KYSFMA Vendor Spotlight -Chris Miller - Kentuckiana Turf Solutions
1. How did you get started in the turf or sports field industry?
I’ve always been a golfer, walked on at Clemson, (didn’t play) got started in the turf industry while I was in college at Clemson. I was in Ag Engineering with a focus on precision agriculture and soil physics. I had a good friend who was the Assistant in Training at a small course. He asked me to help on the crew there mornings before class. When I finished at Clemson, I took a job in Sea Pines on Hilton Head and the rest is history
2. What led you to a career in sales?
I’d like to think that this isn’t a sales job, more of a technology application job that I get paid for. I have a drive for facilitating others’ success and Dryject is something I’d wish I’d known about when I was a golf course superintendent. I’d always wanted a way to apply my soil physics knowledge to the golf course industry, and to help others in the industry around here. I’d parked myself at Hurstbourne with Walter Pritchett after leaving my superintendent position in 2022 trying to figure out what I wanted to do. We had gotten half way through a renovation in December of 2023 and he lent me to the Ohio Dryject franchise to help them at Churchill Downs. I saw that the Kentucky/Southern Indiana franchise was available to lock down, and I knew it was an opportunity to help those around us. By a lucky chance, financials worked out for us to start it.
3. What do you enjoy most about working with sports field managers?
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed learning from my sports fields customers that side of the industry which I’ve never been involved with. Getting to learn how sports turf gets used and abused at all the different levels of athletics in our state has been outstanding to understand how to apply Dryject technology, and just help guys and gals with lessons I’ve learned along the way. It’s been fun working with managers in different fields from middle, high school, collegiate football practice areas, to softball fields, to professional football and soccer wear. Everything is different, and just being able to apply tangential (golf course) knowledge I might have, seems to be a winning formula with a lot of sports fields managers I’ve had the opportunity to work with.
4. What problem do you most enjoy helping your customers solve?
I like helping the managers solve wear spots. I feel like I have a great technology with Dryject to offer. I think the real game changer is in the high wear spots, being able to inject soil amendments directly into the root zone, to create stronger roots. A lot of the wear we see is surface damage, but the recovery we need to fix it is in the root zone. Greens grade amendments can pass through the injection orifices of the machines and we have seen incredible results with some soccer game pitches, practice areas, and grow-in scenarios with a combination of Dryject and Earthworks granular technologies in particular.
5. What makes your approach or perspective unique in this industry?
I’d like to think my soil physics-forward, and root-up strategy make me independent thinking of an industry that has for decades prescribed N-P-K based on minimal information. I hope to introduce managers to a soil first strategy to save money and produce better turf with fewer inputs. Better for athletes, the environment, and budgets.
6. Favorite food?
Favorite food has got to be a Toasty’s Tavern smashburger. Any day, any time. I’ll eat two if you double dog dare me, but I might need a nap after if it’s lunchtime.
7. What are you listening to right now? (music, podcast, audiobook)
I have been hook, line, and sinker into the ‘Dungeon Crawler Carl’ audiobook series. I’m a nerd, and this series has my whole attention because the hero is a very relatable middle-aged man with a cat, like me. I’m also heavily listening to Australian Punk genre, and Scottish punk as well. Connects me to my roots.
8. Fun fact about you (non-work related encouraged):
I was adopted from an orphanage in St Louis. I consider this a blessing, and my incredible adopted parents put me in a position to succeed where I could have very easily ended up a statistic, and instilled in me the morals of service and helping others. I can only hope to apply this attitude to effect, in my community and industry.
9. Why do you choose to support KYSFMA?
I choose to support KYSFMA because I see a lot of folks staring the same challenges in the face in our industry, and I believe organizing and facing them is the way to handle them. I support my peers who have stood this organization up and wish I had the time right now to dedicate to a board position on this nascent organization.
10. Pro tip for turf or field managers:
The best pro tip I have ever received: “Don’t sweat the petty stuff, and don’t pet the sweaty stuff.”
Find me
(502)333-4660
kentuckianaturfsolutions@gmail.com
@kentuckianaturfsolutions on twitter and facebook
