Episode 13

Ezra (00:00)

Welcome back to the lawn care success blueprint. Today we have a guest and a true Living legend. Wow. In the hards, but hardscape space, Mike Pennington, better known as the Paver King. Mike has over 30 years of experience. And last year they did approximately $3 million in Canadian pesos. Mike has gone from a labor to a leader in the landscape space, filling a great brand there in Ontario, Canada. In this episode, we’re going to dive into his journey pricing strategies crew.

business growth, and if you’re interested in hardscaping, then this will be a good interview for you. Mike, glad to have you here.

Mike (00:37)

Happy to be here, brother. It’s always good to get invited on. For the record, I have was voted most likely to get the Not Our Finest Hour podcast sued. So just be careful where you go and what questions you ask.

Ezra (00:39)

Sounds great.

Yeah.

1. And I won’t ask about tariffs, don’t worry.

Mike (00:57)

Don’t ask about, yeah. So yeah, don’t ask about tariffs. You’ll be okay.

Ezra (00:59)

Ha

Yeah. Now, Mike, you’ve been, you were telling me just off air a little bit about your story. You’ve been in the hardscape industry for a long time and you specifically do that. It sounds like you don’t do any lawn care. So do you want to just take us back to the beginning? Why did you get started? And then what kind of drew you into the hardscape space?

Mike (01:23)

⁓ my, I had a job as a timekeeper at a hockey rink, but then the season obviously ends. So a friend of mine in, ⁓ like the first year of high school, he had, ⁓ his grandfather owned a garden center. ⁓ and so they had guys that bag dirt into bags and, know, loaded cars and water, you know, just garden center kind of stuff. And, so they needed help. So.

I went and I applied and then his uncle owned a commercial landscape contractor. And obviously even this was like, I don’t know, a long time ago. Even then there was a labor shortage. So they would just come to the garden center and pick us up and take us to the job site. And then so I just that’s how I got started working in working on job sites.

You know, the first thing I ever did was work on the side of the 401 planting trees. I started off at the garden center that day, ended up in a truck, ended up on the side of the 401. And back then there was no vests or hard hats or work boots. You just went in your running shoes and shorts. So it was a, ⁓ was a unique start, I guess, but that’s how I got started. And then I’ve kind of just always kept doing it. I never stopped. I think that for me, I’m not someone who’s easily contained.

And I think that I don’t, I’ve worked one night in a factory and I was like, I will never do this again. I will never be here again. ⁓ I’ve always been fascinated with trucks and machines and it just, I liked being outside. I feel like because I was responsible and showed up every day.

I moved ahead pretty quickly. I think that you can, there’s a lot of early stage growth opportunities in this business where if you want to learn things and you want to be responsible and do the paperwork and show up every day and not be high on drugs or drunk or, know, um,

not divorcing your third wife. I think that there’s a lot of opt, I think I had a position of relative authority pretty quickly. And then I probably liked that too. So I’ve just sort of always done something to do. I’ve always been involved in landscaping ever since I’ve done. I’ve had, this is a second version of my own company. ⁓ I had my own company before I managed, I worked with the same person from

1987 until 2017, somewhere in something like that. 30 years I spent with him. So, uh, our relationship changed. Like originally he was, he was the architect and project manager where I was working. Then he owned the company. Then I had my own company for four or five years and used to sub off them all the time. And then I, my life went very badly sideways. And, uh, so I, um,

Ezra (04:13)

employee.

Mike (04:36)

I gave up my company and went back to work full time for him. And then I worked there 10 years. And then, uh, in 2017, we had a falling out and that’s, I actually went to work at permacon, which is a paver manufacturer in Ontario and Quebec. I did that for about 18 months and then it wasn’t, it was a corporate position. And I’m, I’m not that guy, which, and the people there were really nice and they were really good to me. And they tried hard to.

make it work for me. And I tried hard to make it work for me, but it just wasn’t my cup of tea. So then I started the current version of what we’re doing, which is paverking, which is unique because it’s probably the only company in the world that was named after an Instagram account instead of the Instagram account being named after the company. ⁓ I started paverking and originally my goal was to work alone doing small walkways by myself and just ride out. I’m 50.

I was 40.

45 when we started this company, which a lot of people told me I was insane and crazy that you can’t start landscaping companies when you’re 45. But the original goal was for me to just work alone and just do lift and

Ezra (05:42)

In

You’ve done a

very bad job of keeping to that goal.

Mike (05:56)

I’ve done a terrible job. That’s a whole story. But yeah, I’ve done an awful, terrible job of maintaining just being by myself doing front walkways. is one of the biggest failures of my life.

Ezra (06:11)

So what made you change? Because obviously you were telling me a little bit before you’ve got several team members that help you and then some subcontractors. What made you transition from, hey, I just want to be one guy doing good work, obviously had lots of experience, to now you find yourself with team members, you’ve got equipment, you’re hauling gravel. What made that change?

Mike (06:33)

Uh-huh.

So I worked at the one company for a really long time. And obviously I think in this business you become, I don’t know what other businesses are like. I haven’t spent a lot of time in them, but in this business, I think when you work with people for a long time and it’s a, it’s a war of attrition, a lot of days, it can be a tough business to be in. It’s cold, it’s wet. It’s you spend a lot of time with these people. They, they, you become very close to them. And I was very close to a lot of people when I left.

company that I had been with for a long time. And it just, after I started this company, one of them had a disagreement, got fired, didn’t have a job, called me. I Hey man, I really need work. I okay. It’s not really my plan, but I also don’t want to see you be homeless. So, uh, we hired, we hired the first guy and then once you hired the first guy, then, um,

Another, another guy that I worked with for a long time came back from BC. Another guy lost his job. All of a sudden we had four and then our, uh, our first truck driver, Christie, she, she drove for me for a long time at the other company and she lost her job and didn’t have a job. So we, my wife and I bought a tri-axle dump truck and so she would have a place to work and I have connections that could keep it busy. So we bought this tri-axle dump truck and we bought a float. we started, Christie started floating.

one of our big customers equipment and doing deliveries for a good friend of mine and that truck. Then one of our big clients was like, I really want to bin truck. And I was like, I hate hook trucks. And he was like, you got to buy one and I’ll hire it all the time. And then my other friend was selling one of his. So I bought this hook truck and then Cody messaged me on Instagram, Randall. And said, I’ve heard that you’re very proactive with.

having women involved with construction and I said I am and she said I really want to work with you guys. So I we bought the bin we had the bin truck she became our bin truck driver and we had two drivers and then now we have and then one truck is hard to book and so we bought another triaxial and then it just kind of and then a bunch of the people that were working at the old company they all decided to leave and call me and say hey man like we all want to come work with you and then all of a sudden now we have

We have, we have a lot of stuff. Sometimes I look around the yard and I’m like, man, this is not, I was just, I was interviewing a new foreman slash operational person. Um, and he just like said, can you give, I’ve known him for years. He used to work for a big client of ours. Just getting to even interview him, I think was a great opportunity.

