Ground Etc.
ABI presents Ground Etc, where we talk all things turf care and ground prep. This podcast is for grounds keepers, landscape contractors, and anyone interested in working in the dirt. From the right equipment, to the right crew, to the strategies needed to run a successful business. We talk to experts of the industry about the ground, the work, et cetera!
Ground Etc.
Breaking Into Adjacent Markets – With Pete Denny
This episode, Matt sits down with Pete Denny, landscaping YouTuber and founder of GCI Turf, to talk about the equipment, strategies, and connections that helped his business break into adjacent turf care markets.
- Hi, everyone, I'm Matt Metzger. You're listening to Ground Etc. This season we're talking all things soil prep and landscape, contracting from the right equipment, to the right crews, to strategies needed to run a successful landscape business. But we are talking to industry experts about the ground, the work, et cetera. And as you can see here, we are not in our podcast studio anymore. We actually get to hang out with a good friend of ours, Pete. How's it going, sir?
- It's going good. How's it going?
- We're doing great. You have a beautiful backyard patio here. Always nice to be in your lawn. See how you do it. This is home base. And so we get to hang out with Pete Denny here from GCI Turf and get to pick his brain. If you know Pete at all, you've seen his videos, you've seen the work that he does, the kind of insider information, even, and this is what I appreciate, Pete, you're even willing to tell 'em, tell everyone, "Sometimes it doesn't go the way you think it'd go." I think one of your most recent videos, you made a big booboo. And so Pete is so down to earth. I appreciate the wisdom you're willing to share. Appreciate that you're willing to kind of open up even your backyard to us and share a little bit about today, a little bit how you got started. So thanks for having us down.
- You're welcome, I'm glad you're here. I'd say almost everything I've learned, I've learned from failure.
- I like that, I like that a lot.
- If you're not messing up, then you're not doing something right. If that makes sense.
- Yeah, no, that sounds like you're experimenting and you're pushing boundaries and trying something new.
- Yeah.
- So why don't you, Pete, why don't you back it up for us? Because I mean, you've got all these videos on the work that you're doing and the different projects and great tips on how to go about it. But can you start us at the beginning? How did this whole thing got started? How did you get into landscaping and yard prep?
- Well, fun, fun story. I just met my soon-to-be wife, Tammy. And had asked her to marry me. And obviously I went to her dad, asked him first, got his approval.
- Smart man, smart man.
- That's right, got his approval. And right about the time we were gonna get married, about 30 days exactly before the wedding date, I got fired from my public job.
- No way.
- Yes way. Try going to your future Father-in-Law and say, "I don't have a job." So I had to do something. And I had do something quickly. So I went to my dad and borrowed his trailer. I took my old 1992 Toyota four wheel drive truck, a push mower that I had, borrowed a friend's blower, little handheld blower. And I took my string trimmer and I literally got in the truck and drove the roads in my community door to door and said, "I'll mow your grass. I'll pick up your sticks, I'll blow your leaves, I'll pull weeds. I'll do whatever you want me to do in your yard if you'll pay me." And that's literally how it started.
- No way.
- Yes way. That's how I started in lawn care. I didn't own hardly anything, I was broke. I didn't have a job.
- [Matt] Well, and you had a timer. I mean you had 30 days and you had to figure something out.
- I had 30 days to get something going.
- Wow, so what was the, talk about some of those initial reactions then, 'cause these are neighbors, I mean these are people that you've been living by for a while. So what was it like knocking on doors and getting started in that way?
- Yeah, best, that was 21 years ago, it's kind of hard to remember all of it. But I started off with people that I knew. You know, the lady at the church, or the guy that owned the convenience store down the street and I, yeah, I go to their places, and just talk to 'em like I'm sitting there talking with you and, "Do you mind if I start cutting your grass." And luck of the draw or divine intervention, whatever. It just happened. And sooner or later people started getting word that, "Hey, Pete does land yard care work, lawn care work and he does a pretty good job." 'Cause I've always been a hyper peculiar dude, if that one grass blade over there in the corner of the yard is still sticking up, I'm gonna take the time to get back outta the truck, go over there and take my pocket knife and nip it off. I'm just that peculiar about my work, 'cause my work is my reputation. And I want my reputation to be very strong. Because people that work hard for their money are paying me to do something for them. And I'm not gonna, I don't dare take advantage of anybody. I want the absolute best job it can possibly be when I leave.
- Wow. Well, now, I'm willing to bet there are people listening to this and they know Pete Denny from all of the wisdom, all the insight, all the practical information. And I mean you get down into the chemicals and down into the organisms and how it all works. And they're saying, "This is how this got started." So where did, so start to fill in some gaps then, how did you go from knocking on door to door and just scrapping it together, 'cause you had to, to starting to learn and starting to understand the why behind what you were doing?
