Bryan Garza is the Director of Facilities at Filoli, a National Trust historic house, garden, and nature preserve. As the overseer of Filoli’s infrastructure and property, Bryan supports the activities of all operations and programs. He leads an innovative team that focuses on high-quality solutions while maintaining national standards for historic preservation. Before joining Filoli, he served as the Technology Project Manager for the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Bryan Garza shares what it’s like to live on site at Filoli and how he landed the Director of Facilities role
- Bryan reveals the various management approaches he learned while working on facilities projects at UCSF
- Bryan’s tips for gaining the skills needed to work in facilities and horticulture
- How do Bryan’s problem-solving skills help him succeed in facilities management?
- Filoli’s early history, activities, and programs
- How does Bryan manage Filoli to ensure its lasting legacy?
- Bryan’s recommendations for people working towards a career in facilities management
In this episode…
Are you interested in a career in facilities management? Do you have a background in horticulture and think you can rise to the challenge?
Consult with Bryan Garza, a skilled facilities manager with a background in horticulture and project management. Bryan fell in love with Filoli’s nature preserve and now lives and works on site. His passion for nature allows him to excel as Director of Facilities, where he continuously works to gain additional knowledge of the horticulture industry. Bryan will teach you how to gain the skills needed for a successful career in facilities management.
In this episode of Watching Paint Dry, Greg Owens sits down with Bryan Garza, Director of Facilities at Filoli, to discuss how facilities management and horticulture can build off one another. Bryan will divulge how he became Filoli’s new Director of Facilities, the management style he uses to maintain Filoli’s historic site, and the problem-solving skills he uses to innovate and maintain the historic premises.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Greg Owens on LinkedIn
- McCarthy Painting
- McCarthy Painting Contact No.: 415-383-2640
- McCarthy Painting Email Address: info@mccarthypainting.com
- Bryan Garza on LinkedIn
- Filoli
- Jim Salyards on LinkedIn
- Alex Fernandez on LinkedIn
Sponsor for this episode…
This episode is brought to you by McCarthy Painting, where we serve commercial and residential clients all around the San Francisco Bay area.
We’ve been in business since 1969 and served companies such as Google, Autodesk, Abercrombie & Fitch, FICO, First Bank, SPIN, and many more.
If you have commercial facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area and need dependable painters, visit us on the web at www.mccarthypainting.com or email info@mccarthypainting.com, and you can check out our line of services and schedule a free estimate by clicking here.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:10
Welcome to the Watching Paint Dry podcast where we feature today’s top leaders, industry experts and more to discuss issues affecting facility managers and property owners. Now let’s get started with the show.
Greg Owens 0:29
Hello, everyone, this is Greg Owens with an episode of watching paint dry, where we’re continuing our conversations with facilities managers, property owners, and all of the support systems to this entire industry. This podcast like all the podcasts for watching paint dry is sponsored by my company McCarthy Painting. It’s a company that was started by my Uncle Fred McCarthy, McCarthy back in 1969. And I started working for him when I was 16 years old. And that was mainly him and I painting and we specialized in painting flagpoles on top of buildings. We don’t really do that so much anymore. We paint all types of both commercial and residential properties. We have done work but for for spin for Autodesk. We’ve done some work for Google, we did a bunch of repainting of facilities that are being emptied by some of the high tech companies down in Silicon Valley this last winter, and that because they’re their employees are not coming back to the back to the office, which is a whole new, it’s a whole new era. And super excited. If you want to know more about McCarthy Painting, you can go to info to McCarthypainting.com or info@McCarthypainting.com. To find out more about our painting company. I’m really excited to have Bryan Garza on the podcast today, this is going to be really different than some of the other podcasts. Each one is different. We were just talking I had University of San Francisco Medical Center, Bruce was on the last time. And that was all about medical stuff. And now we’re going to learn all about this is the first preserve that we’ve had, because Bryan is the director of facilities for Filoli. And did I get that right
Bryan Garza 1:46
so close Filoli,
Greg Owens 1:46
I only more more much more Italian Filoli. And Filoli and it’s a it’s a preserve, it’s it means some of the things we’re gonna learn about is this Preserve. It has 654 acres, it’s located just outside of Woodside up in the mountains. They’re kind of on the way to Santa Cruz. Is that correct?
