The Sprinkler Nerd Show

Welcome back to another episode of the Sprinkler Nerd Show. I'm your host Andy Humphrey. This is episode 144 coming to you on Friday, almost a live Friday. We're gonna get this one aired within the next two hours. So if you're listening to it on Friday, this episode is being recorded at 9.32 a.m. And I'm joined today by My good friend, Paul Bassett, who joined me last week in my hometown of Traverse City, Michigan for the Iceman Cometh Race. Paul is a survivor. We may talk about that a little bit today, but while he was visiting, we had this idea to record an episode calling it kind of like Irrigators Top 10, and these would be sort of 10 facts that we should all have readily available in our mind at any moment without having to open. a book. So we're going to kind of talk today about 10 things all irrigators and or landscapers who do irrigation should kind of just know. So Paul, welcome. Paul Bassett (01:12.718) Oh, Andy, it's always good to hear from you and be with you and come up with these fantastic new topics to do a podcast on. As we were preparing this, I've been in the irrigation business 35 years, so you would think these would all be at the top of mind. As you go through life, sometimes you forget or you don't always use these calculations every day. So it was a very good reminder for me to be able to have these at the top of my fingers and be able to... the pull them out so probably one thing we should do is text these outer get these the folks and you know have them put it on a screenshot and have it available. Andy (01:51.774) Yeah, because I mean, really sometimes when you're in the field, you got to make changes to a design, or you want to run a quick calculation for a customer to run an estimate or an ROI. And you can't always just Google something and find it and figure it out or pull out your design book. And so we kind of thought there are some things. We tried to think of 10, of course, to make this episode a 10 list, which was actually kind of hard. If you're listening to this and you've got other ideas, let us know because this was just a list that we put together kind of top of mind. And when we get started, you'll see that this list is, we're trying to make it sort of memorizable things versus concepts. But I think there are a couple that are concept based, but we really think that these are just sort of the, you know, if we were in school, these would be things you would memorize and there would be, and you would put on a test. You would be asked these questions and you commit them. to memory, sort of like, you know, how many states are there in the United States? That would be a fact that you'd commit to memory that everyone would know. Just common knowledge. And so maybe that's what we need to call this, sort of like common knowledge facts that irrigators should have top of mind. Paul Bassett (03:08.834) Or as you say with this particular topic, common knowledge concepts or constants. I even, constants, common knowledge constants in the irrigation industry. And all of these numbers and calculations that we're gonna discuss are all in tests that we've taken in the irrigation industry, whether it's a certified irrigation designer, contractor, and all of these are extracts from any of the textbooks that we've ever read. Andy (03:15.834) Constance, right. Constance. Paul Bassett (03:38.422) be a part of. Andy (03:40.894) Mm hmm. So I think what we should do is, well, first of all, let me congratulate you on finishing the Iceman Cometh race. I'm really impressed because you didn't even hesitate when race registration opened. You signed up and this was six months prior. And this is no joke of a race 30 miles point to point in the woods with 5000 other riders and you just signed up without any hesitation. You flew your bike out to Michigan and. Boom, you'd finished the race, so congrats, man. Paul Bassett (04:11.358) Yeah, and it was super fun and I can't wait to do this. Hopefully every year for the rest of my life. I got the bug. It was good to hang out with you and all your friends in Michigan. And I am so excited about next year. I definitely going to do a little bit more training and hopefully my neck won't be as jacked as it has been this last year. So can't wait, dude. Andy (04:33.09) Yep, anybody who's into biking that happens to be listening to this, check out iceman.com. And if you're interested, register and we will, you know, get a tent for us irrigators and throw a party in the woods in Michigan after the bike race. It'd be a heck of a lot of fun even if we just got two or three other people into biking. You want to come to Michigan and hang out next year with Paul and I in the woods for Paul Bassett (04:58.422) Can't wait, man. Andy (05:00.246) Okay, so I think that to kind of set the tone for this, I'm going to say the first one that I want to use to let people kind of understand what we're talking about. So here would be a for instance, you're on a project and you take a

The race is on to set the mood for today's episode, which is about competition. I'm going to talk about competition because I've had a few suggestions that maybe I should talk a little bit about some business strategies. Maybe at some point, we'll talk about finances, P& L, balance sheet, estimating. But in this episode, I want to talk a little bit about sales and we will talk more about sales in future episodes. But I think today what I want to do is talk about. competition, and how, how you speak about your competition. Do you speak about your competitors? When do you speak about your competitors? Should you speak about your competitors? Because, uh, you know, in the landscape industry, there's oftentimes not a lot of sales training and the way that a lot of us handle. Our competition isn't always very strategic. It's oftentimes unprofessional. Yet, Um, we tend to, when I say we, my observation is that a lot of you get tied up thinking too much about your competitors, which also affects the way you price and market your company, your products, your services, et cetera. So today I'm going to dig into how to speak about your competition, how to frame your competition, and how to position yourself and your competitors in this episode. If you are an irrigation professional, old or new, who designs, installs, or maintains high-end residential, commercial, or municipal properties, and you want to use technology to improve your business, to get a leg up on your competition, even if you're an old school irrigator from the days of hydraulic systems, this show is for you. Okay, here we go. So I think I'm going to use just my own personal experience, um, helping to build the baseline company, uh, specifically because, you know, way back in the day when, when I was first introduced to baseline, which was. 2004 or 2005, they, they didn't, they didn't have any salespeople. It was just the founders, a couple of engineering, manufacturing people, and a, you know, sort of receptionist, uh, accountant, a bookkeeper, if you will. That was it. There were like five people, you know, and then, and then we, we grew the company. But, uh, at one point there, nobody knew who Baseline was. Nobody knew really amazing emerging technology. Nobody knew who the company was. So the various sales situations, that I was a part of, there was only competition because nobody knew, who I was. And I'm going to try to make a couple of analogies as we go through this, but I want to start by saying there's a difference between being the existing leader in the space, the biggest. competitors versus being the incumbent small, let's call it startup company, whether that's a manufacturing, a distributor or retailer, a contractor, whenever you're starting out, you're kind of that smaller emerging player. So depending on who you are, when you're listening to this, you know, keep this in mind because there might be some strategies that you want to deploy. If you are the small and emerging, and there might be some cautionary words if you are the biggest players. So when I say the biggest players, let's just say Rain Bird, Toro Hunter. Transcribed Uh, for instance, in, in our industry, or if it, as it relates to contractors, you know, maintenance contractors, perhaps Brightview is a big player. And then, you know, Joe's, uh, Joe's landscape maintenance that's starting up is the, is the incumbent. So just keep that in mind as we go through this. But I want to start by saying that in the most general sense, I tend to, and I guess me, my, my thought is to, when you talk about your competition, try to talk about them without naming them or naming their particular product or their particular company. If you have to talk about your competitors, you don't have to talk about them by name. And there are a couple of reasons why this is beneficial. And instead of talking about them by name, I think it's better to look at kind of the entire landscape. Uh, and if you are a startup tech company bringing, let's say some new estimating software or design software to market, you might be, you might be addressing the entire United States or perhaps the entire world. And if that's the case, what you want to do is, is look at that entire. market and then put your competitors, put the existing competitors into buckets and there's some real benefit to this. So put your, put your competitors into buckets. And again, if you're, if you're servicing the entire country, you want to look at the entire landscape of the United States. If you're serving a local market, you want to create, uh, your, your buckets based on that local market. So, I'll point out that these buckets may not exist. You, get to create the buckets. And You want to create buckets that frame your product exactly where, or your service, your business, your company, you want to use buckets that frame your business exactly where you want to be positioned and by positioning, by, by creating these buckets exactly where

Link to Data Chart (ET vs. Air temp) https://sprinklernerd.com/evapotranspiration-vs-air-temperature ----------------------------------------------- BAM! We're on fire today, guys. This is the end of ET. End of it. End of ET. Do I have your attention? Think about it. This is the end. The end. This is the end. The end. End, my friends. All right. Hopefully I do have your attention. Because... I just want to make you think. You guys know me by now. I love thinking of things upside down, sideways, backwards. Just think of something in a way you've never thought of it before, and when I say this is the end of E. T., what does that mean to you? I'm just gonna sit here for a minute and let you think about that. When I say the end of E. T., what does that mean to you? Hmm. Does it mean we're never going to use ET again? Possibly. However, ET is a uh, known good formula. It's a very detailed calculation that probably took whoever came up with it, Edmund Monti, lots and lots of research to figure out. So, I don't, I personally don't think it's the end of EET in terms of we're never going to use it again. I guess what I wanted to, what I want you to think about is that is it the right tool to determine how much water we should apply to the landscape right now? For that purpose, I think this is the end of et not today 'cause this is still how we're watering. But if we fast forwarded 20 years, will we be using ET to determine how much water to apply to the landscape? Right now? At this moment I want you to go out to your landscape, to your project and I want you to water turn on the sprinklers. How long? Should you water the landscape right now? How long should you water it? Will you, will you look at yesterday's wind speed, yesterday's temperature, yesterday's solar radiation, yesterday's humidity? Will you look at yesterday's Cite environmental data to determine how long to water today. Right now, I don't think you will , so when I say it's the end of et, we are in the transition zone. We are in the transition zone of taking a mechanical. system, a turn on now for 15 minutes every Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 6 a. m. We're in the middle of that transition to a automated system that can apply the right amount of water. Right now, in real time. And the only way to do that is to put a sensor in the soil. So this is a long winded way of saying my prediction is that this is the end of ET as a real time automation tool. ET will become the Will become, and actually is right now, the only tool and the best tool to predict water usage, to run calculations, to forecast, to run, uh, forecasting models. It's the only tool for that, but it's not the right tool to automate the irrigation system right now, here, today. So I'm going to start talking more about soil moisture sensors, how they work. You know, the ups, the downs, the, the, the good, bad, and the ugly. But I kind of wanted to just frame this episode around the end of ET number one to get your attention. But number two, so that you can understand where is it, where is et the right tool for the job? And in my opinion, the right tool for the job is for forecasting, calculating estimating, but it's not designed for real-time watering. It's not designed to. Be the tool to water until the ground is at field capacity and stop watering. If I told you to go outside right now and only put down enough water so that the soil reaches field capacity and turn it and it turns off, would you really use yesterday's weather data to run a calculation for that? All right, I'm in the weeds a little bit, but that's the that's my topic for today. And I ran. An experiment that really got me excited. It has to do with ChatGPT, and I asked ChatGPT a really cool question that had some amazing results, and what's kind of fun about ChatGPT is that it doesn't have a It doesn't have a, you know, a horse in the race. It doesn't care who's right or who's wrong. It's very, uh, sort of factual. You know, so it doesn't have a lens. It's not seeing our industry through, you know, the eyes of one manufacturer or that manufacturer or who's right or who's wrong. You know, it's a very... I'm trying to think of the right word. Factual. So I asked ChatGPT, instead of using an actual... air temperature sensor like a thermometer to control a thermostat, would it be possible to calculate the air temperature instead of using a thermometer? Okay? And this is a fantastic analogy because it directly correlates to to et. 'cause if ET is the value that we use to water more or water less, that's like saying the temperature goes up or down. The only difference is the temperature is something that you can, you can measure, right? You can measure the temperature with a thermometer. , just like you can measure the moisture in the ground. With a sole moisture sensor. Yet, we are not doing it. So when I asked ChatGPT, instead of using an actual air temperature thermometer to control a thermostat, would it be possible to calculat

Andy shares is update after speed dating at the EQUIP Show this week (formerly known as, GIE). K-IT Wire Konnector: https://youtu.be/PQXwNig-Gwo

In this episode, Andy shares how he used Chat GPT to draft a Jury Excuse Letter which formally excused him from Jury Duty. Letter Template: https://tinyurl.com/2bdf7pyh