- So I got my big break playing golf, believe it or not, actually the golf course is right down the street here. It's my home course. And this was 19-ish years ago. Went out by myself, afternoon, was playing around at golf and a hole number two, I hit a driver and I hit into the guy in front of me, got up there, "Hey, man, I'm sorry, didn't mean to do that." He was a solo player. And I was like, "Hey, you just wanna play in together? I mean, it's just me and just you." And he was like, "Sure." Guy's name is Todd, by the way, he's still a customer today, 20 years later, 19 years later. And just so happened that he was a surgeon and he lived in a very prominent community in Greensboro, a gated community. And I told him my story about mowing yards and stuff like that. And he was like, "I despise mowing grass. I hate it with a." I was like, "Wait, I know somebody that'll help you." And so I got in his neighborhood and when I did that, how can I be respectful and word just the correct way? People who work hard or get educated, or have been fortunate to earn a really nice living, they make a lot of money. And typically it's been my experience that they don't mind paying to get the job done right. So that was my big break to get in a neighborhood like that. And so money wasn't an issue, just do the yard correctly. And it was like green light for me. I was like, "Well, yeah, I can do this now, I can do that." Where, out here in the country, a single mother or whatever may not be as apt to spend as much money to make sure everything's absolutely perfect, is what it is.
- [Matt] Well, and may not be as concerned as much, right?
- And may not be as concerned, is what it is. But I got in that neighborhood and we ended up in the last 19 years, we've probably picked up, I'd say probably a hundred yards in that one neighborhood. So that was a pretty sweet round of golf I played, you know what I mean? So-
- It was a good afternoon to be out there.
- I was in the right place, right time. And got hooked up with the right guy. And that's kind of how I got my break into getting into high-end residential maintenance. And the more I learned and taught myself about growing turf and how I want the property to look when I leave it, I had the income coming in to allow me to do that and experiment with this, experiment with that and see what works and what didn't work. And it just kind of snowballed from there.
- Was there ever a moment, 'cause again, to hear you talk about it now, you're talking how much you love it, how much you enjoy it. It's something that you, I mean, you're kind of obsessive about it, right? But initially lawn maintenance, lawn care started as something that you were just trying to get bills paid. So that your fiance-
- I was trying to please my father-in-law.
- Right. So was there, I mean, can you think back and see a specific point where I was doing this, 'cause I had to, but then I kept doing it and all of a sudden I learned to love it? Was it a certain moment or when did you look back and realize and say, "Actually, I really like this. This is something I wanna keep doing."
- Oh, that was a light bulb moment. And I can remember that it was my first fertilizer application I made. So in the beginning, I contracted out like a big national chain to do the fertilizer, weed control portion on the turf, make the grass green, make it look good and they kinda sorta wouldn't doing a great job in my opinion. Excuse me. So that's when I decided, "Well, I'm gonna do this myself." And started doing a little homework and made my first fertilizer application. Went back a week later, checked out the results and it was just like, "Wow, I like this. I didn't realize that grass liked food that much." And it was such a dramatic change in the turf, the quality of the turf, the look of the turf, how thick it was, and the color of it, it turned really dark green. And I was just mesmerized by it. I mean, I was just like, "I really wanna do more of this." And so that's when I started diving into the chemicals and herbicides and went and got my license. You have to be certified and licensed in the state of North Carolina to apply pesticides. And just basically started teaching myself how to grow turf. And I've just been infatuated with it ever since.
- So what was the, 'cause you've mentioned a couple of times teaching yourself, what has been your main source of information when it comes to, 'cause you had to get the license, so there's some bookwork there when it comes to fertilizer, but as you've learned about how the grass grows and how it rebuilds itself and the best grass and the best situation and everything that you teach everybody about now in your channel, where did you get that education?
- Failure. We didn't have the internet. I mean, well, the internet may have existed 20 years ago, but it wasn't the internet you have now. Where you can click onto YouTube and find out anything you wanna know about anything, or Google or whatever. You just couldn't do that. So it was a lot of me talking with the salesman at a Site One or a Green Resource, or where you buy your material at and saying, "Well, what would happen if I do this? What would happen if I did that?" And getting recommendations there. And then not just running with what they said, because I'm a see it, believe it guy, you got to show me the money. You know what I mean? And so I would go out and I would do test plots in my backyard. I had a little starter home and I did that for years. And-
- Really? Just experiment in your own backyard, experiment in my own backyard. And I would plot things out and paint them out and make little spreadsheets and notes so I could compare this one to this one to this one and see what happens at different times of the year. Real, I mean, you might look at it like nerding out type stuff. I'm in no way a nerd in that fashion, but my eyes work. My eyes can tell me this grass is greener, thicker and lusher than this. And so I just kinda started building a lawn care program based off that. And now, we grow some really nice green grass. You know?
