1 Customer Controls This $3M Landscape Business (Extreme Risk)

No, there's not. I don't think there's a cash crunch.

I mean—

But we were negative $200,000 in operating costs for the year. And that was just like, what the fuck?

Today we're in Louisiana visiting Scott and Kelly from Ottoma Industries.

They're like my sons and like his. And sometimes they don't like Daddy.

You lose some ass and you'll fit on the seat.

Nah, I'm losing mass. You're not good at your role making decisions. And you make everyone else frustrated when you're jumping in. They're on track for $3 million in revenue this year.

I want them to be able to say, you know what, I make enough money, I can make I can make as much money as I want.

So I make over $1,000 a week, but that's not enough to grow in life. No, it's not.

They do massive landscape installs, commercial lawn maintenance, and they also have a sod retail store.

So we do a lot of D.R. Horton stuff and a lot of DSLD stuff.

It was like 10 acres of Bermuda sod and like 10,000 plants. It was huge.

I don't want to build a $10 million business on the back of that because I saw too many of them go out of business too many times. But I do feel like there's a lack of trust between mid-level managers and the owner.

You drop it, I'm picking it up.

I know, but hey, have I been on it?

Have I been on it?

In my mind, I thought it was supposed to be a 4-month job. I did it like in 2 and a half. And I was like, dude, I fucking killed it. Scott's like, no, we were gonna do it in 2 months. I was like, dude, that's not what you told me.

The issue I'm seeing with Scott and Kelly is they can only see the good stuff.

Look, we're humble.

I had to do the digging to figure out the problems. We will never fix this website if internally we don't know who we're selling to and what are we selling them. This is the Business Turnaround Show. My name is Mike Andes. I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn Care and HomeWorks Software. I travel the country fixing struggling businesses. Our goal is to give Scott and Kelly a strategy to turn around the company in the next six weeks. This is the most basic six-week plan I have ever created. You can do this probably within a day or two, okay? But if you do these things, I do believe in a couple months the business looks very different. This is Evander. He was actually the operations manager. for the business. He's not the owner. He applied for the turnaround show. The owners don't know who I am.

90% of our clientele is big HOA contracts and new construction work. We are the preferred contractor for DR Horton and DSRD Homes.

All right, so it sounds like they are going to do like $3 million in revenue this year, but mostly commercial. And as soon as I hear like D.R. Horton, which is a national home builder, having contracts with them, I just know they're going to be pinching every single penny and they're usually going to be very low prices. And so he's identified that as the problem. We'll find out tomorrow if that's actually the issue. It's real quick.

Usually we get here, I got 4 or 5 guys that are under the landscape side that I have a list of stuff, and we all have Jobber too, so they can see what they're doing on Jobber. We always have around $50,000 to $100,000 worth of past due invoices at any given time. But every morning, yeah, we have a little talk right before we get out and go do things. The lawn guys, they're doing the same thing every week. Last year in the 3rd quarter when I made that submission video, we— it was the day after we had a leadership meeting where they said we were $1.7 million in revenue at that point, but we were negative $200,000 in operating costs for the year. And that was just like, what the fuck? Excuse my language.

So this is the busted mower. So what exactly is broke? It's the knob on the front of the, uh, the weight seat, or— My name is Scott Alford. I'm the founder and COO of Atom Eye Industries. Oh, that's where that seat belt was too.

What you mean?

So I saw there was a seat belt in there on, uh—

Yeah, I take them off.

Hurt my side.

Hey, you hurt my bumps.

How about you, you lose some ass and you'll fit on the seat?

I'm losing ass.

I'm losing ass, everybody.

Okay, so it's, it's this that goes into the seat, the bolt.

Uh, my name is Alejandro Jovel. My position here is, uh, supervise all the lawn and all the guys.

So why don't we take Bolt off, bolt off, swap a seat over. Yeah, Mr. Scott's so smart.

Yeah.

I mean, anybody with a wrench can do that. Just pull the two bolts off, swap that seat over, and that's a short-term fix. I realize that Sergio can make that decision when he gets there. If it's wet, just start cutting common areas and then go back to some of the pond banks.

Sí, dice él que una de las cosas podríamos hacer ahorita mirando.

Not really. It's not a power struggle, but Scott, like, the shop's here at his house. He sometimes, he starts getting stressed about things and he, like, sticks his hands in and just tries to make changes.

Complaints may start to add up. And right now we're just trying to get these properties cut, make sure we don't have a bunch of rough patches.

Yeah, we need to order more blades.

I got 3 boxes of blades in there, I thought.

From the age of like 19 to 23, I worked for Scott when it was just him, his wife, and his 2 kids. That was the company.

My name is Kelly Alford, and I am the founder and CEO of Adama Industries.

I kind of outgrew what was going on here at that time. It used to be called Alford's. Now it's called Adama. So I left and went to other landscape companies. I've worked for probably 6 or 7 of the bigger companies in this state. I've worked for RCI. I've worked for Earthworks.

He and I sat down and talked last summer around the same time we were talking with Matthew, and I was like, okay, we were able to sort of place some things in the business, opportunities opened, and then, you know, Evander came back in. And so now we're looking at full-fledged growth.

Whoa, good morning! How's it going?

Good, good to meet you.

Kelly? Nice to meet you. Alex, great to meet you. And you do the lawn care side, right?

I do the lawn care.

Awesome.

Evander.

Evander, how you doing, bro? Matthew, great to meet you. And what was your department? Sales. Sales, got it. First off, did anyone know— have no idea who I am? Like, okay, you do fantastic. Do you know kind of who I am?

I watched the, uh, Top Dog Roofing.

Okay, cool. It's not far from here. They're in Louisiana, right? Yeah, it is.

How far?

That's like in— they're out Shreveport?

Oh, that's a few hours.

That's a few hours. They have a trucker down here though, so they might have like a little Okay, okay.

All right.

Well, if you don't know who I am, I understand why you're like, why is this 15-year-old in here? So we have Augusta Long. We actually have a location not too far from here too. We have 200 locations around the U.S., Canada, Australia. And so yeah, we do this mostly to show other people how to run their business as well. Obviously, I don't charge for this. This is not like paid consulting. I don't get a dollar from this, but just to help. And then we document it so that other people can.