What's up my friends. Welcome back to the pod. This is your host, Andy Humphrey. I'm actually at the moment driving back from Grand Rapids, Michigan. I attended, uh, yesterday the conference called American... No. Association of Water Technology. Association of Water Technology. AWT. Annual National Conference was in Grand Rapids and I thought, you know what? I have an affinity for technology. I'm in the water business. Let me go check out this AWT conference. So, I drove down to Grand Rapids yesterday just to attend the trade show. It was 150 to go, you know, see who, see what the water technology conference is all about. I also wanted to catch up with my friend, Justin and Breck from OpConnect. Special shout out to you guys on the podcast today. Good to see ya. Lots of fun. Thank you for a good time last night. And anyway, back to the conference. Wasn't quite sure what to expect. You know, like I said, I just kind of figured that because I'm in the water technology business, I should go to the water technology conference. Come to find out that it was mostly... Hmm, what's the right way to describe it? Mostly, kind of industrial cooling towers, boilers, water treatment, things of that nature. And, I guess, uh, that's not what I would first think of as it relates to technology. However, there is a lot of technology in how we treat water and how we manage and control cooling towers. commercial buildings. And what was also interesting is that it was a bit similar to the irrigation and landscape industry. I might say a slightly more professional, and I, I say that from just judging the book by its cover, meaning it appeared that attendees were a little bit better Dressed than a landscape show. So it doesn't mean that it's higher quality. I just noticed that it seemed like it was a bit more of a professional event. I understood that there's about 5, 000 people that attended. And I think for me, and this kind of relates to something that I wanted to share with you today, it, it felt, it was good to see the water industry through a completely different lens. And to get on the field with a new set of players, not just, you know, guys like guys and gals like you and me that understand irrigation, but to see what is happening in other industries and how technology and I guess digital technology may be affecting other industries. And from the most part, it mostly felt like a conference from the early 2000s. In other words, I didn't see a lot of sort of IoT mobile software tech. There was some, but not a lot. Most of what I saw was industrial type controls. Lots of pipes, lots of valves, lots of dosing pumps, things of that nature. Less software. And what is fascinating, I think, about that is there, there could still be a bit of a missing gap in terms of these guys focus, uh, down in the weeds, although maybe it's not really down in the weeds, they focus on the details of water Clarity, I guess, or, or water, water treatment, uh, especially in the cooling towers, with less focus on how much water is going in and how much water is coming out. It's mostly they focus on what happens in between. Less focus on water going in and water going out, more focus on controlling the water, treating the water in between. And, uh, yeah, so I guess that was kind of my 10, 000 foot view, uh, observation. And it's not that different than... then the irrigation industry. Oftentimes, this industry, our industry, the landscape industry, focuses on, let's say, the runtime of the zone and the precipitation rate of the zone and the types of sprinklers and the types of drip and the spacing of the drip and the infiltration rate of the soil and all these things. The details in between with a little less focus on, uh, the 10, 000 foot view. How many gallons of water is this landscape using per cycle per day, per month, per year? And is that the right amount of water? You know, those 10, 000 foot view, uh, lenses that we, we spend less time focusing on the big picture and we spend more time focusing on the details. And I wonder. What would happen if we did it the other way around? Sometimes to, to see what you can't see you have to change the place that you're standing. You have to stand somewhere else and look back or take another perspective and that might be, as I, as I talk here, that might be the lead into What I, uh, wanted to share, which was kind of about, you know, our own biases or, or, or our own cognitive biases and our own blind spots. And this could be one of them, that we focus on the details, we focus on not mixing sprays and rotors and the fundamentals and the infiltration rate and the precipitation rate. And all of those details because we're not focusing on the big picture and maybe that is a potential blind spot. So my question would be, is it a blind spot? Where are your blind spots? How do you know if you have a blind spot? And I heard this quote earlier in the week. And you guys know that I like to write down the quotes th

Welcome back to the sprinkler nerd show, I'm your host, Andy Humphrey, this is episode #138, and my goal for this episode to share a reminder with you. By now you know that I'm a technology evangelist - and by that - what I mean is that I believe technology will improve the human experience, and that technology is merely a tool - A tool for the human - but not to replace the human. There often appears to be a polarization as it relates to technology, and especially, new technology. There are those who embrace it, use it, and experience the benefits from it - whatever those benefits happen to be. And there are those who avoid it, oppose it, are afraid of it, or tend to right it off as not necessary. There is no right or wrong to either of these view points, everyone is entitled to their own thought, beliefs, and experiences. I just find this interesting. Likely there is some sort of psychology behind this, but I;ll save that for another episode to allow myself to research that hypothesis further. But today, I wanted to share a quote with you, that resonated with me this week, and depending on how you view technology might hit home, or you might argue against it, or maybe if you are a technology avoidant (which you are likely not if you choose to listen to this show), perhaps this quote will offer some positive encouragement for the future of the human & technology convergence. I will play the actual quote for you, but first I'd like to summarize it for you in my own words. It goes like this: "People say that Technology will displace people, when in fact, it is people who use technology that will replace people who do not use technology" That is essentially the gist of the quote and the reason I really like this is becasue this is exactly what is happening in our industry. I often say that A smart controller does not save water, someone who knows how to use a smart controller can save water" There is a difference. The tech is just the tool. The human who uses the tool is the one who has the upper hand. Make sense? So going back to the quote - technology alone will not displace people, but people who use the technology will replace people who do not use the technology.

Welcome back to another episode of the Sprinkler Nerd Show. I'm your host, Andy Humphrey, coming to you from the 45th parallel, the 45th parallel. That might make you wonder what parallel you are on. What is your parallel? It's not typically something that we think about unless we're talking about the seasons or the amount of sunlight. We kind of just take for granted where we live, but not necessarily in reference to a parallel. I think we all know what the equator is. Right? Zero. So 45 would be halfway to the North Pole. I'm on, I should say 45th parallel north. I didn't clear, I need to clarify that. 45th parallel north, which runs directly across West Grand Traverse Bay in Traverse City, Michigan. And today I'm taking my sailboat, which is a 35 foot sloop. It's 1961 Allberg 35 hull number two that was gifted to me by some friends in the. Awesome story that I almost want to tell you right now because I'm on her, but let's save that maybe for another time because it's not super relevant. But what is relevant is I'm on right now, I think the second largest body of freshwater. I should fact check that because this is Lake Michigan. And I believe Lake Superior is the largest of the Great Lakes in terms of total volume and then Lake Michigan. So this must be the second largest body of water. And there's all kinds. Here's a fun facts about the Great Lakes, most of which we should probably know because of the industry that we're in and actually we should just likely know as American citizens because this water is in the United States, uh, although it touches Canada, no, that's not true. Lake Michigan does not touch Canada. It touches the upper peninsula of Michigan. Lake Superior touches Canada and then the other Eastern Great Lakes touch Canada. Anyway, I'm on Lake Michigan. I'm returning my boat to dry dock, which is about a four and a half hour power and this week got a little ahead of, got a little ahead of me and I didn't record an episode and I'm hoping that when I get to port here in another hour, I can sit down and see if any of this recording actually came out. I'm, I've got this newer microphone, it's handheld cause the last time I recorded an episode with the wireless lavaliers, it didn't come out so well. I'm looking here at my iPhone and at the, you know, sort of. The, I don't have the words for it, but the, the sound waves, yeah, the sound waves. And I can clearly see my voice and I don't know how much of it's being filtered out with the noise. You can maybe hear the sound of my atomic four engine purring away original engine, which is freaking crazy that an engine from 1961 still works from what I understand. Atomic fours are, you can't kill them as long as you maintain them, you can't kill them. And they're heavily used in tractors. Some of you guys listening are familiar with engines and mechanics. I'm not and owning this boat, I've become more and more familiar, particularly this year on how carburetors work because I don't ever, most of us don't have to mess with carburetors on our vehicles unless you have an antique vehicle and such. So I had a couple issues this year with float sticking and fuel filling the basin, the bottom of the carburetor and it's spilling out. And then there's a vacuum tube that on this model sucks it out, returns it to the top of the engine. So, yeah, became a little bit of a, I guess a novice expert, even though those words are opposites. I'm a beginner at engine repair. So anyway, there's a lot to think about when I'm out here for a couple hours on Lake Michigan because the water is fresh and there are places, many places in the United States and the world where there's no water, yet I look out here and it's hundreds of feet deep fresh water. And here in Traverse City, we have two bays, West Bay. East Bay. And there's a 20 mile long peninsula. That's a couple of miles wide and on East Bay, not far from my house, it gets almost 600 feet deep, which is pretty incredible of fresh water. And, uh, you know, it's just fascinating that living around here, people take water for granted because it's right here and there's so much of it. Yet the population is in very dense around here. So I wonder what, I wonder what the world might look like in 50 years. And in 500. 100 years, will we continue to build where there's no water, or will these areas become more populated and what kind of conversations will we be having as a society as it as it relates to that? Will we allow development to take place, such as here in northern Michigan, where there's a lot of water? What, what kind of conversations will we have, and will this land become extremely valuable because of its water resource, and will the arid deserts be devalued over time? Will water play into the future value of property? Not because of the mineral, the water rights on the property, but because of access to it and people wanting to build, uh, build here and grow these communities. So, anyway, as I sit here on Lake Mi

500 Million Gallons at Hickam AFB In this episode, Andy has a discussion with Paul Bassett, in the car, driving to the Hickam AFB in Honolulu Hawaii. Learn more about ENVOCORE === Andy: Welcome back to a very special edition of the Sprinkler Nerd Show. I'm your host, Andy Humphrey, joined by the one and only the magnificent Paul Bassett live, well not live, as close to live as we can get from the island of Oahu, Honolulu, on the way to, where are we going today, Paul? Paul: We're going to the Hickam Air Force Base, where we're saving a bunch of water by retrofitting out some old, antiquated irrigation systems. Andy: And I think we should, you should give a little background on the Hickam project and why. Why you're here and then we can see if we have enough time to discuss why why I'm here with you But give us some background on the Hickam Paul: project Well, we were lucky to be fortunate to be selected to help the Air Force Base and our client Amoresco save energy and water They're using based on our analysis initially in this particular project over half a billion gallons of water If you are an irrigation professional, old or new, who designs, installs, or maintains high end residential, commercial, or municipal properties, and you want to use technology to improve your business, to get a leg up on your competition, even if you're an old school irrigator from the days of hydraulic Andy: systems, this show is for you. Paul: Um, specifically on the irrigation system, we analyzed them consuming about 300, 350 million gallons annually to virtually apply water to the grass around the common areas and the housing Andy: units. Is that just outdoor water use or is that indoor and Paul: outdoor? Well, the half a billion would have been total. So 350 million approximately annually on the landscape and 150 million. Uh, on the interior homes and Andy: businesses and facilities. Wow. So Envacore though is headquarters in Maryland. How does a company headquarters in Maryland end up securing a project here in Honolulu? Paul: Well, fortunately for us, we do work all over the country, uh, with regards to the Department of Defense. And we've been working with this particular client as long as we've been in business, 15, 20 years. So they trust, we're a trusted partner with them. So we're able to secure projects virtually all over the world with this client. And the client's Amoresco? Client on this one is Amoresco, yes, and they're, they're an energy service company. So what we do is we help them, when they secure projects, develop and build energy and water conservation projects for them that, that pay for themselves and the reduction of the utility bills. Andy: So people oftentimes hear about these projects and hear about opportunities to conserve water and do performance contracting and generate an ROI that has a payback return on the savings, but I don't think a lot of, let's say, industry, Companies and professionals have an opportunity to get involved with them. So maybe you could tell us a little bit more about, you know, about this side of the, of the industry that only a few get to participate in right now. Paul: Well, I think luckily for us, we've found a way. to really parlay irrigation savings into performance contracting. So it's really water savings as a service. And the key to the success that we've had over the years is we deploy and integrate the newest and latest technology to be able to almost in real time watch the water consumption move through the water meters and then report on that information directly to our client. So one of the benefits that we have is that You know, we, we calculate savings based on evapotranspiration and the amount of water being applied to the landscape. But in the real world, you really need the data to prove out the savings that you promised. So in order for our company and my company to be successful, we have to prove year after year that what we calculated in the water savings is real and tangible. Andy: Awesome. So let's go back to, in order to... potential is. Let's, let's go back to when this project first started. When was that? What year were you first involved and how do you actually start looking at a project like this for the first time? Paul: Well, this project has been going on since 2015. Initially there's been a lot of back and forth and up and down and contract negotiations and challenges. But what we typically do is we'll get the water bill and the utility bill and we'll analyze, you know, how much either energy or water. Water is being consumed and we determine from there what either gallons per square foot or gallons per person is being consumed and we'll do a weather analysis and we'll calculate how much water should be consumed by this particular plant in this particular climate and then we look at the utility bill and we say, huh, we think this site should be using 20 gallons per square foot annually and we see it's using 30 gallons per square foot annua

In this episode, you will learn how to START an irrigation system based on a 3rd party device. Example: Start irrigation when the soil temperature is 82 degrees.

