The Sprinkler Nerd Show

You're paying for clicks and leads. How much of that is actually turning into paying customers? I'm in St. Louis at Chans Weber's office at Agile & Co ., with marketing questions straight from a podcast listener who wants to know whether his money is being well spent. Google Business Profiles, Google Ads, marketing reports, and return on ad spend are all on the table. How do you expand into anothe...

Daniel Overton is 25 and already has 8 years in irrigation. He works for Ricci's Landscape Management in northwest Indiana, listens to the podcast, and reached out to me back in July. We've stayed in touch, I sent him a soil moisture sensor to experiment with, and I wanted to get him on the show to hear what he's seeing in the field. We talk about learning the trade, the hardest parts of being an...

What if life isn't like a box of chocolates? Maybe life is like a box of choices. Choose wisely. Today I'm recording from CitiesAlive, the Green Roofs for Healthy Cities conference in New York City. I'm here not because I have to be. Not because someone sent me. I'm here because I chose to be here. And that got me thinking about the last 25 years. I didn't just "end up" in irrigation. I chose irri...

What does it really take to go all in on a landscape business? Dean Ricci started mowing lawns at just 10 years old, pulling his mower behind a bicycle with a homemade trailer built by his dad. By high school, he had trucks, trailers, equipment, and employees. More than 30 years later, Ricci's Landscape Management has grown into a multimillion-dollar company with more than 65 employees. But this c...

Your next opportunity might start with a message you haven't sent yet. When I started sharing my cell phone number on the podcast, I thought I might get overwhelmed with calls and texts. Turns out, very few people reach out. But an irrigation contractor in Indiana did—and the day this episode drops, we're meeting in person to explore technology, IoT, and possibilities for their business. In this n...

At some point, growing a service business requires the owner to stop being the person who does everything and become the person who builds the company. In this episode, Andy talks with Christy Carter , founder of WorkWife . Christy built an HVAC company from the kitchen table to more than $5 million in revenue before selling it. She knows firsthand how difficult the climb from a few hundred thousa...

Live While You're Young What if you never hated learning? What if you only hated being told what, when, and how to learn? It's Labor Day weekend, everyone is heading back to school, and I've been thinking about the difference between school and learning. I was never meant for school. Both of my parents were teachers. My dad taught teaching at Middlebury College. I played by the rules and did the b...

Sometimes the view changes when you stop looking straight ahead. In this Quickie, I'm thinking about perspective, curiosity, and what happens when we're willing to look through a different window—or maybe even fall through the looking glass. The answer you're searching for might already be there. You may just need to change where you're standing

This week, I'm in Palm Springs, California, helping build a LoRaWAN data layer across a private golf course. The first use case is simple: BLADE soil moisture sensors in the greens, giving the superintendent real-time insight without relying entirely on manual field scouting. But the bigger opportunity is the network itself. This isn't command and control. The irrigation controller already owns th...

Try MODURA for FREE:  monitor.modura.app In this episode of the Sprinkler Nerd Show, Andy reflects on a lesson that has taken decades—and a whole lot of technology—to understand:  technology is not the answer. Inspired by Jimmy Buffett's Life Is Just a Tire Swing , Andy goes back to where much of his curiosity began: riding in a truck with Paul Bassett, asking questions and getting honest answers...

What if you could spy on an irrigation system without ever touching the controller? Welcome to Irrivoyeurism. In this quickie episode, Andy explores how a simple soil moisture sensor can reveal the hidden behavior of an irrigation system—from how often it waters and how long it runs to how quickly the soil dries down between irrigation events. For decades, if you wanted to understand an irrigation...

Every episode, Andy ends with the same invitation: "Reach out anytime." Thousands of people have heard those words. Only a handful have ever acted on them. What separates the people who send the email, make the phone call, introduce themselves, or ask the question? In this five-minute Quickie, Andy reflects on a story from Steve Jobs about calling Bill Hewlett at just 12 years old and how one simp...

What does it really mean to be real ? In this short solo episode, Andy shares why authenticity has become one of the most important ideas shaping his life, business, and leadership. From admitting you don't have all the answers to trusting data over assumptions, this episode is a reminder that curiosity and honesty often build more trust than certainty. Andy also reads a heartfelt message from a y...