It's funny because like, dude, I've been telling them about this for a long time and I'm like, I send them Mike's videos, da da da, and they're like, yeah, let's do it, da da da, and I don't think they've ever watched one all the way through.

What put you—

what led you to start that and start doing that?

So I ran my business for the first 4 years. We grew to about $1 million in revenue, just under $1 million, and then I got in a workplace accident and I got caught in the PTO of a dump truck. And so in that time, like, I was working crazy hours, like 80 hours a week, not making any money. Didn't have any systems in the business. I was literally on the hospital bed, like FaceTiming my crew to walk through the next job. I realized, fortunately, I was 21, 22 at the time. I was able to get through that time. But if I had a family or kids, like, I would have been bankrupt. And so I realized that so many other people were going through the same thing, but everyone just doesn't talk about it.

Yeah.

And so partly why I bring the cameras is to show, like, first off, people are not alone if they're struggling, and that secondly, there is a way out almost. Probably 70 to 80% of the people that we come out and do help with, they turn the business around and like they succeed, do really, really well.

Yeah, and that was really my question was what motivates you, and you answered that. I appreciate that.

Yeah, cool.

Well, this is the most people we've ever had coaching. Usually I'm talking about 2 people maybe, so I got myself an audience. These are people: Matt, Alex, Evander, Kelly, and Scott. Okay, great.

You're awesome.

And you do sales, right?

Yeah, so I run the side store. I do sales. Um, I kind of take a lot of Scott's phone calls now that he's taking a little bit of a step back. Okay, you know, kind of a little bit of everything.

And when you say the side store, how much of the business is that retail division?

Um, I mean, we're hoping to do a million at the start of this year. Uh, we're kind of on good weeks where the weather's good, we're averaging probably around 20,000-25,000 sales.

Okay, and what is that selling?

Sides.

Grass. Strictly sides.

Pallets of grass.

We have 2 different divisions, so we have a landscaping division, which is, you know, sod installation, irrigation, drainage, everything that involves the landscape world outside of the lawn.

And are you all wholesale or retail in that? Are you selling— are you—

We try to go mostly after contractors.

And wholesale?

Because it's, you know, repeat business, but we are open to the public with a 1 pallet minimum.

Okay.

And, you know, we deliver. We have a truck with a dolly in the back that, you know, you can drop it for people and stuff.

So We literally do a truck of sod every single day. So that's 22 pallets every single day. And we have so many houses that are side by side, so we send a whole truck, do one that has 10, one that has 12, whatever. So that's, that's a constant thing.

Do y'all grow the sod? Like, you all—

No.

You don't? Okay.

We work with a farm that's been in business for about 85 years.

Got it.

In Abbeville, Alabama.

Got it. And they're just like, we'll ship you a whole ton of it, but you gotta figure out how to assemble it.

Well, we set it all up, basically.

Organize it, schedule it.

Because it's perishable, you got 2 days to get it down. So that's why it's a lot of back and forth. Each one of these neighborhoods has a different, a different superintendent, and they all have houses that they're building and trying to get closed and done. And they have final walks, you know, they have all these things that they do before they sell the house. And he has had a house that we did the sod on for 2 weeks now, but one side of it was Not graded when we came to do the sod. So now he's about to close on the house tomorrow morning, and it's not our fault it wasn't done.

He didn't have it graded, and it's been raining for weeks.

He called me 4 times during the meeting. He's like, man, these people are coming in the morning. I'm like, Patrick, what do you want me to do? So yeah, now I'm gonna go pick this up, I'm gonna go lay it. It's gonna be a waste of gas, a waste of time, all the things, and then go to Bass Pro after this.

So I'm just here at my desk actually reviewing the footage, and I just want to say thank you to everyone that does allow us to come out for these turnaround shows. First and foremost, it is absolutely humbling. So big shout out to everyone that's ever been in the turnaround show. Over 100 businesses that we've traveled to and done the turnaround show for. It's completely free for the owners and we don't pitch them or sell them anything. And it's all because of your support. So whether you're a member of HomeWorks, a member of Augusta Nation, you're inside the school community and Home Service Boardroom, I just wanted to say thank you. And whether it be Adama Industries or another business doing over 7 figures, I highly recommend if leadership is the constraint of your business, joining Home Service Boardroom. I truly believe it's the recipe to be able to become the leader that is required to go from $1 million to $10 million. Okay, back to the episode. So last year we did around $2.2, $2.3 million in revenue. This year we're on target for around $3 million. Is all of that new revenue from the retail side, or has the retail side been growing?

So the retail side has been growing. I would say this year we have added some new HOAs and lawn account, the maintenance side of it. Right now about $100,000 this year on that side. We've not gotten into our subdivision entrances yet this year, which will— last year was a big boost on a big project we did.

Like that Tomahawk job I talked about, that neighborhood community center, pool, all that thing, uh, it was like 10 acres of Bermuda sod and like 10,000 plants. It was huge, huge job. And we have a few of those like in the pipeline that will happen.

We've got 5 or 6 of them coming this year that will probably be a little bit larger than that big project last year total.

And is that like someone like they do the whole development, they're like, hey, we just want Someone did the front really nice.

So you've heard of D.R. Horton?

Yes.

80% of our revenue is everything we've done with Horton, so it's there.

So we do a lot of D.R. Horton stuff and a lot of DSLD stuff.

See what I'm saying? We kind of babysit Horton. Whatever they need, we make it happen.

These are primarily going to be the local division of D.R. Horton, their entrance, the amenity centers, the pool houses, the Pickleball courts have now become a big thing that they're putting into them.

So that's kind of a new service or department in that is like the service, the entrances.

It's something we've piddled in for really a few years, but it's really something we are trying to expand, um, moving, moving forward.

I don't think we even talked about like Kelly's in politics, like local politics, local government and stuff.

She ran for like council or something last year for the parish, so they're like connected So if you look at the current revenue, uh, let's say this year it's $3 million. What's the kind of like percentage breakdown do you think in terms of maintenance, install, and then retail?

Hmm, so maintenance is— I think we're going to be somewhere around $1 million between the lawn landscape side of it.

That's what you manage?

Yeah, the install side is Would probably be that $1.2 to $1.5 range.

So pretty even distribution between the 3, and that's basically each of your departments?