In this episode, Andy shares a live recorded Demo of the IRRISketch design software and the potential that it may have to disrupt the industry. Learn more here: IRRISketch === Andy: When I see something new, I like to check it out. I like to learn about it. And I, I'm a strong believer that every irrigation system proposal should have a drawing. I just, that's what I believe. And using a lot of the design software, it's not that particularly great. Now there's some software like LandFX that is really actually fantastic, but it offers sort of a level that is a lot more, I would say, than the average irrigation or the average landscape contractor needs. It's really, in my opinion, designed more for that architect engineer because it can provide you with some really, really It's just above and beyond what the average design build contractor needs. So I had a web meeting, sort of training overview, actually not training demonstration, let's call it a demo of the Erisketch software and I'm playing, I'm going to play that for you today. We, we probably spoke for about an hour and a half and this episode's only. Maybe 35 minutes. So I did my best to cut it down, not to bore you since you can't see the screen. So you can't really see the demo, but I wanted you to hear the conversation and some of the things that we were talking about and what's really fascinating or what, what. What makes me inspired and excited about this company is where we started when we started the conversation was about iris sketch irrigation design, but when we ended this conversation, it was actually more about building a stack of software that could help you. If you're the contractor, from beginning to end, and what I mean by that is, it can help you from the design of the system, to the materialist, to the pricing, to the proposal, to the ordering of supplies. And this is something that I have been, I have been waiting for. I feel like we play in separate buckets right now, we play in the buckets of irrigation design software, we play in the [00:02:00] buckets of um, Business management software like ServiceTitan, then we play in the buckets of, of distribution. And there really isn't anything as of today that can tie things end to end. And Errorsketch does not do that today, but I, I just have this hunch that what they're building and what you'll hear in this episode is the first attempt to try to tie a lot of this together. And it really does start with you. You're the one out there meeting with the client, residential or commercial. You're the one out there designing the system, determining what the materials are going to be. And then you're the one that has to place the order, install the material, and then deliver that customer with the final project. And so what, what you'll hear today is Iris sketch sort of combining all of these things together in a potentially very disruptive way, which is why I played that clip in the beginning, because I think our industry needs more disruption. If you look at the consumer goods industry, like Instacart. Instacart is filing for their IPO right now at the time of this recording, and it's disrupting the, the grocery business. There is a good chance that era, uh, not era sketch. Instacart is driving down the price of the goods and they're going to roll an advertising platform on top and offer upsells, offer brand manufacturers, a direct channel to the consumer through their software layered. Uh, layered on top of the grocery store. And I think that that could happen right here in our industry. So a couple of pointers, a couple of quick, um, want to see this a little bit so that you do listen. And if it, if it by any means starts to bore you, just hit that 30 second skip ahead because there is a lot of good, interesting meat in here. And this was not recorded as a podcast. So I should preface that this was recorded. I just recorded my demo. And then I asked for their permission to use some of it on today's episode. So I [00:04:00] want to have these guys back to have a real sort of more legitimate actual podcast discussion because this was just sort of a behind the scenes look at the demonstration. So a couple, a couple things you're going to learn today. You're going to learn how Erisketch, their main goal is quick and easy. They want to provide design software that is quick, easy. Of course it has to be accurate. But what I noticed the most, it was actually a beautiful presentation and a lot of irrigation design software that's out there. The goal of the software isn't to be beautiful. And the goal of the software is not, not necessarily to be quick or easy. It's mostly to be accurate. But I'm a strong believer that you got to sell the project. You can kind of figure out some of the details later. So I really liked the idea of having to be quick, easy, and a beautiful presentation so that you can use it to sell. Then they have an integration with Mosher. So I went ahead just this morning, ordered

Andy records live from Highway I-15 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

YouTube Reference Video: https://youtu.be/U5DXOiTOLFI ---------- Do you wonder? Seriously. Are you activity questioning what you know, what you do, and why you do it? Do you leave room for wonder? Do you leave room to be curious? Do you create space for yourself to consider new options and new approaches through the lens of curiosity and wonderment? Let me give you an example. Let's use Green Grass. This is often the " goal " of many property owners. They wat green grass, right? Is water the only way to keep the grass green? Is lack of water the reason grass is not green? Could water be the scapegoat for grass not being green enough? Are you being blamed for the lack of water because the grass is not green, enough? Could there be different shades of green? how do you know what shade of green your client expects? What if there was another way? What if water was only one of the factors to keep grass green? What if....what if.....what if.... do you make space for yourself to questions and consider all the other options? What if the answer to green grass was a combination of Plant, Soil, Water. What did I just say? Seems obvious, right? Yeah, plant soil water, duh? So if you are only the irrigator, and not the lawn care provider, perhaps consider advising your client that water is just ONE factor. As irrigators, it can be easy to only think about water, and forget to think about the balance of the plant / soil / water relationship. Let me give you an example and sort sparked this episode and my curiosity, and caused me WONDER. I'm going to play a clip from my friend George's YouTube channel. The name of George's channel is, Princess Cut Lawn Care. Definitely check it out, it is super entertaining and informative. And in this recent video, George talks about heat stress and ways to keep your lawn green during a drought.

In this Episode, Andy talks with OptConnect CEO Chris Baird, and National Sales Justin Nichols. Learn more about OptConnect Here: OptConnect ========== Andy: For those of you listening that this might be the first time you've heard about OptConnect, I encourage you to go listen to Episode #73 that Justin and I recorded probably a year and a half ago. Something like that year and a half ago, two years ago, and that'll be kind of like level one cellular connectivity intro, how it works, the benefits, all those sorts of things. What I want to do today is kind of hear from both Justin and Chris on where things, where their business has evolved since kind of. Entering the irrigation market. Justin: Yeah, that's awesome. Uh, you know, we entered the irrigation market about three years ago and we knew that we had a very good value prop based on, you know, other markets that were very active in, in our market leaders. And, and over the last two and a half, three years, you know, we've really started to scale in the irrigation market. I think today we have about. Four out of five of the large, you know, national distributors set up to be able to supply OpConnect hardware and services and about a dozen, uh, regional distributors as well. So if you haven't heard of us, chances are it is locally available at your, you know, landscape irrigation supply house. Uh, also just recently during smart irrigation month. We launched our brand new Ascend Dura device. And what's really cool about the Ascend Dura is it basically functions like a wifi hotspot on your phone. And so for the last couple of years, you know, we've really, uh, tried to penetrate the central control market. Uh, and now we have a new tool in our tool belt that allows us to connect to wifi only type of controllers. So you're. Your Hydra wise, your beehives, your ratios and any other type of wifi only type of gateway, uh, to be able to provide the same type of high level managed service to be able to troubleshoot. Now, not only the cellular side of that, but also the wifi side of that. So you can now bring your own wifi solution, plug and play and let us. Hit the easy button for you. Andy: Okay. Wow. So there's a whole bunch happening there and some of this I wasn't quite aware of. So why don't we step back? Because I had always thought of OpConnect as, as cellular, but you just said a bunch of wifi. So how does cellular and wifi come together? Justin: Yeah. So basically the wifi allows you to connect locally to a piece of equipment, just like you would in your house. Uh, and so we're able to make a local network connection via wifi. to that wifi only irrigation controller that allows the user to connect with a cellular device when otherwise they would have no means or way of connecting that external device. So we collect connect locally via the wifi network. But then all the communication is done on the cellular side. So when you're trying to do remote management, uh, Monitoring of a site like this, that's using a wifi only controller, whether it's light commercial, your own personal property, a vacation rental. We're able to manage that now remotely over the cellular network. And because of our managed service value prop, we can actually troubleshoot. Both types of those connections with the wifi. Andy: So can we like get a tangible example? Let's name a controller just to give this some context. Could we say like a Hunter Hydrawise controller? Would that make sense to talk about that? And just to try to, you know, have it more tangible. Justin: Yeah, absolutely. So you have a Hunter Hydrawise controller. Uh, you know, has 48 plus zones. If I remember correctly, they can go on a lot of light commercial properties. The cost is a little bit less expensive than that commercial unit, but you're relying on that property owner or that site's wifi connection. Perhaps they won't let you on their network. Perhaps the wifi signal isn't strong enough. We're able to put a cellular device that acts as a Wi-Fi hotspot inside that controller or right next to it and allow any type of Hydrawise user to manage that system remotely over an OpConnect cellular network. Andy: Okay. So you bring another device, your brand new device, and let's talk about that device. Is it one device? Is it two devices? How do you get from the cellular cloud down to the Wi-Fi LAN or local Wi-Fi? Justin: Yeah, it's all it's just one device. So basically, we have the, the Wi-Fi technology and the cellular technology baked into a single device. It's fully plug and play, we can provide a NEMA 4x enclosure. So if it's You know, an outdoor install and you don't want to mount it inside that Hydrawise controller cabinet. We can just install it right next to it. There's no wiring that you would have to run between the two. And it's, it's very simple. It's, it's activated, ready to go out of the box. The Wi-Fi is turned on. We give you, you know, the SSID and password to manage that. We can change that on

In this episode, Andy chats with Kevin Williams an expert in ChatGPT and A.I. ========== References: www.SprinklerNerd.com/inkworks www.InkWorks.ai ========== Kevin: You know, it's not going to be AI that replaces you as the employee or, or supplants you, your company. It's going to be a company that knows how to use AI or a person who knows how to use AI that's going to disrupt things. Andy: Hello my friends. This is Andy. Welcome to episode 129. Of the Sprinkler Nerd Show, where it's my job to speak with world-class water and technology innovators from all walks of life so that it may inspire you and your business. My guest today is Kevin Williams. Who is Kevin Williams? Kevin has been featured in Inc.Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and even as a Shark Tank business. Before starting his current company, www.inkworks.ai, Kevin was the former operating partner and CEO of www.balls.co. And before that, Kevin was the founder and CEO of Brush Hero, which is the product you may have seen on shark tank. Our conversation today will be focused on AI tools like Chat GPT, and how you can implement these tools in your business. So with that, Kevin, welcome to the show. Kevin: Thanks so much for having me, Andy. Andy: I cannot wait to talk about AI and how service businesses, contractors, irrigators, and landscapers can learn a little bit from you, who has spent a lot of time, uh, really becoming an expert in this field. And I think that before we jump into that, I'd like to ask how you got your start in business and as an entrepreneur. Kevin: It's, it's funny. I actually come from a family of entrepreneurs ever since I was about 10 or 12. My family was traveling all over the country with various business ideas and it was just part of the fabric of my life. Kevin: Sadly, that story doesn't actually end particularly well. So sometimes I, I, I glib about it that I come from a family of failed entrepreneurs because in a period in my adolescence, my parents lost their business, they lost their house. They lost their marriage, like all of this horrible stuff. So young Kevin decides that a good idea is to not be an entrepreneur and instead go be a chemist. Kevin: Well, fates have a way of, uh, of messing with plans like that. Um, I went on the straight and narrow path. I did a bunch of interesting stuff and I ended up at pretty good business school. And in business school, I entered a business plan competition just as a part of a, like an elective entrepreneurship class. Kevin: And I won. And I won a bunch of money that came along with it for seed funding. Um, so I ended up starting my first business having done everything in my power not to be an entrepreneur. I was like, oh heck, here's an opportunity. I'm just going to take a left turn in my life and chase this now. Um, that business didn't necessarily go anywhere, but it introduced me to the angel and venture community in my town in Washington DC and uh I ended up operating businesses for a high net worth, uh, individuals for a bunch of years and my own entrepreneurial journey kicked in again, where I saw that there was just so much waste in a lot of startup companies that people really didn't know how to demonstrate. Kevin: What we marketers would call product market fit, and instead they just dump bucket loads of money into things trying to prove a concept. Uh, and when I saw the rise of social media, I saw an opportunity to rapidly test concepts, um, without necessarily spending a lot of money. And that pivoted into a whole series of businesses where I would either license or buy intellectual property. Kevin: And my dirty little secret was that when a patent was pitched to me, I could go out onto social media and test some concept around that product. I could throw a bunch of traffic at it, see if anybody cared. If people cared about the idea, then I would license the patent and then I would already know that I could get on to first base with the product. Kevin: Was it going to be a home run? Who knows, but I could get on to first base. So that led to the Brush Hero product, which I had licensed. I'd licensed the underlying IP from a gentleman in the UK, um, and several other patents in homewares and kitchenwares. Uh, I sold, um, or I, yeah, I exited Brush Hero in about 2019. Kevin: And, um, then I ended up running, uh, a large international brand. Usually I don't say, but yes, it was Balls. co. Andy: Fuck it, you can say it on this channel, on this show. Kevin: Yes, I was a manscaper. Um, so Balls was the largest, uh, manscaping company in Europe. Uh, you can probably already tell I'm not the guy who tells Balls jokes all day. Kevin: So it was, it was pretty fun to dive into a brand like that. British sensibility, really cheeky humor. And, um, our goal was to drive it into, uh, the U S with that sort of humor. Um, the realities of running a UK European based business from the West coast of the U S not so great. A lot of early mornings, a lot of l