Bryan Garza 2:44
Absolutely. Just along the Santa Cruz. Yeah, it’s got a
Greg Owens 2:47
5400 square foot mansion on the property. That’s just insanity. Because I guess once upon a time that was a residence and there’s a bunch of other outbuildings attached to that a six acre orchard and five distinct ecosystems within this Preserve. Welcome, this will be fun. Thank you for being on the watching paint dry podcast, Bryan. Hey, it’s
Bryan Garza 3:09
absolutely my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Greg Owens 3:11
And so where to get started are somewhat we could probably talk about in this. But how are things for you and your family? You were mentioning? I think you said a two year old and that was?
Bryan Garza 3:22
Yeah, you know, I I stopped mentioning months. You know, I think there’s that point in time where you say your child is 18 months and 12 months old. And he’s a now he’s just in the terrible twos. There’ll be three in September and his birthday present for his third birthday will be a little daughter. I’m sorry, a little sister, our first. And so
Greg Owens 3:43
you guys, you guys are busy. You’re like, okay, COVID times, what are we going to do? We should just have kids.
Bryan Garza 3:49
You know, it’s so funny. I’m just really, really thankful that a by chance came along, you know, I I’m 45 the starting a little bit later than some folks do. But I’m young at heart so and he keeps me young at heart and and I’m going to have to definitely probably repaint the walls, the day that we ever win the lottery or move out of this place.
Greg Owens 4:08
Yeah, you know, I tell people all the time when they they have me come into our houses and they have kids and I’m like, you know, there’s a point in time where they go off to college and that’s good to paint the walls.
Bryan Garza 4:14
Yeah, yeah. Especially if they’re they’ve got a lot of energy and that kind of thing. It’s it’s tough. He was a such a such a special life right now. I mean, I love San Francisco. It’s where it came from. And I’m actually talking to you right now, just as my internet’s pretty stable here. But you know, we had a one bedroom apartment and had a fantastic commute to UCSF, but I got a chance to even have a shorter commute, which was the live on the property at Filoli, which is about a half hour south Woodside and the gig also included of course, you know, a home to live in. That just made my commute absolutely the shortest bike ride one could ever desire in stuff. It’s pretty magical in that regard the
Greg Owens 5:03
was that a big decision? Or was it a sort of no brainer for you, when you when you were sort of looking at to position or was it like, wow, we’re gonna give up the city life, we’re gonna move to the country, we’re gonna be on this estate property,
Bryan Garza 5:14
we’re listening to that one song, you know how it goes, it goes on to the country. Country, right? We we actually took a really big leap of faith, I think we just knew that love the chapter of our life here in San Francisco. I’ve been here since 2001. But we just wanted, you know, like, every good book needs more chapters to it. And I thought it’d be a really neat change and also with a guarantee San Francisco and the pandemic literally just hit, we thought it’d be so you know, it might be very smart to try to be in a, I guess, surrounded by nature, rather than surrounded by all these wonderful things that normally mass transit and bars and clubs, you know, just do all those things that are usually fantastic about a city are actually very difficult in the beginning of a pandemic, because suddenly no one turns out, right.
Greg Owens 6:02
Yeah, so that’s not so good during a pen.
Bryan Garza 6:06
Yeah, we were just like everybody else, you know, really trying to navigate that. But also, it was a great opportunity for me because I was going from a, I went from like a project manager position in after eight years, at UCSF to suddenly being the director of facilities. And I really felt like I had gathered so much kind of tips and tricks and just watched the leadership I had seen at UCSF and play that I really wanted to try my shake at it and the new role. And so I had to convince, of course, Filoli, that I’d be, you know, a good candidate for that. And I really did my homework. I think it matters when you apply for jobs. It’s not just put your resume in there. But the right that personalized essay, you know.
Greg Owens 6:51
So as a, as somebody that hires people, it’s so nice to see, sort of, if they’ve given it some thought, like what kind of company it is, and what attributes they have that could work well in this company.
