Evolve or die

[Jims5543]

Just read through this whole thread for the first time. Surveying classes in college were my absolute favorite part, absolutely loved going out in the field. Now the equipment is smarter than the surveyor most of the time.

A good friend of mine, who is also a surveyor graduated the University of Florida with a 4 year degree in Land surveying.  I remember sitting next to him in a CE class when have a degree was new.  The instructor asked if anyone had a degree my friend raised his hand, he was the only on in the class with a Land Surveying Degree.  The instructor asked why he chose land surveying, my friend quipped right back, my guidance counselor told me I was too stupid to be an Engineer.

I about fell out of my chair laughing. Some of the old timers in the room were not amused.

My favorite part of my day is working with my toys in the field. I cannot wait to get out and start in the morning.  Some days are mundane others are adventures. The cool thing is, you never know what kind of day you are in for. I love that. I love the constant changing scenery.

I am in the middle of my least favorite part of the day and sadly it is long from over... drafting up all the work.

I would rather be outside.

[Jims5543]

Then I decided to completely change how we gather field notes, I picked up a reMarkable tablet, they are expensive ($600) but so simple and made for one task that it does extremely well, worth it.  Once complete I can transfer the field noted to the Toughbook as well including them in the email with the points.

The reMarkable is really cool. It only responds to stylus touches to dragging your hand or a template across does nothing.  We LOVE it.



Now we roll up to a job site, take the notes on the digital tablet, then shoot the job in collecting the points on our windows mobile device, once back in the truck we fire up the wifi and laptop, transfer the points to the laptop and email them to the drafter who is waiting for that data to finish the job, he has already started the drafting early in the morning when we leave and just needs our data to complete.

We now have 2 ReMarkable tablets, I let the mortgage crew have the new one, I took the old one.

The new one is thinner and more intuitive than the MK1.  It has a stylus that has a digital eraser on the back of it, no more changing icons to erase to clear a line out.. It also has at least 4x the battery life of the OG one.  It also lets the stylus stick to the side of the tablet via a magnet which is really helpful.

The crew loves the new one and said the old one is garbage compared to it. Wish they were cheaper I would buy one for me too. I will muddle along with the old one, I tend not to take notes as much as my tasks per day are mostly construction related.

[94touring]

Is it anything like an etch a sketch?  ;D

[Jims5543]

I guess I will put this here. I had the most profitable year in business in over 12 years. 

The crazy part is I am doing that with 1/5 of the staff I had 12 years ago.   My gross revenue for the year rivals 2007, before the housing crash, in 2007 I had about 15 employees, now I have 3. Granted I spent close to 100K streamlining and adding tech to do that.  My truck alone has over 50K in tech in it, that eliminates the need for a co worker, it paid for itself in less than 2 years.

I have been handing out Christmas bonuses over the last 3 weeks, one to each employee per week.  Looking at their faces when they see a bonus that equals over a months income and in some cases, 2 months, is awesome!  Best part of owning a business are these moments.

The worst is laying them off, especially when you like them. I really hope I am not laying off anyone in the next couple of years.


Completely unrelated to politics, so do not read into this, purely based on prices.

Vacant lots here spiked at an alarming rate. 4 months ago you could grab a 1/4 acre lot for 25-30K, now they are 60-80K..... not good, this is reminiscent to 2008 for me.

I already started circling my wagons a few weeks ago, I am pretty sure a huge crash is coming, I am glad I have a lot of gold, silver and lead on hand.

The RE market is priming itself for a big fall.  There are also a lot of factors in play I am purely looking at house pricing and it is not a pretty sight.  Overvalued is an understatement.

[Jims5543]

Is it anything like an etch a sketch?  ;D

LMAO!!

Ummm  no....

[Jims5543]

Lets recap the week so far....

I had a Monday from hell, I am sure of it.

In addition to Gmail being down (I am reading news Google is down today as well) I had a shitastic morning.

Monday is garbage day, my 0500 task before I leave for the office is to gather up the trash and take it to the curb.  We have a pooper scooper setup for the back yard consisting of a scooper with a winn dixie bag on it.  Then a baby diaper can that holds the poop until trash day to keep order down.