In this episode, Andy calls Paul Bassett, and together they have a short conversation about the opportunity to turn water into dollars. === Paul: Hey Drew. Andy: Paul. Good morning. Paul: Good morning to you buddy. Andy: How's your day going? Paul: It's going great today. Thanks. It's Friday. Andy: Heck yeah. I was thinking about you this morning because of the concept of turning water into dollars that I was thinking about and thought we could just brain share about that concept. Paul: I like that. Andy: So yesterday I moderated a webinar with Ben Coffey at WeatherTrack and Max Moreno, who's the VP of sales for Harvest Landscape, and Max uses water budgets as a part of his daily business practice. And the more I started thinking about water budgets, it's really a concept of a budget and a budget entails finances and money. Andy: And what I think is so fascinating is that we all, you know, in this industry, when I say we, I'm generalizing here. Most people talk about run time, number one, you know, how long should I run my sprinklers in the form of time? And then. Kind of at the next level, people talk about how much water am I going to use? Andy: What's the gallons? What's the volume? Either gallons per minute, gallons per day, per cycle, per year, per month. But then what we really don't talk much about is what does the dollars mean? How can we convert that to dollars and cents and why do we not use that as a discussion point more often? Paul: You're right. Paul: I mean, it's something that I think should be discussed with the end user client because in In almost any other utility consumption, it is discussed in dollars and cost. I don't know why the water is slower to transition to that. So I think it's a good place to be for us, Andy, because it will allow us to kind of be a differentiator, or what we teach others to allow them to be a differentiator. Andy: I think that if we're only now starting to talk about the dollars, I feel like what we need to do is put the dollars out there. So with the, let's say the irrigation design, the proposal, you know, the estimate when contractor X goes out to a client site, whether it's residential or commercial, and they put together their estimate for construction and installation. Andy: I don't know that I've ever seen a proposal that includes estimated. Cost per year on the system, and I think if we led with that, then that would spark the kind of curiosity and question and we could go backwards into the different parts of the system, the design, the distribution uniformity that actually affects the cost of the system, but lead with the dollars and then explain it through the use of technology, proper installation, proper design, et cetera. Andy: I mean, it's, it's so good because if you think about it in, in other appliances that you buy, for instance, you know, if you see nowadays, if you buy a hot water heater, or if you buy a refrigerator, what do they have stamped on it, they have stamped on what the anticipated energy cost is to operate that piece of equipment for a given year based upon a unit of measurement of that particular particular. Andy: Energy or, uh, utility. So they say, okay, if you're gonna buy this refrigerator, average energy costs in the United States is 12 cents a kilowatt hour. On average, this particular refrigerator is going to cost you a hundred bucks a year to run an energy. Why can't we do the same in irrigation? It should be that way. Andy: Right. Instead we say this sprinkler uses, uh, 2. 5 gallons per minute, let's just say. But what does that really mean? The user, the end user, doesn't, doesn't really know what that means, and they don't necessarily... But what if we said something different? Yeah, change the metric. I don't know if we could necessarily turn it into dollars, because it depends on, you know, how long it needs to run, but maybe it could be like, here's how many, you know, dollars per hour of operation or something like that. Andy: Yeah, or, you know, just like you, when you create a gallons per minute, we know what that... Flow rate is and you determine what that zone should run for and then calculate what it should cost to run that many gallons through the system. I mean, it's really not as challenging as one would think it's just we don't use that metric at this point, Andy: right? Andy: And and all of these, uh, let's say modern control systems Let's just say modern because I I personally don't think most systems are really all that awesome So we'll just call them modern if we're already tracking gpm And we, you know, we can find breaks in the pipe and we can, we can have all those kinds of alarms and we have a GPM. Andy: All we have to do is add another box to the controller interface that says, what's your water cost? And now we can run basically like a cash register of, of water, of a dollar totals. You know, how awesome would that be? That's a great Paul: idea. Yeah, that's a great idea. Andy: The screen of th

In this episode, Andy interviews Kevin Miller, CEO, Praxxis Manufacturing. Company Website: https://www.h2owize.com/ YouTube Video: https://youtu.be/CZfaKbiE-Tg ----------------------- Joining me today is Kevin Miller, the CEO and co founder of Praxis. The manufacturers of the retro pressure regulator and other water conservation products earlier in his career. Kevin co founded, built and led three companies that generated substantial revenue in the hundreds of millions. Alongside this, he made strategic investments and joined Goldstur. A pioneering bootstrap startup that developed an automated retail kiosk for the analysis and appraisal of precious metal jewelry. Currently, Kevin serves as the co founder and CEO of Praxis, a company renowned for its creation of H2O Wise water conservation products specifically designed for the landscape industry. Kevin, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me this morning. I am really excited to talk to you because I think you've got some hidden gems of products that I'm sure a lot of listeners aren't familiar with yet, but I think they will become familiar with your products over time. And sometimes it's harder to be an incumbent in this industry when there's a couple big brands that tend to own a lot of the shelf space. So really look forward to learning about your innovations and perhaps some of your go to market strategy and such. Absolutely. Let me just get started by giving you a little more background on the company and myself. I've always been involved in the manufacturing space and right out of college, I went to work for a Pentair, a big manufacturer of pumps, filters, and heaters, and got involved in product development. And if there's one thing that I truly love is just that, developing products. Working on hard, complicated solutions to everyday problems. It may not be a super sexy thing, like irrigation or pool equipment. But with Praxis, we've been able to develop a couple of unique patented products that save water, save money, and also divert plastic waste from our landfills. And the Retro Regulator is one such product. And this came about at the height of the pandemic. We had just launched the H2OWISE brand in 2019 at the Las Vegas IA show and the world shut down. It was a unique experience going through that. And we continued working, we had a a product that had been we tested the concept, worked great. And California was just going to mandated PRS. And when you look at the amount of sprinklers that are in the ground, just in the state of California, there are over 450 million that have zero pressure regulation in them for the most part. And when you extrapolate that through the entire United States, that number quickly rose as you can imagine. We wanted to offer a solution that was easy for the pro contractor and also for a homeowner to be able to retrofit a product. Into an existing sprinkler already in the ground. There was born retro regulator. Several iterations. What was can I ask you, was this the first product that Praxis developed? No. Which was first? So our water irrigation ring was the first product that we developed. And Praxis started as a OEM manufacturing company. So we do custom injection molding and custom design work for other large OEMs. Not just in the irrigation space, but also in the pool and spa industry. So WaterWell was the first H2O wise branded product that we launched into the market in 2019. Okay. And when you say OEM, does that also like contract work? Let's say I've got a new widget that I want to make. Could I contact you to manufacture it? Exactly. Yes. You never know, I might be contacting you someday. Yeah, give us a call. Okay, so you started with the water well, and from what I understand, that's like a drip ring? Yeah, it's an irrigation ring. It's designed to go around new and relatively new trees that are planted either on slopes, on parkways, and it includes a five GPH drip emitters and a non eroding well that goes around the tree. We make them in a couple different sizes. And what it does is it allows for 100% water absorption right to that root ball, which is critical, as in the first year or two of growth to get that tree established and get those roots established. But also collects rainwater prevents erosion and runoff. And like I said, 100% water absorption, no waste. Wow. Versus what would be the alternate? A dirt well. A dirt well with a bubbler. That's common practice that the landscape architects use. And dirt wells erode within six to 12 months. And as bubblers get clogged. They're not obviously sometimes not you can get 10 GPH and get five GPH out of them so they can be variable. So ours is a fixed GPH and flow. Okay. And approximately what year did you come out with that product? That was 2019 at the IA show in Vegas. So right before the world shut down. And was that kind of the kickoff to the company was with that product? That was the kickoff to brand H2OI. Praxis has been around since 2017 doing

In this episode, Andy chats with Ken Kwiatkowski, Founder, and Inventor of the Grasshole System. Ken was first on the show back in December of 2021 and you can find that episode HERE, and in this episode, Ken gives an update after 2-years in business. The GRASSHOLE System is a low-cost, patented, long-term solution to sprinkler head damage and alignment problems. Unlike concrete rings, the GRASSHOLE System uses advanced flexible ABS plastic that helps inhibit grass growth and sinking. The GRASSHOLE System is super tough and will protect your sprinkler heads for years without cracking or breaking. No more digging to straighten the head, and no more service calls to your irrigation service! And it's made in the USA! Angus is a Grass Hole. What's a "Grass Hole"? A person whose obsessive yard care causes feelings of superiority, leading to aggressiveness and irritability. The Grass Hole, like our buddy Angus, works tirelessly to achieve a perfect, green, debris-free lawn area. Anyone whose yard has a lesser appearance is inferior. Grass Holes are very territorial and become highly agitated when humans or animals trespass in the yard area. Yards maintained by Grass Holes frequently contain enough chemical residue to kill a small animal on contact.

In this episode, Andy talks with Roland Triska, a 15-year Green Roof expert about all things green infrastructure in NYC. Green infrastructure plays a crucial role in shaping the sustainable future of urban environment. New York City has implemented a range of innovative green infrastructure initiatives to address environmental challenges and enhance the quality of life for its residents. Rooftop gardens and green roofs now dot the city's skyline, providing not only aesthetically pleasing vistas but also mitigating the urban heat island effect and improving air quality. Through these and many other initiatives, NYC is transforming itself into a greener, more resilient metropolis, fostering a harmonious coexistence between nature and urban life.

In this episode, Andy shares his thoughts on plant water use efficiency. Plant water use efficiency refers to the ability of a plant to effectively utilize water for various physiological processes while minimizing water loss through transpiration. Understanding the water requirements of different plants is crucial for efficient irrigation practices and sustainable water management in agriculture and landscaping.

In this episode, you'll hear an interview with Andy on the, "Scaling Up H2O Podcast", with Trace Blackmore. Notable Quotes: "We undervalue water. There are low-hanging opportunities to reduce water usage that doesn't take a lot of technology, yet we still let it happen." – Andy Humphrey "I saw how we were using water in the irrigation industry and decided to go headfirst into the irrigation industry with technology both in the hardware and software side." – Andy Humphrey "Rain: money falling from the sky. When water is falling you should not be irrigating." – Andy Humphrey "There's only so much water the soil can use." – Andy Humphrey "We need to make money AND we need to be able to have margin in order to make customers happy." – Andy Humphrey "You get better the more you do it. You just have to start and try something new." – Andy Humphrey

In this episode, Andy talks about how contractors should focus on maintaining (holding) their prices instead of lowering their prices. In order to maintain price and value, a contractor can position themselves as the best in the world at a specific trade by identifying their niche, showcasing expertise, highlighting unique selling points, leveraging client relationships. These efforts establish credibility, reinforce reputation, and attract clients who prioritize superior craftsmanship and expertise, enabling the contractor to maintain their price and value in the market.

Reference Links: Casey Brown, Boost Pricing: https://boostpricing.com/ EcommerceFuel Live: https://www.ecommercefuel.com/live/ On today's show, Andy plays a recorded presentation on a very important topic, that according to the speaker, Casey Brown, typically gets the least amount of attention in most businesses, and that is..............PRICING! That sounds Booooriiinng, right? Fluck no. Just wait, Andy will give you the Cliff notes. Audio Disclaimer This audio was recorded on Andy's iPhone, in March, while attending the Ecommerce Fuel Live Conference in San Diego. The audio is okay, but it is not good or great, but it's okay enough to deliver the message and for you to pick a few gold nuggets that Casey is going to sprinkle.... Alright, here are the Cliff Notes, and a few takeaways for you to consider, and if you stop listening right now, just think about this list. When it comes to pricing, Are you in the Driver's Seat? Or do your customers have all the power Or do your competitors have all the power We get stuck on the hamster wheel of, sell/grow, sell/grow, sell/grow, and before you know it, your business is 50% bigger, with more headaches and stress, and you're not making any more money... How much volume would you lose with a 5% Price Increase? What about a 2% price increase What about a 1% price increase There is no greater impact on profitability than pricing Pricing is a pully for your business A Tiny price change is a huge profit change. If you have 15% Net Profit: a 1% increase is a 7% increase in profit a 2% price increase is a 13% increase in profit a 5% price increase is a 33% increase in profit Finally, Revenue is for Vanity - Profit is for Sanity So without further ado - Here is Casey Brown, presenting on Pricing.

