This Police Officer Bought a Family Lawn Business & 5x Revenue in 3 Years!

Hey, everyone, it's Mike Andes, and you're listening to the landscape business course. Today is another episode of the Roundup podcast where we're going to interview another landscape and lawn care professional. And I hope it's something that you can gain tips, advice, and tricks to grow your business. Here we go.

Let's go.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Roundup where we interview other landscapers. Hopefully you can learn something today. Today we're going to be interviewing David, who's actually from Warwick Property Group over in New Jersey. And it's really interesting story because we're going to be talking about family businesses taking on acquisitions and how to turn businesses around, ramp them up, and also be able to do that while you're working a 9 to 5 and another job completely separate from your landscaping business. Without any further delay, let's go ahead and bring in David. David, thanks so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it, brother.

Hey, Mike, no problem. Appreciate you having me.

So I'm really interested in kind of your story from several different perspectives. The first and foremost, tell us a little bit about your dad, who started the business quite a long time ago and what he did before you acquired the company.

Yeah, so as you said, it was my father's business for a long time. He started back in, I think, 88 or 87. 88. I was. Was born in 87. So it was right around that time he started out. He was, you know, one man show. It was him out there cutting lawns and making money just to support, you know, my mother and I and family, and I have some siblings. And over time, he grew that up and he expanded. And when at some point in there, he hired more people.

And at one point when I was younger, he had three or four crews on the road. I remember, you know, guys showing up at our house in the morning because he worked out of our house for the most part. We had a yard for the equipment, but office and everything was at home. And I remember guys showing up in the morning and he would hand out route sheets, you know, and. And they'd go do the work. He'd spend the days meeting with customers and making phone calls. And, you know, that was. That was life for me, growing up watching him do that. So I. I always wanted to take that over. That was always my dream.

And fortunately, eventually I did get that opportunity.

Cool. So when was it that, you know, as the business started growing, or I should say going on under your dad's leadership, did he kind of come to the point where he was just kind of done with it and just kind of started to scale it back or did he continually grow? Because obviously there was a point in time you said, where there's a several crews. What did that evolve into before you started taking over?

Right. So what happened was a couple points, he made some decisions that weren't the best decisions. And you know, at the time, back then we didn't have YouTube. We didn't have, you know, all these resources that you could, you know, oh, how do I do X, Y and Z? And you go online and you figure it out. And so he had to figure it out himself or talk to somebody else in the industry. And so at one point he brought on a partner that didn't work out, that had to be dissolved. I think that happened twice actually. If, if I memory serves, he, he never really liked to talk about that kind of stuff.

So then it did build back up and then probably shortly after, shortly after I left the company because I actually worked with him right out of college. I worked with him full time for about two years. And shortly after I left the company, he just kind of, that was it. And when I worked with him, we had two, two full time crews on the road. I ran the lawn crew and then we would also pitch in with the landscape side. So we did a lot of installs back then, pavers and whatnot.

After I left, like I said, he kind of let things go downhill. It was about six years after when I took over. But he, he, what he did was he weeded out a lot of the customers that, you know, wouldn't pay their bills, a lot of the customers that were maybe outside of an ideal area.

And he kind of sized things down so that he could just run it by himself with two laborers, and that was it.

So that was, that's basically in a nutshell.

One thing that's kind of interesting you mentioned there is he had, a couple times we had partners. Do you think that came out of the sense of like him feeling insecure in his ability to grow the business or being able to operationally run it and thinking he needed that and then, you know, determining that that wasn't actually the best thing for the business? And what was your perspective as you actually were working in the business, seeing him trying to go get a partner?

Sure. So the, he had two partners over the years. The one I was too young to really remember, know what was going on. So I have very little info on that, what happened there. The second one was a good family friend. And I believe if if memory serves, the friend got laid off from his job. And my father and him, they were best friends at the time and they were like, he was like, yeah, come on, you can, you know, we'll, we'll grow this and, and work together. And that's what they did. And unfortunately the two of them were very, they're both very strong willed individuals. So they didn't see eye to eye. And unfortunately that ended up getting the best of them. It ended their business partnership and ended their friendship, unfortunately. And, and that, that was a big, big blow. That was, I was, I guess I was in middle school when that happened, so I was, would work part time at that point here to there, but I wasn't really in the business. I didn't know a lot about the back end of the business at that point. I could cut grass, I could weed, whack, but that was about it.