While getting all the shit bags a piece must have fallen and I stepped on it with my flip flop unknowingly.

I took the trash out to the curb, shit included and drove the office, I did not smell anything foul on my way in, but I did have my window open.

I get to the office walk around turning on things for the work week, getting ready to make some coffee, I walk to the bathroom to rinse out a mug and happen to look  down, I see a smudge, like Mr. Hanky and scooted by. I immediately realized it was from my flip flop and then notice the shit over the edge of it. Then I look back across the office and see the dabs of shit from every step I took all over the office.

I spent a good 15 minutes running around cleaning up sit marks all over the floor.

Yay for Mondays!


Tuesday?  Worse than Monday?  Possibly.  At least there was no shit..

- Lost my work phone ( more on that later)

- client orders a survey that requires me to survey 1 square mile and thinks they can have by Friday

- Client I have not heard from in 20 years reaches out and wants me to stop what I am doing to survey his properties in Palm Beach. LOL!! No happening

- Client who I have never worked for before needs to be present when I survey his 5 acres. Needs me to coordinate my movements so he can meet me there on Wed. - I am telling him I need to push his surveyors show off for at least a week, maybe 2.

- Stupid bitch cunt that works for my big builder and handles closings.... we do not hear from her for a month at a time. Then she pops up and orders 30-40 final surveys and wants them all in 10 days.
I just sent her a polite email and told her some of them would be impossible.

- Because bitch cunt sucks at her job, the title company that closes all the houses goes around her straight to us to bail them out when she is doing what she does best, nothing.  I put my foot down and told them they need to go through her, its her job to make sure they have what they need.

- My ditz client forgot to order a survey again. Crunch time tomorrow. She orders more from me than entire offices, when she says jump...... I jump.

- The girl that works for her mom and dad called the office today and cried to Dori that a mean lender demands a survey today or else she cannot close a file Monday next week.  Unbeknownst to her, it was a previous survey for us, we "rushed" it and delivered it the same day looking like hero's.

- Big builder has pissed of the County and cannot get Certificate of Occupancy on several houses in one community due to drainage problems. The bitch cunt orders finals this week and claims they are closing on Friday  the super is frantic and trying to sort all the properties out at once, and thinks I have nothing to do but stand and wait for him. Fuck both of them.... cunts!!

- This evening I am in the process of drafting up 7 plot plans for builders who all want them.... NOW!!

- I have several more boundaries in my office that have to be drafted up before Monday. Weekend Fun!!

- I have another 15 finals to draft up that are all "closing" next week. More weekend fun!!

- A new city rule was implemented on 1 Nov, I have to survey every property they want to put a pool in at. I have a backlog of about 10 pool surveys, some are over a month old.

- There are easily another 40 jobs that need to go out in the field and we are struggling to get to them.


I start to rage them remember 2010, I was sitting in my office watching movies hoping an order would come in and I would have something to do.

This is a good problem.

[Jims5543]

BTW - I Cannot wait until tomorrow!! I am sure it will bring all kinds of excitement.

Oh and the title company what wants a survey by Friday?  After I pointed out the task they put before me... they were very accommodating and gave me 1 extra day.

Woo!

[94touring]

I'm supposed to work tomorrow provided we don't get snowed out. 

[Jims5543]

The client that wanted to meet me at the 5 acre survey brought a side by side with him.  I was planning on taking my FJ Cruiser out on the property and giving it a proper 4x4 workout, we got to abuse his machine instead. So, I was stressing over coordinating for nothing. I guess I am just stressed out lately.

Met some surveyor buddies for beers last night, it was nice to blow off some steam with them.

[94touring]

Sounds like prime opportunity to post beers in the drunk thread.

[Jims5543]

Seems I am ahead of my time.

FloRida passed a $15 Min wage law.

This year in Sept. we bump from $8.30 to $10 an hour min. then bump a dollar a year until we hit $15.

At $15 an hour my robotic total station pays for itself in 9 months.  Not my intention but to be honest kind of glad I went this route now.

I am toying with doing another Section 179 next year to get the other crew a robot too. 

I am hesitating because I can see the writing on the wall, I will be laying off late in 2021. At least one is going and he is the field helper, I may or may not replace him with a robot.  Most likely I will keep the cash in reserve and not spend it and just let him go.