What if the goal isn't to have your life perfectly mapped out? While listening to Jimmy Buffett's Don't Chu-Know , one lyric stopped me in my tracks: "The best navigators are not quite sure where they're going until they get there." Whether it's an old sailing saying or simply a brilliant lyric, the idea has stayed with me for years. In this short solo episode, I share why I believe the best leade...

It's easy to focus on technology. Smart controllers. Sensors. Weather data. Flow meters. Soil moisture. Automation. All of that matters. But in this episode of The Sprinkler Nerd Show , Andy Humphrey and Dustin Nihsen bring the conversation back to the person behind the system. Because even the best irrigation technology in the world is only as good as the operator. Dustin Nihsen, owner of Sprinkl...

In this episode of The Sprinkler Nerd Show, Andy talks with Scott Bowen, Commercial Irrigation Manager for Conserva Irrigation, about what happens when irrigation becomes more than service calls and sprinkler repair. Scott shares his 30-year journey through golf irrigation, sports turf, distribution, manufacturing, consulting, design, and commercial water management — and explains how that backgro...

Brent Garrett, The Skilled Trades Coach www.theskilledtradescoach.com In this episode of The Sprinkler Nerd Show, Andy talks with Brent Garrett, owner of Sirius Plumbing & Air Conditioning, founder of The Skilled Trades Coach, and author of  30 Days to a Better Business . Brent has lived the skilled trades from the inside. He has built companies, sold companies, rebuilt companies, coached contract...

Doug Lewis is a two-time Olympian, World Championship bronze medalist, coach, speaker, and founder of Elite Team. In this episode, Doug shares what skiing, ultra-running, failure, team culture, and doing hard things can teach us about becoming the best version of ourselves. We talk about why people avoid failure, how confidence is built, why the best teams share what they know, and why every win c...

For 200 episodes, The Sprinkler Nerd Show has explored irrigation, technology, entrepreneurship, innovation, and curiosity. This episode is different. Not because we're leaving those topics behind, but because we're widening the lens. Behind every irrigation system, business, truck, project, and career is a person. And people are complicated. In this milestone 200th episode, Andy reflects on a dif...

What if the next great irrigation software tool doesn't come from a manufacturer, a big tech company, or a traditional development team? What if it comes from you? In this episode, Andy shares his personal experience learning the craft of vibe coding and why he believes it could be a game changer for the irrigation industry. After four months of building apps with AI coding tools, including SLIDE...

Song Credit: Intro/outro music: "Mexico" by Little Stranger. In this solo episode, Andy takes a step back from the usual technical conversations and reflects on what The Sprinkler Nerd Show has really given him. After listening to a friend's podcast while cutting the grass, Andy started thinking about the difference between the episode people hear and the life happening behind the microphone. Ever...

In this episode, Andy shares a few simple, real-world ways he used AI this week — from organizing messy data into CSV files, turning commercial property energy bills into a clean PDF, vibe-coding the SLIDE App with Codex in Visual Studio, designing gateway stickers, and creating irrigation patent t-shirt concepts for Sprinkler Supply Store. But this episode is not about letting AI replace your voi...

For years I've watched irrigation contractors, designers, consultants, and water managers wrestle with the same question: How much water should a landscape actually need? The research exists. The science exists. But getting from all that information to something practical in the field often feels harder than it should. So I decided to build something. In this episode, I'm introducing S.L.I.D.E. —...

This episode is a behind-the-scenes look at OptConnect, a cellular IoT company helping businesses connect devices to the internet without making connectivity complicated. Justin Nichols explains how OptConnect supports everything from irrigation controllers to ATMs, kiosks, vending machines, wastewater treatment, solar inverters, EV chargers, security trailers, access controls, and other commercia...

What does it actually take to turn around and grow an irrigation business? In this episode, Andy sits down with Erik Dyba from The Bruce Company to talk about his journey through the industry. From learning irrigation in the mountains of Colorado to rebuilding and scaling a department at David J. Frank from a few hundred thousand dollars to over $1.5 million. We get into what really moves the need...