Yeah, well, Matt's will be— so the goal this year is $1 million on the, on the sod. So, you know, we were talking $3 million, but I think it's a possibility if the rain will stop. So I'm gonna give us a little break. It's rained for 3 weeks straight now. Um, then, you know, we could be through $3.2 to $3.5.

Okay. What were we, break-even last year? Like, what was the kind of Overall breakdown?

So we realized back in— let's see, so it's '26— back in '24, we were not charging enough on some projects. And we had had a consultant come in and they sort of helped us set a base. It was originally a sales thing, if you were interested in selling your company.

Yeah, mergers and acquisitions.

Yeah, yeah. And we were not at that— well, I was sort of at a point I was really in a Yeah, I was in a place in life I was really frustrated.

Yeah.

And we, we weren't really sure what direction to go. With Evander coming in last year, uh, with a couple of the big projects, that's really— we made a good bump in profitability last year. I feel like we can make a bigger bump this year in the profitability side. Our number one problem is leads. We did the brand change, and in the brand change websites, whatever we're doing.

It's stalled momentum.

Yeah, it's it. Yeah, it's, it's broke down on the side of the highway, um, and a few guys have been able to get hitchhiked down the road, but that's really about it. It's a pretty good analogy for it.

And when did that brand change happen?

February of '25. Yeah, so we made a, a name change almost 2— well, a year and a half ago, uh, from Alford's Landscaping to Ademai Industries.

In my brain, every time I heard it, it was edamame. So, Adama was tough to say.

Adama is a Hebrew word for ground, and it is the feminine word for Adam. So through a journey, through a spiritual journey, it was, uh, it literally—

They're serving a commercial client though, so it's not as important. Now the house on the logo is a problem, but the name I can roll with it because commercial, when you're selling B2B, is different in terms of being able to say it.

Like, our motto is bringing life to your ground. And whether— so we have a sod store, whether it's that process selling sod or landscape, we're planting seeds. And so it's a sowing and a reaping principle.

Like, I couldn't say the name of the business. I feel like that's a problem. Um, well, I'll just start on this. So for those of you who haven't seen this, um, this is basically 4 reasons why a business will stop growing. Either lack of liquidity, money, lack of leads, which we kind of talked about already, a lack of labor, or a lack of leadership. And so we'll kind of go through some of the areas of opportunity for each of these, and then we'll figure out like what are the ones we're actually going to focus on and attack. Um, so I'll just start at the top. So from a liquidity perspective, is there a cash crunch? Like, it's— I, I was looking at the balance sheet, etc. Is there a cash crunch right now, or is it like we're okay?

No, there's not. I don't think there's a cash crunch. I mean, we've got $55 grand in a savings account. I've got 2 trucks that are basically sitting here every day, 2 trucks and trailers. I don't think we have any issues there.

Okay, there's no massive like debt that I didn't see or anything like that? Okay, cool. Just want to make sure we're clear.

No, we— that's one of the things, uh, I've been a tightwad all my life that's tried to pay. And so when we make extra money, I'm like a squirrel. I was just— we just— we pay.

Speaking of, when we built our house, literally there was no wasted materials. It was literally down to the number.

Okay, all right, cool. So we got $55K cash. Um, are, are you taking a salary from the business right now?

Yes.

Yes. Perfect. And that's accounted for inside of that?

Yes.

All right. Well, it's like, hey, if you're comfortable with $55K cash, I'm fine with it. I see that as like low for a $3 million business.

I know. We want to grow it.

Yes.

Okay.

I agree with you. So you— we back up and we were low. Um, I mean, you go through last year and we were $100 grand in debt.

So we paid about $80,000 plus The job was called Tomahawk, was the name of the subdivision. And it— after everything was said and done, I think we were like $80 grand just straight profit for that job, right? They were gonna use that to clear their credit cards or whatever. They said they were gonna clear their debt with that.

I can't quite put my finger on it, but I feel like there's conversations or things that have happened that's not being said to me inside this coaching.

In my mind, I thought it was supposed to be a 4-month job. I did it like a 10-month job. 2 and a half. And I was like, dude, I fucking killed it. Scott's like, no, we were gonna do it in 2 months. I was like, dude, that's not what you told me. You told me this was like a 4-month job.

I don't know if there's been hard feelings, if stuff has been said, but it's not coming out on camera. But I do feel like there's a lack of trust between mid-level managers and the owner.

I'm supposed to get a bonus quarterly, quarterly, and on every job over $20,000. I'd have to— I want to say that's the thing, and we do quite a few of those. Like very often. So all the time we talk about how I want to give y'all bonuses, this, that, this. But it's just like, okay, so how do we make that happen?

What are we trying to get to? Are we trying to build a $10 million business? Are we trying to build a $5 million business? Are we trying to build a business that runs without you? Like, I just need to know what's the finish line. I'll work towards whatever your goal is. I'm not trying to tell you how to run your business.

I think all 3 of what you mentioned.

Okay.

Get to $5 million. Get to $10 million. Run a business without us having to be on site. We've got 3 men here that are extremely capable. Our real long-term goal is to see them handling divisions of the company. I want them to be able to say, you know what, I make enough money, I can make as much money as I want. Your growth will make the space for the company growth. It's going to make the growth for you financially. It's going to make the growth for you personally. Alex and I have had this conversation, and me and Evander also, where the external grows and the internal can't handle it, then it's going to overwhelm you. If the internal grows, then the external is going to grow naturally. And that goes back to that Adamah, that the seed, the ground, and the personal life.

All right, and what's holding us back from your perspective from getting there? Is it strictly we just need more leads?

Leads are a big portion of it. I think we've got leadership pretty well in every area. Evander's got a couple of guys under him that we could expand divisions with, same way with Alex. We do, we do need 1 or 2 employees right now to fill some spots, but that's— you run through in this industry, attrition, it comes and goes. I mean, I left to go to Oregon 3 and a half weeks ago and we had every spot filled. We had a bunch of guys quit and we had some transitions there. So, you know, did I answer that question or did I chase a rabbit?

What's funny is like I can look at each of my businesses and see 100 problems. Gaping issues that we need to fix. And I think the issue I'm seeing with Scott and Kelly is they can only see the good stuff. I had to do the digging to figure out the problems. There was never even an admission of anything going wrong. I had to go find those things. From your all's perspective out in operations getting the work done, what are the current holes now that you see preventing that from happening?