But he’s like, just give me a rundown of what you have. And I started running down all the stuff and I’m like, well, there’s two tri axles, three bin trucks. We’re buying another bin truck. There’s 19 bins. There’s, there’s, we have a 20 ton tag and a 30 ton tag. have two, seven ton tags, two dump trailers, two tool trailers, three pick four pickups. Like it just, I’m like, man, we have so much eight ton, two ton, two skid steers, like three skid steers. I just a buggy. It’s like, we just, you look around and you’re like, how

Fuck did all this happen in six years?

Ezra (10:01)

You know what’s so interesting, Mike, not one time in this whole conversation have you mentioned money. So it seems like money has not been the driving growth. is that something that intentionally, I’m not saying in this conversation, but in your business, what makes you keep going then? Because it doesn’t sound like money is your motivator.

Mike (10:21)

I’m not overtly. I want to. I want to say yesterday, I met our potential, our new potential team member. And I said like, Hey man, like my goal here is for everyone to be happy and have a good life and pay the bills. If I have, I have a good, I take my wife and I, only take exactly what we need. And we have two kids that are 17 and they’re

to be going their separate ways. We live in a small house. I don’t need a big house. I drive a 2019 Dodge Ram. I was thinking about getting a new truck and it makes me sick to buy $100,000 vehicles. So I was like, forget it not happening. Yeah, I don’t

Ezra (11:02)

Oh don’t try

to slip that in, I heard you talking about that $200,000 roush.

Mike (11:07)

yeah, yeah, yeah. That truck is crazy. So I just I I want to make enough money to pay the bills and I the company needs to be.

It needs to make a profit and everyone that works here understands that. And we, we take, try to take as best care if we can of everyone that works on our team. ⁓ but I’m not gonna come from an environment where there was a lot of squeezing to, ⁓ for when I worked at the other company, first we broke down processes and we got our processes to the point where they, I mean, it was dialed in. Our margins were probably twice to three times what everyone else in the industry was. We had our processes dialed in our.

our team dialed in everything dialed in, but the person that owned that company always wanted more. And it got to a point where, you know, he didn’t want to grow bigger than between $3.5 and $4 million in sales. He didn’t want to grow bigger than the crews and the people that we had and the equipment that we had. So you run out of places to squeeze and then you get to the last place you can squeeze. And the last place you can squeeze is the, is your team.

And when you start squeezing the team, I’m uncomfortable with that. And that’s sort of where we went offside of each other. I don’t think there was anything ethically wrong with what was going on, but I, you know, morally for me, it just wasn’t how I guess I come from a, much, how much I need enough money to be happy. And I want my, my kid plays our one kid plays a really high level of soccer and she travels a lot. Like she was in Miami for a week.

playing University of Miami. was playing University of Pittsburgh last weekend. We’re going to play. She’s going to, I’m not playing, but we’re going down and she’s going to be playing against a couple of universities in Massachusetts next week. She’s going away to play for the University of Algoma. She doesn’t worry about how soccer gets paid for. She doesn’t worry about, she has her car now. she doesn’t like, those are things that are important to me.

This company affords me the ability to do those things for her. Our son is a drummer. Uh, he has a couple of bands. He wants to take a shot at being a musician when he’s done high school this year. And you know, we, we, this company will allow my family to do those kinds of things. They’re not like, they’re not, we’re not driving Mercedes and BMWs and I’m not driving Roush, $200,000 Roush F two fifties. Um, but

I also think that the people who work on our team, there’s, they all have different things that are important to them. And we can make sure that those things are happening for them. And does that mean that periodically we’re not as profitable as we could be? Absolutely. But I value the happiness of our people.

and happiness of their lives and their families and their kids more than I value having an extra 25 grand or something at the end of the year or whatever it would be. I don’t care. want their sorry. Go ahead.

Ezra (14:23)

So I think,

I’m just gonna say, I think I know the answer to this, but I’m curious, what is your churn rate for your team members? I’m curious, do you have much problems with people leaving?

Mike (14:35)

No.

Ezra (14:36)

I didn’t think so.

Mike (14:41)

We had like for that the lance, the commercial team, ⁓ they’ve all, all of them have one, one was new last year, but it came back this year. And I think if you were to talk to him, he would say he had an amazing experience. The other four had been with us, have been with me in some regard for between five and 10 years. Some of them may be more,

Christy, who’s one of our drivers. She’s been with us for, she’s been driving for me on and off, except when I was working at permacon for, ⁓ 12, 13 years, Cody, this’ll be her fifth season with us. ⁓ Andrew who’s driving one of our tri axles this year, he, he worked, started working. He was, my daughter’s mother’s brother. And, he started with me when he was like 13 and he worked for

with me for 15 years or more. And then he went, got his AZ and he went down an adventure of different AZ jobs. And he actually, uh, he got laid off. He was a mechanic with CN and he had no, he just needed a job. So he called me and he’s been working with us and he decided to stay. So CN called him back and he told him to bounce. He’s going to keep driving our triaxle. And, uh, we have, we also have a float division. So that’s something we do for.

We have one huge customer we float all their equipment for, and then we have five or six other customers that we periodically float equipment for, but that’s something we do as well to generate revenue. ⁓ so he’s our float driver, but he’s, he’s been part of my life for over 30 years. ⁓ we don’t, I have, we had one driver new last year. He’s coming back this year. ⁓ we don’t have a big turnover. We had one long-term staff member leave last year, but last year with the

economy, ⁓ we, our business model had to change. And so we had to do some traveling jobs, ⁓ where the guys were staying overnight in hotels and, ⁓ we had to travel a bit further for work. And he, I, so I told them all in the spring, we had a big team meeting and said, Hey, model’s going to change a bit. We’re not going to be as local because we just, it, it just is what it is. We got to go where we got to go for work this year. The local, we’re going to try, well, obviously our goal is to stay local.

because like you’re in the lawn care space here, like, you know, root density works for everybody, not just lawn care. Um, but he was uncomfortable with traveling. He didn’t want to be away. So he, uh, got a job with one of the townships, but when he applied and they called, we supported him. We supported him. You know, I, anyone who’s ever doing anything that where they’re trying to make their life better, I just support it. And if that doesn’t, that means it’s not always great for us. Um, that’s okay.

