No More Chasing Checkered Flags

Industry Leader | Nick Carlson’s Take on Perseverance & Entrepreneurship

This is not the first time the name Nick Carlson has appeared in our magazine. In the fall, SYNKD highlighted Nick’s flagship invention, Mulch Mate, a revolutionary truck or trailer attachment designed to mechanically unload material like mulch, gravel and compost directly into wheelbarrows, saving landscapers time on the job and protecting employees from the risk of heat-related illnesses, compounded by the act of performing strenuous labor inside a metal box. Now, we want to explore the story behind Nick, an ingenious product developer and entrepreneur whose claim to fame is his propensity to do what’s right.

Watching Nick speak at trade shows and conferences, it’s bewildering to think that this magnetic character was once a homeless second-grader sleeping under a stairwell.

“I tend to be obsessive about things, and part of that is from my experience coming from nothing,” Nick says. “I know what the bottom looks like. I’ve swam with those fish, and it’s ugly. It’s not something I ever want to do again, and it’s not something I want anybody else to experience.”

"I have this love to give, a love to encourage
& put positivity & gratitude first.""

From scooping ice cream to starting his first business maintaining lawns at age 15, to racing cars and founding Dawson Manufacturing in 2016, Nick has worked hard to afford more than boxed mac and cheese dinners for himself. Through his NASCAR career, Nick picked up fabrication and other automotive maintenance skills that he applied when fixing machinery for his lawn care business. According to Nick, these escapades introduced one of his greatest assets as an entrepreneur: his ability to tackle problems head-on without being held back by fear.

“What I tell people is, if you’re feeling pain, anxiety or nervousness, that is your world, your body, telling you, ‘Hey, there’s a problem here, don’t ignore it,’” Nick says. “My fear of failure, my fear of the bottom, has led to many years of trial and error.”

Today, Nick takes pride in cultivating relationships with his customers, leaving the door open to honest criticism even when it’s hard to take. During our conversation, he told a story about a Mulch Mate skeptic who vehemently opposed Nick, saying he was cocky and a no-good snake oil salesman.

Nick calmly sat the man down and asked to hear all his complaints. At the end of the conversation, Nick says he went line by line explaining that the newer versions of his products addressed every annoyance mentioned besides those merely requiring an operational change, like only filling the bed to a certain height. Nick showed the man he was taking this feedback seriously and working toward the best version of his product possible. Just like that, the man came around.

“I think when most people come up with an idea they love, they get too bogged down with this vision of standing on the podium with their win,” Nick says. “They lose track of the beauty of the journey. I tell everybody that there is no checkered flag in life. The checkered flag is death. All we have are checkpoints. I treat this business and this life in a very different manner. A lot of people want to be an influencer and want to talk about landscaping.”

"I want to talk about mindset. I want to talk about humans. I want to talk about how you tackle everyday issues & look at things from a different angle."

While Nick keeps a running list of goals for the future, like creating a sandbag dispensing attachment for Mulch Mate users to add on in disaster relief situations or starting a podcast, he also pays close attention to the little inconveniences that hold people back in the present. In his facility, Nick installed lighting that automatically turns on and off when needed to make it easier to close up for the night, added doors with motion detectors that open when someone approaches to avoid fumbles with packages and took the latches off of other doors so that team members riding segways or one-wheels can move effortlessly through the building.

“I’m trying to bring that automation to the landscaper, reducing the amount of thinking you have to do so we can just focus on the task at hand,” Nick says. “Our mental capacity, our bandwidth in this world, is already stretched so thin with our personal lives, the media, the economy and a pandemic. It’s all too much as it is.”

Whether it be Kart Mate, a zero-turn cart that mounts to the front of a lawnmower; Snow Mate, a snow plow attachment also for a lawnmower; or Mulch Mate, what Nick describes as, “the Rolls-Royce of bulk material dispensing,” Nick’s products could be a glimpse into a drastically simplified and more efficient future for the landscaping industry paved by honesty and dedication.

In third grade, when Nick and his best friend, his father, moved into their double-wide trailer home, Nick made it beautiful by landscaping with materials he found in the woods or free piles around town. When Nick’s dyslexia caused him to procrastinate finishing the book he says changed his life, ​​The E-Myth Landscape Contractor by Micheal E. Gerber, he went to the junkyard, found a CD head unit and saved up every cent he could to buy the book in CD form from Walmart. 

Obstacles like money, or the lack of it, have never kept Nick from making the best of a situation and innovating. Nick’s story calls into question how entrepreneurs measure success when there is no endpoint. What could the landscaping industry look like for future generations if everyone awoke each day intending to improve their practice and help their community grow little by little?

Get In Touch With...

Nick Carlson
Founder & CEO of Mulch Mate

Phone: (888) 776–8524
Email: nick@mulchmateusa.com

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