$1M Business is BREAKING Them

We've worked together for years and years.

Yeah, we don't work great together.

Today we're in Florida visiting Warren and Stacy from EnviroGreen Landscape Services.

When I pull up, everybody scatters like rabbits.

The relationship is the most important.

She tries to micromanage me even.

But the business affects it.

Can't micromanage me.

Their business made over $1 million in annual revenue last year.

Crew leaders are the dads, and then their sons now work for us.

Today, these younger guys, they'll stand there at the truck till somebody tells them what to do.

But then he blows up after it's not done.

You can tell sometimes it's made, like, oh, I need to do this, need to do this.

As many years as we've had these guys here, I really don't feel like we should have to go and check jobs.

Because you're so worried about not one single thing slipping through the cracks on operations, your sales and your admin is like—

Yes.

—terrible.

Yes. But they only have $7,000 of cash in the bank. You have to raise prices.

For years, we never paid attention to that at all. And we were wondering, well, golly, wonder why we don't have any money.

Ah, they have almost $400,000 worth of debt.

You've been doing it for so long and you're like, well, where's all the fruit of our labor?

And their lines of credit are all used up.

And really, we've been dipping into our line of credit to just keep the business afloat this past year. I mean, we just recently put $50,000 on it.

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 Warren and Stacy a strategy to turn the company around in the next 6 weeks. Okay, this is gonna be harder than I thought.

Hi, my name is Stacy. We are with EnviroGreen Landscape. My husband and I have run this business for just over 28 years. We are a landscape maintenance, lawn and shrub spraying, and landscape. We are about 50% maintenance, 25% spraying, and then another 25% landscaping. We are just over $1 million and have stayed at that mark for 6 years approximately. But our profit margin keeps dwindling. I want to say we're probably at about 5%.

So 40% of their revenue right now is going out the door to direct labor, but then another 20% is going out the door to overhead wages. So that's 60% of revenue is just going to wages.

Profit and cash flow are our two biggest concerns. I know you say we should have a month's worth of income in the bank at all times. We are in the negative at least 3 times this time over the summer. They only have $7,000.

And you know what stinks is that was December December 31st, 2025, and in January they lost money on the P&L, like $20,000.

It's been this way for many years, but just seems to be getting worse. I don't think we've watched our numbers as a business owner through the years like we should.

They have $380,000 of liabilities. Oh, they got a property loan. They got Zeezprays, Rightstanders, Hustler, Fifth and Third, SBA loan, GMC loan, Citizens Bank loan, Kubota loan. They have negative equity of $77,000.

On the balance sheet. You know, my husband and I have done everything old school, trying to get everything, you know, going through Copilot. But, you know, it's a big learning curve.

Check this out. Contact button.

No worky. We have looked into selling the business recently. It's just frustrating to know after all these years we're still running in the same circle that we have done for years. When things get tight, that's when the blinders come off and you just kind of have to ask for help.

So if we can get them to convince them to raise their price by 15%, technically that would more than triple their profits. But then if they lose 15 or 20% of customers, which would be cataclysmic, then what I need to do is backfill 20% of their customers by getting new customers on the website. But their website stinks because they're 29 years old in business and relying on a bunch of word of mouth. So we can fix it.

When you put them on there, that's when they will break.

Lay them down gently if you can.

I watched the first half. I figured Seattle was gonna kick their ass.

I like the trees and I like all that, but— Pretend he's not even there. You're good. Over the summer, we were going to sell it. We were like done. We were sinking.

I had a guy look at it. He didn't even give me an offer. I gave him a price up front, and he said, "There's no way I can pay you that." And I said, "Well, I'm not saying I wouldn't take less than that." So we went out and rode and looked looked at all the properties and I'll get back with you. Never heard anything from him.

How's it going? Good.

This is a cool spot you got. Pleasure to meet you. Good to meet you. Warren. Good morning. Good morning. How you doing? Come on out.

My name is Stacy Owen. I'm with EnviroGreen Landscape and we've been in business for 29 years. And this is my husband, Warren. Introduce yourself.

Oh, I'm Warren Owen.

So maybe just kind of show me around a little bit.

Office is— This little spot here? We just have this little small office. Then our shop is down here.

And none of the neighbors give you any hassle over—

No, this is a residential-zoned area. Yeah. But as long as you're growing plants on it, it's deemed agriculture. Very cool. So this is our shop here. This is where we store equipment, so forth, is inside here, so it's safe. Garage door, blade sharpening area. Awesome. This is kind of where we convene in the morning.

For the maintenance side, is it mostly commercial or all residential or—

It's about half and half. Okay, okay. So here, The horticulture part is definitely more profitable. The spray part, the horticulture part of it, I'd like to keep. Irrigation, I'd like to keep. Landscaping, I'd like to keep. Maintenance, I really don't care about. Maintenance, huge competition here. I mean, I bet there's 1,000 maintenance companies. It's tough to compete with those big guys 'cause they offer benefits. We don't have that. In Lakeland alone, there's 1,000 landscape maintenance companies. And it's mainly two guys with a truck. They're doing it for half of what we're doing it for.

So everything's able to fit in here, then they just take everything out in the morning?