They need to like other people watch what you do and how you act. And, um, you know, and always keep an open door book, like, you know, things don’t like our team member that went to the town last year. They don’t happen to hire them back this spring. You can just walk, show up at the yard and start working. You know, I try not to, uh, we actually had a big debate about that on the podcast. I’m on all the time about what you do with someone who comes back and we had a fair size disagreement about it, but I’m more of a.

Hey, you’re here. Great. Let’s, let’s make this most enjoyable and profitable relationship for as long as you’re here. And when you leave, then, ⁓ I try really hard to handle those situations, take a step back and eliminate emotion from them. Cause when someone leaves or I, I, I screwed up one of those last spring, one of our drivers left that had been with us 18 months, but he’s just a great person and a great guy. And,

It just got me and I didn’t treat him well when he left. uh, but I’ve, you know, we apologize to, I apologize to him. We worked it out. He’s actually came in, drove for us in the winter, helped us out when we were jammed up doing snow. Um, you know, I’m happy that we were able, I was able to repair that relationship because he was a good person and a valuable asset to my life. So I’m not perfect. I screwed up, but yeah, we don’t have a lot of turnover. We usually have a lot of people that want to come work on our team. It’s usually not super hard.

Ezra (19:02)

You you’ve been around for a while and you’ve worn a lot of hats. You mentioned you work for that. The corporate company worked for a couple different ones and obviously starting out just work by the side of the road. And how old were you when you were doing that?

Mike (19:19)

teenage years.

Ezra (19:21)

It’s so funny, was looking at a, there was a forum and they were talking about, should you hire someone that’s like 17? And I was kind of, and I get it, there’s liability and insurance and that’s real. But I was just laughing because I think I, I was doing roofing at 17 and then I was on a cattle ranch when I was 16. And man, I was driving this big old loader and a skid steer all around. And I just looked back and I’m like,

I’m glad I got to do it, but they were maybe a little too tru- not tru- I wasn’t gonna do anything bad, but I could have done something dumb.

Mike (19:56)

There might have been

a better onboarding process. Yeah. That’s.

Ezra (19:59)

Yeah, no doubt. But we were

in the boondocks and on a cattle ranch in the middle of nowhere. So it’s one of those things.

Mike (20:06)

The first,

the first guy I worked for his, if you, he would, he, they had like a foreman’s meeting every morning. It was a big company and, uh, it gave me a skewed perspective on life actually. Cause I just assumed all landscaping companies were big like that and had seven or eight crews and all this stuff going, you know, back then they were, know, it was still millions of dollars, but it was like millions of dollars when millions of dollars meant a lot more than it does now. And, uh, I just assumed all companies were like that, but I, know, I buy

16 or 17. I was in the foreman’s meetings every morning. And they, you know, he would say stuff like, take that crew cab and those three guys and float that skid steer and go out to the West. And there was no cell phones back then. I’ve had this conversation with lot of people. I feel like my generation is the last generation of people who were force fed decision making. Because everyone else now they call someone, we need a decision, we call someone we text the picture. It’s a much different environment now. But I

I would say like, Hey man, I’ve never driven that truck and I’ve never floated a skid steer and I don’t know how to load it or chain it down. And he would back then he would just turn you and say, so are you scared? Big one? No, I’m not scared. I’m just telling you, like, I don’t know what I’m doing. And he would say, well, if you’re not scared, then get out of here or go home. Either go do that, either go do that or go home. I’d be like, okay, well, I can’t really go home. So I’m going to go, I’m going to go chain down this skid steer. And I fumbled my way through things and

Ezra (21:23)

well.

Mike (21:34)

No one ever got really badly hurt. it, you know, for me.

Ezra (21:37)

It’s so funny

how work culture is so different, which I think I was on the cusp there. But even now, like, yeah, people’s perception towards what’s OK or I was right on the edge of that cell phone. I was born in 95, so they were they’re coming out in early 2000s when I was growing up, but they weren’t necessarily real. Real prevalent. Till later.

Mike (22:02)

Yeah, it was a different different.

Yeah. The way that I mean, I wrote to work in trucks where people’s lunch boxes were falling through the floor. And now like, guys are like, so we really have to put five people in the truck. And it’s kind of jammed, man. Can we just can we just bring a second truck? I’m like, I I wrote to job sites in the bucket of a loader. And we would hold ourselves in and hope that when we hit bounces, we didn’t bounce out and get run over. Like, it was a different

a very dead you just wouldn’t. I think it’s a better culture. I think there’s a lot more safety. There’s a lot more. I don’t have a problem with the I’m not like an OG person who romanticizes sending guys out to ride in a loader bucket down the street. Yeah. We used to ride we used to all climb into the back of the tandem dump truck and ride in the box to get to the job site. I can you’d hope that the mulch wasn’t holding mulch today before so it wasn’t whipping around and blowing your eye just

Ezra (22:46)

That sounds insane. Like, insane.

Mike (23:01)

that stuff not happening now, I think is better for the business. And I think it attracts people to the business and you know, having a it just it’s a different world. And I that part, like there’s some things I don’t like, but I can accept the safety version of it, I think is, you know, I’ve seen people be pretty badly hurt on job sites. And I just, I think that, you know, we, we, have some simple goals. When we go out every day, the first goal is we don’t kill anyone else.

The second goal is we don’t kill any of us. And the third goal is we all come home with our limbs. Past that, the rest can get sorted in. I can’t replace someone’s hand. can’t, if someone dies, I can’t bring them back. If we kill someone else, we can’t bring them back. So, you know, if we keep all that in mind and if a job takes an extra half day, but we did it safely and no one got hurt, then that to me, those are more important things. But I’m, I think sometimes my perspective on things is because I’m 50 years old.

Ezra (23:39)

Yeah.

Mike (24:00)

You know, when I was 30, I had a company before I was a lot more about like generating big money and stuff. But I think that splitting up with my, my daughter’s mom and literally going down to zero in, in that value and living in a parking lot.

and keeping 50 % custody of my daughter, which was more important than money. I think that was a hard, a good lesson for me to understand what’s the most important thing. You know, a company has to be company a hundred percent has to be functional and it has to earn money and it has to be profitable. And those things are a hundred percent important. just say we’re making, I don’t know what it is. My wife does those kinds of things, but say we’re averaging after everything we averaged 12 to 13 % profit on what we.

Ezra (24:37)

So.

Mike (24:56)

what we make on our gross. If I was to grind on people and make them sacrifice time with their family and everything and we could get to 17%, I don’t care. Personally, if someone is doing that, I got no issue with it. But for me on a personal level, I don’t care.

