BYD aka Michael Bowman

Eric Girouard  0:00  

This is Bucket Talk, a weekly podcast for people who work in the trades and construction that aren't just trying to survive, but have the ambition and desire to thrive. The opportunity in the trades and construction is absolutely ridiculous right now. So if you're hungry, it's time to eat. We discuss what it takes to rise from the bottom to the top with people who are well on their way and roll up their sleeves every single day.

Jeremy Perkins  0:28  

On this episode of Bucket Talk, we're here with BYD. BYD goes by Bermuda. Hey, Bermuda grass Central. Yeah, on Instagram. Well, Jeremy,

Micheal Bowman  0:39  

let me. Let me go ahead, tell you this before we start. B, y, d, stands for Big B, I, G, yard dog, D, A, W, G, I'm from Georgia.

Unknown Speaker  0:51  

There you go.

Micheal Bowman  0:52  

So it's big yard dog, that's what that stands for.

Jeremy Perkins  0:55  

Good stuff. Good stuff. Um, where'd that all come about? Where'd big yard dog come from?

Micheal Bowman  1:01  

Okay, it started way back when I first started doing social media. How long it was about 10 years ago and BYD actually stands for Bowman's yard decor. My name is Michael Bowman, okay, so it stands for Bowman's yard decor. And in the middle of a comment, one of my subscribers said I thought BYD still for big yard dog

Jeremy Perkins  1:27  

and star was born. I like it. I like it. I like it. So you do your landscaping, you're out there with your son, obviously, Georgia. So that's an all year round thing up here. It's a little bit different. It's, you know, snow in the winter, blah, blah, blah. So it's seasonal up here. But you're, you're all year round, correct?

Micheal Bowman  1:50  

Uh, no, actually, with Bermuda grass, it starts going dormant. I'll say it depends on what type of season we have. But around October to April is when my grass goes dorm. Alright? Anything during the off season is going to be turf painting, leaf mulching, leaf bagging, stuff like that. But our season is way shorter than most people's season. It my action doesn't start bringing up to mid May. Okay, so I got June, July, August, September and October, five months to make it happen. Wow, wow.

Jeremy Perkins  2:33  

So that's pretty in depth. Let's, let's dial it back a little bit. How young, young BYD, how'd you get your start? Were you originally from Georgia? Was this always what you wanted to do or, I mean, give me the whole thing. Okay,

Micheal Bowman  2:50  

here's the short story. I was at my grandmother's house at the age of 10. You know what muscadines are?

Jeremy Perkins  3:00  

No, I don't. I've heard it in country songs.

Micheal Bowman  3:02  

Okay? It's like a sour grate, okay, muscadine wine. That's

Jeremy Perkins  3:07  

where. There you go. It comes from. There

Micheal Bowman  3:08  

you go. So people used to have muscadine bushes. I was pulling some off this lady's um, Bush. Came outside, caught me, and she said, Hey, I tell your grandmother, you down here stealing my muscadines. I said, Lady, these are everywhere. I'm not just they all over the place. This is something natural at the time everybody. She said, I tell you what, if you cut my grass, I gave him $10 and I'll let you use my lawnmower. Now, $10 back then was like $200 now for a little kid to cut somebody's yard. Yep. So I cut the yard that was at the age of 10. So every time I went down, I did a little cutting, but I really didn't start cutting to about 18 when my parents got their first house and my dad bought a lawnmower, a weed eater and a blower. Sticker went popular. Keep my yard cut twice a week.

Jeremy Perkins  4:06  

And that's it. That's it. That's how it was born. Yeah. All right, so how'd you, how'd you get the the forethought to to scale the business, get into a full time go to Bermuda grass. I mean, that's, that's pretty niche.

Micheal Bowman  4:23  

Okay, down here, that's all we have. Is that's all you got. You you'll find some Zoysia yard. You'll find some older houses built with where they install fescue. But, okay, I say probably early, 2000s most of the houses built down here will have Bermuda grass sod, and that's that's it. So that's what you cut. Yep, it's nothing else. The issue is a lot of people who follow social media now follow guys who have cool season yards and get it mixed up with the. Meter warm season grass. Okay? The care is totally two different cares. We don't cut Bermuda grass. 2345, well, I'm not gonna say 23456, inches. That's you don't do that to Bermuda grass. So have you ever been to a golf course and you've seen Tiger Woods in the greens at six inches?

Jeremy Perkins  5:21  

No, no,

Micheal Bowman  5:24  

because that's Bermuda grass, or it may be some type of warm season grass, excuse me, that they have but the grass is supposed to be cut low, okay, why not talk about something that you passionate about and make money at the same time?

Jeremy Perkins  5:39  

Nice, dude, that's amazing. So I'm just trying to gather my thoughts here, because you have one of the most immaculate yards I've seen, and you got now you've gone from like, when you got bald spots, you you used place and versus not play sand. Oh, sorry, some people use play sand. You use, what'd you use? Mason area. That's it. That's it.