Yeah, they roll out in the morning. I only have one maintenance crew out right now. Okay. It's kind of messy in here because the wind blows the leaves through this. Oh, interesting. Kind of perfect though. One crew's on this side, one crew's on this side. So there's just two maintenance crews?

Yeah. And then the landscape crews, do they just keep their stuff in that shed or? They're the same crews. Oh, okay. So two crews, one lawn care, one landscape, but they kind of do both. Yeah, we do both.

So this time of year we go maintenance every other week, so that frees up more projects. Yeah, but we just don't have any right now. November through—

we even sometimes go through May, we just go every other week. So we have a whole week, a week of mowing and a week off, or we don't even go to the property. So we have to keep them doing something.

Summertime is hard to— without going into overtime, With the labor force that we have, it's hard to do anything extra. So I found myself doing irrigation work and so forth. I'm 58. I don't need— my back's bad, so I don't need to keep doing that. We're missing out on irrigation, landscaping, anything extra. We're not able to do that unless we do it on overtime on Saturday or after work. So then you're kind of setting yourself up to lose.

So we don't do any during that time.

We do do some. Very little. But I do most of it.

So maintenance, there's just not any money in that right now.

I mean, we might make 5% profit on maintenance.

So out of the million, about a quarter of that is spraying? Correct. The other rest of the revenue is split between landscaping and— Yeah, and irrigation and maintenance.

Maintenance is what, about— Just over 5. About half of it. Okay. So the other $250,000 has been landscape, irrigation, mulch, so forth.

Well, do you all head into the office? Yeah. All right, 'cause I'm chilly.

This is kind of where you hang out most of the time, is that right?

She and I— she comes in, she sells health insurance, so she helps me when she can.

I mean, I come off and on, like I still— She sells insurance. Yeah, we've worked together for years and years.

Yeah, we don't work great together.

But I try to come in whenever I'm—

She helps, but sometimes it's not at the right time. Stepping on each other's toes, you know what I mean? And it's like, stay over here, I'll deal with that.

In the perfect world, what is the lanes? Is it like you want to do the work operationally and then admin side is hers. Yes. And I know that's challenging because when you're working, he has to kind of fill in the parts that you've been doing. Is that right? Yeah. I mean, it goes to disaster. You should know it's okay.

Hey, I'm just being truthful.

And when I come in, I come in full force. Like, I haven't been here in 4 or 5 months, so I'm just like—

She's better at managing the guys than I am because she's a— she's nitpicky. Right. Where I'm not. Yeah. I'm more of, you should know what to do.

And I like to have good conversation with them and we get along really well. Right.

It's because I've always got something else to do, so I'm wanting to get them going so I can go do my thing.

But then he blows up after it's not done, you know?

Yeah, I mean, it's just— You can tell sometimes it's me, like, oh, I need to do this, need to do this.

Today, these younger guys, they'll stand there at the truck till somebody tells them what to do.

—And that's difficult. Sometimes it's difficult. Sometimes they don't listen.

No listen. The crew leaders need to be more responsible than what they are, and we don't, you know, it's all on me. It's not on them. Like, they don't come to me like professionals, and they're Hispanic now. They don't speak complete English. It's a letdown when you go out there and those things you ask for them to do and make sure they do don't get done.

Only what Camarosa needs is organization. Organization. Yeah. Organization and keeping fine work. And when those things don't happen, what services specifically that you have? Is that usually the projects where stuff falls apart? Maintenance.

More maintenance than anything. And our properties look good. We're really hard on ourselves.

Of your 8 crew members now, how many of them have been in for more than a year? All of them.

Our two crew leaders have been with us, gosh, maybe 18 years. My boss is a good person. And they have their sons here, so it's just like two families, and then they're all related.

Like a teacher too, I am learning from my boss. So you have two dads. Yes. And then all sons. Yes. That's crazy. And it works really well.

They're good guys and they're reliable. You know, we've tried to bring other people in and we're just so used to them and— And then one brother.

Until it doesn't. Right.

Because they can play us. Yes. Because our crews are kind of antagonists, so they don't necessarily jive with each other. But they've all stuck around.

Yeah, or it plays where if they want something, you know, like a raise or vacation, it's basically they can all collectively—

Yes.

And then we're like, okay. And we've done that, like, with pay and everything.

They've done that to us. Some are salaried, some are hourly. On the same crew.

One crew with 2 guys on salary, 2 on hourly, and one crew with 2 guys on salary, 1 on hourly. So we're kind of messed up.

And did they basically want salary? Is that the thing? They wanted salary?

Yeah, they kind of pushed that at the time because they knew they had us where they wanted us. So they were like, yeah, my son will come drive, but He needs to make $1,000 a week. Got it.

That's why there's two.

We brought them in at the dad's pay, essentially. So we essentially have two crew leaders paid.

Right, right, right, right.

So like one crew's getting, you know, that's what it is. Per week.

That's why the maintenance is not as profitable.