So, yeah, I think, I think a big part of it, at least that second partnership was trying to help out the friend, but also trying to scale the business to something bigger and it just didn't work out.

And from your perspective as, even though you were younger, coming up in the business, watching your father when you're younger and then actually starting to be in the business, were you already seeing things from a business side that you're like, hey, I would do this differently, I would change this, or were you more or less just like there for the job, you know, going through college and stuff?

Right. So I, there's a reason that I didn't stay with my father. The reason is we didn't see eye to eye, you know, as far as the work was concerned, I learned everything from him. So as far as how to install pavers, how to cut lawns, how to, you know, all that stuff I learned from him. So I do it his way and to me that's the right way. The business side, he was a little bit more protective over it. And I now, looking back, I now understand that the reason is that he, although he knew a lot, he didn't always do it the way it should have been done or needed to be done. For example, one of the things was he never had a CRM system. He used QuickBooks. All the customers were in QuickBooks. He, you know, he had some notes in there. So he, but he knew all the customers personally. He's. My father is very good with names and people and faces and he could run into somebody, you know, out in California that we've never, we've never even, I've never even been To California. He, to the best of my knowledge, he hasn't been there. He could run into somebody out there they hadn't seen 15 years, know their name and face right away. I am not that way.

That being said, so he never had that CRM. So like the route, he set the route from his head, you know, the keeping track of all the jobs, it was done on the Excel spreadsheets, you know, paper end in the month billing was a, was a hassle. You know, he had, he would have to take those spreadsheets, log into QuickBooks, every customer, type it in. When I came on board with him right out of college, I, I wanted to put a system in place and, and there weren't, there might have been more options than I was aware of at the time, but this was 2000, I guess around 2008, 2009.

And I had found service autopilot and I thought that that system was great, but they, there weren't a ton of videos on it. YouTube was kind of still coming up and, but what I, from what I saw of it, I was like, dad, this is going to be phenomenal. Well, it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 300amonth and in his mind he didn't need that.

And so we never went that route. And to me doing everything the manual way wasn't the way to go. I knew that we needed something to be able to.

Organize everything and to be able to make things simpler in those aspects, to be able to grow and we just didn't see eye to eye on that. And truth be told, he also didn't want me in the business. He, I think he felt, I think he felt like the business was beneath me. For example, I didn't want to go to college. My parents pushed me and my siblings to go to college.

You know, to me I, I just need to take some courses and learn the things I didn't know and, and I could do just fine. And, and ironically, it's essentially what I've done because most of what I learned in college is not, it was not business. I went to Rutgers for environmental planning design with an option in the landscape industry.

There was, there's a lot of good stuff came out of that as far as like knowledge of plant material and how to care for landscapes and whatnot. But as far as business, I, I got nothing.

So I think he wanted me to go a different route and even when, when I got the opportunity to take my full time job to, to go after it, he was a huge supporter of it, you know, and and pushed me in that direction and really wanted me to do that because to him, me getting the job I was getting was a secure position. It didn't have that what if, you know, because as you know, as an entrepreneur, you could lose everything tomorrow. You know, one bad decision could, could send you down the wrong slide, you know, and that's it. And he's, I think he was always afraid of, of me going that route and having something along those lines happen to me. So. Yeah.

And then what was that other job that you went and did for a while and then what kind of brought you eventually back to now owning the business? Was it him on his end being like, hey, I'm done and I know I need to bring, you know, David back, or is it you being like, hey, I'm done with this whole 9 to 5 thing and I actually want to get into the business.

Right. So I kind of, it's kind of funny. I've always wanted to take over the business. I always wanted to be a landscaper, a long guy. That's what I wanted since I was five years old probably. And it was because I, I probably idolized my father. We'll end up in therapy over it one day. But.

It'S, you know, I, I, that's what I wanted to do. That was the route I wanted. Now I went to college, like I said, I, when I got out, I went and I, I had some odd jobs, I worked, I worked in an office because he couldn't afford to pay me. He didn't have, at that point, the business had scaled down and he couldn't afford to pay me what I needed just to cover, you know, just regular expenses. And I still worked for him part time a lot, you know, and you know, he would give me back then, you know, I was going out on a Friday night, taking somebody out on a date, hey, here's 50 bucks, you know, and that was my pay. There was, it was just a mutual understanding. Flash forward. I had the opportunity. One of my girlfriend's father was a police officer in our local town. And at the time she was taking the test to try and become a police officer. And of course I'm like, I'll go take it. Sure, why not? So I actually ended up taking the test, doing very well. And when our local town was hiring, they hired me. I went through the police academy and I'm actually still a full time police officer. I, I work midnights by choice for combinations of reasons. The biggest thing is seniority for my family. Family. I have two young Kids, husband and wife. So I can have all the holidays off and everything. The other reason is during the day I'm available, I can meet with customers, I can schedule meetings, I can, I can route, I can meet with my guys, I can pick up equipment and all that stuff.