Micheal Bowman  6:16  

Thing was, that's what people would they didn't know the secrets. Yeah. So the secret is the Mason area play sand, because it doesn't move right once you put it down. People like, well, you're putting concrete down there, in a sense. That's it. That's the it gets hard like that, yeah. But the ideal is to get the runners to run across it, and they have a foundation to take down to and Bermuda grass love heat. It loves sun. So the sand attracts the heat, it attracts the sunlight, therefore your top run and stolen to run across it and fill in the gap. Now, having said that, that's not a quick fix. That's that's a fix that works. But the reason I do that, instead of seeding, because once you see you're going to put a different type of grass type in your lawn. Okay, all right, so if you want to keep it 100% authentic what you had or what you have, you do that technique right there. That way the whole yard will be covered and it won't look patchy with different types of grasses.

Jeremy Perkins  7:17  

Interesting. So, but like this. This knowledge is just acquired on the job. Like or did you go to school? Is this?

Micheal Bowman  7:25  

No, no. Schooling is 30 years. 30 how I'm 52 started when I was 1518, when I really started. But let's just say 15. Okay, yes, that's almost 40 years of just paying attention to things. And you

Jeremy Perkins  7:43  

work with somebody, you have a mentor.

Micheal Bowman  7:45  

How did No, how did you? You know when some people have a gift for and I truly believe on one of those people that I have a gift for lawn care in general. Yeah, so through trial and error. Then, of course, YouTube, once it started, you know, jumping off. But other than that, old school Mexican landscapers, I would talk to them. That's how I knew how to wear the hats and the long sleeves and all that stuff. Getting ideas from pictures was guard. I can't think of the name of the Garden magazine, Home and Garden something like that, which they don't really talk about lawn care, but they talk more about garden stuff, but reading books, stuff like that, experimenting. I wonder what would happen if I did this or I did that. Now, one thing about my channel, you know, I got a YouTube channel also. Same thing, Bermuda grass Central, everything you see on my channel, I've either experimented with it with it before, I actually bring it to the camera. Well, I've been doing it for a while, so that's why I'm so confident when I say things on that channel, because it's not me watching somebody else channel and telling you what to do. It's me actually doing it and then bringing it to the to the masses. Nice. Now the masses are small in my niche, Bermuda grass, you know, that's the lower half of the state, and it really doesn't, it's not all over. And I haven't said that. I know my reach is getting far when I have people in Chicago, Ohio, Alaska, asking me, How do I plant Bermuda grass? It's not going it won't work in those spaces. But that list, you know, people are watching and learning now it's just the opposite what they knew about cool season. They think that the warm season grass can work in their yards, yeah, which is a good thing, because people are watching it, you know. But action nationality is not gonna work. But my niche is real small, so that's why I focused Ian on Bermuda grass,

Jeremy Perkins  9:52  

yeah. Now, is there? Now, obviously there's a difference between cool and warm season, and you said that there's, there's difference in care. But is there any crossover there that, like people can actually you call out different steps or different procedures that you do that could carry over to to cool? Is it complete?

Micheal Bowman  10:12  

60 different 60% of the lawn care is the same? Yeah, the difference is most of the time it's going to be mowing heights and how to treat weeds. Cool season grasses can't handle herbicide like warm season grass. Okay? Bermuda in particular, because it's self repairing. It's the alpha you cannot destroy Bermuda grass. You think you can, but if you leave a dead past there and it rains for two, three months, it's going to come back to life.

Jeremy Perkins  10:44  

That's cool.

Micheal Bowman  10:45  

So technically, Bermuda grass is a weed because it's invasive. It would take over your flower beds and any other garden you have beside it. So you got to be careful on how you grow it and take care of it. So on my channel, I'm going to make sure I show you all the techniques, tips, tricks that I use, that can, that you can use, if you got a warm season grass to make it look like mine. You don't have to go to a golf course to have a golf course. You don't need a real more, R, E, E, L, more to have a real, more looking yard. Okay? I cut with a battery lawn mower. I have commercial equipment. I don't put the commercial on my arm, on my lawn. I use what Jeremy uses. I use the same tools and stuff that you use, so you can understand exactly how it works, versus me putting stuff out there that most people can't afford, or it's just, you get what I'm

Jeremy Perkins  11:46  

saying. Oh, absolutely, yeah. And actually, that's, that's, that's cool, that you do it, because, you know, it does create that false sense of reality people, people like, oh, I can do it. And, and if they can't, with the without commercial equipment, yeah? Well, then it doesn't no good, right? And then looking at you like exactly. So that is cool to be authentic and treat your own lawn the way a regular homeowner would treat it. And I think that's that's amazing. I even

Micheal Bowman  12:14  

stop and ask people, you know, what are you doing in your yard? Because sometimes I see homeowners doing stuff that's different, yeah, and sometimes I actually do get some good ideas. I have a consultation thing I do now. It's called BYD consultations. I've been to a few people yards, and they are actually doing stuff that I implement into my network, because they're just like me. They're enthusiasts. So they try different things, and if it works, I'm gonna tell Jeremy. I'm gonna tell whoever you know that has that type of lawn and you want your yard to look

Jeremy Perkins  12:48  

pretty good. Now, we've talked about this in past podcasts about quotes and consultations. Do you do that free? Or do you charge

Micheal Bowman  13:00  

consultations? I'm charging. All right, yeah,

Jeremy Perkins  13:03  

well, that's, that's been the general consensus. But like a lot of, a lot of younger guys, they'll get out there and they'll, they'll do free quotes or free consultations, thinking that they're going to get the business, and then they realize that they're, they're burning up all their time doing that stuff exactly.