My older son and I were talking, we are going to see an ushering in of robotics in the next 3-4 years. I see many industries changing.


Who would want to work as a plumber making $15 an hour when you can get a low stress gig at Publix or Target for the same pay?

Office Dori already makes over 15 an hour, I have a field helper who I pay 40 hours a week no matter what he works that this will impact. See, he works 20-30 hours a week and get paid for 40. He makes good money when you back out hours worked vs. take home.

When I am forced to pay him $15 an hour he will go on a time clock and only get pad for the hours he works, that is if he is not laid off in a year or two. Same goes for office Dori, if things get as bad as I am anticipating. She will be gone too.

I am so close to erasing my debt from 2008-2015, maybe 4-5 more months.  Then I get into protection mode, I learned a lot in 2008-2010 and will not repeat the same mistakes.

[MiniGene]

Hey Jim,

It's been a while since I've posted on the board--anyway, rereading some of your posts on this subject.  More than a year has gone by, I'm interested to hear what your thoughts are with the time that has past.

I did recently read an article about how big wall street firms were buying up parcels of land to build single family homes to own as rental properties (since the market has been pushing a lot of previously would-be buyers out of the market).  What's your take?

-Gene

[Jims5543]

Hey Jim,

It's been a while since I've posted on the board--anyway, rereading some of your posts on this subject.  More than a year has gone by, I'm interested to hear what your thoughts are with the time that has past.

I did recently read an article about how big wall street firms were buying up parcels of land to build single family homes to own as rental properties (since the market has been pushing a lot of previously would-be buyers out of the market).  What's your take?

-Gene

Sorry, Gene, I took a long break from here. For reasons.

I was wrong on many fronts, I expected a RE crash, that never happened, prices just kept going up up up and up.

I have never seen anything like this in my life, on top of the most overinflated RE prices ever, interest rates are now 3X what they were in 2020.

I thought 2021 was going to be a bad year, I was wrong, it eclipsed 2020. I knew, deep down 2021 was going to be the peak, there was no way I would beat that year and I was right.  2022 was down about 20% from 2021. 2023 went down another 25%, except I decided to start raising my prices in late 2023. Now in late 2024 my business is much slower, but due to about a 50% rate hike, I am still doing pretty good.

In 2021 we were providing 25 mortgage surveys a week to clients for existing home closings. In 2024 we might do 3 a week.

In 2021 we were supporting new home starts to the tune of about 30 houses a week, and yes, it was because large investment companies were buying up new construction homes by the dozens. One builder I was working for, 80% of the houses they built were sold to this one Investment group, when I did some research on why they were, they were based in the PRC. 

In 2024 I see maybe 3 house starts a week, if that sometimes we go weeks with no new house starts.

I shifted away from Builders and existing home sales, I linked up with Pool and Paver companies supplying permit surveys for them to remodel driveways, pools and in a lot of cases new pool construction.  That now make sup about 60% of me work load.

We also take on all off the street customers (something we did not do in 2021 or 2022) to fill in the gaps from the lack of existing and new home sales.

I also linked up with a commercial title company and land about 1-2 commercial ALTA surveys a month from them, one of those surveys = 10-20 existing home sale surveys.  The best part is I charge top $$ for this service and spend 1/4 the time on them. Huge profits from those orders.

Did we crash? Nope, we just trended downward steadily over the last 3 years. I knew in 2021 this was coming so I was not in the slightest surprised by it. I expected a crash, like in 2008, I was wrong instead we have a slow burn, a slow downward spiral.

I accomplished all I needed to in 2020-2022 financially, I could probably retire now at 58 if I consulted with a good FA. Except I don't want to.

I am going to grind 2 more years until I am 60, then I am going to scale back my salary and participation and put my older son in charge, then its his turn to get himself financially set, I figure he can be 100% debt free in about 2-3 years once he is in charge, then I want him to continue to / step up his investing game.

What coming in the next year?

After what I have seen these last few years, I have no idea, nothing makes any sense anymore. I have treated the last 8 years like I was still in the great recession, I will continue with that business model as it has served me well.