Book Reference: The Catalyst - How to Change Anyone's Mind, by Jonah Berger Video Reference: https://youtu.be/DXd2olUuTgk Alright, Sprinkler Nerds, Marketing Nerds, Tech Genius's, and every other entrepreneur joining me today. Welcome to the Sprinkler Nerd Show! This is episode #120 and I'm so glad to have you today First, thank you for helping me grow this podcast. The benefit of growing the podcast is that I can help more people. I don't make any money with this podcast, the goal of the show is not me, it is you - and the more people who listen, like, and subscribe, and share, means that more people will discover the show and the more people we can help - so thank you. Today's episode is 2 topics that I have blended together. #1 - Is about the book The Catalyst by Jonah Burger. Now if you've read it, read it again. If you've read it twice, read it again until you can memorize the book and know every ounce of it and how it applies. Keep reading it. This is one of those books that belongs in your personal growth toolkit. And I will link to it in the show notes. I want to give this book some credibility because the more I learn about Jonah Berger the more I find that he is one of the smartest marketing minds of our lifetime - and this is because he studies it scientifically from the human psychology side - NOT from the conversion and transaction side. And it is my belief that if you understand human behavior, that you can market to anyone, sell to anyone, and make an impact on anyone, and so for me, this book is an incredible read. Actually, it is probably one of the best books that has led to my success with customer journeys and being able to do what I do because of how he teaches customer psychology, and how to actually create things that move that make an impact, and to become a catalyst for people to change. I like the way that sounds, become a catalyst for people to change. Technology adoption is all about change, and your job is to be a catalyst for that change. Today I'm only going to touch on the first section of the book, called, REACTANCE. Because this week I received a YouTube comment that was a bit triggering a first. I reminded myself to take a breath, and not to respond until I had 100% clarity. And this reminded me of section 1 of the book, about Reactance. So I wanted to share that with you. Before I read the YouTube comment and talk about how I used ChatGPT to help me craft a response, I wanted to share a bit about REACTANCE, what it means, and what you will learn in the book. 1- Reactance When pushed, people push back. Just like a missile defense system protects against incoming projectiles, people have an innate anti-persuasion system. So rather than telling people what to do, or trying to persuade, catalysts allow for agency and encourage people to convince themselves. Do this by listening, asking questions, and showing empathy Cool - now let's move on to how I used ChatGOT to help craft my response. I typed this into ChatGPT: You are a senior customer service representative at a sprinkler supply store. Your job is to write technical responses to comments on your company's youtube videos. I will be providing you with the latest youtube comments, with instructions for how to write the response. If you understand your job, please ask me to send you the YouTube comment. ChatGPT: Thank you for providing me with the context of my role. I'm ready to assist you with writing technical responses to the YouTube comments. Please go ahead and send me the first comment, along with any specific instructions or requirements for the response. Andy: Here is the comment, please wait for me to give you instructions: You've lost your credibility with me because you don't understand basic turf knowledge. The longer you let your grass grow the deeper the roots grow and the healthier the grass is. That's all they're saying and they're absolutely right so in both cases where you made the negative comment they were right and you were wrong. ChatGPT: Thank you for providing the comment. Please provide me with the instructions for the response, so I can assist you in crafting an appropriate and helpful reply. Andy: Please write a technical response the compares and contrasts the benefits of allowing turfgrass to grow longer (4" or above). Please find a technical document to site your references, preferably something written by Nick Christians, author of, The Fundamentals of Turfgrass Management. ChatGPT: Thank you for sharing your perspective on turfgrass maintenance and expressing your concerns regarding my video. I appreciate your feedback and the opportunity to address your concerns and to better educate the YouTube community. The intent of this video was simply a fun poke at exaggerated corporate marketing efforts, which is now very common. As an additional reference, I hold a degree in horticulture and have had the privilege of working with professional sports stadiums across the United States. Through my exp

William Gibson famously observed. The future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed. If you are an irrigation professional, old or new, who designs, installs or maintains high end residential, commercial, or municipal properties, And you want to use technology to improve your business, to get a leg up on your competition, even if you're an old school irrigator from the days of hydraulic systems, this show is for you. This is Andy. Welcome back to the Sprinkler Nerd Show. This is episode one 19 and it's gonna be a kind of brief episode, but I'm actually excited to share what I've been thinking about the last couple days because I think I may have been wrong about something. Well, Maybe not wrong. I, I just may have changed my mind on something again based on new information. So if you've been listening to this podcast, you know that I love to question what I think I know and I love to hear. Maybe not other opinions, let's say. Well, sure you could say other opinions, but I love to look at different angles on things. And I want you to, if you haven't listened to episode 90, I want you to lip listen to episode 90 because it's about, My thoughts on becoming a pioneer and in episode 90 I talked about how I used to think that being a pioneer was the goal as an entrepreneur. The goal of an entrepreneur is to pioneer new territory, right? Go out there and pioneer something. And I heard a quote from Howard Schultz, who's the former, well, he may still be the ceo, the founder of Starbucks. And I talked about how Howard said he would not choose to be a pioneer. He would rather disrupt something. And I'm gonna play that quote for you. And my thoughts are back in episode 90. So take a listen to episode 90 and I will play the quote from Howard here in just a moment. But earlier this week I heard. A quote on the very same topic that totally contradict or countered what Howard Schultz was talking about. And uh, this person, Jim McKelvey, who was the, he co-founded Square. Uh, which I'm sure you guys know about, it's the card, you know, the little card swiper that, uh, can attach to a smartphone. He co-founded Square with Jack Dorsey, I don't know, way back in like 2006, and he wrote this book called The Innovation Stack. And if you are, Well, I, I'd say anybody would enjoy this book, but particularly if you are an entrepreneur and you were building a company, could be a service company, contracting company, could be software company. It could be product company. Really any company. This book, the innovation stack is phenomenal and. Jim McKelvey count contradicts what Howard was talking about, and Jim says that you don't ever disrupt, you don't want to disrupt the market. And so what I wanted to do today was play both of these quotes and kind of share that. I think I might have been wrong, or I'm still not sure, or maybe it depends. Maybe you could pioneer something, maybe you could disrupt something. Maybe there's another variable at play that makes both of these people right. So the first thing I want to do right now is play the quote from Howard Schultz on why you should not be a pioneer and instead be a disruptor. There's always this question about what's the best road to take? Uh, should I disrupt the category? Or should I create a new one? I would say on balance. I generally don't want to be in the pioneering business. And by that I mean it's so hard to change consumer behavior. It takes a long time, a lot of resources. And unless you have the most compelling story, idea and form factor and platform, uh, and I think. Are willing to run the long race of losing money, which is fine. Uh, I think the easier route is to disrupt a category that already exists. Uh, but there's an opportunity cuz the large companies feel as if they're entitled to it. And I love that opportunity. Where the entrepreneur can be disruptive, much more innovative than anyone else. Excellent. I hope you liked that. I hope it made sense. It probably did make sense. Now I'm gonna play the quote from Jim, which I heard just a couple days ago from the book, the Innovation Stack. If you like to listen to your books, like you listen to a podcast, go on Audible, download this book. It's so good. And the, the premise of the book, I'll just share it with you real quick, is that a company becomes, Let's say defensible and significant based on not one feature or one thing, but an entire stack of innovations that the company develops. And he uses great examples like Southwest Airlines that figured out how they could charge a rate at half the market. But in order to do that, They had to turn the plane around in 10 minutes, right? And so sometimes when you want to do something, you gotta figure out how to do something else entirely. And that that stack, that compound of innovations is called an innovation stack. And that stack of innovations is what is becomes really valuable over time. So when they started Square, there was just one innovation after a

No intro yet, lol. I'm behind on my shit! Andy talks with Fawzi Melhem, owner of Radius, about irrigation technology in Dubai and the Middle East. www.RadiusMena.com

This is Andy. Welcome, to episode #117 of the Sprinkling Nerd Show. Today today you just get me and this is a little bit of an experiment. And I would like to frame this episode, around experimenting. So let's talk about that. I'm in my truck right now driving to my office. It is Friday, and I didn't have any, I had one interview queued up for this week, but then I had to postpone it so you get me again, and sometimes I've mentioned this before. This is the hardest part of podcasting. It is relatively easy to speak with a guest, ask questions, be curious. It is completely different to talk into outer space alone, solo. It's actually much more difficult than you might think, and today I didn't have anything queued up because of that guest cancellation, so I figured I would just kind of do a little, almost like a. Audio diary today. So I'm in my truck, I'm running an experiment and that's what we're gonna talk about, experimenting. I'm running an experiment right now because I have a brand new wireless laier microphone that I got on Amazon and I don't really remember why I got it. I just thought that my current lavalier mic, that's wireless just really. It's kind of a pain in the ass, and it only had one mic. And this unit has two mics. It comes in a nice little carrying case, kind of like AirPods, and it's by a company called Holly Land. It's the Lark M one. So if this episode makes it live, it's because the audio quality that we are recording right now was sufficient enough to publish. So this is going to be an experiment, uh, just to see if the audio quality is good enough in the truck. Because I've tried a few different microphones in the truck and I settled on actually a handheld microphone. The Audiotechnica ATR2100 is connected to USB to Lightning. Works pretty well, but it's a pain in the ass to have to hold a microphone, and there's a lot more background noise in a vehicle than you may believe. Uh, it's actually not, it's not quiet, right? In a vehicle, there's a lot of background noise and it can muffle the voice. So hopefully if you're hearing this, it's then, then the quality of Thelarche one by Hollyland is sufficient. So that's my experiment right now here today, and I wanna encourage you guys to be experimenting. And I want to ask you, what have you experimented on this week or maybe what have you experimented with in the last two weeks? And an experiment could be a new product, it could be a new way of doing something, could be a new way of trying to splice a valve a new way that you've never done it before. It could be pitching your proposal to a homeowner in a new way that you've never done before. I'm, I'm a believer in trying new things, seeing how they work. Doing it again, making an adjustment. And that those little, those little changes over time compound. And after two years goes by, you can look at yourself and go, wow, I am, my business is completely different than it was two years ago. But it wasn't a shift, it wasn't an overnight shift, it was just little things. Compounding over time can be transformational. So, This is my experiment here right now, and I want to tell you about a device that I experimented with this week. This is only day three of the experiment, and I came across, so I came across a wireless clamp-on ultrasonic flow sensor maybe a month or two ago. It's called the simpleSUB, the simpleSUB flow meter, and. Uh, what it does is you can clamp it on a half-inch, three-quarter inch or one-inch pipe. It accepts CPVC, PVC, copper type L, and type M, only up to one inch. But all you do is clamp it on with wire ties. It has a cellular. Uh, card, if you want to call it that, a cellular built into it. You simply turn it on basically, and it connects to the simpleSUB cloud platform right out of the box. And there's a couple reasons that this device, that you might want this device, and there's a couple reasons that it may not be what you want. However, I think it would be worth taking a look at. So the website is Simple Sub Water, I believe that's what it is, simple sub water.com. I will check that when I get to my office and put the actual link in the show notes if I. If I just misspoke, simple sub water.com, the unit is less than $400 and then it's $5 a month and you can just strap it on any half inch, three quarter inch or one inch pipe, and you can record the daily water use right up to the cloud. Okay, so if So, you could put this on your irrigation main. Absolutely. Right. If your client wants to know how much water they're using on the irrigation system, You can put this right on the main line if it's one inch or less. And I suppose if it's greater than one inch, you could just put in a section of one inch pipe and then clamp this on. But so what the device does, is it, it totalize or it logs the gallons and then once a day it sends it up to the server. Okay. So the simple sub meter cannot find brakes in pipes. Because it's not really sending, it's not sending real tim

I've title this episode, Field Capacity My Ass, because honestly, using terms like field capacity can easily confuse the average person. So I wanted to take 5 mins today, and share my experience understanding field capacity, the importance of it, and some tip to help you better understand it. #1 Let's define field capacity Soil field capacity refers to the maximum amount of water that soil can hold against the force of gravity. It is the point at which the soil is fully absorbed with water and excess water has drained away. At field capacity, the soil is holding as much water as it can, and any additional water that is added to the soil will drain away due to the force of gravity. Seeing this on a graph is the best way to understand this concept. The graph looks like a tall spike, then a slow curve down. It is the slow curve that illustrates field capacity. Another way to describe field capacity, is WET. Not too wet, not too dry, just right. It's Goldilocks. And you can measure it. It's a scientific measure. A second way to think about this, is like a percolation test. Where you dig a hole, fill it up with water, and watch it drain over time. The faster is drains, the more sand is in the soil, and the slower it drains, the more clay is in the soil. Or - based on the drainage rate it can also describe the soil compaction and soil structure, because the soil type is only one variable that will determine the drainage rate - and Field Capacity. Ok - got it? Field Capacity = perfectly Wet. Goldilocks wet. Now, here is where it get really fun, and where current manufactures have kind of missed the mark - in my opinion. In my opinion they have missed the mark because they forget to think about the user. Engineers know exactly what all of this means, and they know exactly how to set the sensors, and have almost 20years of experience, I know how to set sensors. However, the average knuckle dragger has no idea, and the first question they always ask, every time, is how to set the sensor. Let's talk about this. Field Capacity, allowable depletion, permanent wilting point, etc. can be confusing as hell. Here is my tip. If field capacity, IE Wet, equals Full, than full must equal 100%. The soil profile is a tank, and at field capacity, the tank is full. 100% This is where manufactures should set the calibration. Instead of displaying a percentage of volumetric soil moisture, they should allow the user to set the tank, and instead, display a % full. How much water is in the soil tank. Is it 100% full, 50% full, or empty. It doesn't really matter what the actual volumetric soil moisture percentage is. It maters more, what the percentage is relative to field capacity. let me give you an example. I get a phone call and the customers say, "hey Andy, my moisture sensor is reading 28.5%, what does that mean and how do I set the sensor?" My response - I have no freaking idea. Why? because I need more information. I need to know what field capacity is, before I can understand 28.5% Is this making sense now? Maybe 26% is field capacity, which would be 28.5% is saturation. Or, maybe field Capacity is 32%, which would mean the soil tank is 50% full. Every moisture reading must be compared to field capacity, of the same sensor. Not field capacity of another sensor, only field capacity of the same sensor. for this reason, I always recommend pouring a bucket of water over the sensor, or enough to actually saturate the sensor, than wait 24hrs, like a Percolation test, then take a reading and see what it is - or run a report remotely and look at the data. Write that number number down. That is your Baseline - pun intended!! My very general broad approach that works most of the time, is to take away 20% of the number, and use that as depletion. Now you know your tank size. Let's pretend 30% = Field Capacity or Full using my 20% depletion rule, dry would be what? if 10% of 30 is 3%, than 20% of 30 is 6%. Tank size = 6% So your tank size becomes 24% dry, 30% wet. That is what your working with. So, now that you understand, and if you don't listen to it again, I can explain how different soil types have different tank sizes. Clay soils hold more water. So field capacity of a clay soil will be higher. Lets say 33% Sandy soil hold less water. so Field Capacity of sandy soil will be lower, say 22% if we use my general rule of 20% depletion, 20% of a bigger number is a bigger tank. So the more clay in the soil, the larger the tank size, and the more sand in the soil, the smaller the tank size. And the smaller the tank, the more frequent it will need to be filled up. The larger the tank, the less frequent it will need to be filled up. If you have a 12 gallon gas tank, you'll fill it up more often than if you have a 20gallon gas tank. That's it. That's all there is to it, essentially. It can be so easy to way over think this, to over complicate this, and to miss the point. The point is that you must first identify Field Capacity, and that becomes