- You ever have any neighbors ask any funny questions when they saw you out there painting off squares on the lawn?
- Yeah, I think I can remember a couple neighbors asking me, "What in the world are you doing, man? You're crazy." And then now, where I'm at now, before I planted the bluegrass back there in the back, that's just one big experiment back there, I used to have fescue back there and they used to do the same thing back there. And the neighbors would walk by and I could just see 'em. They were just looking at me like, "What is this nut doing?"
- "Plotting out his own yard."
- It's weird back there, like a big science experiment, but it was all for the sake of learning and teaching myself, because people are paying me to do stuff in their yard, I take that very seriously. I'm not gonna go do something in a yard that's gonna be counterproductive. And so if I don't figure it out beforehand, you might as well not do it. Does that make sense?
- Yeah. Well, now you've mentioned failure a couple of times, and how it's pushed you forward and you've learned from it. Can you think of a time where you had the failure was so big that it almost didn't propel you forward? That whether it's a big job or a big side or a project, or something that you did that it went way backwards and it almost knocked you over?
- I've got a good example, but nothing knocks me over, I can tell you that now, when I fail, I'm going to figure out how to do it the correct way.
- That's why you're still around, yeah.
- I don't lay down for nothing or nobody. I can remember, I had a yard, a little small yard, three, 4,000 square feet over in a different real prominent neighborhood in Greensboro. And I had the bright idea to take some water-soluble micro 46-0 urea, which if you're not aware, that's a pretty hot fertilizer. And I went out with a belly spreader and tried to apply it in June to turf type tall fescue. I knew I was wrong, but I was so curious, "Let's see what this does." And I overlapped way too bad. Applied it way too heavy and it pretty much smoked the entire yard. But yeah, it just fried it.
- Yikes.
- So you had to explain that to the homeowner. And then of course-
- That was one you didn't test in your own backyard.
- Exactly. I got a little impatient and done the wrong thing by testing something I didn't really understand fully on a customer's yard and that was a major failure. But I made it right to the customer. I basically redid his yard for free, a complete renovation, got him back on track, then he fired me, which was, I would've been shocked if he kept me around. So that was a big time failure that I learned a very valuable lesson from and to today, that has never happened again and it will not happen. Period.
- Learn from those mistakes.
- I'm a very good learner.
- I wanna switch gears for a second then, let's back up to this whole thing started with you needing to, right? You need to make sure that that marriage actually goes through. So that, how did your-
- Well, for the record, she was whipped since day one. Yeah, money or no money, she fell head over with me. That's what I tell people. "It wasn't about the money, she was after me." No, I'm giving you a hard time. I can say that 'cause she's not here.
- I was gonna say, she was going to-
- Yeah, she's not here, so I can say that.
- We can ask her to come out here when-
- That's okay, no, no. She'll have a different story though.
- Well, that's what I was going though for your future wife at the time and future Father-in-Law at the time, what did they think of you jumping in the truck and driving around the neighborhood? What was their thought on you starting something on your own?
- I would imagine her dad was like, "Do whatever you need to do to provide for my daughter. Number one, period. I don't care what you do. Do something." My wife, she's always had my back.
- I love that.
- Always had my back.
- I love that.
- Even here recently, some of these crazy ideas like starting the website and the GCI Turf Academy. And when I told her that, she was like, "What, you wanna do what?" I was like, "Yeah, let's do that, let's try it. See what happens." So she's always kinda had my back and always been a big supporter of my wild and crazy ideas. And that's really allowed me to kind of go at it full speed. And fortunately where we're at now, because our marriage is just that good and that tight and jails that well that we kind of feed off each other and she, now, she will pull me back in at times, because I do have some ideas and she's like, "Hmm, I don't think that's a good one."
- [Matt] Can you tell us one that she's pulled you off the ledge on?
- I wanted to start another business, 'cause I run four companies now. We got four different sections of business and I wanted to start another one that, it's like a mobile mower blade sharpening service. Where we send the truck out to homes and do the thing and that way the customer don't have to take, go to the shop. And she was like, "Don't you have enough going on right now?" That kind of thing. And so I was going like, "Yeah, we're probably busy enough right now." So I got that one on the back burner, but it's coming one day.
- One day.
- One day.