Bryan Garza 7:04
Yeah, no, that’s, that’s exactly it. And I think hopefully, it resonated. I guess it did, since I got hired, but our COO the Chief of Operations, Alex Fernandez, he also raised his kid there. At Filoli, and he still lives there, just about a three quarters of mile away from me. And so I think he saw like, the opportunity for, you know, even though being a junior, you know, possibly in some ways, someone who could commit and put the time in and really just get to know that place and treat it like my own backyard. Because it’s even, you know, every new facility, it’s like drinking from a firehose, when you first come in, right, and, and this place here, definitely, definitely, it has some similarities to many other facilities I’ve been to before, but there’s plenty of other things that are like, never go as easy as you hope and take that time, energy and investment in sometimes you have to go out at 1am and meet the fire department, you know, for that smoke alarm going off or the oak tree that knocked out power lines. And so it’s not really a nine to five job in the traditional way. It’s it’s a, you know, you have to make sure you fight to get your your weekend.
Greg Owens 8:11
Right, I bet Yeah, cuz there’s a few things in there. I mean, facilities managers in general tend to have to be like on call 24/7. But they’re actually not on site. And that’s a big difference, right? You can be on call. And they’re saying like, hey, there’s a fire alarm is going off. And and you’re calling and saying, Okay, well, I’m going to send somebody or security’s gonna come, which is also hard, because it’s like two o’clock in the morning, where you’re literally on site and see your, like, roll out of bed and go check this out. Yeah, it’s
Bryan Garza 8:41
not even just like the responsibility. Sometimes it’s I’m enticed, you know, like, I might want to drive out and enjoy my weekend. But on my way, I go, Oh, look at the nature center could really use a little line trimming right around there. And I had that new Milwaukee battery powered line trimmer, I want to see how it works, you know, and I can like, really, this is our weekend, that’s what you’re gonna do the first half of your day and that it’s so it’s easy to just be you know, i plus, you know, my kid loves tractors and all these various facilities, electric carts we have from the 70s to all over the all over the map. And so I can entertain him endlessly, even after work by just taking him back to the corporation yard and zipping around on our various little, you know, electric carts and tractors and, you know, and dump trucks because it’s like all he cares about.
Greg Owens 9:29
Great that is so that’s such a valuable skill sets to be learning to it at two years old.
Bryan Garza 9:37
You know, not to ever have, I think, you know, I don’t want to ever go the nepotism route, we know but the probably the best candidate about five years from now will probably be him. Or whatever age he hits the legal age to work. You’d probably be a fantastic technician
Greg Owens 9:51
there. Right, right. But he’ll probably want to do like computer programming or something.
Bryan Garza 9:58
So yeah, we’ll see. Yeah.
Greg Owens 9:59
Oh, that nature. So was it luck? Or were you looking for this right before the pendant where you were in the process? How did that? How did that unfold
Bryan Garza 10:09
that way? You know, it’s interesting because I actually wasn’t looking, I think I’ve kind of found a tend to be kind of a pretty, like loyal employee who just kind of likes to, you know, I was a right hand, man, I think in a lot of ways to my boss at UCSF, and he had, he just really was impressive. He thought he was a great guy. And so what happened was, my wife’s friend was a lawyer on the board of Filoli, and an environmental lawyer, and he heard of this role opening up, and he said, Hey, I would love to apply for this bound or anything about facilities. Do you think your husband Bryan might be interested? Because I know he has what he does. And most people in San Francisco in the circle we run in, never know what that means, like, facilities isn’t part of the, you know, doctor, lawyer, engineer, astronaut, you know, thing that people think of, you know, and so they
Greg Owens 10:54
don’t think of it as a career. Yeah, in a way. That’s interesting. Yeah. And
Bryan Garza 10:58
so he brought it up. And she is a such an ambitious person. I mean, she, you know, I can this is your wife is, yeah, if I digress here, but she like, for example, when we met, we were both playing in bands. And I probably did 500 Plus shows and had a great, great run for a decade, around the world, really, with a signed band. And she also was in a pretty successful band while and I said, What if we get married, and we go out in the woods and watch the sunrise with 10 of our best friends. And her next thought was, what if we had like, read a rock opera wedding, invite 400 people and put it on and involve all of our family and friends on stage. And I said, Okay, let’s go with that. She always want UPS things in such a wonderful way. And like, you know, we did a music video a few months, or a year ago, now that she wanted to break the world record for the most pregnant women in music, dance video, we got 127 pregnant women to be in that video. And so the Hey, now we are working on a hair metal musical movie. And so
Greg Owens 12:01
that’s some, there’s some massive amounts of creativity in there.
