Chuck Bowen, editor of Lawn and Landscape Magazine, talks about how to grow your business with fewer growing pains.

Set yourself apart from other companies with excellent customer service.  Customers want someone who is going to call them back and do a good job.

Solve the "labor problem" by creating a culture that makes people want to work for you.

What can people do to take themselves from a small to medium sized company?  "What got you here, won't get you there."  It requires the owner to step back into different rolls.  The owner needs to hire people to do the work he/she was doing and do different work (sales and business building).  What systems do we need to put into place so we can effectively scale it.  Get everything that's in the owner's head on paper so their employees know exactly what to do.  The owner who doesn't eventually step back, becomes the limiting factor in the company.

In the off-season, you should be stepping back and...

D.E.F. Regulations

Stan: The lawn care landscaping construction industry has dramatically changed in the last five years and the problem is we have more rules, restrictions, and regulations than ever before and this is the tip of the iceberg. It's only going to get worse. Luckily we have small companies out there that are helping contractors like you and I deal with these new regulations that the EPA likes to put on us. I want to introduce you guys to Thunder Creek, first they're going to teach us what DEF. is. And then they're going to show us some unique ways they're helping contractors like us work around the new regulations. So let's get started. Alright guys what we're going to be talking about today is that we want to de-mystify it. DEF is a new regulation that the government has imposed on all of us. And that's going to impact you, it's going to impact me. If it hasn't caught up to you yet, it eventually will. Luke is going to tell us a little bit more about these regs and...

Stan:  In one hour, I'm going to hopefully teach you something that will change your life forever. I'm going to show you three simple rules that will potentially double your profits from this year forward for the rest of your life. It’s the three percent rule, the five percent rule and the 10 percent rule. Now at the end of this video some of you are going to say the ten percent rule is not achievable and for you it isn't, so congratulations you're right. You see for me I don't live by the 10 percent rule, I've upped that ante a decade ago. I've made the 10 percent rule be my 40 percent rule, to be my 50 percent rule, to be my 60 percent rule. If I can do it, then I know you guys can do it. One of the things I want you to focus on in this next hour, is to understand the effect of scarcity. At the end of this video, I'm going to give you some actual examples of how very common businesses can have very scarce services. So make sure you stay tuned all the way to the end.

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I want to give you a walk-through of a job we completed that has just about every type of service that we offer on it. The job started off to do the work for this house right.  We were doing a retaining wall to fix the drainage, clearing the back yard, irrigation system, sod, pavers, landscape lighting, and fencing. So, we started off working here and about day 2 into the project, the neighbor came over and said, "listen we've been getting bids on our back yard for 5 years." They had huge drainage problems.  If you can see, the water came down from that area and just washed out the whole backyard. There was no sod, and it was overgrown with weeds.  All that water came downhill into this property.  It’s a big natural area so where I'm standing. This was just no backyard.  It was all completely down to bare dirt with a lot of channeling where all the water had flowed into the property. Our job was to fix all of that. As I said, this neighbor came over...

57 Stone

Today I do not want to talk to you about dirt. I want to talk to you about this stuff: 57-stone. This is a course stone about 3/4 - 1" and it's great for drainage.  We're building a paver patio that's going to extend off of the house to just a portion underneath this deck. So, what's important here is this wall’s pretty short. It's about 3 ½ ft tall at its highest point, so you might be tempted to try to get away without drainage. We've seen a lot of jobs where contractors will just backfill with dirt only.

I do not recommend in any situation but specifically where water is going to be sloping down and has a potential to seep in behind this wall. What we've done here is we've put in a boat load of this 57-stone instead of using dirt.  In a normal drainage system, you're going to have about 12 inches of dirt that you're going to wrap in a fabric and allow that to create a separation between your gravel and your dirt.

So eventually they don't combine....

If you are doing any type of irrigation work, then you know that the sound a screwdriver makes when you poke it through the lawn into the grass and you hear plastic. You know that is one of the most rewarding sounds. That means you've been looking for an irrigation valve in a yard and you finally have hit plastic. Now you can actually begin the work of replacing the faulty valve. So, I want to give you a quick outline of what this yard looks like.  It is really, really big. It's fall and there are leaves all over the ground.  I looked at this yard knowing I had a leaking valve somewhere and thought, "This is going to be a really long day trying to find this."

Look for the Green

But one thing that I did as I came around the side of the house, and what I noticed is about a 4ft diameter patch that is much darker green than the surrounding area. So, it made me think, "Why is that so much darker of a green color?" Well if water is leaking, it's irrigating it very well and...

How to Build a Retaining Wall and 6 Reasons they Fail

Today we're going to cover six big mistakes when you're building a retaining wall and how to avoid them so let's get started. I predicted this wall would fail over a year ago in this exact spot, in this exact way. You can see where the grades behind this wall have dipped down. It's going to blow that wall out and in fact, we had one catastrophic wall failure on this project last year and we had to repair it. We got another one coming up; it's not because I have a crystal ball it's because the writing was on the wall. It's just completely shot right there, that's from drainage, from not maintaining it. You can see where all the grades have dropped down in here and now we've got big sinkholes behind this retaining wall. I can literally stick my leg down in here, up to my knees. You can see this distinct angle, it’s all bowed out.

Avoid Problems

This problem could have easily been avoided had the property owner, the...

.Drainage Swale

I was called out to address a problem in drainage and erosion. Years ago, we did a drainage erosion project for a property you can’t see right now, but it sits behind this fence in a very nice neighborhood. It was to address water that was coming from this adjacent trailer park area.  I want to go through a problem that we recently had. Last night, there were some horrendous rain storms that came through this area, and as a result, they flooded over a large drainage swale that we had installed using rip-rap rock.  We had excavated out of very nice swale going down the hillside with the intent of capturing this water.  That drainage system has been in place for probably close to 2years now and it's worked with good results and until now.

Heavy Rains

Recently, we had this heavy rain and it crested over the drainage system. I came back here to this trailer park behind the property to identify the cause of this problem, and here's what I found. There...

Breaking News

Breaking news right now a man is fighting for his life after a landscaping accident. The man had to be pulled from a pond after his mower tipped over into a pond with a rider on it. Stan: An incredible amount of people are injured or killed every year in lawnmower related accidents but let's find out how many accidents there are we're going to talk to somebody a whole lot smarter than me. Hello McFly, you're up. Three two one! Reporter: He rolled over an embankment into a creek and then that riding lawn mower he was on, fell on top of him. Stan: The sad truth is a lot of these accidents can be prevented. We're going to cover three simple steps to keep you safe. But before we get into that, how many accidents are there actually every year. Relax, calm, down breathe through your nose, not your mouth.

Accidents Happen

Stanley: Oh! Well, thank you Mr. Monkey, but you can actually call me Stanley. First off Mr. Monkey, I just want to say thank you for giving me the...

Stan: How do you eat an Elephant? This is a concept they use the especially when I'm bidding landscaping project. We are getting set to do a complete makeover project on this yard, strip everything out and regarded it and reinstall everything brand new and this is something that I want you guys to get I want burst straight in there and I don't want it to ever leave because you're going to use this concept how do you eat an elephant for almost everything that you have to do to build your business. You will be able to apply this concept of every component of your business especially when you're bidding landscaping. You get into these big projects you like ah man where do I even begin, to build a job like this you develop it the answer is one bite at a time now I want you to stop what you think about this concept because it's going to apply to everything you do. One bite at a time means you break down the job you break down the pit the very first thing if you feel that you're getting...