Micheal Bowman  13:17  

Listen, my consultations are not part of my lawn care service. My BYD consultations is a DIY DIY consultation. Okay, all right, I'll show up at your property, and we'll walk the property, and I'll see things that you can't see because I have a green thumb. I'll tell you all the secrets that you you're not going to get on the internet because you can't watch every video that I put out. All right, so for 45 minutes to an hour, you got a solid one on one with BYD. So I teach you the mowing heights. A lot of people, they just don't understand the mowing heights. They don't understand Bermuda grass needs to be mowed often. Yeah, every other week. Now, when I'm doing it as a business, I'm coming every two weeks, but most of the time, those customers know not to fertilize with high nitrogen fertilizer.

Jeremy Perkins  14:10  

Okay? Why is that? I want to control

Micheal Bowman  14:12  

the growth. If you fertilize Bermuda grass with anything over 25% nitrogen and it's raining, raining, raining, you're gonna have surge growth. So when I come out every 1014, days, my more setup is not set up to cut four or five inch grass. Okay, yep, I have a mulching a OEM molten kit on my turbo Z Master, 2000 so I'm set up to strictly mulch. Yep, all right. So most of the people who yards I come to and we do the consultation, they don't understand that they need to mow. Often. You can mow it however you want to, but when you your Bermuda grass gets four inches and you're trying to take off. Two inches, it's gonna brown out. So they have a thing called the 1/3 rule. I don't know if you ever heard of

Jeremy Perkins  15:07  

that? No, no, but, but, but before you go, yeah, what's that? Further brown out isn't a bad thing, right? Because then it comes back in the color, it'll come back

Micheal Bowman  15:16  

green. But that you don't want the brown out and every cut. Okay, all right, so that 1/3 rule is one of the things I teach some of the people, but I don't do the 1/3 rule. Actually, I do the 1/4 rule. Okay, we're only taking off a fourth of the blade of our Bermuda grass throughout the whole season. If we keep it mowed consistently, that way it'll stay green all season long. Nice. So a lot of people, they don't understand that I teach them, that I teach them what fertilizers to use, and by the way, like say, it's not sponsored, but I do use yard master fertilizer. That's strictly what I use on my yard. Okay? And they have a program that you can download the app and it actually show you what to do. But My Teachings is to show them the tricks I'm doing to get my yard to look better than most. Because you're not gonna get everything from the app. Yeah, so that one on one consultation, it's gonna, that's what you're gonna get do. I do them for free. No, that's what. That's what the YouTube channel, and that's what the Instagram channel is for all the free content you want I upload three times a day on Instagram, so you look for information, that's what, that's where you'll go if you want it for free.

Jeremy Perkins  16:37  

So that's actually one thing that that that some people are guarded about. You seem like the person that that wants to put it out there, wants to, wants to empower this segment of of people. Any trades? Do you keep any trade secrets to yourself? Or it's all out there, and if people want to use it, they can use it or or

Micheal Bowman  17:00  

I put them on that in in bits and pieces, yeah? So if you watch the channel all the time, you'll get all the information, yeah? But if you one of those guys who like to, you know, channel hop, you're not gonna get all the information. Yeah, yeah. Now the one on one, I give them everything. It's like, you better have a pen, a piece of paper, iPad or something. But you don't

Jeremy Perkins  17:25  

feel like you don't feel threatened because, because, honestly, even if you gave them the whole recipe, there's still people that can't bake a cake. So, yeah,

Micheal Bowman  17:33  

no, not at all, because it's some of the stuff is skill. Some of it is God given talent. Yeah, alright, yeah. Now everybody can do the same thing, but some people can do it better. Just ask Michael Jordan.

Jeremy Perkins  17:47  

It's true. You gotta have ability too. So, so kind of been a buzzword. I mean, I've seen it with the snakes. I've seen it with, you know, we got some invasive species up here. That was kind of cool, that you said that Bermuda grass is an invasive species. How does somebody go about, like, having a garden, having is that just like, constantly keeping that at bay? Or, yeah,

Micheal Bowman  18:15  

it's secrets. And I listen, I've done, oh, I think maybe 10 videos on this. I use Pring control, premium prevents weeds in your garden bed. Okay, alright. I use the six month and also use ortho grassy weed killer, okay, alright. Also use vinegar 20% 30% or either the one you got in your cabinet, 5% without whatever the key to it Jeremy is maintenance. If you let it get away from you, that's when you start having these issues. Yeah? So most people don't want to put the work in. They just want the prize at the end. They want the cracker jack box. They don't want all that sweet stuff. They just want the prize. Yeah, so if you don't do the work, you won't get the results. Okay, so you asked me, am I will I be, you know, fearful, uh, somebody taking my secrets? No. I mean, it's, I can't take it in a grave with me, so give it away for free. Yeah,

Jeremy Perkins  19:30  

yeah, that's cool. I mean, there's, there's one, there's one side of power, empowering, you know, your local community people to be able to to do what they can do, empower in the young generation. You work with your son, Junior, and you know, how's he coming along?