Bryan Garza 12:04
Yeah, it’s so she but the, you know, I bring her up a lot, because obviously, this is the, you know, the joy of my life. But I really admire her ambition. And also, she is really, she’s a designer, user experience. Designer. And it really opened my eyes to the facilities world of how much User Experience matters. And, you know, except me if I go into too much, but I am really a proponent of like, what is the experience for whether it be visitors to a facility and or the frontline staff, with their interactions with the tools that we provide them to capture the work orders and such. And so I’m always thinking about that user experience, rather than just the specifications, I guess you could say, like, sometimes, you know, packages, or, you know, a projects or software offer you certain things on a, you know, in a database checkbox, but um, they don’t necessarily mean that people are going to use it, or have an experience that motivates and use it well, and so I’m always that guy. If I bring anything to the facilities world, I’m thinking, How do I get the experience to be something that really raises engagement with employees, and keeps them around and also capture that institutional knowledge and makes it easy for people who visit to have a great experience and to communicate the things that are gone awry, which they always do. And so that’s kind of like my, if people ask you what’s Bryan’s signature at UCSF? I mean, I’ve worked on a lot of great things. I think the probably the most, you know, discussed, one will probably be Oh, he’s the guy who made the button signs in the restrooms. You know, I, I thought, hey, people aren’t gonna want to pull out their phone and scan a QR code and go through multiple pages of something to tell the customer service team that there’s a clogged toilet, they don’t want to do that. No one wants to pull out a camera. It’s awkward in the bathroom. And so yeah, yeah. So I thought, well, what if I designed something that’s simply a real friendly sign that says, is there an issue in here, push this button, and you push it, and it knows on the back end, the location of that restroom, and it forwards into a service request to the service, you know, customer service team and it says an issue has arisen and this restroom please dispatch someone to check it out. And,
Greg Owens 14:14
and you don’t even know what the issue is. It’s not even it’s not even going that far. All it is is like a button to say hey, if there’s an issue could be dirty, could be clogged toilet could be sink as to then you guys get a but you’re like, that’s a priority. Because if the restroom is not functioning well, that’s not good for the user experience.
Bryan Garza 14:33
That was exactly it. I mean, I eventually pivoted like couldn’t, as a one man show I couldn’t make you know, I’m not sure how many restaurants at UCSF, but its themes attended a few percent of the entire employment of use of San Francisco that are UCSF jobs. It’s pretty big and so
Greg Owens 14:48
10% of entire San Francisco employee jobs is UCSF. Yes, it could be 11 Could be some it’s suddenly Cali does not know that. That’s a massive number. Yeah, that’s a few baths. There’s a few bad bathrooms to support all those people, right? That’s not including the patients, or people that are coming back.
Bryan Garza 15:04
Yeah. But my thought was, well, how about the high traffic areas? Like the ones near the cafes? The ones near the entrance? What if we just Yes, we won’t know what the issue is, that was one of the complaints on our team. It’s like, well, how do we know if it’s graffiti versus a clogged toilet versus, you know, broken window? I said, Well, we don’t, but the visitor doesn’t care about that. They’re just letting us know. And it’s upon us to find the obvious, you know, issue. But it, it made it so easy for people just to say I’m pushing the button and I’m on I’m off my way. And if it happens too many times, or 10 times in one minute, it’s probably a kid pushing the button than we are okay with that, too. But it was quite probably actually rare. Exactly like the it says people worry sometimes, but the 1% of issues and it worked really well. With the exception of like, I never liked having to go into women restrooms to like, you know, setup these devices. It’s always that awkward knock, you know, facilities, okay to come in. But yeah,
Greg Owens 16:00
I’ve been there. No, no, I mean, people have that experience, right. But yeah, as a painting contractor, we’re looking at the restrooms have to go in there.