Ezra (25:17)

I would just comment there and say in the short term, you may get that extra three to 4%. But in the long run, I think you’re going to lose it anyway, because here’s the problem. No one wants to work. Obviously, you need to work hard while you’re at work. But if you’re trying to squeeze every dollar out of someone, then they’re not going to stick around. And that little bit that you gained, you’re going to lose it anyway. And I think treating people obviously with, like you don’t want be treated.

and I have a job. And that’s why personally, I’m very intentional about the phrase team member rather than employee. Because if you’re part of a team and if you ever played, it sounds like your daughter does, I don’t know if you ever played a team sport, sure you have. You’re covering for the person. Like if they’re and you think soccer, they’re down, they’re out of their spot, you’re try to cover it. rather than, think of it this way, I was recently,

Mike (25:53)

I try to be too. I agree.

Ezra (26:15)

working with someone and the thought of a freelancer, they’re kind of whoever, just someone for hire compared to someone who’s part of the team. It’s going to pull the slack if there is any because they’re invested in the success of the company. So I think that’s where getting the right kind of team member really makes a difference.

Mike (26:37)

I agree. Yep. I think that you’re only as good as the people you send out. So, and I, I, it’s harder to step away from things when you don’t have, you know, for me, the most important things are, ⁓ trust and loyalty. The rest of it, can sort of, but if I don’t, if you don’t have the core to those core two things of trust and loyalty and a team member, then,

it’s pretty hard to build anything else. Like I don’t know, I don’t even know how you build. If you don’t have trust and loyalty, then I don’t know how you build off any anything off someone because you’re always just be looking over your shoulder. But I think that trust and loyalty are underestimated in today’s world.

Ezra (27:15)

on these can.

And you know, it reminds me of, remember I was hiring and there’s this one, I don’t think I call him a team member employee. And I just felt like, and partly this was on my end, think too, but like, no, cause later, no, thinking about it later, no. I just felt like I had to be every couple minutes going and looking at his work to see if he was still working. And it was this kind of guy where we were, this was before I had my lawn care company, we were doing painting. And I told him, Hey, we’ve got this big project.

It was at like a monstrous cheese factory, like literally monstrous. We were doing painting and I said, hey, this is, we’re charging them by the hour, a large fee. I’m really trying to get this job done this week. So for our lunch hour, can we please keep it at this certain time? Cause we’re trying to get this 80 man hours in this week. So he’s like, yeah. So, and I said, can you keep it to half an hour today?

An hour later, I called and I said, hey, you know, what’s going on? You all right? It’s like, oh yeah, I’m, he was 30 minutes away one way, said, oh my, my tire went flat. I’m like, okay, wait a sec. I asked and you agreed to take a 30 minute lunch. You had to drive 30 minutes one way. You knew as soon as you left, you’re gonna be late. Like, and then I’m like, okay, I’ll come pick you up if your tire’s flat. He’s like, oh no, no, no.

Mike (28:46)

Yeah.

Ezra (28:53)

You know, I’m good. And I’m just like, okay. Needless to stay. ⁓ and this was where I didn’t do a very good job of finding a right team member. waited till I like needed it and then never do this. put an ad on Craigslist. That was a not the place, which I know I don’t really think they have it here in Canada. ⁓ but it was, it’s like a cheap job board or a cheap selling place, kind of like Kijiji for Canadians.

And anyway, I learned my lesson there on hiring and whatnot to do. Now you’ve been around for a while for 30 plus years. What have you seen has changed the most in the hardscape world? Safety?

Mike (29:36)

safety.

No one told me not to breathe in concrete dust. That’s like a huge thing now, right? Like everyone’s got masks and they’re conscious of cutting and wet cutting and dust collection. And I can tell you no one cared at all when I started. one like safety is we didn’t like, I remember working on the highway and we didn’t even have pylons. Like we’re on the side of the shoulder. You just pulled the trucks off where you had to be and just start working with the truck. Like not even the hazards on just trucks parked on the side of the

shoulder the highway all day. Now if you were working on the side of the highway, you’d have bumper trucks and pylons and like it, you know, even when we go to when we go to work, everyone’s got a vest and everyone’s got a hard hat and you know, on commercial sites, residential sites, they start cutting their, they’re got a wet saw or a dust collector or they’re wearing masks. It’s safety is easily the

biggest change in the time that I’ve been and then the second biggest changes is cell phones, which we already talked about like, you know, when I started, there was no cell phones. There wasn’t even like, you used to go to a payphone and call the office and hope that someone was in the office, which at the time seemed really reasonable. Now, saying that out loud, it’s like, what have you drive to the self the payphone and you don’t remember the number what if you had to have like a book where you wrote everything down?

What if no one answers there? What if the person you’re trying to communicate is outside of the office? there’s a whole bunch of what and then I remember after a bit people had pagers and you would page you’d go to a payphone and page

the person you’re trying to get a hold of. And then they would call back the, the pay phone number, be standing outside of pay phone, because when their pager went off, if they were on the 401, they had to get off the 401, go to a gas station, find a pay phone, call you, could be standing beside this pay phone for half an hour, 40 minutes. Like cell phones, I think have made construction more efficient in some ways. And then I also think that it’s bred a

it generations now, not just add generation, but generations of people who don’t make decisions that constantly call someone else to make a decision. And that’s good and bad. Sometimes on the job site, you just need to make a decision and move forward. And if I the hardest lesson I ever learned was that just because it’s not the way I would do it, it doesn’t make it wrong. Just makes it different.

It’s not wrong, it’s just different.

So, but that’s people making their own decisions. So if you constantly beat up someone about making decisions, you’re just going to end up in a place where they’re just phoning you to make every single decision every day. And you have to come to accept that there’s different ways of accomplishing the same goal. And your way isn’t always the right way. It’s just a different way.

Ezra (32:48)

That’s so good. remember in college, was a former roofing crew for four, five years. No, probably four years I forming. And you know, I think that’s something as you have to learn, because I remember I fell into that trap. You hit something and it’s a lot easier to call because then you’re not responsible if you make a mistake. But I remember when I had to realize like, hey, I can’t call them over everything.

I think training your team members that, hey, you know, I’m not going to get upset at you or you’re not in trouble if you do make a mistake, but do something. And I think that’s just overall a good business advice.