- Well, but I love that you've got that kind of relationship with your wife and that, I mean, because this is what we're talking about is how do you make a business go? Here you are a successful businessman in this industry, and some of it's outta necessity. You just had to figure it out. Some of it's the experimentation and learning, but I mean, it sounds like a key component to your success and this whole thing working is that you had somebody beside you that was supporting and that was-
- 100%
- That had your back. Yeah.
- I can say I probably would not be where I'm at today without my wife. I just wouldn't. The scariest time in my entire business career happened on this couch in here. She sat me down and she said, "I'm gonna quit my job." And this was about 14, 15, 14 years ago, roughly. She was a nurse making 65 grand a year. And I was kinda sort of getting going really good. And I think at that time we probably generated maybe 70 grand a year from my lawn care that was with paying my employee so I wasn't making 70. I was more like making 30 or 32 or something like that. And so she was still the breadwinner. And that was when my son, she was pregnant when my son, Jacks, my special needs child. And we kinda already knew all the hospital and travel and all that kind of thing was going to go on. And she felt like she wanted to be by his side a hundred percent of the time. And I wanted that, but I'm a math guy too. I was like, "These numbers don't work out.
- "Those numbers don't match."
- "All that great." You know what I mean? And so she sat me down there and she said, "Just pray about it. Pray about it, and let's see what doors God opens for us." And we did. I prayed over that for a couple of weeks and I come back to Tammy and I said, "You know what? I'm comfortable, we're gonna trust the Lord with this and we're gonna do this, January 1st, you quit work." And when we did that and she was able to help me a little bit, with the invoicing and calling customers and things like that. And some of the office work type stuff, we exploded, exploded. So I was like, "Thank you, Jesus. I'm sorry if I ever doubted." And ever since she's been at home, it's freed me up even more to go after some of the things I wanted to go after business-wise.
- Yeah, so, Pete, you mentioned a couple times some big moments, right? The big moment when you just, you had to pay the bills, a big moment when, the golf outing, right? Where you got into the new neighborhood, the big moment when your wife said, "Hey, this is direction she wants life to go for you and your family." But talk to us about how you knew, it sounds like an, there's been a number of more big moments when it comes to starting these four different businesses you've got going. Talk us through some of those big moments. When did you know that it was time to start this portion of the business? Or when did you know that it was time to start this other side?
- So everything's a blanket under GCI Turf. So it's one company, but we have four different, I call it divisions. And you basically have to run on this separate businesses, because that's really what they are. One's the maintenance or, I have crews that go out and do the mowing and trimming and all that kind of thing with a yard. And that's their own thing, the maintenance side. And then I got the fertilizer weed control division that, that's a totally different, spraying turf with liquid fertilizer or grains, or whatever has nothing to do with mowing. So it's totally different. Totally separate. And I got different employees and you have to look for different characteristics in employees because that's more of a detailed type of thing is, not knocking mowing, but it just, it is what it is. And so that's a different section of the business we got. And of course when we started the website, the online business, that's a totally completely different animal. I mean, night and day different, 'cause everything's internet-based, computer-based, has nothing to do with going out and cutting grass. So Tammy and I basically had to learn that on our own and all that kind of stuff that goes on with the website. And then that led to a second business online-oriented to where people from all over the country ship us their mower blades, their lawnmower blades. And right down here at my office, we sharpen 'em, put the perfect third degree angle on 'em, they're razor sharp when they go, they're so sharp that we have to dip 'em in hot wax so that when the customer opens the box, the packaging, they'll cut their finger off and a sharp blade equals healthy turf. And so that's the other business I've kinda started. And to my knowledge, I don't know that anybody anywhere does anything like that.
- Let's talk more about how you progressed and into YouTube. So it sounds like your first couple of videos, you're just, again, kind of back to necessity, right? You had a client, you had a customer you're working with that needed something and then you realized the comment section, then people started asking questions. When did, was there a certain experience that you realized that this could be a big thing for not only growing your business, but also connecting with the community?
- Oh lord, yes. That was another wow moment. I think I was up around three, four, 5,000 subscribers or something. I was talking about grass seed and how I custom blend my grass seed here at my local blender, my local company to suit the environment I'm trying to grow grass in. And one of the perks of that is when you buy a bunch of grass seed, you can get your company logo on the bag of grass seed. Just a cool perk. And I was like, "Well, that would be pretty sweet to roll up to a customer's house. And here's little old Pete that had his Toyota truck back in the day and now he's got his logo on the back of grass seed." So that happened and I had a bag of grass seed in the background of a video, didn't even know it was sitting there and was talking about grass seed. And this dude from Virginia, his name's Michael, to this day, is probably one of my best friends I have.