You're kind of setting yourself up for discrepancies between the crew and a lot of infighting by having the two different tiers of pay. Because what they're going to do is like, well, why are they on salary? Why am I not? Well, they have a driver's license. Well, I do more work. I work more hours. Right. OK, then you have your salary that want to work less. The hourly want to work more. So you have all these different incentives versus being like, we're all trying to do the same thing. Right. Like right now when you look at your P&L, about 40% is going towards direct labor and then another 20% of revenue is going to overhead labor, i.e., the two of you, officers, like other overhead pay. 60% of revenue is going out the door. So $0.60 of every dollar is going to wages. That's out of whack. We'll never make money doing that. And because you've currently done it on salary, the fastest fix actually would just be increase revenue by $100 grand because your additional cost of labor would be so much lower because it's fixed on the salary side. So by us having less work, the problem is you've basically made a fixed expense of your labor, a lot of it from the salaries. So when you have less work, you're just cutting directly into your margin.

You hope to get 10, 15, up to 40% profit in and, you know, operating something this long.

And because we used to be there and then now we're just trickling down and it's, it's disappointing. Yeah, it's very disappointing. It's upsetting. I mean, this is like our baby.

The thing that's going to make this hardest is the debt when it comes to liquidity and cash. When I got a balance sheet, we had $7,000 in the bank and about $350,000 or so in debt. Has that changed? Have we had to dip more into the working line of credit? What's that look like right now? It's almost maxed out. It's higher than that.

No, it's the same. It's like 95 between the two. The two.

The two. And so we only have about $5,000 left. I would say there are only 4 reasons why a home service business will stop growing. It's either because of a lack of liquidity, a lack of leads, a lack of labor, or a lack of leadership. Now, when we look at liquidity for EnviroGreen, there's a lot of debt. But the real problem is that we only have about $7,000 in the bank. And I ideally want to see at least a month's worth of revenue in the bank account. When we look at just equipment debt versus the working capital stuff, what's the kind of breakdown on that? Do you approximately know? I actually broke it down. You're good. This, uh, if the balance sheet was accurate, I know what those are. You do? Yeah. Okay.

As long as I don't know that that balance sheet is totally accurate off of QuickBooks.

I just kind of broke down.

Oh, beautiful. Fantastic. Okay, so monthly— oof. Okay, this is going to be harder than I thought. But they have $100,000 of working capital loans and credit card debt, $180,000 of equipment loans, and $127,000 of property loans. I'm really concerned by the fact, though, that $7,000— over $7,000 per month is spent on just paying down the debt. That fixed expense doesn't change year round, and that's It's killing our cash flow.

The line of credit wasn't bad and we like got one and condensed a credit card that we had. And then we kind of just been living off the line of credit this past year. We normally don't do that like this. And then really we've been dipping into our line of credit to just keep the business afloat this past year. I mean, we just recently put $50,000 on it. It's just because we keep going in the negative.

Of your current maintenance clients, how many of them do you think have been with you for more than 5 years?

80%. Yeah, at least.

Now, in the past 5 years, have you raised prices on those customers?

We just did, but it was baby raises.

You already went to 5%? We went more than 5%.

We went more than 5%. It was 10%. So you just raised—

and is it, is it a monthly rate that you're charging the maintenance clients? Yes. And is that a signed contract every year? It's continuing. Okay, so just rolling each month. Fantastic. Okay, cool. Lead side of things, we have word of mouth only, really. We don't do any advertising whatsoever. None. Zilch. Nothing. The next constraint in the 4L framework is leads. And right now all of their leads are just coming from word of mouth. They've been in business for 29 years and they do a great job. And so I'm sure they get a lot of referrals, but right now they're getting only 1 lead per week. For a million-dollar business, you're getting 5 or 10 a week at least. And it's worked thus far. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is what I was telling them last time. Like, ultimately, you've done what 92% of entrepreneurs won't do, which is build a million-dollar business. Only 8% of businesses in America will get above a million. So you're doing something right. And in my opinion, you have operations dialed and you have a really solid team and you really care about the work and you do a great job. The proof is in the pudding when you have 80% of your customer base that stuck with you for more than 5 years. Most people can't keep 80% of their customers per year. Okay. They have a 20% annualized churn. You're crushing operations. So I'm not really concerned as much about the constraint of labor also because they're saying they can do 20 or 30% more work without having to get any more employees or get any more trucks, which means they're way below capacity. From the leadership side. Now, moving to that, I feel like we do have a lot of stepping on toes around the roles of sales, operations, and admin because the two of you unfortunately for like 5 months of the year are doing it together, and then it's like you drop out. Now when you drop out during the winter, are you here at all? Remotely. Okay, but you're staying connected.

And the problem too is like, this is weird, like we have two different styles of, of management, running, managing. And so like I get them fine-tuned and I'm a little pickier than he is.

And, and as soon as she's out of the picture, they know, they go back to just right chill mode.

And I don't mean that, but, but he, he's more like, hey guys, how you doing? They'll sit out there and they'll chit-chat and blah blah. Where I'm in the morning, I'm like, okay, let's go, boom boom boom boom boom. But they like you more. I think so.

I think they like to be managed that way, right? Right, right. Because I think with me, they don't really know what, you know, they're like, well, I don't— I think he wants us to do it this way. She's a better Manager. She's a micromanager and I'm not. She tries to micromanage me even, which that doesn't work. Can't micromanage me. She'd be right there telling them, you need to do it like this, you know, do this.