Bryan Garza 16:10
But that was a really neat, just to prove it could work. And I I’m the king of like, never really necessary permission for a huge project. And so instead, I say, what if we pilot, just a small, and I’m always the guy who says pilot pilot pilot, and it’s been like, the key to my success is then later people really, hopefully like that. And then it always expands. And so that was a really a neat kind of first and
Greg Owens 16:34
it’s a great way to introduce change. Because you’re like, look, let’s just three months, we’re gonna test to test the waters with this right? We’ll just, then we’ll get more information, and we’ll come back and revisit it. It’s wonderful. I do I try to do it, I try to do it all the time, within my own company, right? If we’re going to unroll something new, I’m like, we’re just trying this out. Even though in my mind, I’m like, pretty sure it’s gonna work.
Bryan Garza 16:59
Roll it out to the champions, like the early adopter, who like if they like it, everybody else? Because, like, because it’s, so I really wanted to make sure that that was the next thing as well, you know, how do I get the skilled trades and the, you know, the custodial staff there to want to use these tools, because there was, it’s a little easier, maybe now, but I think when I was there, there was such a, the cellular phone, you know, the smartphone was still just like, it’s my personal thing. And I never want to have to use something like this in the workplace. And so getting people to, especially the majority of folks in facilities, like the engineers working on boilers and stuff, they come from more of an analog world and from the Navy, and so I knew that that might be a little bit of a struggle to prove that carrying a cell phone, or even an iPod touch, I get those for pretty good deal with with robust Wi Fi, saying this is gonna make your life easier. And I’ll show you how. And so I usually did is I made probably about 100 videos, I’m not kidding, Greg of like, with my band’s music in it and all the productions they weren’t like little like corny videos, they were extremely corny, but with really good production. And they had the employees themselves in there, saying, hey, you know, I’m, I’m Jim, I’m gonna show you today how to, you know, change the status, your work order. And I think having that ownership of having themselves involved in seeing their peers, or their friends or counterparts in these videos, made it easier to adopt new platforms. And it did if it was some, you know, boring voice with some generic kind of interface, instead showing photos and videos of the actual place you work it, it really I thought it made it easier to adopt took a hell of a lot of work for me, on my off hours, you know, to produce these but it was fun and, and so Oh, man,
Greg Owens 18:44
that’s great. Because that any any of those little micro lays of learning and then doing it, like you said, in house and and having your own people say, voicing like, this is how I use this new tool is brilliant, right? It gave
Bryan Garza 18:58
me a chance to play with gizmos. I mean, that’s really usually most of my desires in the past was just to pontificate on gizmos, find an application that wasn’t really the intended use, but is way cheaper than buying something that is the intended purpose. That usually is, you know, very expensive. It was a lot of fun in that time, but it’s, you know, it’s pivoted quite a bit since then, because I am now not pontificating for technology as much, but I am now managing and directing a team and literally being the person who has to know where the diesel shut offs are and where the tractor is. And you know how to get a chainsaw running at 2am. And there’s, it’s so hands on and it’s so nice, especially during the pandemic to be out in the sunshine and just be somewhere as beautiful by literally
Greg Owens 19:45
with What great timing to because the city became a wasteland and so many ways during the pandemic, right and for a two year old to have it. Well. You didn’t have a two year old when you started the job.
Bryan Garza 19:56
started the job, he’s about six months old, right. And I’m just coming across my, my anniversary here two years there. And he, we have a nanny. So fortunately, we have a nanny, and she takes him to the garden every day. And so he knows that place like the back of his hand, and he’s literally digging holes and helping with sprinklers. And like, you know, and point out where the gophers are like to our horticulture team of, like, 15 people, he, he’s seen more than I am, because I gotta know, if you find this great, but a lot of times people in the facilities world, or an alternate orbit than the majority of other people, like, we tend to be in these, you know, mechanical rooms, or in just places the roof and places that no one else goes. And so we are seeing, we’re usually like, you know, sprinting or hiding, because people want to grab us and, and we might be late for a meeting, you know, and so it’s a, it’s always an interesting struggle, but my son golden, his name is golden is the most in person, probably if at Filoli, like, you know, it’s funny, like,
Greg Owens 21:00
he’s not gonna go to him and say, Hey, there’s a sprinkler leaking over here. Right?