So. Yeah, when? About two years, three years ago now.

Close to four years ago, I should say. He came to me and he's like, listen, I think this is it, I'm done. He was, he was in the process of starting to get ready. They were moving from New Jersey to North Carolina.

And he came to me and he said, that's it. He's, he basically said, listen, you got to tell me now, either you want it or I'm going to put it all up for sale. That's it. And I went to my wife and I, and who was a saint, and I said to her, honey, you know, this is what I've always wanted. I said, I know it's a big risk, I know it's going to take a lot, but I want to try it. I, you know, I really told her I really want to give it a whirl, See, see what I can make of it, you know, Know, see if the ideas that I wanted to push with him would actually work, you know, and see if I can build this up to something that we can be proud of as a family and, and one day maybe even pass on to my children. And so I did, I, I. Him and I sat down, we had a conversation, we came up with, with some numbers. You know, I did buy the equipment and the customer list from him for probably substantially less than he would have sold it elsewhere.

You know, and plus I had the knowledge, I had the. Because like I said, he didn't have a CRM. So even to that point it was little, you know, well, what do you, you know, what do you do about Mrs. Adams? You know, when do, how do you deal with her? Because I know we do everything for her. And you know, so he was able to give me that information.

So, yeah, so I came up with that. We sat down and I took over. And that spring I, I went for it.

So the year prior to you taking over, you said about 50,000 in revenue he had been doing. You took it to about 110. And then this year we're on track for about 350,000 at each of those stages of growth. And with you still having your job at night, but still a full time job, has it just forced you basically to use systems because you physically cannot know all of that information in your head.

Right. So what I did was I. For the record, I actually don't know what his revenue was that last year, but it was probably around there.

So, yeah. So when I took over, the very first season was kind of a make or break for us. I brought on a full time employee. He had worked for my father and I when I was with the company years prior. And he left because there were some issues going on between him and my father. He left. So he had reached back out. It was just coincidental timing. I said, listen, I'm doing this. I said, if you want to come back, I'll have you back and we'll, we'll give it a whirl. I said, I'm not making any promises, but we'll try it. So right away, he had some knowledge, he knew how we like things, so I brought him in. The very first thing I did was I. I got a system and of course I jumped into service autopilot. I didn't last with it, unfortunately.

Because it's a huge system as I think you use it as well. And it. I'm a one man fan. So it just wasn't working. So I ended up switching to yardbook shortly after. And Yardbook just allowed me to do simple things like, for example, they go out. I schedule the work. They go out and do the work. When they hit complete, I don't have to then check the sheet and go, okay, what was done? You know, I just click two buttons. It does the billing. We're done for the month. So, yeah, systems were important and they still are. And unfortunately, as I have scaled, I realized that they're not good enough yet.

And unfortunately this, this year. So that first year we. We did. I think actually the numbers over here, we did108,000 that first year.

I didn't lose anything, but I also didn't walk away with any extra flash forward that next year. Same, same guy, two laborers at that point. I went from one labor the first year to two laborers the second year. We ended up going up to 161 in revenue for the year. Again, didn't make anything, but didn't lose anything.

So. But that was with COVID going on.

Which at the end of that season would. That was supposed to be it. My wife and I, you know, I told her, give me two years to figure it out. At the end of that second year with code, I said, honey, I. I didn't do half of the stuff I wanted to try because, you know, everything changed. I didn't we didn't. Nobody knew what was going on. This, you know, March, April is when we kick our, kick off our season here in Jersey. And nobody really knew at that point. Are we going to be able to open, are we going to be able to cut lawns? You know, I was back on a mower for the first time like regularly. You know, I was getting off of work at 7am and getting changed into a work T shirt and heading out to meet him to cut some lawns. And I would do that two, three days a week sometimes and it was not fun. And then once the state said okay, you can have two guys in a truck. They just got to wear masks, brought the laborers on, that was that.