Right. But I don't do it in a—

I used to be a bad micromanager and I have learned I don't do that anymore.

But when you say, hey, do this, when you're saying that, is that on job sites or— Okay. Okay. So you're going to get on job sites.

Yeah. I like that part of it. When I pull up, everybody scatters like rabbits. But when he's there, you know, it's like, hey, you know, good morning.

How was your weekend?

But our guys and I get along really well. They just know that we have two different styles of management.

But it kind of falls off once you're gone. Yeah.

And I know enough just to be dangerous with technology. Yeah, right.

Okay. Okay. Just a real quick clarification. Every time I or they say Copilot CRM, it's HomeWorks. This is recorded several months back. We're usually a few months ahead of schedule on the Turnaround Show, so this was back in January, and in February 2026, Copilot CRM became Home.Works. So go check it out there. Just know Copilot CRM is now HomeWorks. So back to the episode. In our defense, we—

I got Copilot. Yeah. And Christian is awesome. When I signed up with Copilot, you know, you just felt a connection immediately. It wasn't like someone sold you and got you off of it. And then he followed up with a fantastic email. It just was like, made my day. But when we had to transition over to QuickBooks Online because we were using QuickBooks Enterprise, my bookkeeper doesn't like QuickBooks Online and everything went haywire. Of course. They like desktop. And billing got messed up and everything went— and it was in our busy season and then my season started, so everything went She tried to implement that in the summer, and I should have said, let's wait till the fall to implement that.

Us making our own game plan sometimes? No. You didn't follow through, or you got busy, you forgot that.

When you say you're using QuickBooks, are you billing from QuickBooks? Yep. I don't believe there's any reason to do this stuff in QuickBooks because the challenging part is it's completely separate from what you're using every day. Okay. And it's hard. You can't see anything in Copilot. It becomes useless.

Then you're not going to utilize it fully either.

Because you can't go into the customer and see their invoices and see their payments and what card they have on file. You got to go back into QuickBooks. And that's going to be especially now it's desktop. Yeah. You're going to be back here to see anything.

And two, the accounts receivable has been a big— like we used to not have issues with it. Now it's a huge issue. Like if we could do where we just credit card at the end of the month, like, like you have in your system. Yeah. Okay. So how much right now do we Do you have an accounts receivable?

Um, even if it's relatively low, right? 60, like 55, 60, 42. Okay. If you're only getting one lead a week, that means your sales system is broken because you don't even have the reps on like servicing a new customer. So, for example, someone calls in right now. What's the process for answering the phone, setting up an estimate, etc.?

Do you really want to know?

I do, because I don't think it exists.

It comes to my cell phone. Okay. And I answer it and then I take it and then I text Warren and then I pray that everything gets done.

You text him? Have you put it into Copilot at that point?

No, because we haven't been using it since it went haywire. Okay, so I just use it at the bare minimum, like only because routing.

So routing is the only thing you really use it for. The big problem with the implementation of the software has been that you're doing QuickBooks over here on the side. You have two different systems. It's going to be a pain in the butt. Like when a lead comes in instead of texting, it should be you're putting a profile inside of Copilot that is then going to trigger him, letting him know like that text can be automated. A lot of the reason you guys are stepping on each other's toes because there's all this manual communication between the two of you.

Right?

Right. Like the only manual communication should be like, I love you.

That's like, that's always like, I've got so much on my plate. I don't need you sending me things.

Stacy likes to work. 24/7, and she just does. When I get home at the end of the day, I'm done. I don't want to talk about it. I'm done.

And that's when I get his time, is when we get home, you know, because I haven't seen him through the day. So that's when—

then you got to respect that and say he's done. He does. I'll hit this tomorrow. Morning times are my time. The afternoon, I'm aggravated. I don't want to discuss anything then, because it's going to not be good.

So you're going to call the customer probably and be like, hey, tomorrow at 3 PM, does that work for you? Right. Got it. Okay.

So what we could do— but then let me explain what happens too. Okay. Is, is it on— in defense, he has so many other things going on, he'll get that and then he'll say, I'll get to you. Right. So it may take 2 weeks, 3 weeks to get an estimate out.

Well, yeah, especially if I go into drawing mode.

So I told him to quit drawing then.

I just gotta get— I gotta lean it out and don't perform that anymore.

He spends too much time drawing these estimates.

I'm not efficient at it anymore, so I need to just say, no, I don't draw anymore. I'll just give you an estimate.

Or if he could be in his truck and just give them an estimate and go, that would ideally, you know, the small jobs, because some of these could be done quickly. But then he'll get in here and then they'll stop him and then they'll call him on the job and then they'll need a part and then it just gets lost.

There's an irrigation break.

And then it sits on that board.

What's this board? That's my—

Estimates outstanding? That's my remind Warren board, but we've done away with that.