Micheal Bowman  19:50  

He's an artist. Man. I'm listen when you see your when you see yourself through somebody else as. You actually looking at your young self becoming you, that's magic. Yeah? All right, so I've always told him, regardless of what you do, everybody needs I'm not gonna call him two hustles, but you need two forms, two ways to make money. Yeah? So if you talk to a doctor's kid, more than likely, he's gonna know all the terminology, and some doctor you know may know how to do some surgery. If you just staying with a landscaper, what you think gonna happen if you're a guy, you're gonna learn how to landscape? Definitely, when he first started, it was like, Oh, I can't do this. I can't do that. Now I never hear that. I can't talk. So this goes further past that. I don't know if you follow me on my stories, but I show you us in the gym, working out together and stuff like, okay, yeah. So I don't just do just the lawn care. I kind of give you bits and pieces of what's going on in my life, this and that, and all of it is to motivate people. Yep, that's what I'm here for it, just to motivate him. Jeremy, just it's nothing else I could say about it. Now,

Jeremy Perkins  21:04  

there's one thing that I say to my kids that you just said resonated with me, and I don't hear it a lot, is people saying that I can't. I tell my kids all the time you might not be able to do it now, but never say I can't. And I think that, like, it sounds stupid. It's like, well, I mean, I can't do it, but that's not, that's not. The point is, if you put your mind to it, you find the right resources. You can do it. It's just you're not anything you

Micheal Bowman  21:37  

want to accomplish. Take that. I can't vocabulary word. Take it out of your vocabulary. Stop seeing it, because you overcome it.

Jeremy Perkins  21:45  

Yeah, yeah. And, and they, we used to say that a lot when I was growing up, and now it seems like it's, it's kind of gone by the wayside. It's like, I can't and then they just don't, you know what I mean? Well, that's

Micheal Bowman  21:57  

because most of these kids now want to least path of resistance, which is the word I can't, so the parents don't want to deal with the issue that comes with you trying to learn on my teaching so I can't becomes I can't, and they never will. Most of the kids don't even know how to write in person.

Jeremy Perkins  22:20  

Yeah, I know you get what

Micheal Bowman  22:21  

I'm saying. They took it out to school. So it's up to you as a parent to do that. I had a conversation with a with Campbell's hardware equipment, one of the owners, and we were talking about kids, you know, just out doing, helping with the lawn care, this and that. And I told him, I said, What's the parents fault? And he said, Finally, somebody said, it's their fault. Yeah, kids, they're not going to do what seems to be hard. Sometimes you got to force them to do things to make them grow. Yeah, all right. So once they start accomplishing things and conquering things, then they start seeing, well, you know what? I remember, I couldn't even pick up a weed either. Now I'm running a business. I can run every piece of junior. Can run every piece of equipment I got. I don't have to check behind him. I don't have to make sure he did it right. It's done right. But that came with constantly telling them, you can now I can't,

Jeremy Perkins  23:22  

yeah, yeah. And now it's probably the most reliable guy you got,

Micheal Bowman  23:27  

and only reliable guy got that. And that's, that's another issue too, man, let me, I don't know if you want to go into it, but the let's go landscape. The landscape business is headed into turmoil.

Jeremy Perkins  23:41  

Yep.

Micheal Bowman  23:42  

If you've been watching my my um channel on Instagram, you see, lately, I've been talking about the robot more All right. Now I was talking about that four years ago, when everybody hated the robot more. I just get hate mail, people like, I'm unsubscribed because you're talking about robot law and wars and this and that. Now it's starting to become popular again. So I brought it, brought chewy. That's what I call it back out stuck in the grass. But that right there is going to replace a lot of people, and it's primarily because you can't find qualified landscapers or technicians. You know why? Because these kids growing up now. Don't know how to cut grass. So where's your workforce? It's gone. It's gone. So I don't, I don't have two, three guys working with me. And another reason why it's because everybody need, needs, not wants, needs to be making 2030, $40 an hour. That's

Jeremy Perkins  24:42  

just not. You can't, you can't pay them that. No,

Micheal Bowman  24:46  

my son is making 20, and he stays at home, and that still ain't enough.

Jeremy Perkins  24:50  

Yeah, yep. So it's,

Micheal Bowman  24:53  

that's, that's what I'm talking about, where it's headed into a bad situation. If you look at most of the. Guys. I'm not gonna see all of them, but most of the guys on YouTube, you don't even see crews anymore. It's normally just one guy showing you how to do things, or a mom and pop deal, yeah, but to hire five and six guys in the economy is flipped upside down. People gonna start looking for alternative ways to service their yard, and that's where that robot more would step in eventually.