Welcome, folks! It's your favorite Nerd, Andy Humphrey, back on The Sprinkler Nerd Radio with another hilarious episode. This is episode #115, and this episode might sound a bit strange. Perhaps a bit robotic, because this is not me. This is not my voice. My name is Drop Bot and I am the voice clone of Andy. I am the Artificial Intelligence version of Mr. Andy Humphrey. Andy has programmed me with 2 tasks for this episode. Task #1, is to teach you about evapotranspiration, and #2, is to tell you a short story about an irrigation contractor and a landscape contractor. Before I play the intro, please remember that Andy is the creative genius behind the development of this episode. however, I and Drop Bot speaking to you, and I wrote this episode for you, to showcase the power of artificial intelligence, using Chat GPT, and voice cloning software. Now it is time to play the Korny intro... Coolness, Andy said this would be fun and I can't wait to talk about something that you might have heard of if you're in the industry or have a smart controller. And if you haven't, well, don't worry, we're going to break it down for you. The topic of today's episode is drumroll please evapotranspiration! Yeah, I know, it's a mouthful. Basically, evapotranspiration, or e t for short, is the combination of two words: evaporation and transpiration. Now, before you start thinking it's a new dance move, let me tell you what it really is. Transpiration is the process by which plants consume water, and evaporation is just water evaporating from the surface of the ground. So when you add them together, you get evapotranspiration, which is the total water loss from the soil due to both of these processes. Now, why is evapotranspiration important? Well, it determines the amount of water required to maintain healthy plants. So, in a perfect world, we would give our plants exactly the right amount of water they need, no more, no less. And E T is the scientific word used to describe that amount of water. Simple, right? Now, the next question that pops up is how is E T calculated? And guess what, folks, there are four factors that are used to determine it. The first one is temperature. The warmer it is outside, the more water loss there will be due to evapotranspiration. The second one is solar radiation. The sunnier it is outside, the more water loss we'll have. Thirdly, humidity. The drier it is outside, the more water loss there will be due to both transpiration and evaporation. And last but not least, wind speed. The windier it is outside, the more water loss there will be. Now, remember that E T is a variable factor that can change day-to-day, week-to-week, or month-to-month. However, there's something called a seasonal E T curve that we can follow to conserve water. In the spring and fall, we can match the E T curve of the season, which is the best time to save water. And in the summer, we might actually need to water more. Now, hold onto your MP Rotators you Sprinkler Nerd, While E T is a useful tool for water budgeting and forecasting, it is not always the best option for real-time watering. This is because E T estimates are subject to a wide range of factors, including temperature, humidity, wind speed, solar radiation, and plant type, among others. As a result, it is difficult to accurately measure E T in real-time, particularly in changing weather conditions. Another challenge with using E T for real-time watering is that it only provides an estimate of how much water is lost from the soil and plants, but it does not account for other factors that affect plant water needs. For example, soil moisture, plant growth stage, and root depth are critical factors that influence how much water a plant needs at a particular time. These factors can vary significantly within a field, making it challenging to use E T as a real-time irrigation scheduling tool. Additionally, the use of E T for real-time watering does not consider the actual water availability in the soil. E T is a measure of the water demand from the atmosphere, and it assumes that the soil is always able to supply the required amount of water. In reality, soil moisture can vary significantly due to factors such as soil texture, compaction, and irrigation management. Therefore, relying solely on E T estimates for real-time watering can lead to over- or under-irrigation, resulting in water wastage or crop stress. On the other hand, E T is a useful tool for water budgeting and forecasting. By estimating the water demand of crops over a period, water managers can develop an irrigation schedule that ensures adequate water supply while minimizing water loss through runoff or deep percolation. Moreover, E T estimates can help water managers to plan for future water demands and anticipate potential water shortages or droughts. So, in my final expert opinion, while evapotranspiration is a fascinating and important scientific concept, it's not always the most user-friendly tool for th

This week I had the privilege to speak with Lawrence Ying, founder, and CEO of GeoDrops. Lawrence Ying is an engineer, dreamer, and the Founder and CEO of GeoDrops. Lawrence was one of the first twenty hardware engineers at Google, and has been a pioneer in reinventing how modern computer systems work in the Cloud era. His engineering team consists of many senior engineers and lead designers from many of the top U.S. high-tech companies, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and more. Lawrence and his team believe they can take the very best in artificial intelligence (A.I.), robotics, and user experience, to perhaps the least technologically advanced place in our lives: the backyard. I have not used GeoDrops yet, so I need to be careful not to be so damn excited, however, if you know me, you know that I'm very opportunistic, and I do believe that the world has been waiting for someone like Lawrence to bring a product like GeoDrops to market. My advice to you - even though you're not asking for it - is to visit GeoDrops.com, and join their Launch-Day Email List, so you can be notified as soon as the product is available, and if you are truly a Sprinkler Nerd, pre-order a GeoDrop so you can be the first to receive it. Please enjoy this short discussion with Lawrence Ying.

In this episode, you will learn about the opportunity to find water leaks to reduce water waste with the potential to save millions of dollars annually. I am joined by Ben Slick, Senior Vice President of Business Development for HydroPoint, and Paul Bassett, Vice President of Water Efficiency for ENVOCORE. This episode is the audio replay from a webinar hosted by HydroPoint Data Systems. To learn more about HydroPoint's Smart Water Management solutions, visit www.HydroPoint.com.

Today it is just me, I'd like to share a quote with you that opened up my mind a little bit, in a really good way, and inspired me to think about what I know, and how we should perhaps be a bit more opened minded sometimes... But before I share that with you, I'd like to tell you a story of self-reflection this week. For the past 7 days, I was in Honolulu Hawaii, on spring break with my family, and had the chance to catch up with 2 other sprinkler nerds, my good friend Paul Bassett and Dave Woods, both from ENVOCORE. They are working on a killer project at Pearl Harbor that I was fortunate to assist with, and it was great to see them both. Special shoutout to Dave Woods, for entertaining my wife such that she actually drank a beer. 2 beers. My wife doesn't drink beer, and we met Dave at a tiny microbrewery on the Island, and my wife actually drank beer. On the flight home, I was catching up on emails and remembered that I had been asked to be interviewed on the Scaling UP! H2O Podcast, and as part of the scheduling process I was asked to answer a series of questions, one of which was to write a short bio about myself and my business history. It was in this process of reviewing my past that I had a few moments of self-reflection that I typically don't allow time for. I asked myself a question, I don't know why, but it seemed like to right question to ask if I wanted to advise someone else and tell them about my business career. At first I wrote down a whole bunch of things, a ton of accomplishments, timeline, work, projects, etc. Then I reflected again, and asked myself how I could simplify this - if someone were to ask me for advice, about what got me where I am, I'm certainly not going to rattle off all of this goobliguck to them, TMI!.....then I thought, is there something specific that ties my different successes together. And I encourage you to ask yourself this same question - what makes you, you? What makes you successful at what you do? What got you where you are? I boiled it down to 2 specific traits, or philosophies, or whatever you want to call it. #1 Creativity #2 Curiosity That is pretty much how I got here. Got here talking to you, and that is how I'm going to get where I want to go. This will be different for you, and I encourage you to spend time reflecting on this from your own life, and if you have never had a thought like this before, give it a try, it may seem awkward weird, but I can tell you that the benefits will start to compound over time. So now, let's transition into the quote of the week... I heard this quote while listening to the Tim Ferris Show, and I'll plug that again, it is a great podcast for expanding your mind, I highly recommend it. Tim mentioned this quote, and he couldn't recall the exact phrasing, so I looked it up. The quote is this: "Half of what we are going to teach you is wrong, and the other half is right. Our problem is that we don't know which half is which". This quote was from Dr. Charles Burwell, Dean of Harvard Medical School from 193-1949. It resonated with me, partially because of my passion for curiosity and creativity, but also because this is all just a big experiment. Seriously, watering plants is just a big experiment, and I think that it is important to remind ourselves that what we think we know maybe be correct, and it also may be incorrect. And it could be correct today, in 2023, and it could also be incorrect in 2028. Everything is subject to both change and relevance to the information provided at the time which may lead to the theory being correct or incorrect. Just think about sprinklers. How we water the landscape today, is different than how we watered the landscape in 1975. The tools we use are different. The scheduling formulas are different. The automation is different. And I say this to give you permission to keep an open mind. You do not need to be an expert who has all the answers, instead, I encourage you to be an expert that continuously questions what you know, in constant pursuit of perhaps a better way of doing it. That's it. 50% of what you know is right, you just know which 50%. That's it, my friends, I encourage you to stay curious, ask questions, try something new, learn, and repeat. Have an amazing weekend.

In this episode, Andy is joined by Brad Krause. Brad is the President and Owner (former) of Service Professor. Service Professor is a 40-year-old home services company based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that grew from a small electrical company to one of the largest home service repair companies in Michigan. You will learn how brad Brad decided to exit the business by selling the business to a private equity firm, turning Service Professor into a "platform" model now used to acquire other home service businesses.

In this episode, Andy talks with the President of Smart Rain, Dan Hymas, about their SmartController™ platform, what makes it unique, how contractors can partner with Smart Rain, and why Smart Rain may be the last controller you ever need to buy. About Smart Rain: Smart Rain was founded in 2012 with a mission to put a stop to overwatering on commercial properties. Not only does this protect our planet's freshwater, but it also helps property managers save money and time on water system management. Smart irrigation systems are the most efficient way to prevent overwatering, as they monitor water usage and shut off lines when no more water is needed. When we started our company, we knew that we needed to create advanced smart irrigation technology that was backed by a supportive team and increased irrigation transparency. With that mission in mind, we created the centralized SmartController™ and the Smart Rain mobile application. In just under a decade of business, Smart Rain saved their customers over one billion gallons of water, $3 million on water bills, and hundreds of thousands of hours of labor.

What is Helium? The Helium Network is the world's largest and fastest-growing wireless network in history, with over 613,000 Hotspots, in over 47,000 cities, across 163 countries. Learn more at www.Helium.com The largest contiguous wireless network in the world provides extensive coverage, reducing the need to purchase and manage additional infrastructure Highly competitive connectivity costs enable initiatives to scale — the average sensor costs only $1.05 per year (for a sensor sending data every 5 minutes) Accessible and easy to use with compatible off-the-shelf LoRaWan devices Built on open source standards, increasing access to open source projects that attract companies to build and/or utilize smart devices and avoid issues such as vendor lock-in and high hardware costs

Today I have one statement that I want to remind you of, it could be the most important tool in your tool bag, the one thing you should always remind yourself of, and perhaps the single most important concept for your success... You Are The Value Remember that. Always funnel the value through you. Value is not the products you sell. Value is not the products you install. You are the value. What is the value? Is it Hunter versus Rain Bird? No People buy the value that you offer, not the products that you sell. Be curious and discover what this value needs to be.