Bryan Garza 21:06
But my nanny has been known to let me know that we are trying to get a hold me work. And so that’s, that’s the funny part. But, uh, it’s, it’s a very special place. I mean, there’s, I’m not kidding with that every morning. It’s like a Disney movie where I see four or five rabbits scatter about 25, Turkey, you know, 15 deer, and you know, and hopefully not a mountain lion, as I enter, you know, go from my place to my trailer. And it’s, it’s just wild how much nature there is, you know, everywhere. And you it’s easy to kind of miss it, because you’re so focused on getting something repaired. But I always tell my team like, hey, if we can, let’s, instead of have a one on one across my desk, let’s go walk on when the nature trails, and let’s just, let’s, let’s keep you, you know, enticed by this place, rather than stressed out inside of a, you know, fluorescent tube with you know, trailer.
Greg Owens 21:57
Right? Why Why get on Zoom, and we can go for a walk down this path and chat about the issues we got and look at things and see it, ya know, I mean, I, I tend to have meetings, I like meetings where I’m walking, it’s, you know, I just pick a park here and Moran or anywhere that I’m at, it’s, it’s a nice way to sort of have a conversation and talk about the things that are going on, right?
Bryan Garza 22:18
I hope if anything from the pandemic more people just get in touch with nature, they they recognize how much of a, you know, it can center them again. And you know, I always make this kind of joke that like, you know, I’m not a smoker, but I always thought was, the good thing about people who do smoke is that they actually, on a regular basis, go out and sit down and stare in the, you know, I
Greg Owens 22:37
just saw a bunch. I just saw a bunch of guys at a pharmaceutical company. And it was like five guys sitting standing outside on the roof, roofed area where they can smoke, right? And I’m like, Man, that’s one of the greatest benefits of smoking, right? They all get to come out here and like, hang out and there’s like, you know, it’s allowed. There has
Bryan Garza 22:56
to be like an alternate oral fix a fixation device people can have that justifies him standing in a spot, like leaning against a wall with a lollipop or, you know, something that where it’s like, that makes sense. That’s historically doesn’t make sense if you’re just someone standing there. Yeah, but I do think just having that moment of disconnecting is so valuable because and if you can’t, it could be in a workplace. That’s not like Dunder Mifflin you know, parking lot, but instead a place like Filoli all the better, because it certainly is gorgeous there.
Greg Owens 23:29
What’s crazy is also your son is your golden is his name. Yes. Yeah. He’s, he’s, he’s learning in such a rich environment. And, you know, I hired some people in the last year. And I’m blown away by that they have like zero skills when it comes to like construction, right, zero. And I mean, like, they didn’t know what a baseboard was, or what, like certain things are on a house that I just take for granted. Because I grew up doing a lot of work with my father, right? Like, we lived on a property with three acres. So we’re always we had chickens, we were always fixing things I’m always helping out. And I learned how to like, fix small engines, and they still have that ability to take a power washer and like diagnose what’s wrong and fix it on the spot. And so many of my own people haven’t grown up in those environments. Right. And it’s so it’s such a good learning to have,
Bryan Garza 24:23
Hey, you want a job? You sound like the perfect candidate. You’re right, the, the, I think just the interest levels and the types of experiences that people grew up in. It’s rare, more more rare, especially in the Bay Area, to grown up on acreage. And to have that like I I was lucky as well with I growing up in the, you know, kind of near Alum Rock Park against mount Hamilton observatory area in South San Jose to we were just on one acre but we had you know, 50 fruit trees and we had, you know, irrigation setup and my dad worked in sheet metal and did a lot of early CAD drawings. And so, you know, it helps kind of at least Introduce me to that field. And I think a lot of folks these days, it’s not if you don’t help them, introduce them, and let them kind of experience that they might really run with it. But there’s a lot less people exposed to it. And so whenever I find that a candidate is applying for a job that maybe has come from a farm ranch experience, rather than just a business park, it’s so exciting. So I know that when it comes to small engines, especially, it’s like, they’re going to know how to yank the car out. And they’re going to know like, you know, the real issue here is that, you know, someone put, you know, two stroke fuel instead of 87 in here, or something like that. And I only mentioned that, because I’ve been having the plague of issues these days, where I think some of the other Junior candidates that are candidates, but employees might have made that mistake. And it’s, we’re paying the price dearly, and a few pieces of equipment right now. I’m like, what happened to this engine?
Greg Owens 25:47
I think, what do you have any creative ideas? Because this has happened to us? Do you have any creative ideas to, like, educate them? Or have it where?