- Really?
- To this day. He emailed me and said, "How can I get some of that grass seed?" And I said, "Hmm, you can't get that grass seed. That's my grass seed." So he tracked it down, how in the world he did this, but he tracked it down to the blender and got the bag of seed from the blender and then emailed me a picture of my grass seed in his garage. And I'm like-
- That's bold, that's a bold move.
- "What are you doing, dude? This is my grass seed. How'd you get that?" "Oh man, I just did this, this, this." And so I was thinking, I was like, "If this dude will go through that much trouble to get my grass seed that I custom blend, what if I just put it out there to make it easy for people to get." And when that happened, it was nuts. I kid you not, absolutely chaos, those first two or three years, everybody trying to buy GCI grass seed. And we had to kind of, that's when the website started, we had to build a website to be able to offer the grass seed online and it just, it spiraled out of control. It was the most rapid learning experience I've ever had in my life, me and my wife Tammy. And we had to learn the internet side of things very quickly and very fast. And we screwed up in some different things, various things. But all in all, we held it together and we've really dialed that system of shipping and receiving and ordering and POs and all that kind of stuff. We've really dialed that in. Not necessarily to a science, but to where it fits us. And it works for us really well. And now we move multiple, multiple tractor trailer loads of grass seed every year.
- All off of one guy.
- All of one dude-
- Who backdoored it.
- Who backdoored it, went behind my back. I'm like, "How'd you get my grass seed, dude?" I'm still blown away by how he did that. Some dude in Virginia. And like I said, Michael is, he is absolutely, I confide in him, when I need to ask a question, "Who do you think the general public, or who do you think the internet world would think about this?" He's my guy I go to. We're just tight like that now.
- I love it.
- We created a friendship that I got his back and he's got mine. Period.
- Well, I love all the different connections that you being online created then, right? Not only educating people, but launching a whole nother side of your business. Making friendships that last with people who reached out originally.
- The money's good. The, I guess you could call it fame, or whatever, I'm just Pete to me. But some people view that different, but all that stuff's cool. But man, I'm making buddies for life.
- I love that.
- They got my back and I got their back. And I like that interaction with people.
- Well, and that's, I think that's one of the things that drew ABI Attachments to you and seeing somebody that actually cared about people, cared about integrity, cared about the quality of what you were doing. What was the-
- Well, I think what happened, there was Kevin finally met someone that could outwork him. And I think Kevin was impressed, is why. No.
- [Matt] I'm looking forward to him seeing that. That sounds like a challenge.
- I could outdo Kevin.
- Honestly, we should consider that, you get yourself a gig where you've got two ball fields that need to be taken care. We'll put you on one and put Kevin on the other.
- Me versus Kevin. I'm good, I'll do that all day long.
- Oh man.
- I'm a very competitive dude too, if you can't tell. So.
- Oh, yeah. All right, Kevin, he's calling you out, man. This has gotta happen.
- I'm coming to get you, brother, I'm coming to get you.
- So do you have, of all the videos you've put out there over the years, is there one or two that stand out as your favorite? Was there a certain job or a certain video, or certain interaction that just highlights for you?
- Yeah, I'd say there's two categories on that one. One is a Pete's favorite and that's when I turned my bluegrass back here into like a ball field. Went back there and painted the diamond, painted the infield clay and really did it up. And we had like a big 4th of July thing here. We had the ice cream truck. We rented out the ice cream truck of the Kona Snow Ice or whatever it is. Had a big family here, big family outing. And a bunch of the neighborhood kids come and we played a big woof ball game back there.
- That's fun. And the prep work on that was insane just to get the field out there. Because it was all paint work, had this big logo I painted in the grass and it was so amazing. But I'd say a video that even trumps even more than that, that stands out to me even more than that, is I've got four or five different videos where things have just happened naturally. And I feel like God's put me in the right place, right time. I rolled up to this lady's yard to do a aerating seeding job and I seen her out there on her hands and knees working in her yard trying to prep it for me to make sure it was absolutely perfect for me. And come to find out later, she was a single mom. And so none of this was, it just happened, and I caught it all on video, because I planned the video, this aerating seeding job. And the end of the video I said, "I'm not even gonna send you a bill. I mean, when I rolled up and saw you working that hard, you literally broke my heart. Here I am rolling up with all this specialized equipment and you're out here manually doing stuff in the yard just to get it ready." And I was like, "Man, you really got to me so I'm not charging." And come to find out, she ain't hardly had the money to pay for it anyway. She just wanted a yard, a nice yard so bad. So she got a free yard. And that blessed me more than it even blessed her. Another case was, I do a lot of gravel driveway renovations and this lady had a driveway, it was almost a mile long. It was a massive driveway. And it was the worst driveway I've ever seen in my life. I'm talking about ruts that were a foot and a half deep through the middle of the driveway, special needs child. And they wanted to fix the ruts only, so that the nurses that come four days a week to give care to her son could get in and outta the driveway. And I was like, "That ain't gonna happen, I can't do this, 'cause I got a special needs child myself. So I get that. I understand that part of it." And a guy named Cole, who's been an avid watcher of the channel, made a comment on the video and said, "Why don't we just raise enough money and buy a couple of loads of rock and rock, and you can fix the driveway that way." And I was like, "Okay, let's do it." And ended up raising almost $10,000, I think, no, I'm sorry. I think it was about $12,000 almost overnight.