So I mean, if I'll speak on it, like, like you just said, we have 2 sitting trucks. 2 skid steers and 2 trucks that are just available. I mean, if that's 3 times what I'm doing, that's 3 times the shit right there. That's 3 times what we're making. I mean, that's big. That's huge. See, those trucks could be operating every day right now, but they're not because of the lack of work that's in the pipeline. You see what I'm saying? And like, I do all the scheduling on the landscape side now. Like, that's been the goal since day one. That's what I wanted to do. I thought when I was coming here to be operations manager that I was going to be able to oversee, schedule out, and also sell and like not have to be in the field every day, right? I'm in the field every day right now. I've tried to take what I've learned from you to other businesses, and we implemented budgeted hours, all that stuff we implemented at the company I was at before. At Evergreen, we had a— we had a— an actual P&L. It's like, here's this, here's this, here's this, here's this. And, you know, Everything was highlighted, you know, and I could see— you could see it all. Materials, fucking laying this, this, this. And like, even at Evergreen, we did door hangers, we did all that. We did a crap ton of door— I'm talking about we, we were paying, like, on my weekdays or whatever, I'd pay my little brother, whatever the case. We were, we were paying guys $10 an hour, you know, just around just to go. And we had them on the little app where we track them, and they, they put out tens of thousands of door hangers. I'm assuming residential Yeah, but exactly that. That's the thing. And that our wheelhouse is HOA, commercial, that. But it's also like, I know that's our— that's what we do, but we can also—

Landscaping is residential as well.

We are open to that.

That part of it.

So I've tried to pitch the tree and shrub pruning, the fertilization, weed control, because we did all that at Evergreen. At Evergreen, we did— we had like 7 services they called, and then there was like the big 3.

I would love to have a guy that we train where he goes and gets his arborist license. Maybe we don't go into full trees. We did the job for Kathy Preston, we had palm trees, and we had lint. I had to bring— I brought an arborist in and paid an arborist $800. You know, those are things that if we had a guy that worked through the knowledge, there's opportunities there for sure.

Yeah, I think in my opinion, our ideal customer for this company is like Bass Pro, you know what I mean? Having that big account where it's a big long account, you know, only collecting that one big check. And I think that's where Scott's really been good at, was focusing on that stuff. I think on the residential stuff, our ideal customer is somewhere, you know, a half a million dollar house that wants like about a $12,000 install, you know, somewhere around there to where we can send those guys out for a day, they get it all done, and then they're done. It kind of just creates a little bit of a scheduling nightmare whenever you start trying to, trying to do everything. We have $2 million locked in in accounts, so we're gonna do $2 million no matter what.

When you say accounts, are you talking about maintenance or installations? Like jobs you sold?

Well, maintenance basically, because— well, and installations, because we are locked in to do those houses for Horton.

Contract.

So I mean, some of these neighborhoods are going to be 900 houses. Yeah, so that's work for the next 10 years, right? You know what I mean? So it's like we have a good opportunity to expand right now on other stuff, but we also have did a really good job building like a very solid base.

Throughout the first half of this coaching, I was just listening to all these different perspectives and angles because I was trying to find like, what is the problem here? What can we actually attack? Well, we can always keep adding more services, but we have to get clear on like who's our ideal customer profile and then how are we going to grow this business? They don't really truly know the goal of the organization or the problem they're trying to solve. Or the mission. Because contractors specifically will pull you in 100 different directions. They just keep wanting you to do more stuff for them.

Yes.

And so we have to build the business what serves us. That lack of direction and that lack of focus is what's causing them to be scattered. And so we have to get clear on that. Otherwise, we're just like throwing, like, you know, stuff against the wall and be like, well, see who calls us.

And that's pretty well what we've been doing. Yeah, that was a great way of putting it. Throw stuff against the wall and see who calls.

Yes.

And nobody's called.

And so we have to understand, well, I— we can solve the leads problem. I, I can tell you right now the things to solve the leads problem. I don't really care about the leads problem because we can fix it. What leads do you want? I have yet to hear what leads do we want. Do we want more DR Hortons? Do we want residential customers that want a $5,000 install? Do we want more maintenance? Do we want to be able to install and then sell the maintenance package? Who's our ideal customer profile? Because that determines what leads we get. I can dump leads on you tomorrow by solving a I think we want all—

let me, let me ask a question.

One second, sorry. I want to hear what you say. Go ahead.

I think we want some of all the things that you said, that we want like more, more jobs worth $2,000, $5,000, and more, you know, grass cuts, more installs. And I think that will make I was really, really nervous when they told me Mr. Mike was coming because, you know, my English is not really, really good, and trying to explain, you know, my weaknesses in the company and trying to hear and understand completely, you know, what can I change and what can I do better.

I think the 2 departments on your ends are the ones that's really interesting because it's more recession resistant. The building construction and like the installs is basically an avenue to get them on the maintenance or sell them more sod or build the connections with the contractors. And we can take advantage of the boom and bust cycle of building custom houses. DR Horton, like DR Horton, if something crazy changes in the economy, in 6 months they can change. Like your 10-month, 10-year backlog can be gone.

Sure.

They just change. And so I don't want to build a $10 million business on the back of that because I saw too many of them go out of business too many times. I think, though, that it is a great way to make money. It is a great way to then create connections that then sell the maintenance and create goodwill for people to go buy more sod from us. That's the interesting model to me. And I think if we have to— if we're going to go after residential, I would literally say you have to create a new brand because it doesn't look like a residential business right now. That's why you're not getting a bunch of leads like homeowners being like, hey, can you come? I've never heard of you guys before, really. I just saw your trucks and I want a $2,000 little bed installed. You're not getting those because you're not speaking to that customer. And if you want to go that way, that's fine. It's just going to look like a very different business than what you're building right now. If the founder doesn't know the direction or the mission or where we're going, how can we expect anyone else that's following them to ever have clarity in terms of their role, what they should be doing, Who they should be serving, what services we should be doing, what marketing channel, because we don't have any clarity or direction. And so I'm not saying what kind of business you should build. I'm saying we need clarity because otherwise we— I have heard everything from tree pruning and arborist to massive contract work with D.R. Horton to mowing someone's lawn.