Mike (33:33)

Yeah, I think that it’s, it’s just that those are two big changes, cell phones and safety. The rest of it is trucks and skid steers and excavators and you know, whatever. That stuff, it’s obviously gotten better, but it’s, know, there was no track skid steers when I first started. I remember when they came out, no one had track skid steers. They were all wheeled skid steers, which have a whole bunch of issues.

that tracks, I mean, obviously, anyways, but those safety is absolutely the number one change. Like the stuff that we did when we were, I was young compared to the stuff that, you know, I’m amazed that people don’t do better. When I see stuff going on, I’m like, really? Like, we don’t know better yet. Like, so anyways, those are the two biggest changes from when I started.

Ezra (34:26)

Now, lot of people want to get into hardscaping because obviously your average ticket cost is much higher. And for those people trying to either grow their hardscaping division or break into it, what advice would you give them?

Mike (34:41)

⁓

No matter what you do from the beginning, don’t cut corners. Like you’re going to, if you’re starting out in hearts, like a hardscape division, you’re going to price things poorly and inappropriately. That’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to think things will go faster than they are. You’re going to realize that when you take things to a perfect square, instead of like, you know, say someone wants a 10 by 10 patio, but if you can do it modular and it ends up being

10 and a half, that’s half a square foot of pavers you’re buying, you’re not getting paid for. There’s a whole bunch of things like that, where you’re going to find all these little problems that you don’t realize. And it’s going to be tempting to try to cut down on the time it takes to do things to make up for the difference of things you messed up. But if your long term goal is sustainability, then you need to

do a high quality of work. If you start off getting tiny walkways, but you’re doing an impeccably high quality of work, your company will grow.

Ezra (35:52)

So is there a way that we, that as landscapers, we can shortcut the process? I don’t mean shortcut in a bad way, but some of these bidding mistakes, do you have any resources or do you know someone who does a good job of teaching? that like, instead of making some of these rookie mistakes that you could probably just look at and say, don’t do that. That they don’t make those same dumb mistakes that maybe all young landscapers make.

Mike (36:18)

I think there’s a lot of resources now. Anyone who’s young and trying to get into the business, my Instagram account is not oriented towards teaching hardscaping. If people ask me questions, I respond right away. I answer any question anyone asks. I think that Caleb Allman at Allman Landscape, he has the Hardscape Academy. He puts out a ton of

great educational content. I think that if you’re serious about becoming a hardscape or then you should be serious about following Caleb and Brittany. think that their company, they are very open about their company. They’re very open about how they’re growing it. They’re like, I think they do a really good job. And then the second

The two things, two of the things that you should absolutely, ⁓ one is Caleb and Brittany and the other one is, ⁓ Mike from how to hardscape. ⁓ his website is full of a ton of information. His YouTube page is insane with the amount of videos and, ⁓ his podcast, the how to hardscape podcast. I think there’s like 300 episodes or more. If you started at the beginning and you go through them all.

by the time you come out the other side, he has some really high level people on that podcast. Like, ⁓ and there’s a ton to learn from them. You know, I also think that, ⁓ Mark Bradley and the leanskaper account is a great, you know, there it’s a new account this year, but, ⁓ Mark’s been in the, I had dinner with Mark earlier this year when he was in, ⁓ doing a leanskaper event in Toronto. And I think that following that account, ⁓

You can learn a lot too. Some of that stuff might be high level for someone who’s just starting out. ⁓ but learning that stuff from the beginning is important. But Mike, from how to hardscape and if you want like a source of terrible information, you should listen to the not our finest hour podcast and then you’ll get terrible information from me, but Chad, that’s Chad and Mike are both on that podcast with me and they both have relevant information. That’s good. ⁓

That’s a, you know, Caleb has a great podcast, ⁓ as well. So if you’re in, you’re getting into hardskeeping, that’s our things that I would, those are podcasts and people I would spend a lot of time listening to.

Ezra (38:51)

That’s helpful. Thanks, Mike. How would you recommend? Now you mentioned you’re you’re probably going to get pricing wrong at the beginning, but how do you approach pricing, especially for you do some large commercial? You mentioned that. How do you approach premium pricing and how do you present value to the client? Because at a certain point. Pavers are pavers and dirt is dirt. So how do you present to the value? Because obviously in business hiring tree people, right?

you’re probably not going to be the cheapest person around. So how do you convey that value to the customer?

Mike (39:25)

So we, you know, essentially we’re running a service, all of us are running a service based business. So, you know, the sound, this sounds insane to say it out loud, but it’s a key core thing to me is answer your phone.

Ezra (39:45)

So good.

Mike (39:46)

You like answer your phone. Don’t leave people hanging for long periods of time. You you’re right. Pavers are pavers. What separates someone from someone else other than having a cheap price is the level of service. You know, I. That’s one thing I would say to somebody. Everybody is be prepared to offer a great level, even even like our commercial division, which is.

very price oriented commercial landscaping is very just price oriented and it’s about trying to find the right numbers. We have commercial clients that call us because we provide great service and we answer the phone and Jack who is our project manager and estimator and Kelly who’s our office manager they provide insane back office stuff.

And that to some of our big commercial clients is really important that submittals are in on time. And Jack provides Microsoft plan scheduling, there’s a scheduling software and he will build out a schedule for the client. So they understand what days were going to be, what the expected production rates are. That kind of stuff is really important to some of our bigger commercial clients that, and we get jobs. Sometimes we get sole sourced work from them because they know that they can trust us and

we will provide them all the information they need and our back office is in a shit show. But the when it comes to like just core price, I have a couple like life lessons that have been on lots and lots of places. I’ve said them lots of times, but people that I learned from one of the one day I was in an in the office and the company I was I worked for had two partners that owned it and I was with one of the partners and

I was just saying, man, this job is shit. Like, this is just a terrible job. And he said, well, that’s your fault. And I went, why? Why is it my fault that this job is terrible? He said, well.

It’s not never a bad job. I said, I don’t know, man, this job is pretty bad. Never a bad job. Just a bad price. If you price that job, right, you wouldn’t care if it was a bad job. You’d be so happy that you were doing it. And I went, wow, there’s an epiphany of my life. There’s never a bad job. There’s only a bad price. You know, if you’re if you’re complaining about something at all while you’re doing it, then you probably didn’t price it appropriately is something that I base things on. I also I

Often say the job you don’t get is the most profitable job you’ll do in a year. You know, if the sometimes if, if, the price isn’t right, and it’s not the right price, you’re better to walk away and it will provide opportunity to do something else. Trapping yourself in, we’re in a situation right now this spring where we have a lot of work in the spring, but we’re kind of summer fall looking and commercially, sometimes you got to be looking far out. It takes a while for projects to get off the ground and get launched.