But yeah, having, having systems in place. So now what we're doing. I've been using yard book through this season. I actually I hired two brand new crew leaders this year. I was trying to hire a third and unfortunately just haven't found somebody with the hiring market the way it is. And I'm actually in the process of switching back to service autopilot and making a lot of changes in that aspect of the business. To be able to automate things like letting the customer know when we're coming for example. That's been a big problem for me this year. Is that going from that 162 we're on track to do, like I said, 350000 right now. We've invoiced 306000 so far this year.

That's we have two full time. Like I said, I have two full time drivers, crew leaders and I have two full time laborers. I've had up to seven people at one point this year. Unfortunately couldn't, couldn't keep these guys. They, they would show up for a couple days and then leave. You know, I had one guy, he worked for two, three weeks and then disappeared just like a ghost. So it's been a complicated year. But what I've learned this year is that I cannot continue to run the business without having good systems in place. Having things that, you know, a call center can take the call and give them a price for the lawn. Right now I have a call center. They take the call, they put a note in. I gotta then go figure out the price and either I gotta call them back or I gotta put another note in to have them call them back. I need to eliminate that kind of stuff. That's a big thing for me right now.

Hey, thanks for listening to the episode so far.

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When you look back at kind of what your. How your dad ran the business and versus now and kind of the theme that I kind of kept hearing is a lot of the relationships with, with his under management, whether it be partners or employees, there was always some friction or issues that prevented the business from growing, whether the partners are getting more employees. What did you learn from that to be like, was it a matter of compromising on certain things with a matter of leadership and how you handled other people to be able to actually have employees, have a more dependable, you know, free crew leads to actually scale the business up? And how important is that to differentiate yourself from, you know, 50,000 a year versus now, literally six, seven times that in revenue a few years later.

Right. So my father has a very strong personality and which is a good thing at times. And it's, it's coming handy as one of his kids. I mean, you know, he'll, he would go to bat for us and no problem, take care of whatever, whatever we need. When it comes to the business, though.

Sometimes as a business owner, you have to realize that you're not always right. And sometimes being the mindset that we have, it's that, no, this is my business, it's, it is my way. I am right. And I've had to even I have to sometimes go, maybe I'm not right, you know. And a lot of, A lot of what I've learned has been from just listening to books, audiobooks, you know, and trying to.

Trying to avoid that friction, you got to be able to trust people at a certain point, you know. And I think that was another part of it is I don't think he had a lot of trust in people. I think that he had been burned too many times and that kind of killed it for him. And I've hired guys, done a background on them, check their driver's license and giving them the keys to150,000 worth of equipment, you know, the truck, the trailer, all the mowers in it, and said, okay, go cut lawns. That's a lot of trust, you know, because you got to know that A, they're not going to crash it, B, they're not going to steal it, you know, and unfortunately, if you've been Burned, you understand why, why that can be nerve wracking, why that can cause a problem and why you know, somebody who.

They don't have. My father had nothing but the business. There was no backup plan.

I don't need the business. I make enough money from my full time job as a police officer that I, I could shut it down tomorrow and be fine. You know, there's food on the table, the house is the, you know, my wife takes care of the house that we, we go out to dinner. Like there's no, I haven't taken anything from the business yet at this point.

So I think that's another part of it is that I'm willing to take the risk because at the end of the day, if it blows up, I can just walk away, you know, pay whatever debt it has to be paid, sell everything off and that's it. Would I be disappointed?

I think that's sometimes why like your dad or someone that has only the business can sometimes overreact or be too forceful is just because it's almost a matter of scarcity or like they're, they're almost backed into having the business and it's it surviving. They almost do things counterproductive to its growth.

Right. So that's a, that's a great point. And that's exactly what I think would happen sometimes is that he, you know, at the end of the day, if the business didn't make money, there were four children and a wife that went without. And you know, I do remember times growing up when things were tougher and you know, and then something would happen, something would go right and then, okay, we're going to get new shoes today, we're going to, you know, get new school clothes or whatever. And I think that as an owner operator, in some cases you trying to go from that point where you can, as an owner operator, you can control more because you're the one out there doing the work. You're the one out there, you know, interacting with the customers. You know that, you know, when you go to Ms. Adams house, you knock on the door and Ms. Adam wants that shrub trimmed a certain way. You know how she wants a trend. Whereas now I send, I send Joe, I send Carl, I send Juan out to Ms. Adam's house. And I have to trust that they're doing the right thing. And if they do the wrong thing, it doesn't fall on them, it still falls on me. So as an owner operator, you do the right thing, you know, you're doing the right thing, it falls on you. You're okay with that. As an owner who's detached from it, you have to trust those people. And, and I think you're right. I think that scarcity mindset, I think a lot of times when you're smaller, when you're trying to get past there's, there's. I like to look at is there certain steps in growing a business. And you know, you go from being that owner, operator, having your first employee to, you know, to adding the second crew to. As you scale like that and you grow, you have to, you have to let go. And I think some guys have a problem with letting go of certain parts of the business and giving control and, and opening up. And you know, I think my father had some issues with that. I think that he didn't want to let go of certain things. I know he wanted to let go of other things, but unfortunately, sometimes they were not the right things.