He came in, he explained a lot of the stuff we was doing wrong. We was focusing In too much things at once, and that has been, I think, an issue for years.

So I think clarity is important because like right now when you get to your website— yeah, I'll pull it up. Here's what it looks like.

I hadn't even looked at it.

I had no idea. That is a problem. That is a problem. Okay, so here's the thing. I can't even see your logo. It's cut off.

Me neither, but I'm blind.

See, most people aren't on a desktop, they're on their phone.

Here's the other thing. Here's the third thing.

Okay. All right.

I'm just gonna— I got to this page.

Okay.

Grounded in excellence, creating beautiful results. Automa Industries. I don't know what you guys do. I don't know where you serve. I have to read the next 3 paragraphs of sentences, of text. And then down below that, there's 6 more paragraphs of text. And below that, there's pictures of Cabela's.

Oh no, sorry.

Bass Pro. Like, I don't know what you do. The only 2 things a customer wants to know in the first 5 seconds of getting your website is, do they serve my area and they do the services that I have a problem with? And if that's not clear in 5 seconds, they're leaving your website. It doesn't matter if you're doing B2B, business to business, and going after property managers and contractors, or if you're going after Miss Smith as a residential customer. They're still finding you ultimately online. No one knows about you until they have a problem. And so I need to make sure that when they have that problem, they show up at this website, I am the first person they think of for the solution. And right now I need to read about 5 minutes of text to understand what we do.

Nobody's going to read that.

No. Like I get to the website, I'm serving, like, what's this township called?

Uh, Denham Springs, Livingston Parish.

Right.

Livingston Parish. We do sod retail. You can buy it. Here's a link. We install for large commercial projects and new builds, and we maintain properties that are commercial. And then those 3 link into— okay, if they're interested in maintenance because they're a property manager for a big Cabela's, they're going in there and seeing the services that you offer. They're booking a link with an estimator. Even if they got a referral, they're searching you up online and they're looking at your website. And if that website is hard to navigate, doesn't look good on a mobile device, I I can't see your logo. I can't understand if you serve my area or if you do my services. We're never going to get leads. So the lowest hanging fruit is just make sure that when people show up at your website, they know what you do and they know if you serve their area. If you do those 2 things and make it easy for them to get an estimate or sign up, you will probably get more estimates accepted. Right. That's just from the website perspective. But like, we will never fix this website if internally we don't know who we're selling to and what are we selling them.

That's a good point.

No, so thank you for pulling the pulling the shades up and saying, hey, that's look, that's that's direct. Yeah.

I feel like Adam Asad in a way is like a logistics company kind of.

Yeah.

You know, I'm dealing with truck drivers and everything like that. So you know, not to put another business in there, but we actually talked about getting a broker's license because I've got like six. We've got like 6 flatbeds empty.

We should sell insurance. Maybe we should do a little, you know, we have so many trees. Sorry, nursery. Don't you think we should do a nursery business?

Oh my goodness.

Anything that's not specifically these 3 things, we have to cut. Like, my goodness. Honestly, the sod is a completely different business.

Yeah, it is.

It absolutely is. So I'm gonna— I recommend making a whole new website for us.

Yes.

Alright, so it's gonna go on there as adamasod.com. It's gonna look totally different. They're gonna get there, they're gonna see sod. They're gonna see installation of sod. Like, it's gonna say we serve this county, which is probably a larger area, I imagine.

Yeah, yeah.

This county, this city, whatever, and we supply sod delivery. Like, it should be like, I get there, I think sod, this is what I'm here for. And then on the Adama Industries, it's like, Serving contractors since XYZ for installation and maintenance. Now I know what you do, you serve who you serve and what you do. The challenging part, the reason I think we have to split the website is because who you serve on maintenance and install is completely different than who you serve. You're going to confuse the algorithm in terms of who they should show it to. So first one is Adam Assad, change the website. Next one on the current website, Automa Industries, have to redesign the site. But to be very clear, like, I don't care if it's like down the middle. We have installs and we have maintenance. We serve these areas. Contractors in these areas is who we serve.

We've had some complications in the rebranding and the marketing side of it because you make a name change from one that you've been in business doing for so long, changing websites. We've lost a little connection to the market. I guess that's one of the biggest things that I would say that we're looking for in the coaching side is to be able to connect.

And Evander saw that.

So, can I ask you a question? So, I just got back from an event where a guy that was in the event with me, he is a website builder that focuses on the service industry. Do you have someone you recommend or do I just get on a call with him?

I'm completely biased. We've built over 1,000.

Oh, I didn't realize that.

No, no, it's fine. Have the conversation with him.

No, that's an easy answer.

No, no, that's it.

That's an easy answer. Easy answer. But like, I don't think getting more information is a bad thing. So like, also, is he going to do like your SEO or anything like that?

No.

So listen, if that's what you do, you're here.

I know, but like, and you're in the industry.

No, it's even an easier answer.

But like, it's important. So like the— yeah, the 2 sites, we can build those, and I don't care if we do them or not. It's just a function of they need to be done right. They need to work well on a mobile device. It needs to be very clear who you serve and where you serve right at the top. It should scream SOD, it should scream your ICP, your ideal customer profile. Our team will definitely talk to you, even if you go with them, and give you some advice. We do 15-minute free consults. You can also go to our page, go to our work, and just look at all the sites. You can see all the ones we've built and get an idea of what it should be looking like. So if you use someone else, just be like, you know what good looks like.

Yeah.

And if you pull up on a mobile device, it's usually the telltale sign. Like, does it look good?

Okay.

Right?

When a new lead comes in, who does— is it she? Wanda? Who does she contact?

It's been between Matthew and I on who deals with it. If it's an HOA, I deal with it. If it's been an individual customer, Matthew's dealt with it.

Yeah, everything to do with sod will go to you now.

Right?

You are the sod general manager. All right, I hereby declare you a knight, the sod general manager. Meaning now she has full clarity when there's a lead to anything to sod, it goes to you. Whether it be delivery, a contractor talking about sod, 100% Automa Industries is now Automa Sod. Everything goes to you. Every other lead goes to you for maintenance or installation. Now how I look at the two of you is operations, meaning he gets the work, you guys go do the work. Right, so operations manager for installations, operations manager for maintenance. And anytime any customer complaint issue comes in, to your point, this is the part that you actually have ironed out a little bit better. It's like, we're going to Evander if there's a project that's going south, we're going to Alex if there's an issue with a maintenance customer, right? But like, that's how you get out of the business, is because as this business gets to $4 or $5 million, you hire— you replace yourself.