The investment bankers buying up all the rear estate has come to an end. I would say that ended in 2022, I can see the housing market was/is slow to react to that.  I tend to see things before other trades and the street does. I can say the housing market has died.

I got away from it 2 years ago, glad I did now.

 

[Jims5543]

A week ago my one client who orders commercial surveys from me needed one in Merritt Island near the the Space Center.

It was 100 miles from my office.  I really didn't want to go that far for one job and was not even sure what to quote it out at.

One of my Surveyor Friends who I meet for beers once a month just opened a second satellite office in Melbourne, which is about 15 miles and 20 minutes from the property I needed to survey.

I asked him to give me a quote to do the field work only and I would handle the drafting.  He came back with a quote close to $5K.  for the field work only.... I was in shock.  I wasn't even going to charge that much for the entire job!

I decided to just do it myself. My wife suggested we make a half weekend out of it. She booked us an Air BNB in Downtown Cocoa just over the bridge from the job site, it was a 5 minute drive from Downtown to the commercial site.

She found a cute little condo on the river a 5 minute walk from the restaurants, shops and bars in downtown.

We got into Cocoa around 6pm Friday, tossed our bags and my equipment in the condo and walked over to a newer restaurant that just opened, its menu was full of southern comfort foods.

https://tinwhiskey.com/?

They had a live band playing, it was a fantastic cool evening here we sat out on the deck and listened to the band for a couple of hours, had some drinks ate some fantastic food.  We also learned from the waiter they do not use seed oil in the fryers, only tallow. We were impressed by that. 

Downtown has a lot of cool places to visit, tons of shops, this place is a blast we have been here in the past, it has a huge outdoor courtyard and a stage, pretty legit German place.



This English Pub is a block over, I believe Classic Mini's United has visited here a few times during their Florida meets.



A couple of shots of downtown Cocoa Village, its a cute little town now. When we moved away from this area in 1997 you did not go here it was a really bad ghetto. So cool to see it revitalized.





We had a fantastic evening, another great idea from my wife. The next morning we walked over to a little cafe and had breakfast before leaving the condo, packing the truck and going over to the commercial property. The property was a small strip plaza on a busy road.

I had no idea what I was walking into since i have not worked in this area in over 30 years, I actually learned Land Surveying about 5 miles from this job site, the company I worked for is no longer there.

I gave my wife the option to help me or drop me off and go shopping, she wanted to help me out. Even though my equipment does not need 2 people, one can work just as efficiently.

I got really really lucky, all the property corners were in, everything!! I was stoked to find that. That made my job so much easier, I did not have to set any property corners.

It took us about 1.5 hours to survey this, and I was taking my time.  I had Mrs5543 running the Win10 tablet at times, to help expedite the process.



I charged close to 5K to do this survey. I am paying my contract drafter $600 to draw it up, after all expenses traveling staying the night , food, gas etc.. I cleared close to 4K on this and had a fun weekend.

We went back downtown and walked around all the shops there, had lunch in a Mexican place that had fantastic taco's. Then once we were done shopping we stopped off at a fantastic BBQ joint  called Cydermans, in downtown and  purchased a family pack to bring home and were home by about 330Pm.   https://www.crydermansbarbecue.com/

[Jims5543]

My 25K robot has been nothing but a problem since the day I purchased it. I bought my other crew the next generation robot.  It has been problem free.

Mine? It has been in for repairs 5X now and now is in for its 6th repair and I am over it. I cannot afford for this downtime.

I ordered a second generation Robot, since the 3rd generation robot is 2 months from being released and I am not waiting for it, I got a discount on the 2nd Generation model, it is only 24K vs. probably 30K for the new one. Since everything has pretty much doubled in price in the last 4 years, I am happy to pay so little for one. Mine is.

My salesman told me to sell my old one on E-bay, I can ask 10K for it used, they will give me 5K on trade.

So for 14K I get a new problem free unit. I cannot complain, it has made me millions over the last 5 years, 25K is pittance compared to the revenue generated by it.

[Jims5543]

All weekend plans are cancelled including Mini activities.

My BIL who I use as a contract drafter was admitted into the hospital last night. He needs to have a heart transplant, we have known that for almost 10 years now.  He we declining these last few weeks, this past week he could not even get out of bed, he is sleeping 18 hours a day.