Yeah, two questions I had in relation to the fact that you're a police officer. The first is something that I've found somewhat of a theme for, whether it be someone in the military, police officer, and even like the fire department, because so many times their schedules from the police officer or a fire department actually accommodates a landscaper schedule really well. But sometimes what I've seen them struggle with. I wanted to ask your opinion on this. And if it's something that you, you think about and that is they go from a structure like where the department and you have a chief and you have very much structured and it's very. Not hierarchical, but like you take orders, right? And someone else will just, you know, can basically override you. Especially in the military, I've seen this where someone's mindset from military, they try to shift into business owner. And now especially with this labor market, you know, Gen Z type labor force, has that been a struggle where you like, hey, I'm no longer a police officer, I'm now business owner. I got to shift my mindset just in terms of how I deal with employees. Has that been a struggle for you?

So that's a great question. And the thing with it is, is it's actually the opposite for me. I was brought up an entrepreneurial family, so I, when I go to work as a police officer, I kind of have to remind myself that there's a structure here. You know, I'm an officer. There's a sergeant, there's a lieutenant, there's captain. All these people are above me, and I have to listen to what they say. And sometimes I, I try to not Go.

You want to be the entrepreneur inside of a police department?

Yes. It's. It can be tough because at home, I'm in charge. I mean, well, not at home. She's in charge. At home, business, I'm in charge. The buck stops with me. So at the end of the day, you know, even if one of my crew leaders. Just the other day, one of my crew leaders had an idea. This week is Thanksgiving. We're trying. This is the last week we caught lawns for the season, and we're trying to do all 100 of our lawns in three days. Now, that includes doing leaf cleanups while we're there. That complicates things because some properties, you're spending 20, 30 minutes to clean the leaves off. When you're talking 100 properties, three days, it's really pushing it. So my crew leader had an idea. I listened to it, but I told him no. I said, that's not going to work. And I explained my reasoning, and he understood that. And at the end of the day, that might mean that we might not get to all the lawns before Thanksgiving. I'm okay with that. But he was. I. At the same time, I'm pushing those guys to. To do their best to get there, try make an effort. If we don't, it's not the end of the world. But that's what's nice is with the business. At the end of the day. I made that decision. It's my decision. That's it. As a police officer, I have a problem on a job, I make a decision. The sergeant calls me up and says, no, no, no, do it this way.

Okay. Doing it that way, I can't change that. And so from that aspect, I have. I see what you're saying, though, and I could see where somebody going from being a police officer and starting a business could have that issue.

Got it. The second question I have kind of relates in terms of the past couple years, what's gone on with the relations towards the police department, etc, and what have you learned from all of that? Like, I respect a lot of people who even are striving to go into that profession right now. The amount of, you know, intense public debate has become in terms of someone's actually trying to serve our communities, in my mind, sometimes crazy. However, from your perspective on the inside, has it. Has there been anything you've learned that has translated actually how you deal with the business from a managerial standpoint, from a PR standpoint, from a training perspective over the past couple years as really the police have now become somewhat politicized or even brought into the focal point of our country.

Right. So, I mean, obviously we're. Now, I will start with Hamilton is a very safe, quiet town. We're not a small town by any means. We have over 90, 000 residents. Our department's over 170 sworn officers. We border Trenton, which is the capital city of New Jersey. So we do get some things, some problems that spill over the border.

But for the most part, people in our community, people in this area, they support the police. I appreciate that. And that's phenomenal. You mentioned, like, from a PR standpoint. So that made me think of the fact that I still have to remember at the end of the day, when I go out and I'm doing landscaping, I'm always a police officer. So when I make decisions in the business where, for example, something that has been an ongoing thing that I've noticed with a lot of other contractors, a lot of other landscape contractors in our area is you're supposed to have your trucks and everything registered a certain way and lettered a certain way by state law in New Jersey, all my trucks are registered that way, lettered that way. I'm actually waiting for new vinyl for a new truck, but it will be lettered that way. So.