And we’re looking at a project and it’s a three week project. And I said to Jack, said, all right, well, like, let’s tighten up. We can tighten up the numbers on this. It’s three weeks and it’s going in August when we need it. We need some work. So it’s a three week job. Let’s tighten up the numbers. But then on the flip side, Jack was also pricing something that’s a $2 million job. And I said, we are not tightening the numbers on this. The numbers are the numbers on this because if we get this job and we did it on tighter numbers, we are stuck doing this for

$2 million worth of work like the other one three weeks if it’s tight, we’re still going to walk it with a profit. The guys are still going to get it done. We’re still going to be profitable. Is it the best way we could have spent three weeks? No, but it was three weeks and we needed to just put a job in the bank. If it’s not the right job, then it’s just not the right if you can’t get the right number for something you just can’t get the right number for something and I’m more willing to squeeze a number on a small job than a big job big jobs. don’t

I’d rather walk away. We’ll look for a different opportunity. The other, the other thing I base a lot of our pricing on and when I look at when I, after I work through everything and I look at something as you can’t shovel your way to a good price, like if the price is crap from the beginning, you can’t go there and work extra hard and make the price better. You can’t shovel twice as fast. The shoveling is the shoveling. It doesn’t like, so

If you start out bad, you don’t have an expectation of shoveling your way to making extra money. It just does it. One in a hundred, maybe it doesn’t happen. So those are things that I think about when I’m pricing and theories I work off of. So I don’t know if that helps anyone, but it’s not an exact methodology, but it’s more of a more of a overall overview, I guess, of what you’re, you know, I Jack has a whole system.

Ezra (44:36)

That’s good.

Mike (44:45)

He has margins and markups and he has a whole spreadsheet thing. That’s I do everything on. Like I do some of our pricing. I do it all on yellow sheets of paper. And then look and lots of times let’s just look at the final number, even though I’ve worked it all out and was like, yeah, I understand that that’s. The right number for this work, but. I’m like I don’t this job is going to be ass. We’re going to run into problems.

We’d rather have some extra money so when problems occur, everyone’s not freaking out. We have one client who’s like an absolute disorganized good person, but a disorganized mess. First job we did for him was stressful because it took a bit longer than it should have because on his side, he’s just disorganized. So we’re doing, know, whenever we do work for him. Now I just put an allowance in there and that way when

shit goes sideways or we dig something twice or whatever happens. I’m like, whatever, man. Cool. I built in this buffer that I knew I was never going to collect. So that’s how I price things. I mean, I have an idea of overhead to an overhead costs. And I try I work hard to keep our we work hard to keep our overhead down, because it’s really easy to like there’s so much equipment and so much stuff. And it’s

so expensive, it’s easy to bury yourself in. You know, some of the trucks that we buy are 300 grand. Like, so well, we’re just, yeah, we have, we bought a track. So last year was 291,000. We bought it. What’s crazy is we bought a track on 2022. It was two 25. Same, same truck is two 91 now. And now that same truck is three or three 10. We’re buying a we’re, in the process of trying to buy a new hook truck.

Ezra (46:22)

believe it.

That’s insane.

Mike (46:42)

and it’s $3.24. I guess it’s crazy. It’s a wild, wild experience. So it’s easy to bury yourself, I guess, in overhead. So that’s another, I would tell people, be careful about what you buy because you gotta pay for it.

Ezra (47:01)

sure. Are there any systems or processes routines that you have seen been a game changer in your business?

Mike (47:09)

We switched lot two years ago to the connect team app. I think that’s what it’s called and it it allows me to Yeah, it’s called connect team. It allows you to see a schedule on your computer. You can see what everyone’s doing where everyone’s It allows it allows the team members to clock in and out digitally it It

allows me to upload tasks into people’s days. So they have a task checklist of things they need to do. I can write big descriptions. can up like for the our drivers. I can upload. can write in there where we’re picking up the equipment, the pieces of equipment, the number of the equipment, the page, the project manager we’re working for the PO number for that float move. It all gets into this app and it and we have a driver chat, a field staff chat, we have

It supports all these chats. have a two crew chats for the two crews. We have a bin truck chat because the bin truck drivers will talk to each other. Hey, where are you? Can I, can I grab that bin? Can you get this one? Are you freed up or can you run this load of gravel? Like we have a driver chat with our brokers and all our tri axles. And that app has, because I can open up my laptop. have a lap. I have a cheap laptop. I keep in my truck.

So I can open up that laptop and hotspot it off my phone and immediately look at everyone’s schedule for the week. If someone calls me and says, I need two trucks for three days or can your crew do this? Or can you, it’s all there in that app. It’s, I think that that’s, that app has changed our business tremendously.

Ezra (48:52)

That’s

really good. I think a lot of businesses are still in the paper phase. Whatever CRM or sounds like a scheduling software you use, mean, you’re leaving so much on the table if you’re not doing that. you know, depends what you’re in. Hardscaping, maybe you’re more doing checks, but if you’re doing smaller tickets, you know, getting credit card on file or make sure, you know, your accounts receivable can grow if you’re not careful.

And I just heard about one business of the day and they were a couple million dollar business and literally their gross, their profit margins was like, ⁓ something insane, like under four or 5%. And so I was just thinking about all this stress they were under. I mean, just like any business you run, but they’re making no profit. And I was just like, that sounds like a terrible recipe. Literally they could have made more money as a solo operator, whether they’re doing lawn care or landscaping, but now they’ve got all this stress.

but it’s not manageable.

Mike (49:53)

And you have you end up with a ton like, one of the things we do is we have three very reliable partners that come and work with us. So we, you know, last week, someone called me and said, I got 7000 square feet of pavers, I got to get done in May. So I look at our schedule and I say, hmm, like, we’re pretty, we’re pretty busy. So then I call

I have three reliable partners that I call and I call up one of them and I say, man, I got this 7,000 square feet. Like you want to do this with us as a partnership and we’ll work through it together. And he’s, he says, yeah, absolutely. And I said, okay, cool. So then I know I can price that job and have a reliable partner. I, for that job, I call two of our, partners we work with constantly. And both of them were, we’d set aside some time to come work with us, you know, and maybe we do it. Maybe all of us get together and we

we bang it out in three days, two or three days and we’re done and we’re And that’s good for our client too, our client can count on us to perform. I do that for a couple of reasons. I like…

I think that team members are always invested. Like good team members are very invested in the projects and moving them forward. But I also think that when you have people that are owners on a site, have, it’s just a different level of investment. Natural, it’s a natural thing. That’s not saying anything bad about anyone. But when we work with our subcontracting partners, I know we’re going to have an owner on the site. And that means that there’s going to be a big investment in that person.

