The blog is back!
Due to several people commenting lately that they enjoyed reading our blog — “The Blog is Back Baby!”
I have missed writing the blog myself and there’s never a shortage of things to write about or discuss; it’s been more about the lack of time to put the words in print. I know some of you wordly wizards write a mile a minute, all ten trigger fingers blazing away, but this writer is stuck pre-tech or to be honest stone age, one finger entering one letter one at a time. Don’t get the idea that I’m turtle slow its more like just not rabbit fast. In fact i once tried my hand at the mortgage business and my manager came around the corner one day and gasped in amazement that I had kept up pace with the in-house correspondence using my one quick digit and the other hand holding coffee.
Some time has past since my last blog and there just isn’t time to recover all the time lost, so we’ll focus and review the past week, then maybe we can keep it going into the future.
This past week we began new accounts on three golf courses, Snoqualmie Ridge, Mill Creek, and Harbour Pointe. Amazingly I met with the first potential client at Snoqualmie last Tuesday morning and was hired, then headed to Mukilteo and was also hired there at Harbour Pointe, and then while going towards Woodinville, I received a bid request in Mill Creek. And there you go — three new golf course jobs in the same day and 100+miles of driving. Since last Tuesday, we’ve been spending a considerable amount of time in Snoqualmie cleaning-up our new client’s home near the 18th hole in preparation for the Boeing Classic golf tournament this weekend. Although I know golfers and worked for Allen Geiberger “Mr 59″ until he moved to California, I had no idea how big PGA related events were. Crews have been building huge tents around the green for weeks with fancy new Cadillacs strategically placed everywhere for best advertising. With all the people feverishly working you can really feel the excitement in the air.
Despite the economy we have been having one of our best years. Thank you to all of our clients who have enthusiastically referred us to your friends and co-workers. We have also very much appreciated your emails and reference letters.
“Our clients know the difference between those who know and those who oughta know better”
These past few weeks I’ve met with many potential clients and keep repeatedly finding simple mistakes that make the difference and people in our line of work should know better. For instance and fairly common if you don’t know better, having thick bark piled around/against tree trunks and rose/shrub canes/stems is the reason many people have been concerned about dying trees and shrubs and the majority were preventable. Bark is great not just being attractive but also keeping down the weeds and preventing moisture loss. It’s these attributes that also directly make it a killer when piled high against trunks/stems/ and canes. Where the roots meet the surface and your tree or shrub rises from the earth, there is a transition from a woody root desiring warmth and moisture to an above ground trunk, stem or cane that needs to breathe. When beauty bark gets piled up in this situation it doesn’t allow the plants bark to breathe. The heat — a result of decomposition — and moisture deteriorate the protective bark and destroy the Cambium layer responsible for healing the plant, which results in an untimely passing of your precious plant(s).
A client’s wife once told me that her husband “spends more money trying to save money then he would have ever spent doing it right the first time”. More often then not, I find this to be true of people hiring the cheapest, fastest talker, or only getting one bid. I know that sometimes we’re the least expensive and maybe that’s because you were getting overcharged. I don’t consider myself a fast talker as much as one who simply enjoys good conversation usually involving plants. We might be the one bid you take a chance on, but I would always like my potential clients to get multiple bids and really compare apples to apples, line by line to see we’re the best fit.
From BenK and Sure Lawn, Enjoy your week!