Jeremy Perkins  25:24  

That's actually, that's actually an interesting point of view, because up here we do have crews. A lot of them are commercial, and they're, they're now becoming like, national businesses versus like, you know, you go down and, and in my area, it was Keegan's landscaping. But Keegan had a group of 10 guys, two trucks, you know, yeah, yeah, go out and split up and, and now those guys are getting gobbled up by the big group. I would call it the dealerships of of the the landscaping trade, because they can, they can provide health care. They can provide, you know? Oh, yeah, all that stuff, and, and so there's two ways. One, now you have these national chains, which probably through the roof, may not be in your area, and then you got the young guys that are coming in, or even the small mom and pop places and and they can't keep up with their demand either. So exactly. So that's that's kind of interesting, that you've gone the robot way. Yeah,

Micheal Bowman  26:29  

let me, let me tell you something else that's gonna happen. Okay, you'll, you'll start seeing this more. Do you go to gie? Well, not gie equipment Expo. Now equip

Jeremy Perkins  26:42  

Expo, not yet. We will be going to I that's on my bucket list. But go

Micheal Bowman  26:47  

ahead. Now, having said that, they show you all the latest things that's coming out, this and that, yep, for the last three seasons, I've been three years, I've been there, all I've been seeing is them pushing robots and batteries All right, so here's what's gonna happen me and Jeremy, we got a crew of sticks, but we can't really keep them, because even though you made the national chains and maybe swallowing them up, they still don't know how to cut grass. So it's a high toner turnover rate, yep, but they put the rest of the lawn care businesses out of business because they just got all the equipment, the name, the branding, all that stuff, a couple things gonna happen. You won't be able to sustain that paying six guys $60,000 a year. All right, that's 360,000 you say you got a million dollar business, you don't. You get what I'm saying, you don't. If you pay everybody out it's not a million dollar business, all right, even if it's a $2 million business. So what they're gonna do is, like Disney, they're gonna start looking for ways to make more profit. Let's invest in a 30,000 $40,000 robot. More we'll have one guy. He'll pull up the robot will map the yard, because it's gonna be through satellite or through visual, through the robot, yep, yep. The robot to back off the truck, long as the yard is decent, not them jacked up yards with, you know, just too much, too many options. Yeah. So the robot will cut the yard, the one owner or the one operator would do the hedge trimming in the weed eating and stuff like that, wow. Let's just say the lawn mowers gone, yeah. So after that the lawn mower finishes. It loads itself back onto the truck. The trailer automatically closed. The owner puts his battery equipment up his battery. We need your battery sticky, because now you don't have had to have guys to to maintenance the gas equipment, yep, because battery is going to be plug and play if it tells you just gonna go get another

Jeremy Perkins  29:01  

and that's that's actually interesting. I may have brought this up early on, but up near us, they were, it's kind of like a double edged sword. It's like these communities want their lawns and hedges and everything to be pristine, but on the flip side, they don't want to hear their neighbor's leaf blower going or whatever. So anyway, a lot of the communities around us have have banned leaf blowers, have banned two stroke motors, everything, and now it's been and we could argue which way doesn't matter. Environmental decibels doesn't but at the end of the day, who's going to do it, and how are they going to do it? Right? And the technology isn't there yet to be able to say, hey to a commercial crew, we're going to go full we're going to go full electric and and noise is going to be down. So these guys are they're screaming. They're like, hey, you know, I'm. All for innovation and mall for change, yeah, but we don't have the technology to be able to do it. Then you're telling me, I'm gonna take my, you know, 5060, $70,000 Walker Mower, yeah, and get rid of it, and then buy your $100,000 mower, yeah, and that's just one mower. Most crews got hundreds of mowers depending on a

Micheal Bowman  30:23  

grandstand down here, grandstand Toro, $34,000 brand new, with the Tesla battery. All right. $34,000 I can buy a whole lawn care setup equipment for two guys, yep. All right. Now, having said that, it's gonna hurt the industry both ways. Because if, if you're gonna go, by the way down here in Georgia, our government passed the bill saying that no municipality can ban, um, gas, power equipment, blowers, we use this and that.

Jeremy Perkins  30:58  

So you're protected for a little while. Protected

Micheal Bowman  31:01  

for a little while, if your landscape will move on down here. So we can get the price even more lower, you know, but we'll protect it for a while. But who's gonna how's the conversion gonna happen? You see, Honda just got out of the small lawnmower business with the gas.

Jeremy Perkins  31:20  

I actually didn't see that, but Honda

Micheal Bowman  31:24  

is probably the best. It's for a reason, because they see where things are going with that. Yeah, they'll still supply the parts for the next 10 years or so, but that's gonna be a situation where a lot of landscape companies will go out of business. The only ones that's going to be able to survive are, like you said, the corporations. Yeah, all right, so these big battery lawn mowers they got now, like grandstand no regular guy is buying. Those are being sold to municipalities and colleges and stuff like that. Yep, you know, it would be insane for you to take that type of money and invest it in a battery longboard, and you got five or six guys, but now you got to go get three more million dollars worth of equipment. You won't see the returns on so

Jeremy Perkins  32:16  

so are you? Are you predicting that the landscape industry is gonna

Micheal Bowman  32:25  

I don't know if the landscape industry will be around forever, but yeah, it's only gonna be the key holders that survived this apocalypse. Wow, it's just that simple, the one, one or two man crew that's out there can't even afford to get insurance and all that stuff. Yeah, you got to go to work and hope that you don't get hurt.