Oh, so this is not— That's not current. Okay. When I see points of contention in a relationship, first off, I don't really like exploiting it on camera, but also I can very much recognize there might be some tension there. And then my thought is, okay, if I solve the business and it makes more money, that would make room for more time at home. That would make more room. If we have systems, they won't step on each other's toes. They won't get frustrated with each other. And so whenever there's a lack of liquidity in the 4L framework, it causes stress on everything else and also creates stress personally and in the relationship. And so, yeah, like if we were a drama show, reality TV, I'd be like, so how does that make you feel when it— like, but like ultimately the business needs to be fixed. And then a lot of those problems that come up in the relationship will be solved. The problem is there's no source of truth because like right now when you show up in the morning, you don't even go to a place like you're not logging into Copilot and seeing what to do. No. Right. Like in the perfect world, it is.

That's what you would do.

Admin gets the lead, sets up the appointment knowing what times he's available. He looks in the day and then we'll give him the day. Oh, 3 PM. I have an appointment.

That is scary.

Because you don't know if he's going to show up.

No, I don't know what his schedule is.

So that it would all be on there.

That would be the part we need to iron out too, right? So from an estimator's perspective, see, this is the problem. If you have one lead a week, you do just fit it in wherever you can. When you have 2 or 3 a day, you have to be, hey, from 3 to 5 PM, that's when I do estimates. Between 3 and 4, Warren's going to show up. Okay, that one got filled. Okay, next available slots from 4 to 5. Someone else called in. Okay, I set them up in Copilot. I'm going to set an appointment for 4 to 5 PM. And then he logs in every day into the app and says, oh, I have an appointment for 3 to 4 and 4 to 5. That's on this side of town. Great. I'll make sure I'm leaving my properties by 2:30 to make sure I'm there. There is no more— I see lots of sticky notes. I see lots of paper. I see lots of whiteboards. They hate sticky notes too. Who? The crew? Yeah. All of that goes away. Okay.

Like, we all hate sticky notes.

Like, I just bought new sticky notes. Fortunately, they're cheap. All of this should be done inside the software. The fourth and final reason why a home service business will stop growing in the 4L Framework is leadership. And right now we have Stacy and Warren kind of stepping on each other's toes because you got sales, operations, and admin, 3 departments in every business. And they're kind of doing all of it together. Sometimes he does sales, sometimes she does, sometimes he does admin, sometimes she does. We've got to create some role clarity. And to do that, we need systems. And the number one way to do systems is use software because software doesn't change and just keeps doing things the same way every single time. We can automate things and we can keep everyone accountable to what they're supposed to be doing in the business. So that way when they go home, there's not any contention or strife there simply because they've been stepping on each other's toes all day long. I understand the desire to go on a job site and make sure it's perfect. There's no reason in the world you should be doing that.

And I do it all the time.

Right. And it's partly where you feel satisfaction. It's also where you feel the most in control. Yes. Because as soon as you don't do that, you feel like the jobs could be going bad.

And then we lack in here because we're out there doing all that.

So I give you this, this solid pass to get some Complaints.

Oh, I don't like complaints.

Yeah, but see, the problem is because you're so worried about not one single thing slipping through the cracks on operations, your sales and your admin is like, yes, yes, right? Yes. Agree. So I almost want you to be like, is this an operation? Like, there's problems that happen throughout the day. Is this operations? In other words, getting the work done. And that's the crew. That is the customer. Okay. Getting the work done. If so, I'm going to say I'm going to let that fire burn. Okay. I'm not going to deal with it. And there might be a complaint and a crew member might get mad. Okay. That is not the problem for the business. The problem for the business is that we have no sales and we have no admin systems. Okay. I'm going to focus on those fires because they're infernos, not the tiny little sparks that are coming out of one job because a little plant wasn't done correctly. Okay. Let the stinking plant die. Okay. And we will go back and we will fix it. Okay. And so I know it's difficult because you're both perfectionists on operation side. I need that that same level of perfection, perfection to go into sales and operations. Okay.

Yeah, praising the operations side was, you know, we thought maybe we had some failures within that, and so that was a big thing to know that we did that successfully, and a few changes will turn this around.

There has to be this balance of, yes, I want to do great work, but I'm not going to sacrifice my entire life, and like they are, 29 years and have nothing to show for it. All right, here we go. So sales process, sales process. All I really, really want is everything in the software. Okay, now that's a jump. It is a jump. That's when we will then convert to the new sales process, which is lead comes in, appointment is set up. He's inside the Field Force mobile app every single morning checking his schedule. When you set up an in-person estimate or sorry, an in-person meeting, that's what you're going to set for him, a meeting. That's when you're going to see, you're going to click in there, be able to add dispatcher notes. Those are the notes that you're going to use to make the estimate. Okay, now right now, are you making the estimate? Yes. And where are you making that right now? QuickBooks.

So spraying and, and maintenance, we have sheets that we check off, put a number on, hand it to the client. Not sure that's the best way to do it.

So all of what you're talking about is just going to become templates and items and services of Copilot. For mowing, it sounds like you already have on a sheet. That is going to be copied in as an item and service. Inside of there, and that's what you send to the customer. Okay. You can text them, you can email them, you'll get faster response. You have to go take it to them, you know, mail it. I don't know what you're doing for the sheet thing.

Yeah, both email.

And another thing is he gets a lot of calls to his phone from customers.

Yeah, because right now you stepping into admin during the winter is what's causing that, because then you're calling from your phone, right?

Well, he tells them to call his phone, but— and then I'll think he's got free work and he'll like, you have no idea how many calls I already have, right?