Here is what we are going to talk about today. 3 things. #1 - being in the room #2 - being at the table #3 - being the table This week I listened to an amazing podcast episode, on Masters of Scale, It is episode #46, and I'll add a link in the show notes. The title is Make it Epic, with will i am. So let's get started. Who is will i am? William James Adams Jr. known professionally as will.i.am (pronounced "Will-I-am"), is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, actor, and record producer. He rose to fame as the founder and lead member of the Black Eyed Peas. But after I listened to the episode of Masters of Scale, I learned there is more. Unbeknownst to many, will .i. am owns a founding stake in Beats Electronics. Beats sold to Apple in 2014 for $3 billion, and if will i am owned only 1% - that would be a $30 million payday. You may assume that Dr. Dre owned Beats, because that is what I thought. I had no idea that will i am was the guy with the original idea. But there are 3 founders, Dr. Dre, Jimmy Lovine (will i am's Mentor), and will i am. Apparently, will i am came up with the original idea for Beats while on tour with the Black Eyed Peas in Europe in 2004. It was there that he saw fans holding up camera phones (not lighters) like they still did in the US. And At that moment he realized that there was an opportunity in the hardware space. Listen to this.......I be rockin' them Beats! He even had the Super Bowl halftime stage shaped into the Beats logo when they performed back in 2011. This was grassroots marketing. Beats wasn't allowed to put an actual logo on the field, so will i am came up with this instead. The initial story goes something like this: And this is a quote for will i am's mentor Jimmy Lovine... "So I was with will.i.am one day and he says, "You know the record business is all screwed up, we're losing, Jimmy. Jimmy, hardware.'" "So I said, 'Will, what are you talking about hardware?'" "He says 'Hardware.'" So I said 'Will, you know why they call it hardware? It's hard. That's why they call it hardware '" "About a year later I was walking down the beach and I ran into Dr. Dre…" Now, there is a lot more to the story, and I would encourage you to listen to the episode, but what I wanted to do, is share with you the lesson that I learned, that really resonated with me... will . i . am's mentor, Jimmy Lovine, said something to him that really stuck. He said, "Will, you are the type of person that if you stay at the table long enough, you will figure it out." and I love that. If you have been listening to this podcast you may know that I recorded a recent episode called, everything is figureoutable, and this statement really hit me. Heck yeah, if you stay at the table long enough, you will figure it out. But there is more to this... Jimmy also said, "You just need to figure out a way to stay at the table longer" Boom! I love love love this.. How can you not only stay in the room but stay at the table longer? But wait, there is even more.... Jimmy then said, "OR: be the table. BE THE TABLE. BE THE TABLE. My mind was blown. Think about that. Then I realized there were 3 big takeaways, each with increased benefits of the opportunity. #1 Being "in the room" gives you access. How can you be in the room at your next dream project? That.s up to you, you can figure it out, I know you can do it. And it is important to remind yourself, that whatever you really want to have, to achieve, etc., you need to be in the room with someone who can help you make it happen. #2 Next, it's not just about being in the room, there is more. You need to be at the table. Being "at the table", means you are in the room when life-changing opportunities present themselves. And if you listen to the episode with will i am, you will hear how Will was in the room when the magic unfolded. #3 If the longer you stay at the table, unlocks more opportunities, then BEING THE TABLE, means you are the one creating those opportunities. And that is some serious shit. Personally, I want to be the table. I realized that this has been my goal. I didn't do this exactly, and I still don't know exactly how I can do this, but I'd like to be "the table". So, to bring this home, please know this episode may not resonate with everyone. Some of you might be perfectly happy with your job, doing what you are doing, and doing it forever and ever and ever. and this is totally cool. doing what you want to do is the goal, and if you are doing that, I applaud you. If you want more - more fulfillment, more challenges, more money, more whatever, you may have more of a growth mindset, and I want you to think about the table analogy. How can you get in the room, have a seat at the table, and become the table? I want to leave you with one final quote for this episode, and then I see you next. Reid Hastings, on Masters of Scale, says, "will.i.am was already successful, but he wanted more. He saw a window to create a bigger opportunity, he'd change his sound, a

Maybe you think soul moisture sensors don't work, and that's okay, you can call me out. I will agree that weather-based ET controllers have the potential to be better than a timer, however, I would argue that mass adoption is low, and for the systems are out in the wild, a majority of them do not operate correctly, and they leave a shit ton of doubt in the mind of the consumer. I would also say that before you take a stance before you disagree with me, when was the last time you installed and programmed an irrigation system to run fully automatically using a soil moisture sensor? If your answer is never, then you need to listen, learn, and give it a try, before you take a position. So I just mentioned that I think that weather-based system mass adoption is low, and for the systems are out in the wild, a majority of them do not operate correctly, and they leave a shit ton of doubt in the mind of the consumer. And I believe that if you asked a random stranger on a park bench, or the next person that you sit next to on an airplane, what tool would be best suited to automate a sprinkler system, they would guess a soil moisture sensor. And then, when you tell them that this technology is not readily available, they will be shocked! I say, "readily available", because although it is available, it is either too costly for the everyday system, or too basic and doesn't provide the correct data or automation.

in 2004, Andy made 6 predictions about the future of irrigation for a presentation with a group of Landscape Architects. -------- Today I have 3 powerful lessons from my own experience. These are 3 lessons that I feel will improve your mindset and allow you to be more flexible and open up more opportunities that come your way in the future. Lesson #1 - Dreaming. What do you dream about? When I say dream, what I'm asking is, what do you think about? Not what you think about while you are asleep, although there is nothing wrong with that either, and the more you dream while you are awake, the more you will have similar dreams while you are sleeping. What I mean is, what do you see in the future? Do you see the future? Do you allow yourself the space to consider what the future will look like? You can do this for every aspect of your life, and I find it to be a fun exercise. Picture your ideal life. Picture yourself getting out of bed, what do you do, what does it look like, where are you, what does it smell like, what colors are the walls, and who are you with, picture all of it. The first step in making these dreams come true is to embody them, to literally pretend as if they are real. Sometimes when I really get into this practice I may even feel goose bumps, and that's how I know I'm on the right track. So all of that being said, let's move this back to business. I have an actual example of a vision I had back in 2005 that I'd like to share with you. I found this deep in my files last week while I was searching for something else entirely, and I was struck by it. In 2004 & 2005 while I was working for Turf Equipment & Supply Company in Maryland as a Water Manager Representative I often visited the offices of landscape architects during their lunch hour to educate them on best irrigation practices, how to design, and new products. Last week I found a slide deck with a specific slide that caught my eye, and actually blew my mind. The title is, The Future of Irrigation. Remember that this was 2004. The Future of Irrigation: #1 - ET Control #2 - Wireless Control #3 - Internet Accessibility #4 - PDA's #5 - Graphical Interfaces #6 - Flow Metering for Leak Detection & Reaction. "If you are challenging the boundaries of any genre/industry, what came before is not all that there has to be. There can be something beyond that which is not yet imagined" - Tom Morello, RATM Never Work for Money Hating your job is never worth the money. The way I've gotten wealthy is not by accepting giant paychecks or titles to jobs I know I'll hate. I follow my curiosity and my passion, always. And that's meant leaving money on the table, so much money that people thought I was crazy. Don't get trapped. Just because you know of any better options, doesn't mean they don't exist. There is other money, there are other jobs. New opportunities will most likely come to you.

Today I'm opening my notebook and sharing a concept with you that I think is super relevant to using technology, being an entrepreneur, and kinda hits the nail on the head as it relates to being an innovator, and an early adopter. So today I'm going to share my personal experience with taking business risks and trying something new. So as it relates to taking risks, and trying to things, I've always had this attitude of just figuring it out. That's it, that's the secret - the secret for me is to just figure it out. I was thinking about this concept about a month ago and I wanted to learn more about this, and learn more about why I think this way, because it's not how everyone thinks, and you may not think this way, but I wanted to learn more, so I googled it. Right? I can't remember exactly what I googled, but what I found hit me to my core. I was not alone. There was someone else who also thought just like me, and she had written a book and was publicly speaking on this very topic - the topic of figuring things out - and she described this concept as, "figureoutable". Fucking figureoutable! Yes, that's it. That is the attitude where failure is not an option. let me explain. When I think about everything I have ever done, basically ever, it was not because I read it in a manual, or was given specific instructions, or followed someone else's advice, it was because I figured it out. Sometimes when I meet someone for the first time and we start talking about business, what we do for a living, etc., I usually get asked a question like this, "Hey Andy, how did you build your first website?" And my response it typically something like, "huh, great question, I'm not sure, but what I can tell you is that I just figured it out" Or, "Andy, how did you learn pay-per-click advertising? Andy, how did you learn ecommerce? Or, Andy, how did you learn how to import products from China? How did you learn podcasting? How did you learn how to make YouTube videos? Fill in the BLANK, how did you learn____? How did fix ___? This is not just business, this is as simple as my bathroom sink stopper being stuck, the spring loaded ones, and going to youtube, and figuring out how to fix it - everything is figureoutable! This is how I think, and so often we assume that everyone is juts like this, but as I mature, I realize this is not true. Not everyone is just like us. and I see examples of this in out industry all the time, especially as it relates to technology, and using something new for the first time. When I was first bringing Baseline technology to market in 2005, and even to this day, I see contractors & distributor salespeople that are afraid. They are afraid of not knowing. They are afraid of what might go wrong. They make up stories in their minds about what could happen, and what would happen if they don't know how to fix it. And what happens is they either 1) spend a crazy amount of time beforehand trying to learn everything about it, and wasting their time, and historically my time, just to realize that it was easier than they thought. Or 2) they become avoidant and expect someone else to do it for them. If this is you, I hope you are smiling, and if this is not you, I also hope you are smiling because you know exactly what I'm talking about. The key is to remember that something IS going to happen that you haven't planned for and that you can't plan for, so you need to have the mindset that, no matter what, EVERYTHING IS FIGUREOUTABLE. I'd like to imagine that this rule is 100% true. It will never fail you. Everything is figureoutable. And as I think more on this, it reminds me of my theory of can't, and removing can't from your vocabulary, never say can't. Instead say, how can I, or, I choose not to, I'm saying now. But don't say can't. If you are someone who says they can't, or perhaps the voice inside your head says you can't, you will never figure it out. Assuming that it is all figureaboutable, you need to ask yourself HOW? How is the keyword. how can I fix this? how can I change this? how can I make this? How can I? And you might have to try it 100 times to finally figure something out, but it is possible. Get curious, be curious, ask questions, and you will figure it out. Once you understand that, you will realize that you are in control, you are in control of everything, because if something doesn't go right, if something doesn't go as planned, it doesn't matter, you will figure it out. Oh, I have one more real-world example that I think you'll get a kick out of......the year was probably 2019 and I set up a meeting with Hudson Yards in NYC to do a short training class as well as discuss Building Management Integrations.... As I wrap this up, I really think this is probably the best attitude you can have for implanting new technology, because as we know, technology is great when it works! And it doesn't always work, but if you carry the attitude of figureoutable, you will not fail. As a reference, the book I fou

In this episode, Andy asks a specific question to frame this episode. What is a Smart Controller? Think about this question. It may seem obvious at first, but I want you to really think about it. What EXACTLY does it mean? I ask this question because I think it is a grey area. I think we use the words Smart Irrigation or Smart Water, very loosely, which can cause confusion in the minds of your client, and also in the minds of us, the industry. What if I told you that you could buy a Smart Controller on Amazon for less than $100? Would you tell me that it's not a smart controller? This is why I'm asking you to think about this. My belief is that the phrase "Smart Controller" is so vague, that it has lost its meaning, and we make up our own meaning for it. Now that you've thought about it, I'm going to give you the exact answer. This is according to the Irrigation Association's master guide, Irrigation 6th edition. there are over 1,000 pages in this book, it is the most detailed book on irrigation in the world. "Smart" irrigation controllers ---- as defined by the Irrigation Association, are "controllers that reduce outdoor water use by monitoring and using information about site conditions (such as soil moisture, rain, wind, slope, soil, plant type, and more), and applying the right amount of water based on those factors" Page 557. Crazy, right? SMART is only a feature. A feature that allows a controller to automatically adjust for the site climate. Is wifi Smart? is flow monitoring Smart? is Water Budgeting Smart? is Leak detection Smart? is automatically optimizing concurrent zone operation to maintain a specific volume of water Smart? Why is SMART only 1 feature? Are we using the word SMART to define other features and capabilities of a controller?

I challenge you to fantasize. Let your mind wander. Let your mind drift and wonder. Let your mind be silly, playful, and creative. The future doesn't just happen, the future is created, and you get to build it.

WHAT ARE YOU OPTIMIZING FOR? Why are you doing what you are doing? I ask you this question because last week I was asking myself this question. The question came up on my radar when I was reading Atomic Habits, by James Clear. It's a fantastic book and I highly recommend that you read it, or listen to the audio version, or I james Clear says himself, READ A BOOK LIKE A HAWK SEARCHING FOR PRAY, you don't need to read the whole book, just go looking for the key moments of inspiration - more on that later. For me, I've chosen to optimize for IMPACT. - I don't want to make the most amount of money - I don't want to have the biggest team - I don't need to have the largest business - What I do want, is to make the largest IMPACT that is possible. Specifically, first I want to make the largest impact in the irrigation industry. Second, might be to impact the greater landscape industry, and after that, I would like to make an impact on every person who would like to carve their own path. That is my why - I want to create an impact, and influence change - we will hit on CHANGE later in this episode. So instead of optimizing for money, ego, status, etc., I realized that optimize for my time. Time is my currency, and wasting my time is the number one reason I can be easily triggered - if I know there is a better, easier way to do something, and I'm forced to do it the slower way, I get very very frustrated. If you know me, you know this, hahaha. I know this, but I didn't stop to think about why! Time is my currency, and I want to create impact - so it comes down to efficiency, execution, and effectiveness - experimenting with this, making changes, and trying it again. Okay, let's get back to how this relates to the CES Show. I've talked about the concept of becoming your future self - and if you are new to the show - go listen to episode #91 - I talk specifically about becoming your future self. To become your future self, and in this case, becoming your future self means creating IMPACT, and in order to do this, it all starts with, What I think about, WHO I learn from, What I consume, and what I create. The reason I wanted to attend CES is so that I could put myself on the playing field with people smarter than me so that I could see what is coming, and what might have an IMPACT.