Right.

Yeah, that's gonna be a salesperson, but they're not going to be over inside, correct? They're just going to be getting leads from maintenance and for install.

Well, the goal will be in that process is that Evander then moves into that spot, moves into what I'm doing while we build what he's doing. That's how we get him— I think that's how we get him out of the, uh, the install side of it.

Yeah.

A founder that's nice, an owner that's nice, a manager that's nice to appease their team will just, oh yeah, like you'll be the salesperson. Oh yeah, like we'll do door hangers. Oh yeah, we'll add this service in.

Like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

That actually shows that you as the leader don't have a clear vision of what the business should be doing. And that means saying no to some people and maybe hurting their feelings, but sticking to what is the vision of the company. And only the founder can really dictate that. Okay, do you want that?

Eventually, yeah. Once we grow to a spot like where that's possible, and I think that it 100% is, you know, with the what we have going on right now, you know. I'm trying to hustle in my life, like I'm trying to get ahead from situations I've been in in the past. I'm at a place, like I said, I'm 33. I've been doing this since 18, 19 years old. Been doing this the entirety of my, of my whole life. So yes, that's what I would like to do. I don't want to be out on these job sites every day for another 10 years. You understand what I'm saying? I'm kind of riding a roller coaster where I'm just being a glorified supervisor and operations manager at the same time. And I think that's stunting my side of what I have going on.

I think at scale, though, like any business, as a leader, you end up getting to the point where you're not in the field. So the question is, do you want to get out of the field or do you want to get into sales? 2 very, very different things.

Another different thing.

Right. So like if we scale the install side, would you rather have 4 projects that are massive going on and you're doing $5 million a year with multiple crews and you're not going to be in the field, right? But you're in operations. Or do you actually want to go do sales?

It's a great question.

I feel like you're great at operations. Yeah, I'll just— my 2 cents. I don't feel like sales would be your strength, right? But we can grow the installation division to the point where you're not out on the job sites, correct? This kind of goes back to Evander being like, we should do door hangers. It's like he doesn't have the full scope of the business. And we're like, I want to do sales. Like, no, like, you are better at operations.

I think in my mind I just want to get out the field, so I'm like, like, yes, let's go do sales.

So I'm not doing this every day. But that's also the thing that's leading us to like, we should go to door hangers, we should go do—

Yeah, that's just me shooting things that I've seen make up gaps and other things.

I got you, I got you. Yeah, as the leader, I don't just bend to whatever my team wants. Like, oh, they want to do residential jobs, great, we're doing residential jobs. Oh, we're gonna do door hangers, we're doing door hangers. No, here's the strategy for the business, here's why it exists, here's the mission, and you got to fit within these parameters. But I then give them autonomy to do it. I want to have clarity, like, you will get out of the field when that division is big enough.

Correct.

To get that big enough, we need clarity for the customer to get more leads so you can sell more, right? And eventually you will be out of the Because you'll have multiple crews at massive job sites.

Correct.

Scott's got to let go and let Evander do his thing out in the field and not jump in with the contractors. Evander's got to trust that Scott knows what he's doing in terms of focusing on the ideal customer profile and not letting him do random stuff inside the business that would hurt everybody.

We wanted to— I bought the book, I bought the P4P book, know all about it, but that was something that He wants information on, and it's— but anyway, I'll just let you know he's interested in that and how it works.

I would say number one for me priority would be, uh, pay for, uh, pay for performance, P4P.

I wouldn't even worry about P4P for now. We can, you know, down the road you can address that, but like with especially with big contract work, it is very difficult to do P4P on a 6-month contract.

I guess that's maybe what we needed more clarity on. So, but Even so, so like we're on set salaries, so some type of bonus structure that falls within the category of—

Yeah, like definitely be able to do stuff, you know, profit sharing.

Yeah, no, I don't get bonuses. I've gotten one since day one. I've been— I'm supposed to get bonuses. I don't get paid by the hour, so I'm on a salary. The more I work, the less I make, technically speaking.

So, so part of my desire is getting savings to a certain point. Setting goals, getting there, and above that, doing profit sharing. If they're struggling to provide for their homes and their families and it's really, really hard, they're going to want to go do something else.

Look, I can afford to be a country club member. I play golf every day, but I also have a 12-year-old daughter. I'm about to get— I have a ring in my car. I'm about to propose. Like, I'm trying to have a family. I'm trying to do other things. You can't do that. I make $72,000 a year. $72,000. That's it. Boom. That's my salary. So I make over $1,000 a week. That's, that's what I make. But that's not enough to grow in life. No, it's not.

But if they're being rewarded well for their labors, then that, that'll get you through the hard days of the summertime.

I think it's one of those things in my life, if I'm going to stay at Adama, like there has to be some sort of growth, you know? Like I said, I'm comfortable for now. I'm good.

We're good.

But also, like, I want to grow. I want to see them grow so I can grow. So that everything's copacetic.

The challenging part with profit sharing is going to be the fact that it's difficult to do profit sharing for, let's say, a maintenance technician.

Yes.

If the sod and the installs impact the profit and loss.

Yes.

Because now, like, it's like, well, I just make this random number at the end of the quarter. I don't really have any impact over it. Now you have a meaningless bonus. Then no one knows how they get affected, right? That's like, that's where P4P is helpful because it's like how hard I work, I get paid more. But like, if you just throw a random profit sharing right now, like, they're not gonna feel in any control. It's not gonna actually change behavior. They're gonna feel it's arbitrary. They're like, why didn't we get a profit sharing? It literally becomes entitlement.

Sure.