We have no— we have no point of truth, which is the schedule on—

but should they be calling here rather than his? 100%.

So like, in my opinion, you are a salesperson, you're an admin person. As time goes on, I want to create the delineation that nothing in terms of admin is on his plate and nothing in sales is on your plate. That way we can create the delineation, the roles, and we don't have any problems. Also, it means that she creates the the estimates.

I'm willing to take on more of helping with the estimating, cautious of, you know, the software side of it, just because I know there's a lot in it. I could enter all this stuff, but then like implementing, it's a whole nother ball game.

Now, in order for her to create the estimates as the admin person, she needs to have templates. And if you're like, well, we can't create templates for that very custom type project, we're not doing that work anymore. If there's an estimate that you have to customize every single time, it's different, that's the work that is pulling you both into operations. So So what you're going to do— do you have iPhones or what kind of phones do you have? iPhone. So on the Notes app, you're all going to have a shared estimate comments template. So it's going to be called— and you guys can share that between your phones. You're going to type up the 10 most common projects that you do and what generally that list of items and services looks like. That's going to be inside of Copilot. Okay. As underneath items, you're going to create them so you can one click, add it in. But then what you're going to do is when you get that visit for the meeting with the customer inside Copilot, you're going to go to the visit, you're going to copy those notes in from the Notes app, and then there's going to be a few changes. This customer was a little different here. They mentioned this one plant, this type of irrigation is a little different. Great. Make those edits. You complete that. That notifies the office. The office picks up that visit inside of Copilot, sees all of your notes. Oh, those are normal. But then he added a few things at the bottom. Great. I'm just going to copy that in the estimate. And here's the pricing. It's all in your dispatcher notes. From inside the app. That'd be awesome. You guys never talk to each other. That'd be great. That'd be good. That's the clip.

But you know, like, you bring it home. I mean, it's a pretty big—

I mean— Right. No, 100%. Like, the software is the source of truth.

Obviously, the software will be challenging. I'm not scared of it, but I know on the other end, it's going to be hugely beneficial.

So week 1 is software. 2, we're fixing the sales process. Which is no more texting back and forth. Everything is inside Copilot. Everything is on the mobile app. You're checking it every morning. There's no like, hey, remember? No, no.

Drinking my coffee. I look at my—

Yes. Yeah, that's exactly the move. When you look at it now, what that means is you never drop the ball on setting up the appointment. You never drop the ball on not showing up. Assuming we have done those two things, we need to create better lead flow. We have no leads coming in. No. Your website stinks. Yes. To say bluntly. Yes. And the reason you have had a drop-off in leads in the past few years is because the money from COVID dried up and everyone was so busy in 2021, 2022. And now in the past few years, everyone's online. Yes. That's where all of your customers are at. And we're not. And you're not. Yeah. So you're leaning on word of mouth. That's why you're getting one a week. Yes. At your size of business, you should be getting 2 to 3 a day. Easily. I think you're totally capable of doing it. The problem is right now you are getting customers refer— like saying good things about you. Someone's like, okay, let me look them up, see your website. The Contact Us button doesn't go anywhere.

We had a guy helping us with it and it just— we just stopped. He wasn't very good. Yeah.

So I want to— I want to build you one at Home Service Web Design. For the next 6 months, it'll be free. If you don't like it after that, just cancel. But for the next 6 months, we will build it. It'll take us about 4 to 6 weeks to get it up, but we will do it for free. I know this because when we have the site done within 5 weeks, maybe 2 months of it being up, you will have probably 5 extra lead flow. That's the long-term fix. While it's being built, I need to do all this other stuff so that you're ready for the leads, because the worst thing that could happen right now is you get a bunch of leads and this just becomes chaos. Right? Right. It would honestly just put tons of pressure on your relationship. A struggling business will cause pain in the relationship and pain in the relationship will cause pain in the business. And so those two things have to be healthy. And so a lot of people say, don't go into business with your partner or your spouse, when in reality what they're saying is it creates another degree of error, something else that could happen, an Achilles heel. And as if the relationship is hurting, now the business is hurting. And if the business is hurting, then the relationship is hurting. And that's true, it's— they're codependent, especially when you're working with your partner. And I think a healthy business can actually really help and make a healthy relationship. And healthy relationship can make a healthy business. We've got us all the lead flow that's going to come from the website. And when we do the website, you're going to get videos from me about making your Google profile better because it stinks.

And there's something on there that's not even us. Like someone came to the door, door knocking. We got a negative review. It's not even us.

I saw that.

Yeah, the one was in another city too. It wasn't even us.

Right. So you're able to respond to that and just say that, right? Because right now, if I look you up, I see 3.7 7 stars. But that profile, you haven't even claimed it, I don't think. No.

Yeah, no, and I started on it and then he didn't finish. Who? That was starting doing the Google—

oh, the website stuff and the profile. Okay. Yeah. So like when we build the website for you, we're— you're gonna email saying, hey, here's how you set up your Google profile. You're gonna have to claim it. You're gonna have to verify this address, which is gonna crush— you guys are gonna crush it on Google because you have a verified address. Most of your competition does not around here. Oh, okay. So because they're just serving their guys in their garage, they're not gonna— they can't verify their address. You can verify this address Yes. Show up in this market. And because you're inside of your territory, like a lot of your customers are around here, you'll crush on Google. Okay. Like this is a slam dunk. Just doing that would double or triple your leads. Okay. That plus the website is going to another double or triple. I'm like so confident you will 5 to 10 extra leads. It's insane. I just need to know that when that happens in a few months, that you're ready for it.