And so all of our subcontracting partners we did generally the owner of those business. They’re smaller landscape companies that Maybe don’t get the same opportunities that we get Which is undeserving but they just are they can’t sometimes, you know, some of these jobs are big jobs to finance So we have you know a pretty deep well now Because we try to be very responsible with our finances so that we can have a deep well because being able to

control money is something that allows us to be very, be more profitable. ⁓ and you know, with us, it just snowed a ton here a few weeks ago and we had, we move snow, we don’t plow snow. We move snow with the dump trucks and the bin trucks and we had calls for 15 or 20 trucks a day sometimes like just mass snow moving in the city. And, ⁓ our, our ability,

And the City of Toronto was sucking up a lot of the trucks because the of Toronto needed hundreds of trucks. And our ability to pay people quickly, kept, where some of my friends were losing their trucks to the city, we didn’t lose a single truck because we pay quickly, we pay the rates, we pay fair rates, we make sure that the guys are taken care of. And so they all, they all stuck with us. And, but that’s because we have a good financial well.

So I think that that’s maybe too, if you want to get into the hardscape world. so right now we about 15,000 square feet of pavers lined up for the season.

So they’re all big bulk jobs. You know, sometimes if you want to work towards getting those opportunities, maybe finding someone who’s doing that work already and going into to work with them as a sub. I like the model because it also keeps our overhead low. Like I don’t, I don’t need to have the equipment sitting around to support three crews. We have equipment in our yard to support two crews. We don’t need.

And when the other crews come, they bring their equipment. I pay them for it. They use it when they’re working with us. ⁓ so I think that’s another,

Ezra (54:01)

So how close

are these other companies? Because I’m curious, this is something I’m a big fan of, is networking with people who may even consider a competitor. Are they in your quote unquote service area that you would drive for a job? And how do you connect and then to trust them enough to bring them onto these large projects?

Mike (54:16)

Yeah.

They’re all within our service area. They’re just like-minded people that I don’t…

I think there’s a trust factor between our client not approaching them and them not accepting that approach. I think for all of our trusted partners, they would look at that and be like, okay, this is a one-time thing. Whereas Mike and Kelly and the team at Paver King have supported our business for three years.

they constantly have another thing coming up and another thing coming up and another thing coming up. And those three partners know that I’m very committed to having two good crews and, and then dealing with them, moving, you know, having them be our trusted partners to work with us. So I think that that means something to them. We have one of them that does all our woodwork and fencing. We have one that does, we have a two concrete subs, but, ⁓ both of them are.

People I don’t, I don’t know that it’s advantageous and also a lot of those companies, you know, sometimes when we do work commercially, you’re sitting on money for 60 days, 90 days, 120 days. I think that all of those companies have no interest in being the ones sitting on the money. You know, that’s, we did a job in Barry and they’ve had $50,000 of our money and a hold back for the whole winter. Cause some other company hasn’t

finish the greenhouse that has nothing to do with us. So the city of Barry won’t release the final hold back. So, you know, I, it is, but that’s part of the game. That’s part of what you sign up for. I’m not complaining about it. just saying there’s, I mean, it sucks. I would complain about it, but it’s part of the game. you know, Kelly and I are prepared for that fiscally and financially prepared to be sitting on those volumes of money when other people have been paid. So if you’re one of our,

Ezra (56:02)

It’s pretty brutal.

Mike (56:27)

trusted subs and you look and say, you know what, I’m to try and steal this client. They don’t want to, most of the, most people I meet don’t want to have $50,000 invested in a

job in Barry where it’s being held up by someone who’s just dicking around finishing the greenhouse. There’s nothing to do with you. Whereas for us, that’s just that’s normal operating procedure just is what it is. It’s part of the game. I don’t likewise all of these these partners, they all use our services. They use our bin trucks, they use our tri axles, we drive, we deliver gravel to them. We

It’s a very symbiotic relationship between us and them. It’s a partnership where they’re not calling someone else for their bins or calling someone else for their gravel or calling something like they’re… It’s a very symbiotic partnership between us and them. It works for us. I like it because it keeps overhead low. keeps highly invested people on job sites. They also, all three of them do…

a really, a really, really spectacular job on the work and do a very high quality of work. And they all have different one of them is two of them are really good residentially. One of those two is in particularly amazing at wood, like just spectacular with wood. And, and one of them, third, the third one is, is does an amazing job with concrete, which is avoid that the other like they’re

Sometimes they work together on the same jobs. We had an emergency, say landscape emergency, which there truly is no actual landscape emergencies, but there was a failure to perform on 10,000 square feet of pavers in a driveway for a grand opening. so we had our team and two of the other teams all working together and we crushed it out in two and a half days.

Ezra (58:37)

Was that another company that had just not done the work or was this something, a flub on your end?

Mike (58:42)

No, the other company, we were doing the softscaping on that project and they just, think they’re not a paver company and I think they just, their guys are sewer and water main people and they’re different skill sets. And I think they just, they got behind because it just was harder than they thought it would be when they did it. And so it was a failure to perform and it was the fire exit and without it, you can’t open up the building.

So there was a huge meeting with the general and everything and they asked us if we could get it done and I said, let me make some calls. And so two of the companies said we have time and we will come up and help you. And I said, great. And so we banged it out.

Ezra (59:32)

And I’m

sure that was one happy customer when you were done.

Mike (59:35)

They were, they didn’t, no one believed it could get finished in the time allowed. So it was, was fun to, um, it was fun to do something that other people believed couldn’t happen. So I believed, I believed it could happen. I understand bulk. We were, and to put it in perspective, we weren’t doing excavation. We were screed, we were doing a screed layer and laying the pavers, cutting them in and they were permeable. we were sweeping in HPB. Um,

Still a challenging project because there was a lot of small pavers and it’s a lot of buttons. Like I think we did a hundred bundles. So we were averaging over. We did like almost 40 a day to get it done in two and a half days. And. But it’s also a road. So bulk pay like it’s not like doing something in someone’s backyard. Like the numbers seem huge. So you put in perspective what we were doing. We’re building the road like and it’s permeable. So.

You know, there’s great points to hit, but the water is also going through the pavers. It’s not lying in the driveway anywhere. So it was a, it was a fun project to have. And we couldn’t have done that without having trusted partners because our crews were committed to doing what they were doing. So we couldn’t in any way, you know, for them, it was super fun. And that building actually got named one of the, by Time Magazine to be one of the top 25 places to go in the world.