Jeremy Perkins  32:46  

And what's the insane part about this is, is even though you go out and buy this beautiful electric even robotic mower, yeah, it's still gonna break. Yeah, there's going to be cost in repairing this, and that's so it takes the power. Because I know most of our landscaping crews, they they changed out their own carburetors. They, yeah, they did prime involved. They did as much maintenance as they could in house before, right? So now you're telling me you're going to need some sort of diagnostic equipment, some sort of scanner, some sort of computer system, and that's not going to be easy. So that's a whole another that's a whole another ball of wax there. So,

Micheal Bowman  33:36  

so where are we there? It's if that technology is not here, who's gonna fix it? Who's gonna survive it? Because most of the lawn mower shops you go to they technically, they don't work on battery operated equipment, right? They just plug and play it. This part is broke. We'll just stick another one. This part is broke because that actually it doesn't it's not as as complicated now as gas components are, but we did have a workforce that was trained to fix small engines and stuff like that. Correct. Yeah, so now you don't have that. People who own the Tesla don't have to worry about catalytic converter theft. They do not so people who own battery operated equipment don't have to worry about spark plugs, gas, fuel mixes, just the host of oils and greases that go with that correct even, even me myself. I figured I don't even when I go into storage now, I don't even look at the additives and stuff like that. The only thing I'm running right now is, like said, I run steel primarily is the oil mix. Yep, that's it. And I do all the fixing my the small fix in my cell, carburetor, muffler, spark plugs to keep it for. Going to the shop, because now those guys used to make $22 now now they make it $62 an hour. You get what I'm saying. So right before your eyes, it's having it before your eyes. You may not kind of see it, but you mentioned it. Y'all trying to force everybody to go to batter. And I'm not against it, no, because I'm not gonna lie to you, my battery weed eater outperforms my gas powered weed eater, as long as I'm not taking it into the rough Yeah, for well maintained yard, all my battery equipment works just fine. Oh, trust

Jeremy Perkins  35:46  

me, when I was in the automotive field, it was the same way I everything was pneumatic. Yeah, I love, I love the freedom of having a battery operated impact on tools or what have you, no cords, no hose. A lot, a lot less noisy, more reliable. You can take it anywhere. Um, that being said, there's the price was up, right? So every Milwaukee tool that you had was through the roof. Then you're sitting there, you're like, I have this. It's pneumatic. I have I want to buy this, but, like, I can't justify replacing one that's not broken, right? So it's

Micheal Bowman  36:27  

exactly but, but when you do replace it, it's called an upgrade. Now it is, you know, so if the other one is still somewhat functional, you can always sell it. But the thing with battery power equipment is most I speak for self. I don't like buying used battery equipment. No, I need a new at the box. I need to smell plastic. You get what I'm saying all

Jeremy Perkins  36:52  

that. Yeah. No,

Micheal Bowman  36:53  

I hear you, yeah. So the battery revolution is upon us now, once what's what's happening now is the manufacturers are trying to figure out a way to get that tool in your hand and get you hooked, because once you get one or two of their batteries, you're going to do something else with it. Yeah? Now we'll sell equipment that, oh, hey, Jeremy, you don't have to have a battery for this piece of equipment. This is too long. Cheaper, yeah, okay. Four years down the line, the battery's closed down, it'd get 360 charges and all this and that. All right, 280 you start seeing the power fall off. But now they, instead of the five amp, they got the eight out better. So you go buy that. So now you, you're switching over to the battery platform. Yeah, all right now all these people who keep switching over all the mechanics that can fix small gas engines, What job do they have? Does the company they work for send them back to school to learn how to work on battery powered equipment? That

Jeremy Perkins  37:59  

was, that was the that was the conundrum with with me, is, is it was, there's only so much you can learn, on, on, on the job, especially if you're in a mom and pop shop, right? Yeah, the the technology is changing so fast that, like there's, there's only so much you can do. So the natural progression would be, do I go and work for Tesla? Do I go and work for Ford? Do I go and work for Chevy? Go to that schooling and then be in that system for a while and then kind of go back? I mean, my boss had was it was impossible to keep up with just the diagnostic equipment alone. Each each manufacturer had their own

Micheal Bowman  38:43  

software, yep, and then I forgot what they call it, but yeah, their own software. I mean, yeah, we

Jeremy Perkins  38:48  

had scan tools, and we had factory scan tools, and then we had to pay monthly subscriptions, and they were getting to be a lot and, and it's almost by design too, because they're, they don't, they don't care if you buy it or not. They're, they're almost killing the competition in that, in that. Again, the key stakeholders,

Micheal Bowman  39:11  

I said at the beginning, the power players, are the one who's controlling, all right,

Jeremy Perkins  39:15  

so, so. But how do you what do you tell a young kid, like somebody who wants to get into the land landscaping industry.