Because they're used to it, and then they don't even know how it's like calculated. So like, I would be very careful adding that prematurely. Team members get disillusioned when what you told them was going to happen, their expectations, don't match up with reality. And if you're gonna sell them a bill of bill of goods when it comes to onboarding, training, or recruiting them and say there's bonuses every quarter, as soon as you miss one, we got a problem. Versus being, here's your base pay, here's what the incentives look like, here's the open numbers of what it was last quarter and last year. And based upon these numbers from last year, if nothing changes, here's the bonuses you would make. We do need to build the cash reserves before the profit sharing because otherwise there are going to be months where where you lose money and then what do you do? Take money out of people's paycheck? So like, we need $200K in cash for this business, just for the stability of the crew and their payroll. Like, for a technician to know that you have one payroll in the bank account, I would be afraid. If I'm trying to feed my family, like, I need to make sure we have stability.

Sure.

And so I want that to be $200K. That should be like the goal. And then once we get there, we determine, okay, what are we willing to split with the team? And also from that is when you Then replace yourself. If we had 200 grand in cash, we're giving distributions to the team, and now we can replace yourself. You have enough salary cap to be able to go find someone that's gonna be expensive, but they know how to sell these jobs. But like, your exceptional skill is sales. I don't want you in operations. I don't want you in admin. I want you selling. And that's the whole point. You got that, chat?

The whole point of every good salesperson Hey, you ever seen Franco Harris run down the field when that ball drops? I pick it up. That's my problem. You drop it, I'm picking it up.

Hey, have I been on it? Have I been on it? Alright then. How do you get dragged in operations right now? What happens? When you're like, I need to go. The ball dropped. What happened? Like the last thing that popped in your head.

So, one of the ways I get dragged in is, you know, the contractors, the builders that I've dealt with for so long They call me, you know, when I've dealt with them for years. That's just— it's, uh, they call me. Now I think one of the things—

They're texting me right now. I have like 10 text messages.

Yeah, and I probably do too in a second. And that's probably one of the things that we need to break— me getting out of the text message with the sod store, me getting out of the text message with the Horton guys.

Yeah, because if he's in that text thread, he starts operating. starts.

I mean, like, we were in Oregon, I just put my phone down and I had to stay away from my phone. Well, for the first week I didn't have a phone, but after that I just literally left the phone.

Do you have the company email coming to your phone?

Yes.

I do have company email, but I tell people, if you don't want to get in touch with me, email me. Okay, that's right. Really, really bad about it.

This is so easy.

Let's go.

No email on phone. Okay, so This is this is great because the reason that they feel like they need to get out of the field is because you have not empowered them to take full control of their department.

Sure.

Most people, everything's got to be so perfect, and they're the only one that can do it perfectly, and so they never let things go, and they never never let people fail on their dime, and so they'll actually just cause more trouble because now they don't cut the original email; they're just going to them via text message. That's what they are.

Yeah, Scott is very, very efficient.

Yeah.

He's, he's the type of guy that it's like you got like 2 weeks worth of work, you get it done in 8 days, you know what I'm saying? It's like he can do it, you know what I mean? He's very, very efficient with the scheduling and stuff like that. And he'll even come into the store and I'll have my little Post-it system and stuff, he's like, well, you could do this, you can do that.

He just can't help himself.

He's got a very efficient way of scheduling and looking at that kind of stuff.

And that's why most of us will stay, like, be trapped in our business, is because what has served us so well and got us to where we're at now is the exact thing we have to shed that skin in order to get to the next level.

Yeah.

And so this, the, the— I also have a lot of pride in my efficiency. Like, I— everything is dialed in. You have not heard this phone ring, like nothing like that. That is the same thing that will keep me from getting to a bigger business because I take pride in being efficient versus at your size of business, the best thing you can do is be a good leader and make good decisions. You jeopardize both of those when you try to get into everyone's business.

Yeah.

You don't— you're not good at your role making decisions, and you make everyone else frustrated when you're jumping in. And so when you step into the sod store and you have 5,000 ideas, you shut up. And when you have your weekly meeting with your GM, you say, hey, what worked well, what didn't work Well, here's a couple ideas I had. 'Cause by the way, out of the 10 ideas that you have, 8 of them are bad, but you just spewed 10 of them and now he's gotta digest it all, figure it out, test it all, versus you taking your 10, putting it all in a list, digesting it. Okay, these are the 2 that I actually think I wanna get through. I'll have that in my one-on-one meeting with him. Now you come across as a controlled leader instead of someone who just like dumps on someone and then they've gotta digest it all. Trust is important every single level of an organization. As soon as the mid-level manager doesn't trust the owner, we have problems, right? They're going to do things behind their back. They're going to pull the technicians in a certain way. Culture is going to get bad, etc. As soon as the owner cannot trust their mid-level managers, they start doing things that like hiding information, profit and loss statements, pricing information. They start making things up on the fly and telling people different stuff. So anytime there's a break of trust up or down a chain of command, it leads to bad stuff.

Um, and that's—

here's the thing, you won't know how to solve the problem anymore because you're not in the thread. And so the best way to solve the problem will be take the message they send you and send it to them.

Yeah.

And then what they're going to do is then contact the contractor. Hey, Scott sent me the message, here's the solution. And over time happens is they start realizing Evander has a solution. Yeah, I don't need to go to Scott. He's a middleman. Yeah, but what the problem is, is when you want to jump in, you're ironing this fact that they know they can come to you, and that will take time to break. But if you get out of the thread, you don't know how to solve their problem, and then you don't contact the admin person like, hey, bring me up to speed here. No, I forward that to Evander. I send that to Evander. He'll take care of you. Evander texts the contractor, says, here's the solution. He starts realizing Evander is the person you should be going to. That that is hard, very, very hard. I know, especially because you you have such values around quality and excellence. Yeah, that it hurts you, and you think that those might be compromised by you not jumping in.

Yes. Well, that's that's because I've micromanaged everything for so long.

Great. I'm glad you said it.

Yeah.

No, I know that.

I know that every business has humans, and every time there's a human involved, there will be. errors. Right now he just knows about them and can solve them immediately because he knows everything. And so there is still going to be problems when he's not there. They'll feel bigger and more horrible and higher in volume and quantity when he's not there because he will feel out of control. And that is where you have to fight the inclination to just jump back in, because ultimately that will keep the business small. And by doing that, it'll give you the ability to focus just on sales. And when you say you need more leads, we can solve that problem. I'm going to need a great salesperson that's not in threads with contractors that you've serviced for years.

I agree.

So they can do it.

I agree.