Bryan Garza 25:56
Because yeah, yeah, well, there’s, there’s that kind of line of thinking where you can, you know, rely just on, you know, there’s like, administrative, there’s engineering controls, there’s different types of controls.
Greg Owens 26:07
And there’s teach, like, we’re trying to teach them, but that doesn’t always stick. Great. Because if you tell them, I tell them once, three months later, they’re gonna make that same mistake, right?
Bryan Garza 26:18
I think in some ways, you need to be able to make the mistake, but hopefully, that was your prized piece of gear, but I think it needs to be a cocktail. You know, like of things you have to say, Okay, I’m gonna teach you about this, I’m gonna teach you again, and have you repeated to me. Yeah. Secondly, I think you need to going back to user experience, say, Well, you know, why not really just color code as much as possible, the, the empty, you know, the, the portable tanks, you know, the actual, you know, if it’s not something that’s going to be ugly to the public, you know, can you make your gas cap, you know, dipped, you know, like, same color is that other cans, so that way, yellow is diesel, and maybe reds gas, and, you know, polka.is, you know, two stroke, whatever it is, I think it’s making that so, you know, it’s just foolproof, you know, and in a perfect world, that would be great. If, you know, the actual shape of the, you know, the container itself couldn’t fit into the gas tank, you know, right.
Greg Owens 27:10
Like a diesel, like the diesel hoses, the kind of they’re a little bit shaped differently here. Right? Yeah. Which is so funny, because I was in Portugal, three years ago, and I rented a motorcycle, and I get to the gas station to fill it up in the and I have these options, right? And I’m looking at the options and it’s like, gasoline, that sounds like gasoline. Right. And so I just put it I didn’t even think about diesel because I just looked at it. And I was like, oh gasolina and put it in. I think it was that maybe it was something slightly different. Portuguese, but then I rode the motorcycle like 30 feet, and it dies. And I knew instantly I was like, I think I put the wrong acid. And then I know how to fix it, right? Because I’m like, cuz I’m like, a great how do I get this motor that counts? speak Portuguese. I need to get this motorcycle back to where I got it from. But in order for them to fix it, it’s going to cost me money now right to fix it. Or, and in my mind, I’m like, Could I just dump this stuff out here on the side of the road, and, and clean it and put it in, you know, and I’m like, running through and I was like, that’s gonna look really bad. We just pouring diesel on the ground. I’ve gotten containers. So then I ended up it ended up costing me like $150. But it was funny. I’ll never make that mistake. Again. I’ll write all I had to do is if I smelt it, I would have known right? I didn’t even didn’t even enter my mind.
Bryan Garza 28:33
I think we all have to take our lumps. But the funny part is, is our conversation right now and a decade people are gonna be like, like, I have a feeling, you know, just the way things are going like I’m watching how much our horticulture facilities staff is taking to like, for example, the Milwaukee you know, ma team, you know, electric, you know, tools and crazy example, line trimmers, chainsaws. hedgers, they’re,
Greg Owens 29:00
you don’t get no gasoline tools at all, in hardly any and then the maintenance is so much less, right. So much
Bryan Garza 29:07
less but also like the troubleshooting and also the just be able to just get to the job rather than have to first solve like, how do I get this thing turned on. Now, I’m not always going to do better. But a lot of times 80% of time, it just is such a no brainer slam dunk, and then 20% of time, it might be a job too big for some of those. If maybe, for example, the chainsaw is not as powerful as a really big echo or right. That’s corner or something like that. But those jobs aren’t traditionally ones we’re doing anyway, we’re hiring out contractors to do those because they’re just the safety level, having our, you know, master’s degree, you know, horticulture, you know, employees are using a chainsaw. Yeah, that’s outside of their scope of it’s kind of like that Mitch Hedberg joke where it’s like, Hey, I heard you’re a chef. Can you farm you know? Well, yes, but that’s not really why you hired me and so I like to make sure that we kind of focus on their skill set. and just make it as easy as possible rather than have to have like, you know, 32 different carbureted, you know, different types of equipment to that we have to service every darn season. And so I think I have like, right now we’re in that place where it’s good to be a little bit of both and know that they’re a person that maybe is a little Junior. Let them get to know what the application of the tool is first before you kind of you know, it’s like giving someone an automatic forgiveness stick shift, you know, or, I don’t know, maybe maybe it’s the opposite. I learned on this diction.