If I make those decisions the other way and I say, you know what? Everybody else does it that way, I'll just do it that way. I could actually get in trouble.

As a police officer for doing the wrong thing within the business. So from that aspect, you know, I almost have to watch over the business a little tighter and make sure that my guys are doing the right thing. I mean, all my guys know what I do for a living, you know, so they all understand that. And, and whenever they come to me with a question and it's, it's, you know, listen, Dave, for example, we can get it all in one load, but it's going to put us overweight. Well, if you're asking me, the answer is going to be no, you know, you, you cannot break the law to do this. So I, I always have to tread lightly, almost with, without, without.

Trying to think of the best way to put this. So it's. Yeah, I. I guess tread lightly. I. I have to make sure that the business is doing the right thing. That's. That's important. And as a police officer, I have to always remember that I'm always a police officer. As a landscaper, I can turn that off and on, you know, or I should turn that off and on when I Go to work as a police officer. I'm no longer entrepreneur. I'm no longer a landscaper. I'm police officer. When I come home, I'm still a police officer. You know, I'm. I'm sworn to protect the. The citizens of the state of New Jersey, and that's what I'm supposed to do. So when I'm out there and doing stuff with landscaping, I always have that in the back of my mind where if I see something or something's going on, I have to. I have to do something about it. I can't just let it go.

Last question I had, and that is from a scheduling and just a more perfect personal side of your life. Is it sometimes challenging to switch all the hats? Like, entrepreneur, police officer? Okay, now I'm a dad and a husband. Like, does that become exhausting? What do you do to kind of just deal with the fact, like, you do switch? Like, I find switching hats exhausting. Right. Going from one business to another or like, okay, now I'm gonna be this. And now I'm gonna turn this part of my life off. That can be exhausting sometimes. Do you have to decompress or is it just a knowledgeable. Like, I know what I'm doing. I am literally. I don't know if some people, for example, they have a certain watch they wear when they're on duty, they take it off, and it's like, okay, now I'm something different at home. What. What is it for you? And have you created any boundaries to help with that regard?

Yeah, so that is. That is something I'm working on. I mean, full disclosure, I've had times where I've just broken down. You know, I come home to my wife, and it's. It's not so much necessarily the job as an officer that. That, yes, being a police officer can be very stressful. Being a business owner can be very stressful. I do both. Being a parent is the most stressful thing I've ever done. I. You know, these. These two humans are my responsibility. You know, we. We've. We've brought them into this world. There are times when. And I'm. This is. This is a big part of the reason to go back to why I'm putting some of these systems in place, why I'm switching service autopilot. I've actually hired a company to set all of it up for me so that I don't have to set it up.

To try and free up a lot of my time this year with the growth that we've seen has been extremely challenging and it's definitely been taxing on me. It's been taxing on my wife. I know, like I said earlier, and I'll say it again, she's the same. I, I, I could not do what I do without her.

That being said, I don't want to put that on her forever. I, there are times when I have to sit back and I have to go, you know what? I'm not answering that email. Mrs. Jones can wait.

And working from home, because I'm downstairs, I'm in my home. This is my office. You know, it's where I keep all my work stuff. But I have a laptop. I'll be up on the couch doing work too. It is hard to turn it off sometimes, and especially with the business because the business is personal for me, you know, because I've always wanted it. It was something that I was always important to me. So trying to turn that off, you know, I'll be laying in bed and be like, oh, honey, just so you know, I talked to Jeff from, from the dealership and the loader's going to be here this week. And she looks at me like.

Whatever, like, you know, but on the flip side, you know, if something happens when she's a teacher, if something happens in school, I listen to her. So it's, do I turn it off? Off? No, it never goes off. Am I still working on ways to cope? Yes.

You know, I do, I do meditate from time to time. I found that earlier this year and it, it sometimes helps me, I don't like sit down and have a sand circle or whatever, but you know, I, I have one of those apps where it tells you, okay, breathe, you know, and close your eyes. It helps, it clears your mind sometimes you need that. I think that this, I'm really looking forward to this next year actually because A, I'm expecting the business to grow a lot and B, having the systems that I'm putting in place and a lot of the automations that I'm putting in place, it's going to take a lot off my shoulders.