- Good grief.
- We bought, I had a just absurd opportunity to take her 13 dump truck loads of rock. So she got a brand new driveway, not just the ruts in that one spot.
- Not just fixing it up.
- From the road all the way to her house. Grand spanking new driveway. So the YouTube thing's been great, but those are the times that I can see a bigger picture of maybe this is why I'm on YouTube.
- Doing good work. Being a good neighbor. Taking care of people.
- There's a lot of crap on the internet. There's a lot of crap in this world. But when somebody sees a dude helping somebody and it blesses them. And not to mention, they got a brand new driveway. That was absolutely, and it wasn't a short one. It was 13 dump truck loads. And I was just on that week, you couldn't touch me because I was on cloud nine, man, you know what I mean? To be able to do something like that. So YouTube, it's done good for business, but it's helped me spiritually and personally in ways that people will never understand.
- I love that. Well, and I love that it's bigger than just spreading business. It's bigger than just making money, for you, it's relationships, people. It's education, but it's doing right by people. And hopefully encouraging others then to do right by people too.
- To do the exact same thing.
- Yeah, yeah, wanna know, that's one reason and I'm giving Kevin Keigley a hard time, ABI Attachments. But that's one reason why we love being connected with you, 'cause it's not just about the job, it's about the people behind the job. It's about what the job means to somebody, right? So the-
- You never know when you're gonna affect someone's life in a way that you would not understand.
- I mean, I'd love to hear how life changing, like exploring YouTube and leveraging YouTube as a medium to get message out into the world and to meet people and to take care of people. Have there been any drawbacks for you? Any downsides or any rough spots of using that medium?
- Oh Lord, yeah. You better, if you plan to go down this road, you better be ready to work your butt off. I don't have a filmer. I don't have someone that follows me around with a camera. So while I'm on the job, I'm setting up cameras, getting different camera angles, making sure my batteries are right, making sure everything's formatted right. When I get home, I don't have a dude, or a girl that comes in here and edits for me. I sit there and now, well, let me back up. I do now, I have a lady, a young girl that does edit for me now. But when I started, I did not. And I'd sit there at all hours of the night and when I say all hours, I'm talking about two, three in the morning editing videos, trying to pump 'em out, get as much out there as I can in a short amount of time. And then, you gotta get up at six and go to work. So I cannot tell you how many nights I've had three hours sleep all in the name of get a video on YouTube. So obviously you can do that to the extreme that you want to do it at. I have backed off considerably lately. Just because I kind of feel like I realized that I've kind of missed out on some things around here that I probably should have been involved in. I don't wanna sound like I'm a bad dad, but, 'cause I'm there for my kids whenever they need me. But I feel like the videoing and YouTube kind of overshadowed some things that I probably should have been there, to be honest with you.
- Well, I appreciate that vulnerability, Pete, because I mean that's what we're asking, 'cause it sounds like if you're gonna jump into this game and jump into the algorithm, it takes a lot and there's legitimate cost to that.
- There's consequences behind that too. By missing things that you should probably be there. And I think therefore, I think therefore, a time period of about four to five years, I was working around 80 to 90 hours a week. That would be 40 hours at my job. My day job, I call it my day job, my lawn care business. And then another 30, 40, sometimes 50 hours a week editing videos. And the production part of the video. And it wore me out. If I'm down there, I was just drained and I could see it in my wife's eyes. "You need to slow down now." And she told me several times, "You need to slow down." I would always say, "All right, I'm gonna back off." But I don't know what it is inside of you that wants to keep pushing. But I just kept pushing and not because I wanted to not do what my wife asked me to do or not, I just, I could see a lighted at the end of the tunnel thinking that, "Hey, I'ma blow this thing up and get so crazy everybody in the world's gonna know who GCI is." And it just didn't work that way. And I just, I had to slow down. I just couldn't mentally, physically, spiritually, just could not keep doing it. And so I went out and found me a editor and she does a fantastic job. And then I still do the videoing myself, because that, honestly, that's not the hard part. The editing is the hard part. And then, so I've cut back to a video a week now. Sometimes you might get two outta me a week if I'm feeling froggy, but one a week is a gracious plenty.