All the things we knew we needed to do, those things, but we didn't realize how important it was. But in today's world, it's— that is your marketing.

Because we pride ourselves on referrals, you know, because we were like, oh, well, we've, we've never had to do that.

Now, the part that's not going to be in the next 6 weeks, but I need you to do, is raise the prices again. Okay. I know it's gonna be painful because you just raised prices a little bit. I need money today. We need cash in the bank. We only have a little bit left on the working capital. Loan, right? Correct. When did you raise the prices? Last month, February 1st. And was it across the board on all customers?

No, we kind of picked and looked like, oh well, she just retired. Oh well, you know, she's got this. Oh, she's not gonna like— you know, we went through each one.

Out of 100, how many did you raise?

Probably 60%. We only raised our maintenance prices. We didn't raise our spray yet.

When was the last time you raised on spray? Years. Oh, okay, here we go. I want to see a 20% on spray. And you're like, well, that's where we make all our money. Great, let's make more. And then on the 40% of customers we did not raise prices for maintenance, we're raising them on their maintenance also by 20%.

I don't have a problem doing across-the-board increase. I think that's the way it should be done. She was a little more forgiving to the customer, I guess you could say.

We might be able to do it on some because I don't think some we went on it up enough.

Enough. I really don't. I agree.

I mean, I mean, just looking at the number, I mean, because we've— we had— I mean, I think some of the commercial, we didn't go up enough. We have some people that just know us as owners, and I think they would understand. Every time I turn around, someone's raising a price. It's like, you know, but it's the reality of it.

It might be difficult, we might get some negative feedback, but it's okay. Wouldn't hurt. Well, it might hurt.

Oh, because if someone's gonna leave, you guys are gonna take it very personal. Family. Yeah, like, fast. Oh yeah, like, you guys is gonna feel like, like pulling teeth. It's 3 people leave. Yes, that's 3%. 6 people leave, you guys are gonna literally think the house is burning down. So I'm definitely asking them to do a lot of things in a short amount of time, but the acuteness of their pain of having no money in the bank, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of debt, and $7,000 plus a month in payments is actually really, really painful. And they're actually very calm for how bad the situation is. But I understand that they're just a few months away from it being really a bad spot because leads are coming down at the same time. They, they're not raising prices. They're not making money. Okay, so we're raising it on everyone again. I'm sorry. We're going to make a video. You guys are going to send it to everyone and it's going to be very honest and with their new pricing.

I know.

This is great because like we need, we need 4 to 6 weeks to build the site. So you're going to fix all these things while we're doing it, which is the sales process, getting into the software, and then this price increase, 20% on spray, 20% on maintenance. I want to make one video and it's not going to be saying sorry because for 30% of people, you didn't even raise the price. You're just going to say, hey, we understand and we don't take it lightly that we are raising prices on everyone. We've been in this for 29 years and we have not raised enough. And now with the cost of everything going up, we're in the hole. And you have to say that, like, we're in the hole. We know we can get out and we want to serve you and provide the level of service. The same crew has been on their property for so many years, they don't want that to change. And so you just gotta be honest with, like, this is required for us to stay in business. Then in the email, if this is going to cause financial hardship for you or your family, Please reach out. We don't want to lose you over as a customer and we'll work with you. 5% or 10% of people. So 5% or 10% of people are going to contact you about that and you're going to extend their terms. You're not going to change the price increase. You're saying, we'll honor your current price until June 1st.

And do you give them a month, like effective next month, 30 days effective on your next billing? And Warren does the video.

Both of you are going to do the video because they talk to you sometimes, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So to make sure that happens, you're going to do it today. Okay, we're gonna give you the video. So you guys can even do it at the desk here, but I want you having it on your phone. I'm assuming you would email it to customers, and so you could put that into Google Drive.

You're making me nervous.

I know I'm making you nervous. Do you know how to put it into Google Drive? Yeah. Cool. So we will get the video for you on one of your phones today. We'll hold it, put on a tripod, whatever. And it's just gonna be very— it's gonna be painful as all get-out. Like, talking to a camera stinks. Yeah. Yes, yes.

Hi, um, I'm— wait, I did the um. Hi, I'm Stacy and this is Warren, and we are the owners of EnviroGreen. Welcome to the club. I couldn't sleep last night.

Right, I understand. We need to increase our prices.

Can we stop?

You got to act a little more motivated. Now, the ones that we already did an adjustment, we're only going to go up 10% more, not 20% on top of the 10%.

We have not We haven't in the past raised our pricing enough to— I don't like that look. That's 30%.

But it's needed in order to stay in business. Ah, okay. 10% on the people you've raised for maintenance. Okay. But 20% increase on the other people you haven't for maintenance and 20% on all spring pray. Thank you.

Okay, right. I'm just afraid people are gonna like, you just had a price increase and then you're sending us a video and another price increase.