I'm also simplifying some things. We're, we've already stopped offering a lot of services that my father used to do. We no longer do any hardscapes.

We were doing very little as far as large installs. We do still do plan things, but they're on a smaller scale.

Really. I've focused the company on maintenance, you know, customers cutting lawns, trimming bushes, weeding beds, installing mulch. That's the Core, those things are simple enough that you can train pretty much anybody to do them. They don't need a technical knowledge to do those things. So if, if I can also, then somehow what I'm doing, one of the things I'm doing with the company is setting up so I can do production rate estimating so I don't have to be the estimator. And I will be able. What I'm going to do is have actually my crew leaders meet with customers for a couple hours a day, leave their laborers on a site, go meet with customers for two hours a day and estimate jobs. And then I'm hoping that I can then roll that into hiring a full time estimator. And once that happens, I'll be able to really step back and not have to meet with customers every day and hopefully have more time for me and for my family and my kids. And that's, that's the goal that. I mean, as an entrepreneur, I didn't, I didn't take this business on to have another job. I took this business on to have more time. Time is the most valuable resource you have. And right now, at least this season, the way it's felt is I've put too much time into it and I want to get away from that. So how do I, how do I separate? Sometimes I don't. That's the simple answer.

Last question. To kind of bring it full circle, Dave. And that is in regard to your father and him looking at the business now as it's grown and, and you've taken it from what it used it used to be down, and then to now it's actually going back to where, you know, it was back to its glory days in terms of size and number of employees, et cetera. Has that helped your relationship with him? Has that? Or has he somewhat resentful of the fact that like you've taken it to the next level? I'm interested because so many family dynamics come into this in when there's families being handed off a business or taking on a business, and if the business succeeds or fails. And so how has that been and your relationship with him?

So ironically, as we're, as we're recording this or talking, I haven't really been talking with my father too much lately, him and I, I don't want to say we've had a falling out. We'll get back. I used to talk to the man every day. You know, we had, we had some disagreements. And.

I think that to some extent, I think he does resent what I've been able to do in the short amount of time that I've been able to do it. I also think that as a father, that he's proud of what I've done. And my hope is that to continue to grow it and be able to give him back something more than what I've given him, you know, I understand because again, as I said earlier, I, I paid him probably a lot less than he could have got if he sold everything outright by himself. And I appreciate that. That being said, you know, I do hope one day to be able to repay that and give him, you know, more than, than what I've already given.

I, I, like I said, I don't, I don't think it's going to affect our relationship long term right now. Like I said, we're, we're having a little bit of a disagreement, so him and I aren't really talking as much, but I think we'll get over that. And, and I think at the end of the day, I think he'll be proud of what we've, what we've accomplished. Because at the end of the day, a big thing is, is family. I mean, that's, it's a family business. And I still use that in a lot of our marketing. You know, we're a family business. You know, I treat my guys like their family. You know, I, you know, I always, I do background checks on them, but at the same time, I, I get to know them. You know, I know that, you know, my one crew leader has, has both my crew leaders actually have daughters. You know, I know that the ones in high school, the ones in, you know, my, my lead labor, he's got daughters as well. He's got. Building a house back home in Honduras. Like, I like to know this about my people and, and family is important. And so I think that long term, my father and I will be fine. I think he'll be proud. I think he is proud, probably proud of what I've done. And I think that he'll get over whatever resentment he might have.

Well, Dave, I want to say thank you for coming on. I think a lot of people will learn a lot of stuff from what we've talked about. And if, if it's possible, if someone wanted to reach out to your website, potentially where they could contact you especially, I'm kind of thinking, like people that are in the department and might have questions of how you've kind of set things up or different systems. Is there a website you could give as a resource for them?

Yeah. So if they want to reach out to me. I have an email address set up. It's media pgnj.com they can also find a lot of information on about our company on wpgnj.com awesome.

Well, I really appreciate Dave. I really do. You have a great day.

All right. Thanks Mike. Have a good one.

Thanks so much for tuning in today to another episode of Roundup. If that was something interesting to you and you learned something, comment below, share the message with other landscapers so we as a community can come together other and learn and grow our businesses. If you would like to be on the Roundup show and actually interview with me just like we did today, feel free to go in the description. There's a link there. Fill out the form and we'd love to talk to you if you are wanting to share with the industry and help other people grow their business. Thank you so much. I'll see you next episode.