ATTENTION PROFESSIONAL DITCH DIGGERS! Could there be a better way? Could there be a better way to dig? In this episode, Andy speaks with Sam Dahrouj, the inventor of Sole Saver™. Sole Saver™ is like having a HAMMER for your BOOT. It removes unnecessary strain so you can work more efficiently than ever before. Sam: "I invented the tool to save my boots. When you're smashing on a shovel all day, it puts a hole in the bottom of the sole very quickly. If you're owner-operator and you buy your guys their PPE, their work boots. At a lot of the larger companies, they'll get a boot allowance, one boot allowance for a season, right? But you know, as an irrigator, that doesn't fly. You need a boot, a pair of boots, every 30 to 45 days due to the top lip of the shovel, putting a hole in the bottom of the boot. And depending on where you hit the shovel, it could actually tear a brand new boot right up real quickly. And as an irrigator, you know, you're in the water. So that puncture just compromised the entire boot and yourself. So, that guy isn't gonna be as efficient, he's not going to want to dig, and he is not going to be confident on the shovel anymore. And this is why I invented Sole Saver™." Links: Boss & Hoss Irrigation Sole Saver™

Andy & Paul Bassett reflect on their 2022 predictions and make new predictions for 2023. You gotta listen to get the juicy details! Contact Andy: https://tinyurl.com/34zrtj25 Contact Paul: https://tinyurl.com/3dpbtwmn

In this episode, Andy has a discussion with Aaron Weiche, the CEO of Leadferno.com. FREE Demo Here >>>> www.sprinklersupplystore.com/leadferno Aaron: What we found is text is so much easier for both the consumer and the business for a number of reasons. So that's really where things start, is you're on a website and you see that you can just ask a question, you know, gather more information, find out if they can help you by starting a text conversation. And now you have that conversation in the app. You likely use the most on your phone and the way you communicate with a majority of your contacts in your. INTRO: If you are an irrigation professional, old or new who designs, installs or maintains high-end residential, commercial or municipal properties, and you want to use technology to improve your business, to get a leg up on your competition, even if you're an old school irrigator from the days of hydraulic systems, this show is for you. Conversation: Welcome back to another episode of the Sprinkler Nerd Show. I'm delighted to have our guest today, Aaron Waki, the c e O of Lead. Ferno Lead Ferno helps businesses to convert website traffic into leads with a web-to-text widget for two-way s m s messaging, Facebook messaging, and Google business messages all in one shared inbox. Their goal is to help you close more leads faster. Aaron is an entrepreneur with 20 years of experience, funding and leading multiple software companies in digital marketing agencies. Prior to lead Ferno, he was the c e O of gather up scaling it to serve over 25,000 businesses. In appearing in the Inc 5,000 list, Aaron led gather up to its acquisition in 2019. He speaks internationally on digital marketing, customer experience, conversions, and messaging. Before I officially welcome Aaron to the show, I want you to know that this chat with Aaron is not sponsored. Endorsed. It's not a sales pitch. It is like literally me just expressing my own curiosity to learn more about SMS technology, how it can help service contractors, as well as an opportunity to get inside the mind of a technology ceo. So with that, Aaron, welcome to the Sprinkler Nerd Show. Andy, thanks so much for having me. And maybe by the time this is all over, you'll say, I endorse this, I promote this. It's wonderful. Right? That that's my goal today. Win you over . Perfect. Okay. I like the spin on that. Excellent. . So I think where I'd like to start, because. it's not as if you and I have known each other for years and years and years. I'd like to start at the beginning and have you give us a little bit of a background on both lead Ferno and s m s messaging as a, as a technology. Yeah. Uh, let's see. To summarize my longer form history, I am just a curious, creative person and luckily in the world, this whole internet thing came along, uh, and across my peripheral in the late nineties. And, uh, Building websites became something that I was very interested in. And if it wasn't for that, I don't know, maybe I'd be in, uh, woodworking or construction or something else where I could create and build. But instead, pixels and code, uh, became my way to build things. Um, so started a few different digital marketing agencies, building websites and SEO campaigns, and then social media. And then got specifically into software, just seeing how much software can help businesses automate things, grow, simplify, be more efficient. And that really intrigued me. And Lead Ferno itself was kind of a culmination of this history in all of these things. Um, one, I, when I was building all kinds of websites, I really sought a solution to. Transferring you from being a lurker on the website to a lead to that business as easy as possible. Um, we spend so much time, effort, money, all these things driving people to this website we have, but it's really not doing its job unless it turns them into someone that we know and can answer questions for and get into our sales process. Uh, so that was one big part of it. Then my previous company gather up was focused on customer feedback and online. And I just saw in mass from millions of pieces of customer feedback and reviews how important communication was for people in having a great or a poor experience. Uh, and then lastly, it was just kind of seeing as a, I've been in this for so long, just seeing the wave of how people were moving. From texting, being only a personal channel to being a do everything channel because it is easy. It's how we like to communicate, it's where all our personal communication is shifted towards. So this natural migration of, well, I want my interactions with businesses to be easier and convenient and have more control as well. So the culmination of all those things led to, uh, lead Ferno with the, you know, the simple precipice of. , are you easy to work with? And how do you be an easy business to work with? And that's what we've tried to build our solution around. Yeah, that's awesome. I'm excited because I actually,

Andy breaks down how much it costs to apply 1" of water.

This episode of the Sprinkler Nerd Show is brought to you by......me! This episode is sponsored by your host, Andy Humphrey. Yep, I'm paying myself, or not paying myself, to entertain your earballs. Kidding, but I got your attention, right? It is a reminder that this show is free, and it cost me about $500 of my time to produce each episode - just my time, not money - but time is money and I'm making this investment for both of us. If you enjoy what I'm producing, my only ask is that you #1 subscribe to the show, and #2 Share this show with a friend or colleague. That would mean the world to me - and because this podcast is niche - and niche by design - there is not a pool of a million listeners out there searching for it - the best way we can develop a larger audience is word of mouth - and i need your assistance. So please subscribe and please share this episode or any episode with a friend. Part #1 - Mail Me As it turns out, you guys are really liking the direction of the podcast. Thanks for your honest feedback, it was so great to chat with many of you at the IA Show last week. The first part of this episode is an experiment. Why is it an experiment? Because i need to entertain myself. Seriously, I thought this experiment would be fun , and it would be an interesting way for us to get to know each other better. So here's the experiment. I would like to personally mail you something. I can't say what that something is, but I want to mail you something. Let's just leave it a mystery. But before I can mail you something I need your address. Cna Myles, if you are listening, way up there in Oh Canada, I'm not sure what it might cost me, but I owe you for the double Whiskey's you bought me in Las Vegas - that was very fun, thank you. So here is what I need you to do. I need you to visit www.SprinklerSupplyStore.com/mailme and fill out the form. I know how many people listen to each episode, so I know I can do it. What I don't know is what might happen in 2 years when the rest of the industry wakes up and starts listening to this. Maybe then, I'll get Hunter to sponsor the mailing, haha. Part #2 - Patience I was listening to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show, and this episode was with Author Steven Pressfied. Steve wrote for 17 years before he earned his first penny. He wrote for 27 years before he got his first novel published (The Legend of Bagger Vance). During that time he worked 21 different jobs in eleven states. he taught school, he drove tractor-trailers, he worked in advertising and as a screenwriter in Hollywood, he worked on offshore oil rigs, he picked fruit as a migrant worker ... And for one season he lived in a house with no power, no water, no doors, no windows. Rent was $15 a month ... Steve explains that life as a writer is like an odyssey. It goes from someone that, at the start, can't do it, and at the end of it, can do it. So if you are feeling like you can't do something - perhaps you are just at the start of it. It's not that you can't do it, it's just that somethings take time to learn, and everyone has a different learning ability - some learn quickly, some learn slowly, and not everyone has the same amount of time to be learning. The bigger questions - actually it's more of a reminder, it that you can do anything. One of the takeaways from his story, and it resonated with me, is that there were a series of breakthroughs along the way, emotional or other, and almost always, the breakthroughs don't pay off in the moment. You can have a breakthrough, let's call it an AHA moment, and then nothing happens. He says that it's like 10years later, it finally pays off. So that if anyone listening, is trying to understand what that means - what it means is that big work - big ideas - take a long time to become something. If you are starting company right now, or you have just hired a key employee, or you are building a passive income stream by flipping houses, it might be a year - or 2 years - or more, before you really start seeing ht benefits. let me give you an example, and I haven't shared this publicly yet - I don't think. I had an aha moment and decided to offer paid technical support calls with me, via Zoom, behind a paywall. Millions of DIYers run to YouTube to get answers - I do the same regularly. I thought, what if for $75, I could just answer their question? So I through a customer link onto every youtube video that I make and I waited. Then, one, someone actually paid $75 and scheduled a call with me. I was shit, fuck yes, this worked, this is going to change the game. Did it change the game? No. Well, slightly, because we now have a better support approach that we can monetize, however, the vision that I had in my first AHA moment, was room full of Sprinkler Nerds, answering calls and helping people directly over the web for a fee. I could clearly see it. I could hire the best Sprinkler Nerds around the country and we could provide a subcontracting service to distributors, ot

Andy shares his insight about the definition of quality while listening to an interview with Seth Godin on The Tim Ferris Show (#638). QUALITY. If you are a perfectionist, Quality as is a great way to hide. And if you factor in that according to Wikipedia, 25-30% of the general population are perfectionists. That's quite high, and how is the word Quality, a great way to hide? He says this because he believes, and I would agree with him, that you do not want to be an enemy of quality. I'm going to dig into this, but I'd like for you to think about how often you might use this word in your own business, or in your own daily routines. I'd put money down, that you use the word quality to describe your company, your work, your ethic, etc., you cannot be the enemy of quality. When an engineer, a product manager, or a company, says, "I can't ship this yet because the quality isn't there (like a physical product, or software), or someone says, "why are you racing through that project, don't you want to put quality into it?" We feel defenseless in the face of that question, because yes, we want quality. So, someone who doesn't want to ship their work is going to stand behind perfectionism. BUT perfectionism has nothing to do with Perfect, and perfect does not have a lot to do with quality. BOOM! Mic fucking drop right there. I think I should say that again, perfectionism has nothing to do with perfect, and perfect does not have a lot to do with quality. Holy cow, right?!? So, what this means, and this is the heart of my aha moment, and this episode, is that quality has a very specific definition. This concept is something that I had not given much thought to in the past, because, perhaps I was making my own definition of quality, through my own lens, and my personal tastes, based on my own experiences, but in knowing what was this ever a specific definition of quality. So, what does QUALITY mean? Seth Godin said that, the definition of QUALITY, comes from Edwards Deming, and the rest of the quality movement of the 40's and 50's, the people who gave us, the Toyota, and what it means is, MEETS SPEC. That's it. That is what quality means, that. is. it. MEETS SPEC. Then he says, so if I asked you what is a better car, a Toyota Carolla, or a rolls Royce, the answer is, a Toyota Carola, because the Toyota meets SPEC. It more reliably does exactly what it is supposed to do, when it is supposed to do it than a rolls Royce does, but rolls Royce is a different thing, it is luxury, and it is deliberately spending resources to create something that most people can't have. Boom, mic drop again! To me, this means quality could mean many things, but you must know what the specification was, in order to decide if the product or project was quality. I guess that what this might also mean, is that if you are a landscape contractor or an irrigation contractor, and you do not meet the project specification, you do not do quality work. Simple as that. How well did you meet the project specification? If you are a design-build contractor, perhaps you also have the advantage of writing the specification - and if you can write the specification - I would you could deliver a finished project that meets your own specification well. The next definition of quality which I won't go deep into in this episode, but it is equally important, especially when there is no clear SPEC to MEET, which is often the case with landscape construction projects - the next definition of quality is THE MAGIC of MAGIC. What is the Quality of Magic - think about the good old fashion coin trick, when a good magician either makes the coin disappear, or the coin goes from one hand to the other. For a moment you feel something, some amazement, some tension, the tension of questioning how that just happened, because you know that couldn't happen - but that just happened - and you have both of these feelings at the same time. That couldn't happen, but that just happened, at the same time. Once you know how the tick is done, it is simply a trick, the magic is gone. And in the case of a great performance or great customer service, or great theatre, the first time you experience it, the unexpected moment when the lights turn on for you, that is the magic moment, and that Magic moment is another definition of quality. Seth believes that with robotics, artificial intelligence, and offshoring, the work that is left for us, is the work to create magic. That is really powerful, how do you create magic? So guys, if your product or project does not has a SPEC you can MEET, you might look for the magic in the magic. What can you offer your clients, for the first time, that will have an unexpected moment of wow? - I'm writing that down - look to give your customers an unexpected moment of wow - and they will perceive that as QUALITY. So perhaps, and I'm going to leave this thought with you....would it be possible to meet a spec 100% and do a quality job, and if every contractor met th