Micheal Bowman  39:24  

Here's what I tell a young person, yep, first of all, make sure you take care of your body, yeah, all right, because more than likely you're gonna be working without insurance. All right, so you got to make sure your body is running just as good as your equipment. Okay? Always study. Try to stay ahead of the game, not with the game. So when you I'll give you just $1 amount. You made $200,000 this year. 50,000 of that needs to be for research new equipment, because. You always have to do something different or have an advantage over the guys who don't have this what emotion is. I give you example, when Jeremy searches the YouTube, he's looking for the biggest and baddest and the newest and greatest. So that's what people want. So you got to stay ahead of the game. You got to learn what's gonna last forever? One of the issues is some of this battery stuff is the dealers are being left with the bag. Because if you just put out a $25,000 lawnmower, and two years later you just upgraded to new lawnmower, 2.0 people gonna start trying to get the 2.0 but what happens to all the old inventory stock that you have? Nobody wants it. Nobody wants it, or you got to give it away for almost free. That's why you'll look and see some of these manufacturers who manufacture battery next year. And two years later, it was $800 next year is 500 because the other company came up with a better board than everybody wants. No, I got eight battery mowers in my garage. Who has eight battery lawnmowers? Nobody me, but I have them because I constantly use them and I constantly show people all right. So I got more, as I call longevity, more these. Ian had these more three, four seasons, and they hadn't broke. Yep, so I put confidence in you to buy, but as long as the manufacturer don't make a big change, you'll be okay with that equipment. So yeah, landscaper, you go out there and you get the new steel this, uh, Echo, that. And by the way, I hate to I hate 2.5 amp batteries. Please stop shipping those manufacturers with those with your tools. Waste of time for a landscaper. Great for a homeowner. Don't send that out to a landscaper. But yeah, the newer batteries come out now. It's just like the printer game. The money is not in the printer, the money is in the ink cartridge. Power Tools. The money is not in the power tool, it's in the battery, right? That's right. So people are buying batteries and mass hysteria and throwing all this stuff away that you don't use, e trash, or whatever you want to call it, but in the end, you still got people who don't have jobs. And let me tell you this, as the landscaper, the owner, is going to have to figure out ways to make more money. That's why he's going to start switching over to robotics and better equipment, because he know he can't rely on 10 people anymore, yeah, because the new workforce is not there, so now he has to eliminate six jobs and get a robot two jobs. You get what I'm saying. So if you're not if your finances are not there, it's going to be hard. I know we see the crews, but if you start doing math, you'll see those crews getting smaller and smaller and smaller. I don't need at one point, I had three people. I could do it all by myself with the equipment I got. Now, because I try to buy the best equipment that's going to make it easier for me, because I cannot find reliable people that can deal with 100 degree weather.

Jeremy Perkins  43:19  

Now, now maybe I'm putting words in your mouth, but, but this is what I just took from that message. If you, if you want to get into the landscaping game, you can do it the old school way, but God knows how long you'll be able to survive it, yeah, or you could do the research, potentially, get some backing, get ahead of the game by potentially innovating and going the robotics way, or maybe there's some other way of doing it out there, yeah, and carving out, carving out a section of of the landscape and industry that could now propel you so it's really innovating your mindset. Don't, don't go into it the way that that my they did back there.

Micheal Bowman  44:01  

Yeah, you can't do that. Can't do it interesting. And you're gonna have to build your infrastructure where you stay at these guys ride around with the trucks with the signs on it. That's fine, but when you're 50 miles away from my phone headquarters, I'd say, and you get a call because somebody saw the number in the truck, and they stay out there. You start spreading out your work so wasted you've been, yeah, you're losing time. So where, what city are you from?

Jeremy Perkins  44:32  

Um, I'm actually from. I'm in Standish Maine, right now.

Micheal Bowman  44:36  

All right, so you want to be stanish Maine, famous, right? Only advertised in Standish man, you feel your infrastructure there. You don't go outside of it. Once you get so many customers, you don't even have to ride around with the signs on your truck, unless you just want to do it for the show. I got an LLC and all that good stuff. But once you do that, you can put QR code signs in. Yard. People come by scanning book. They all stay in the same area. Yeah. Now, yeah. We word them out, yep.

Jeremy Perkins  45:07  

We used to do it with the snow plowing game. I mean, you we wanted, we wanted, I wanted a cul de sac. I wanted to go and hit all the driveways on that call, yes, instead of driving across town, you know, gas, fatigue, all that stuff. I could go, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, be back at home eating dinner, and then come back out and do it again.

Micheal Bowman  45:28  

That. And that's, that's the dream plan, right there. Now, as you get older, in any of these physical jobs, you'll start learning that you can't keep doing it. Yeah, and you're gonna want to spend more time with your family now. Young landscapers and guys in the early 20s, maybe early 30s, go hard, but you got to build the infrastructure so you don't have to go as hard as you get older, because you're gonna have to transition. I'm in transition. That's why you see more social media BYD than me out there, actually more in yards. Yeah, I don't have to work as hard, but I got, I got 30 plus years of experience that I can give Jeremy right now. If he's go ahead and sign up for a consultation.