Being the stupid stubborn Irish mother fucker that he is, he refuses to admit something it wrong. His wife finally said enough last night, leaded him into the car and drove 3 hours to Tampa General (Highly regarded Heart Hospital) to see his Doc there. They admitted him last night and are running tests, according to a report in the middle of the night last night, they are going to put a stint in to get his blood flow back up. He is running at about 25% capacity at the moment. The best he can achieve with the damage to his heart is 45% and he was there at one point.

Because of that, all the work I have with him is not complete, I had no idea he was this bad, he was keeping it secret.

Therefore, I need to roll up my sleeves, recruit my boys to help my in the office and go to town on all the drafting we have backed up. Its going to be a very long day today and a shit weekend. I hope to be caught up by Saturday so I can mess with the Mini on Sunday.


He is in good hands in Tampa, I am sure they will sort him out.

[Jims5543]

On top of that my younger son is sick today, he thought it was allergies, as the week progressed he ended up feeling like crap last night.

So he is out today, the older kid is out in the field ATM and I just went on a mad tear on a lot of the drafting putting out many fires.

I have 3 more nagging jobs to bang out now that customers are waiting for, then I need to try to get ahead with my pool companies. I have a lot of proposed pools I need to turn out of here.

As I said before, I had no idea he was so sick, he was keeping in secret. I texted my one surveyor friend who uses him as well, he replied he had no idea he was on the phone with my BIL yesterday and he sounded fine. I then informed him that the BIL is hiding his condition, I am not sure why.

Anyway, I have another dozen jobs I need to expedite through here this weekend. 

I am rethinking not having an in house drafter and thinking it is time to hire someone here full time.

[Jims5543]

The docs are still trying to decide what to do with my BIL. He is not getting a transplant, they want to put that off for as long as possible, since he is in his early 50's.  Once you get a transplant you get 10 years of life, some make it 13-15 years and there are rare exceptions of some lasting longer.  The average is 10-13 years. For that reason Docs try to keep you with your OEM heart for as long as possible.

The problem here is my BIL does not live a healthy lifestyle, even after almost dying he cannot control himself. He is probably 80 lbs overweight, he drinks alcohol (forbidden by docs) and on many occasions I have seen him get completely blacked out drunk at parties and then he is hung over for a week after that. His body cannot take that abuse. Him and his older brother both are drinking themselves to death.  The older brother was recently in the hospital, they wanted to keep him there and detox him, he checked himself out. They warned him his liver is going to fail. So he stopped drinking hard liquor and only drinks beer now. In his head that is more healthy.

It's frustrating watching these 2 guys self destruct, you cannot stop them, they are both stubborn, they have to decide on their own.

[Jims5543]

My equipment guy emails me today and asks if my robot had been under water. WTF? I said hell no!  I told him it had been rained on in some torrential downpours that caught me out a few weeks back but I thought it was waterproof?  He confirms it is indeed waterproof then tells me they found water puddled up inside the unit. It might be totaled.

$20K down the drain...

I purchased a new robot for $22K, I was hoping to sell this one for 10K to offset the cost.  I may have to eat it now.  My other crew has the same newer model as the one I just purchased, I just told them to keep a bag in the truck to cover it with if you get caught in the rain. I am doing the same, they are obviously not waterproof.




If you want to see the tech pour water out of the unit, click below.

https://photos.smugmug.com/OLD-SURVEY-PICS/i-hLXhZZn/0/LLW8wbsZpQctZZ9QW3R45H3p2Z7J3PNRF4RvrsCcc/1280/20241118_093905_1020585163552392-1280.mp4

[Jims5543]

Today I learned about IP65 waterproof rating via my equipment salesman.

https://www.budind.com/blog/2014/02/the-mysteries-of-ip65-ip66-and-ip67-rated-enclosures-explained/


My instrument is supposed to be IP65 rated. Supposed to be...

My salesman just called me, we went to his corporate office today to meet with the repair department and find out what is going on.

They were repairing my instrument and were going to hit me with a $3,800 bill for the repairs.