So it was fun that we all did the landscaping. Yeah, it fun. We all did the landscaping there. it, ⁓ that’s how we control overhead. I, when we price things and when we price things, knowing that we’re going to self-perform, ⁓ there’s a certain pricing scheme, but when someone calls us for an emergency thing, because we get a lot of calls.

Ezra (1:00:59)

That’s neat.

Mike (1:01:25)

because people know that we can get things done. Then we make sure we allow that, you know, this is going to probably involve those guys and the rates are going to have to be a bit higher because we have costs even associated with that. you know, our office is still processing it. We’re sitting on money. We’re, you know, so it’s a different… Anyways, it’s… That’s how we handle that situation.

controlling overhead where we are.

Some things, no, go ahead.

Ezra (1:02:00)

Good night.

I was

just going to say, this has been really interesting. If you could give one piece of advice to the next generation of hardscapers, maybe someone already in it looking to grow, maybe to get to where you are someday, what would you tell them?

Mike (1:02:16)

I don’t stop educating yourself. You know, it’s there’s just when we when I started businesses and stuff, there was no YouTube. There was no, you know, and I think you have to temper the advice that’s getting pumped out on you. very anti guru. I am not a guru person. And there’s a lot of guruing that goes on in the landscape sector now, I think because people are easily susceptible to thinking there’s an easier way to make massive amounts of money.

I think that’s true everywhere, but in the landscaping business, it’s such a hard grind that I think that when someone sells, uh, so temper where you get temper, all the information you take in and pick the points, I guess, that relate the most to you. If someone’s promising the world, don’t, don’t, don’t believe that all the time, but, um, yeah, I think that there’s so much information out there that there’s podcasts like this, uh, the how to hardscape podcast, the kid contractor podcast.

Brian’s lawn maintenance has a great podcast. Brian does. there’s, ⁓ the not our finest hour podcast, which is my podcast, which that one is a lot more, just three of us just literally just talking about the really crappy stuff that happened to us every week, which I, I mean, there’s also wins we talk about, but I think that there’s not that many places where you can go to hear people openly talk about failures they’ve had and things they’ve miscalculated. And I think that

Chad, Mike and myself are all, I know you listen to a little bit of it, are all pretty real about what our businesses are. I had a, we had a client, we had our biggest client that we were doing over a million dollars a year for go bankrupt two years ago. And, you know, almost white plus about 600 grand.

Ezra (1:04:03)

Did you have a lot of accounts receivable with them?

It’s brutal.

Mike (1:04:09)

So it was a big deal. have one of the lawsuits is settled. We have another one that’s still ongoing. In the end, we’re probably gonna.

lose couple hundred thousand dollars on it. Well, we had a tough go. was pretty open about it. I don’t pretend it didn’t happen. Luckily, because we’re fiscally conservative, we still exist. If we weren’t fiscally conservative, we would not exist a hundred percent. And the bigger problem from that, like the first problem was the money we didn’t get paid. The second problem is it was a source of work. were a subcontractor for that company. So they did all the background, found all the work and they just sent us to, sent us to work.

Ezra (1:04:32)

You’d have to be.

Mike (1:04:50)

We were more of an operational company as opposed to a full service bidding company. And the biggest hurt, the biggest pain was just rebuilding the infrastructure to start to bid our own work. Too many eggs in a basket. Too many eggs in a basket. There’s another, we, the other piece of advice that gives to someone starting out is diversify. We have commercial landscaping, residential landscaping. We have triaxial haulage where we haul dirt.

Ezra (1:05:02)

It’s really interesting.

Mike (1:05:18)

We do a lot of fill haulage. do a lot of gravel delivery with the tracks. We do gravel delivery with the bins. We do bin, bin delivery. We also float equipment. Like I can show you six or seven clean streams of revenue that we have coming in. And when one thing isn’t busy, other things are busy. And that’s how we built the company. ⁓ so when that went really sideways, we, we still had some residential projects to fall back on. had, we rebuilt how we bid work and how we, just,

Don’t put too many eggs in one basket and keep educating yourself. That would be my two pieces of advice.

Ezra (1:05:56)

Yeah,

it’s always helpful. Yeah, you’ve got to, you’ve got, don’t know how you can, I don’t think you could ever plan for something that large, but obviously don’t spend everything you make and have some sort of reserve. Cause that’s, that’s brutal. Any size business, unless you’re just monsters.

Mike (1:06:17)

It was tough go. I’m proud of our whole team that we, we worked our way through it and we battled our way through it. we, we never, all of our bills got paid on time. All of our team members got their paychecks every week. know. Yeah, we never, ⁓ all of our suppliers were paid on time. You know, sometimes it was tight. Sometimes we were working off money before we had to make the payment with the trucks, but that’s okay. We got through it. And this year we’re in a better place.

Ezra (1:06:31)

Something to be proud of.

Mike (1:06:46)

So it was tough.

Things that are too easy are probably too easy for a reason.

Ezra (1:06:56)

Business is hard. Even if you have some of this knowledge, you just got to put in the hard work. mean, it’s all it comes down to.

Mike (1:07:01)

Yeah.

And full disclosure, I knew better. I got into deep. I knew better. I knew that the company was like, I’ve been around this business a long time. I watched what was going on. I knew that it was a lot of bad decisions, but at the end of the day, we were, we’d been working with that company for four or five years and they had always paid us. And we just, I got into deep and we did too much for them and it’s okay. It was a, and you still learn lessons at 48 and 49.

And I would, I do that? Would I do that again? No. Like we’re very, we’re, very careful about how deep we get in with people.

Ezra (1:07:32)

For sure.

Yeah.

It’s been really helpful, Mike. If someone’s looking to find you, where’s the best place to do that?

Mike (1:07:45)

On Instagram, I’m at paverking. Our website is paverking.ca. And then TikTok, same at paverking. If you look up, just look up at paverking, then that’s probably not our finest hour podcast. I do that every week with the guys. do two episodes. have on Fridays, we release the not our finest hour. And on Saturdays we release our even worse hour. So that’s

Ezra (1:08:14)

Something to look forward to.

Mike (1:08:16)

Yep. And sometimes we’re on Mike’s How to Hardscape podcast as well when he’s hurting for a gas till have me on. So but if you just look up at paverking, you’ll there’s a lot of stuff. Some of it is not necessarily landscape related, but we have a good time.

Ezra (1:08:34)

Thanks Mike for tuning in and for each of the listeners. Thanks for being here on the Lawn Care Success Blueprint. Huge shout out to Mike for sharing his wisdom today and some of these insights have been pure gold. If you got value from this episode, be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with another pro. Until next time, we will talk to you later.