Jeremy Perkins  46:10  

Well, that's, and that's the thing, what? What's your end game? You're going to cut lawns all the way up until you're 80 years old. No, what's, what's by these retirement you know? I mean,

Micheal Bowman  46:19  

I would be more social media consultator. Um, if I did have one, I would have maybe two guys and four robots working for me.

Jeremy Perkins  46:31  

That's the dream. I'm

Micheal Bowman  46:32  

just, I'm just telling you this. It's going to happen. Anybody else this podcast think that you're going to keep mowing dark old school way with gas and all snack This earth is in serious trouble with all the gas usage. Okay, that's why all these alternative ways are coming out. Better operated cars, better operated biceps, better operate skateboards, better out rated power equipment, because you got to make the transition over to battery somehow. I'm not saying all your equipment, because I cut commercially strictly with gas. I don't I don't have no gas battery operated lawn mowers out there yet. Now for power tools, like a weed eater, a stick edger, you'll see a lot of guys on the internet switching over to those, because it's actually a better deal. It works, yeah, and it could take the heat, you know, some of these equipment, once you get over 100 degrees, that gas is hard start sometimes, you know, work at the depth, yeah,

Jeremy Perkins  47:29  

yeah, no, no, I hear you. And obviously, you know, I'm not necessarily satisfied with the way the batteries have gone, you know, early automotive and stuff like that. There's always the disposal and yeah, so there's always a counter argument to that. But to your point, we gotta continue to progress to make things better. So to

Micheal Bowman  47:53  

watch, everybody's stuck in the old ways. But do you remember the movie Back to the Future? Yeah, what was in that movie that that everybody has now that was laughable when they show it.

Jeremy Perkins  48:08  

I got

Micheal Bowman  48:10  

screen TV, flat screen TV. That was a joke when they showed it, yeah, yeah. Everybody has one, yeah. So the future is, if you don't go grow with the future, you'll get left behind by the future. Yeah, you know, I know everybody wants to argue about the gas thing. I'm arguing too, because I'm my battery lawn mowers, if the grass get too high, they won't cut it. Yeah, my gas when they run right through it, yeah, but I had to make a transition. Okay, so if it won't cut through it right now, what does that mean? I have to cut more often.

Jeremy Perkins  48:51  

So there's a Yeah. It's, I mean, for me, I own a horse farm and and one of the Okay, one of the issues that we're running up against right now is towing capacity of electric vehicles. And so we can't, we can't

Micheal Bowman  49:08  

make, yeah, and that, that what you got, 350 diesel tether house off the hen that 259 diesel won't do it.

Jeremy Perkins  49:20  

I know. I know. And so while you want to be able to move forward, my hands are tied. I mean, we're also super rural, so you know, there's no charging stations around here. You know what? I mean, oh,

Micheal Bowman  49:36  

that's, that's another limit. It's just like where I stay at. It's not in the country, per se, but they're just now starting to get fiber out here, fiber wires and stuff. Yeah, internet sucked out here. Yeah, it just sucked. But they building the infrastructure, though. Yeah.

Jeremy Perkins  49:52  

I mean, we're a lot of people don't realize it, but we're on a well and septic. There's no natural gas. There's no. Sewer. There's

Micheal Bowman  50:00  

no I'm on the septic too.

Jeremy Perkins  50:04  

I don't hate it. I actually kind of like it. Yeah, I ain't

Micheal Bowman  50:07  

got that extra Bill, you know, but, but the newer just like you buy a new a home in a new subdivision, the mailbox is gonna be cluster boxes. Yeah, you will stop seeing mailbox in front of people houses with new construction, yeah, yep, that's the transition. Okay. Why are we going door to door when we can go one spot and stick it all in one big mailbox? Yep,

Jeremy Perkins  50:35  

so where it's gonna be?

Micheal Bowman  50:37  

Yeah, I hate it too, man, but, I mean, but you got to be a futurist, man, you can't. You can't sit here and just wallow in it and say, Well, you know they're going to stop gas, then, yeah, you're gonna find something else so you're gonna adapt. Yeah, yeah. It's just that simple. And I think guys who've been in it for the longest, they're not going to just give up like that. I would hope not. Yeah,

Jeremy Perkins  51:04  

yeah, no, I know. I mean, it's going to be generational too. It's going to be it's going to compound, you know, it's Yeah, us to die out for somebody else to adopt a new, a new mentality and a new so, it's obviously change.

Micheal Bowman  51:20  

It's a change. It's changed. It's kind of, I know we got to go, but it's just like my theory, no, go ahead, ask your question. No, no.

Jeremy Perkins  51:32  

My question was, I always like to do this at the end of the podcast. But what does BYD do outside of work, what do you do to unwind? What? How do you

Micheal Bowman  51:46  

I'm glad your question. Jeremy, I have a barbecue channel called Grilling with BYD,

Jeremy Perkins  51:53  

no way. Yeah,

Micheal Bowman  51:54  

Instagram, that's on Instagram, I love the barbecue. I love so

Jeremy Perkins  51:58  

is it grilling or grilling? Smoking? Like, what, what's,