- Well, and Pete, I mean as far as paying attention to the downsides of jumping into the YouTube game, I really appreciate that honesty. That hits it.
- [Pete] Yeah, I don't want people to think-
- That's good advice.
- People see that you make the website, makes money, does well, you get monetization from YouTube, so they're paying you too for the ads. And people look at that and see, "Oh man, Pete's got a big nice truck and Pete's got a big nice house." But you have to bust your tail to get there. It's a lot of work. And there are consequences to that.
- Everything has a cost, right?
- Everything has a cost. And my cost was, it just got a little bit outta hand and that was kinda ruling my life, my personal life was, they're in there watching TV, chilling, having a good time. And I'm over here at the table editing videos with headphones on. And it's just, that's not the kind of dad, that's not the kind of husband I wanna be.
- I respect that.
- That's not the dad I am and that's not the husband I will be. So that's why I nipped that in the bud.
- I respect that.
- And oh man, they, my wife and my kids, you can see it all over their face. They're much more happy now.
- They got you back.
- They got daddy back.
- Well, and I love that. I mean, this is an example of, like you said, you don't ever get knocked down. Failure doesn't knock you down. You just learn. So here's the exact same thing all over again. A really hard season. It hit you.
- [Pete] It was kind of a failure, but in a different-
- Turn it around. Yeah, oh, exactly.
- In a different way I failed my family. I don't want it to come off like it was this major, a major catastrophic moment or nothing. But it just kind of slowly hit me that, "You know what? Maybe life behind a camera ain't as important as my time I'm missing with my kids and my wife." So.
- [Matt] I love that.
- Limitations now. And now I've been playing golf with Jacks like once, or twice a week and we are eating it up.
- I love it, yeah. Your son was hitting golf balls when we pulled in the driveway, I love it.
- I mean, we are eating it, I'm eating it up.
- Good for you. Well, and I love that. I mean, back to you giving advice and sharing your wisdom. Right? So let's keep down that track. I mean, you've done so many things and you've jumped into so many different things. You've started so many different things. If there's somebody listening, or somebody watching your YouTube channel that they've got ugh and they do, maybe they started a lawn service or maybe they, I don't know, they started because somebody they knew did and they want to jump into something else. What's some advice that you'd give them?
- I say they work hard in integrity. When you sit, you tell somebody, especially a customer's gonna pay you money. You tell them you're gonna be there on a certain day and you're gonna do a certain thing in their property. You need to do it. Don't keep giving excuses and all that, 'cause I built my business based off that. If I'm gonna be somewhere and do something, I'm gonna do it. And of course the hard work is part of that. You have to work hard. If I could go back and tell myself 15 years ago, I would, if I could go back 15 years ago and tell that Pete something that I know now, it would be set some limitations. Meaning, I just turned 50 years old, I have worked incredibly hard my entire career physically, my body hurts. There are times I get up and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I gotta do this again. I can't even hardly move." But that comes from not using my mind when I was working when I was younger, picking up two bags of grass seed instead of one. Picking up the whole sliding pallets with your hand instead of using a machine to move it. Stuff like that when at the time you don't think about that, but that's some big advice, is protect and take care of your body, 'cause it's the only one you get.
- Well and I love that you're getting practical with it too, 'cause I mean, it shows you the kind of man you are that you're thinking integrity first. You're thinking grit, tenacity, work ethic first. But then there are also very tactical, practical things that people can do to be successful as they try to jump over. And I know for you, taking care of your body is one, but you've always been kind of an equipment guy too. And that's really how you got to know us and we got to know you is seeing that you value quality equipment. You value having the right tool for the right job. So how do you, over the years, how have you learned to kind of discern is this tool the right tool? Is this tool the tool that I need? Is this the tool quality enough to meet my purposes? How do you learn that?
- Well, I think it depends on the avenue you go down as far as what type of work I'm gonna do. You know what I mean? If I'm gonna bush hog big fields for my entire career, then obviously you want equipment that's a niche product for that. You probably want a tractor with a cab and a big nice bush hog. You wanna be comfortable while you're working. That's a big deal for me. I busted my tail for 20 years and now I'm gonna enjoy the comfort of the machine that makes it easier on me. Does that make sense?
- Yeah.