And then they will feel like they have more ownership of their role and of their department. And then when they double in revenue, they can take the credit because they did it.

Correct.

Right?

Yeah.

And so instead of thinking about like, what can I do for them or what services can I add for them? I want to get them to this. Just let them do their job and stay out of their hair. We're not!

There's this saying in Spanish is that if you never get it wrong, you will never learn. One of the things that Mr. Scott always says is nobody taught me, I learned by myself. And I, I understand that because, um, all the lawn care things that I know— cutting ponds, doing the slopes, uh, weed eating, edging, all that stuff— I have learned them by You're like, can we get that recording back, please?

Hey, I need y'all to like back me up.

Have I not been y'all's back when it comes to that? He's been great the last few weeks.

Ask the wife.

So, okay, hey, don't worry. Hey, we have a 6-week plan here. Yeah, Scott's gonna get out of all the text threads. Yes. And delete email off of his phone. When mid-level managers are so eager to see the owner get out of daily operations, This is also a bit of a— something is going on here that's not being said to me, but it's happening. Usually mid-level managers want the founder there. They want the leader there. They want someone casting the vision every day in front of them. And it's actually the owner trying to help them and empower them to take things off their plate. In this case, it's like, get out of here. We don't want you.

This is music to my ears because I'm a visionary and I have a lot— I've had a lot of ideas. And so much of what you have said, I have mentioned in one way, shape, or another. And so it's beautiful to me because I'm like, you want this, but you, you're not letting go of this. And, and you see this and you're incorporating this, but you're still involved in this. And so thank you.

So really, Mike, my long-term, my desire personal-wise is there's a shortage of men in America, men that are fathers, that Father and raise up young men, and that's really my desire. That's what I— it's what I'm called to do, it's what I want to do. And honestly, I got 3 sons sitting here, and I, uh, I respect each of them deeply. I appreciate each of them. And as a dad, one of the hardest things is letting a son stand up and walk, you know. And these guys have done it. And so No, it's, uh, it's music to my ears, but, uh, that's a little bit of my heart. That's a little bit of what I'm gonna walk out and do and what I'm in the process of doing.

So. It's like the chicken. You can't let— you can't crack the egg for them. You gotta let them peck out and step away.

Yeah.

Right.

Good analogy. We treat our guys like family. I mean, they are family. Like, they're like my sons and, and like his, and sometimes they don't like Daddy. But truthfully, and so we invite that, you know, involvement and engagement. You know, it's not wrong to take that step or, you know, inappropriate by any means.

So there's sometimes that, you know, I want to talk to him and he always makes the time to talk to me. So, and whenever I had something in my head, I always try to speak it out. If I think that it's needed in the company. If it is something personal, I'll probably just keep it to myself.

Look, we're humble. You know, just because we've been in business for a long time doesn't mean that we don't, you know, need some guidance or that we have all the answers. And we welcome that input.

This is the most basic 6-week plan I have ever created. You can do this probably within A day or two, okay? But if you do these things, I do believe in a couple months the business looks very different.

Being that the websites were kind of my wheelhouse, obviously we got on the ball with that. So we reached out to one of our friends that he had already kind of communicated with in regards to a website, um, and talked with them and then got the ball rolling. So We have already today have the Adam Asad website is live. And then Adamah Industries will, they're saying by the end of today we'll have something. So very fast, quick response to that. And I mean, we love what they did with Adam Asad. Can't wait to see what they did with Adamah Industries.

Alex has done a, done a really good job with the maintenance side. And, you know, and then getting Matthew into the, the side store, really taking him away from the landscape sales, which has really been an easy transition for me just to go back into that, go back into that sales portion of it. And I've enjoyed it. I've always said I've, I've had a crazy high close rate because I enjoy just I can sit and listen. A customer tells me what they want, they tell me what they want, we, we close the job and we go get the job done.

The difference in Scott and what we've been doing the last month compared to the last year I've been back, he's 100% gave the trust and kind of let his hands off of it to where that I can make those wheels just, you know, turn and keep going. And the only time that he chimes in is when I have questions. So that's kind of one of the things too that I'm realizing is I need to just not call Scott at all about anything and just figure it out on my own, because otherwise I just don't hear from him and then it goes. So it's been great. Like I said, I'm very happy with the way that it's been going the last month or so from my end.

There have been some phone calls and I go, why are you calling me?

Yeah, I know, I know, I know.

And I'm like, why are you texting me?

I know.

I'm like, I, I, you know.

That's what I'm saying. It's for both of us. We're both, we're both learning how to, you know, keep— That's right.

That's right. The text threads pop up. I ignore them.

He doesn't respond. I'll say that he has not responded to any of those chats.

I'll just ask Evander. I'm like, hey, do you need anything? He's like, no, I'm good.

I'm like, okay.

We've added probably 6 or 8 new continuous customers since Mike's been here because that has been a focus. of Matthew on that side of the customers that he's reaching out to, those that he's focused and putting his effort and his energy into. So we've actually done a couple of commercials just through— well, we— I'm waiting on a contract. We've got the approval where it's actually a government project. So once the contractor gets his final contract, then we'll get ours on that. That's a job we'll perform probably in October. We're waiting on 2 or 3 HOAs that we've bid in the process. So I am focusing on contacting some of the larger commercial contractors in our area. While what we've done in the past works, but also saying, okay, in the, in the process, what I've realized is when some of these local jobs go up for bid, I need to be at those meetings. I need to meet every contractor that's there, every contractor that's on their list, make sure I have their email so that when I submit a quote, my quote goes to every contractor that's there. That way, if our price is in range, we have an opportunity with whoever gets the job.

For us, we just really are appreciative to Mike, his team. We are appreciative to Evander, our manager over landscaping, who took the initiative to reach out to y'all because he is just a super fan. And we've watched a few episodes and again, super impressed. I was just watching, you know, Mike going to Texas and seeing him in the cowboy hat. Yeah, that was pretty cute. So I'm excited for y'all. And again, just really honored and appreciate it.

I appreciate Mike and Augusta and all he does. These turnaround shows, they're interesting. And in our, like in my life, it has helped. It has helped. The situation that I have been in, especially with this, uh, this side of things with Scott and Adama. And I'm, uh, I'm appreciative of the advice and the way that things are going. So it's been great.