So we'll see. Now before you send the video out, you're gonna have a crew meeting. You're gonna explain like, hey, we're in a bad spot and this Mike guy, which I would like—

we've told them all this, they know. Perfect. Oh yeah, they know we're in a bad spot and they knew you were coming.

Perfect. So he's gonna help us. And one of the biggest things that we have to raise prices customers. We're gonna let them know. And I want you all know that we want to be able to pay you all more. We just can't afford it. Like, those are words that have to be said. We want to do this, we can't, and so we're changing things. And so we're raising prices on all the customers. It's really important that, especially over the next several weeks, we have a really high level of service so they can stomach that. And within the next couple billing cycles, we hope to get our feet underneath us. And then our hope is that we can pass that along some of that along to all of you. Like, if you have $100 grand a month in revenue and we can raise prices, let's just call it 15% as a blended average of the 20s and the 10s, we essentially can bring $15,000 to the bottom line, which will pay for the debt and give us a little bit of breathing room. If they did everything else I talked about and just scrapped it all but raised their prices by 20%, they would triple their profits and like probably get to a lot of their other goals. We can solve this this, it's going to be 4 to 6 weeks of pain while you're making all these changes and you're not going to feel it in the bank account. Like, we still have a little bit of pain here, like, because a lot of what we're talking about here won't hit till the next billing cycle. All right, so week 1, software, very important. Okay. Because everything else falls apart if we don't get into software. Number 2, by doing that, we get the sales process dialed in with meetings, you showing up, everything's inside of the software. Number 3, we're doing a price increase. That's gonna be alongside a video. And the sooner you get to this, the better. If you can get this to like within 2 weeks, big props. In the meantime, we're also, we're gonna build the website and you're gonna go get 20 reviews from customers. Okay. Okay, get those reviews in weeks 1 and 2, 'cause you're on week 3, you're pulling pricing. If that video goes well, you say the right words, I don't think you're gonna get anyone to cancel. I really don't. If you can raise your prices by 15% and last year we had 5% profit, we basically 4x'd our profit. Okay. So that's the biggest lever. We gotta pull it. I always have a lot of respect for these owners when I come to them knowing their financial pain and the business and the stress that causes. And then also having this degree of also the person you're like responsible for and the person you love is also going down with the ship. And that level of stress is crippling. And that's when it's just like, I will do whatever I possibly can to make sure that we can break through this and they can turn the business around.

We get into this rut of doing everything our way and thinking our way's right and, you know, blaming ourselves or blaming the crew or blaming, you know, like you said, the economy or the area. But it takes a lot to to have someone come in and, and tell you those things. But I mean, he knows what he's doing. And sometimes you just have to go to the expert and just kind of have them show you a different way of doing things. We're old dogs and you have to teach us new tricks. As far as like announcing the price increase, were you guys able to send that video to the spray customers? We chickened out on it. I just, I didn't like seeing myself on film and I just, I couldn't do it. We've actually gotten bombarded with just cleanups and landscaping revamped kind of thing. So we've actually had our best month that we've had in 5 years. I think it just put a fire under my husband. So I, we quit. Now he's got a schedule. Mike asked him to do a calendar with a schedule with time blocking. So now we've time blocked and we're coordinating things more efficiently. It put a big fire under my husband. So we've— sales have— we've increased our spraying, the lawn and ornamental spraying by 40% just in, you know, just that last month. He's done really well. So I don't know what Mike did, but it definitely worked. He did the website for us for 6 months. We finally got that situated and up and running last week. So it looks fabulous. Mike Andes suggested going with our old logo versus the one we were currently using. So we went back to that. So that went well. And then the Google listing, I had to get 20 Google reviews. We just got that up and running. But long story short, I've got probably 10, 12. So he told me not to do too many too fast. So, and then I got sick last week. So we're working on that. So that's going well. What else did we do? He told us to have Loren no more drawing, only do videos out in the field. He's— the videos have worked, so he been out in the field with the crew, so that's helped. So he hasn't had to spend so much time doing that. What else? A lot just happened. It's just kind of happened fast. We've, um, got money in the bank, we've got money in savings, and we've been working on paying down our debt with what we've been doing over the past couple months with, um, revenue from the landscaping and revamping and stuff. So it's all, all around it's been great. It's been great. We've been very, very, very happy. My goal was to try to get everything with the Homeworks program up and running by May 5th, but we got kind of a big rush at one time because we had freeze in Florida, which we haven't had in forever. Like when you were here, it was just— did a lot of damage. So I'm having to push it now to June because the crews will be back to doing more maintenance and we'll have more time. But so that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to have to shoot now for June 1st with the maintenance, but we did do the spraying. Well, my mom said she's— that he's the happiest she's seen him in a long time. So it's made a big difference because I think he was spending too much time drawing and not getting estimates out in a timely fashion. And now we're just, you know, we know when we're doing them, we're kind of working together and I'm trying to do them for him. He's just giving me the information and then I'm getting them out. So before I would let him do it and him draw and him take his time and it's made a world of difference. Overall, we're ecstatic. So it's, it's, we're, we're very pleased. We feel good about it. So we're thankful. We definitely would recommend it.