them goes down, which occasionally one we have a backup, it's still cheaper per year than buying brand new trucks. I get the argument of a truck going down means that you don't make any money and it costs you way more than an extra few thousand dollars per year of depreciation. I understand that argument, but once you have multiple trucks, just have a couple backups and you can still get away with paying off your fleet, not having a bunch of debt. And the people who are going to win as we go into recession are the ones that don't have a bunch of debt on trucks and depreciating assets and are not spending and depreciating 3, $4,000 per year on trucks. That's who will win.