- And so I definitely look at that when I'm looking at equipment. And I definitely like that the equipment is designed to do what's going to make me money in my business. You know what I mean? If I'm a ball field guy, and which I do, that's kind of what I do now and I'm gonna grade ball fields for a living, why would I go out and buy less superior grader, you can name the brand or name the product which you want, but why wouldn't I go above and beyond and buy the absolute best thing out on the market that? That I think's on the market, just the best, so that I can provide that perfect finished job.
- Well, and I love that you're thinking of the end of the project, right? It's not about the the flashiest thing or can it do the most or can it, a color or a brand on it, will it make me profitable as a business owner?
- And honestly-
- What is my return on this dollar?
- And honestly, I'm not really worried about the cost. I believe there's a time to be frugal and a time not to be, and if the equipment is going to make a more efficient operator, or make the job more efficient, meaning you can get done the same amount of work in a quicker time without sacrificing quality, or even improve in quality, improve quality, that's when I do not mind at all spending money. Whether or not you gotta finance it or whether or not you've saved the money to go pay for it. If you're in that particular line of work, whatever it may be, and you're ongoing getting work, you're gonna be able to pay for the equipment. It just, it is what it is.
- [Matt] It's all about the return you're getting back out of it.
- But if I got a machine that's gonna make me 20% faster and the jobs are 30% better quality, why in the world wouldn't I buy it?
- So a lot of the folks who watch your videos are on your channel who may be listening to this. Maybe they know one particular type of landscaping. Maybe they're like you in the beginning that you started out mowing lawns and you started to know grass and test grass and they hadn't branched out yet. And you know, maybe some people wanna follow in your footsteps, right. That they know one thing and they're looking to find a way to break into that, that new audience or the new market, or find a way to, "I know how to talk grass or mowing, but how do I talk fertilizing?" Any advice for those folks on how can you learn a new language, or break into a new side of landscaping?
- Well, I think the first thing you have to do is educate yourself. If I don't know hardly anything about brick mason work, but let's just say outta the blue, I got a wild hair up my tail say, "Why don't we start a brick mason job?" I'ma go educate myself first and then learn what not. Of course you have Google and YouTube and all this social media now to where it's a lot easier now to learn and pick up a new skill. So I would educate myself first, and then you have to do this little magic thing called advertising. You can wanna be the brick mason inside your mind all day long, but if nobody knows that's what you do, nobody's gonna call you and pay you money to do that. Does that make sense?
- Yep, absolutely. Well, and I love that, again, back to education, back to you trying to make information available and empower yourself first.
- I kind of broke into the ball, the athletic ball field work through my spraying division. I had some local coaches that had seen some of the Bermuda grass yards that we manage and were like, "Can you do that to my baseball field?" I'm like, "Well, absolutely I can." And I did whatever it took to get started. I didn't have my big MultiPro boom sprayer. I can spray a baseball field in 16, 18 minutes now and not lift a finger. I didn't start off like that. You ever seen the spray trucks with the big tank and the big hose?
- Yep.
- The 400 foot hose. I would drag it across the field and walk the entire baseball field. That's the grit. You know what I mean? Do whatever it takes to get the job done. I built myself up, worked myself up to get some of that nicer equipment and that led into infield work. Then, "Pete, don't you have something that you can smooth out the infield with?" And it's like, "Yeah, I'll figure it out, I'll do that." And I can't remember exactly what I used in my very first infield job, but it wasn't an ABI Force, it was a shovel and a rake and some kind of box blade equipment I had behind a whole tractor. And I did whatever it took to get the job done. And then obviously I've graduated to a Force now, man, things are so much easier.
- A little bit easier than a rake and shovel, Pete?
- Oh my word, so much easier with ABI now. It's not even, you can't even compare the two.
- Right on, right on. Well, and I know that this is, you've also mentioned, and actually we're gonna save this for next time, right? So next time we sit down together, it's not just you doing the work anymore. So not only have you graduated your equipment, but you've also kind of graduated your team and your teams and how big of a company you've got. And so I'm sure a lot of people listening, it's not just them either. Maybe they've got one person or two people and they're trying to figure out how to level up and get bigger teams. So next time we sit down with you, we're gonna talk all about teams and finding the right people and how to raise 'em up and how to train 'em and make sure the right ones. But for now, we appreciate you kinda giving us insight not only to your home, but also to how things got started. Thanks a lot for the time, Pete.
- Yeah.
- We appreciate it.
- My pleasure.
- So make sure to stick around and make sure not only subscribe to Pete's channel, GCI turf, but subscribe to Ground etc as well. That way you can catch us next time when we're back with Pete and talking all things team and leadership inside of landscape contracting. So see you next time.