My salesman went off on them. He told them to pull up their website, the pointed me me on there and went on to explain to his boss and the repair department manager how much of my time I have given them for free with no expectation of anything in return.  I did a podcast interview, I let a film crew shadow me for a day then interview me for promotional purposes, the picture below is a screen grab from that day they are using as a promotional backdrop at trade shows.

I just wrote a 22K check to them for a new next generation robot, since I am tired of mine being in for repairs every couple of months.

My other crew has the second gen robot and it has been flawless. My first gen? Not so much, it is on its 5th set of servo motors.  I suspect it has lost its waterproof abilities somewhere along the way due to it being opened up so many times.

Brent, my salesman went to bat for me, he got them to repair my instrument for free.  I may have a buyer lined up for it as well. So I may come out of this mess only taking a 12K haircut.

*edit* I was "covid fat" in that picture, I have to admit, seeing the video of me lugging my gut around inspired me to lose 20 lbs in 2022.

[Jims5543]

This happens about once a month, my older son just called he had to swing back by a property we surveyed this morning to gather some additional data and set some property corners. A neighbor just walked up to him and threatened to kill him.

It happens at least once a month.

I had another employee I had to let go because he cannot keep his cool in these situations, he did 5 years in prison and cannot turn off the alpha shit and has to assert his dominance, he was a liability to my company so I let him go.

I just got off the phone with my son, I asked if he had time to sit around, does, I told him to call the police non emergency and have an office come out and take a statement and get something in writing about this person.

We are tired of this bullshit.

Florida is now a constitutional carry state, we are both seriously considering carrying from now on. We never had these problems until about 10-12 years ago, we used to just show up and survey properties explaining what we were doing when we got there, it was a rare day we had a problem.

Now we call everyone the day prior and let them know we are coming and we still have issues with both homeowner and neighbors when we arrive.

Imagine seeing a guy walking with the rig I have in the picture above and thinking they are up to no good.

[94touring]

In the 5 years I was a land surveyor back in the late 90s early 2000s, I can only think of a couple incidents with jerk property owners.  The only one that really sticks out was just an old lady who was full of insults.  No real threat, just obnoxious.

[MiniDave]

I do not understand the justification for people getting all up into other's business, and then getting aggressive about it too? I mean, stay in your lane, folks! Keep your nose out of other people's bidness.....

[94touring]

Reminds me, I've had 2 incidents with people at the condo. One was another old lady who was the world's biggest bitch.  I was moving appliances in through the loading dock and she didn't like that I had the loading door open.  I told her to mind her business and she threw a big fit.   Then because I was dressed like you'd expect someone who's moving things in and working, she wanted to know who I worked for.  Again, none of your business lady!  But I live here and own multiple units.  The other was a guy with anger issues. He posted a photo of a package left outside the property and I told him it would take less time to move it in where the packages go than it does to post the photo. A little snarky on my part, but I wasn't wrong. He threatened me in a series of private messages till I went to the gym where he was waiting for me to beat his ass.  The video footage was amusing.

[Jims5543]

In the 5 years I was a land surveyor back in the late 90s early 2000s, I can only think of a couple incidents with jerk property owners.  The only one that really sticks out was just an old lady who was full of insults.  No real threat, just obnoxious.

It is almost a daily occurance now.

My crew had to pull off another job today. We were hired to mark a customers back property line so they can put up a fence.

The neighbor behind comes out and tells my crew they are marking the property wrong and he is going to rip out the stakes the moment they leave.

My son, who runs that crew looked at him and said, "Then why am I wasting my time, he pulled out the first and only stake he had set so far (5 were going in) packed the truck and left.

We emailed the customer and told him I (the owner and Surveyor) will be coming out when we figure out when that is.

A couple of years ago, the guy I let go got into a huge screaming fight with a neighbor 3 houses away from our job. Why?  The neighbor 3 houses down told my employee he was lucky that he did not have his gun on him or he would have shot him. The crime? He was looking for a property corner along the roadway in the front of his property.

My employee cam unglued and threatened to beat the snot out of the guy bowing up at him daring him to take a swing. It was at that moment, I knew he was a liability and I needed to let him go.


We are deep diving into the dog asshole, we have some info on him. After the holidays he will start getting random things mailed to him to fuck with his head.

A bag of dicks is not off the table...

https://bagofdicks.com/