Greg Owens 30:29
I you know, what’s funny is like, I was thinking I was talking to some real driving, I taught myself how to drive. I went from motorcycles taught myself how to ride motorcycles, right. And then because I was like riding BMX, when two motorcycles, went to stick shift cars, and it was seemingly seamless, right? I didn’t have somebody sitting in the car teaching me how to do these things, right? To drive then driving like automatic was like, No problem then after that, and it’s still nice. It’s super nice to have all those skills, like drive any vehicle, like from a dump truck to an RV to tractors, to motorcycles, right. So and it’s funny, because when I travel, it comes up. Right? Oh, absolutely. Right. And with the way I travel anyway, it’s which is not your typical tourist thing. I end up on farms or ended up in situations where they’re like, Hey, can you drive this? I’m like, sure.
Bryan Garza 31:17
I believe they say that now the stick shift transmission is the equivalent of the club for security because people don’t steal and they don’t know what to do. They’re like, how do I how do I steal this
Greg Owens 31:27
though? Oh, man, that’s great. Yeah, yeah, I
Bryan Garza 31:29
have. It’s funny. I got into motorcycles too. And I you know, I’ve restored like a 72 Honda CB 500. I have actually down in the garage here.
Greg Owens 31:38
Oh, you still have it? Oh, yeah.
Bryan Garza 31:39
I love I love it. It’s just, I haven’t brought it to Filoli yet because I know enjoy it. And I don’t have a garage. I have you know, it’s the interesting part about living kind of back out in the forest basically, is I have a great little barn house they call it but there’s no garage there. And so we had to kind of figure out like, what do we do with all of our band gear and our bicycles and you know, I’m a motorcycle and so we had to kind of get creative and knowing I’m renting here I’m not actually you know, it’s not my property. I can’t I did build a shed but I looked at the cost of the wood to build the sub floor and everything I was like, man, like I think actually it’s cheaper for me to just buy I got two storage containers like just like roll up door 10 footers and we got a tiny home also my wife worked out of remotely Samer owns
Greg Owens 32:25
separate office from the house. Yeah, yeah. Nice. Yeah, we call it
Bryan Garza 32:29
tiny house village now because it’s like no one really can see it from the visitors side. But if you’ve were on the back side, it’s like oh my gosh, and it’s a it’s so special to have, you know, these extra little places to put things now but my motorcycle I you know, I don’t know what to do with that just yet there and I’ve watched what happens to vehicles and Mother Nature alone and like I you know, like the you know, rats and mice and you know, and bugs are no joke. It’s like the turkeys love to peck and scratch it every dark kind of metallic reflective paint. Touch different. Yeah. Yeah. So I have a yellow like kind of cream colored car Buttercup, my jeep, they leave it alone, buttercups. Fine, but her black Mini Cooper. Literally, there’s like it’s it you would not even recognize it anymore. It’s like it’s so covered with bird poop and scratches from the turkeys left and right, that we’ve covered in streamers to kind of like reflect and scare them away.
Greg Owens 33:24
Oh yeah, I’ve seen that for woodpeckers. Yeah, I have like I have these ultra
Bryan Garza 33:27
sonic like noisemaker kind of led flashers underneath the hoods and stuff so that way it keeps maybe some rodents out but it’s it’s no joke sounds like I’m gonna take my motorcycle there it’ll be it’ll be destroyed so fast so I But even here in San Francisco I couldn’t believe that people he knows this shame and I love the city but there’s a few always a few kind of hard things to kind of pills to swallow and one of them is that people would steal my spark plugs and they use my guests they work really well to throw through windows and break glass windows does break into their cars and
Greg Owens 34:01
they’re stealing off your motorcycle.
Bryan Garza 34:03
Yes
Greg Owens 34:04
yeah the show of the motorcycle on your like go to start it and you’re like oh it’s nothing
Bryan Garza 34:09
this is when I was single it was such a hard way to impress them buddies like come on hop on my bike let’s oh and then you realize I’ve got fingers I can make it home
Greg Owens 34:19
Do you have a Kickstarter too