38 Years in Business… Now She’s Broke

Why are you against this?

No, I'm not against it.

So just tell me.

You have to be able to handle it.

Yes.

Right now we can't.

Today we're in Wisconsin visiting Janet from JW Landscaping.

I've got nobody. It's been the worst year of my life here with these employees.

I have a whole list of questions.

Okay, we'll go back for it. You do one, and then you do.

I have a very simple question.

She's 57 years old, and she still works out in the field seven days a week.

Janet has been killing herself. I've been out on a medical situation.

Who right now can I send out in the field to do all those lawns right now? Who can I. You get it? Zero. I keep staying out longer and longer and longer, and I've had a few meltdowns, but not for long.

She sleeps in her office most nights.

But my guys are like, you sleep over here.

You do.

I've seen my house that I rent like, five times or six times this year.

The business makes $500,000 a year, but they run the company off of pen and paper.

Okay, I have to remember where I put all that stuff. Oh, I put it over there. Wait till you guys turn over 55. You're going to love. You're going to love that.

Worse. Employees keep leaving.

Tyler, you're worrying me already.

Probably one of the most difficult things we strug with is hiring people and retaining them.

Oh, Mary. Rocky did not show up, so I let him go. I don't like to wait. I think that our standards were a little higher than his.

Nothing personal against our employees, but if it's in their hands, that can be questionable.

This is the business turnaround show. My name is Mike Andes. I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn Care. We have over 180 locations around the world.

I'm all alone. And now I didn't get an answer because you kept going. This is why. This is this. Sometimes it's like, okay, who's the owner? That would be me. So I want what I.

And I travel the country fixing struggling businesses.

It's just capitalizing on a couple key points here changes everything.

It's a few little things, and a lot of the big things actually get.

Affected by these little tweaks, which makes sense.

Our goal is to give Janet a strategy to turn around the business in the next six weeks.

I'm in need of so much help. Mike. God bless you. I hope to meet you.

It's very rare to have someone that is not only 54 to 60, like two main core ones, but also ladies. So like, respect. They're definitely a very different industry for that. But it's going to be difficult to tap into an audience in terms of labor.

I've got no. I've got nobody. So I have to take a chance. Okay. It's been the worst year of my life here with these employees. And so I hired like four people. So we'll see how many stay. All right, you guys, I don't think I want you to work all day today because of this hate. Tyler, I want you guys to go to these one's. Really good one's really good one is. Doesn't listen to directions that well at all. I don't care what order you go in. You might want to save Tom. I can call you. You've never done that house, have you? Where is it? Just leave it for me and I'll do it.

Okay.

I've been working for like the past six years as it's all kinds of ups and downs like any other company.

So I'd say about 5%, maybe 4% of the team members in the field are women. And so you just kind of cut your audience down unless you can change your. Adapt your leadership style to be able to get younger guys in there too.

Janet's like a mom sometimes a little too mom.

Like everybody. Where are your waters? Do you have waters? Do you have waters? I have water. Tyler, you're worrying me already. Can you please take this with you? Because that has electrolytes in it and stuff and I'm really scared that you're going to code blue.

It's close to my place too. It's only like a 15, 20 minute drive from Earth's. At the end of the day, they help me out quite a bit.

Well, we got three trucks, four. Whoa. Okay, folks, this guy stepped up real quick, dude. They take over this whole spot. This can't be cheap. I did not expect that. And all nice trucks. Two should be what it is for this size of business. What are we doing?

We're all over the age of 30. Everybody's like 37. 37 or older. And that Tony guy, I think is like 34.

Is she in here? Oh, in there. I'm looking at this.

So to get the young guys here is very unusual for them to. To stay. Uh huh. Just stick around. Oh, my God.

It's Mike. How you doing? How are you?

I'm Janet. Nice to meet you. Oh, my God. It's really you. He looks the exact same. Oh, my God. Are you adorable? First of all, do you want a water? Oh, I'm fine. Thank you. Look at how cute he is. Hey, don't get any of that on video. Think I'm a weirdo?

It's okay.

My wife, but this is like an old lady kind of thing. Okay.

You guys do a lot of leaf cleanups then?

We do a ton. We do, like, backpacks all day long where our stuff is. You don't have a lick of sticks anywhere. So some of our cleanups are anywhere from 600 to $3,846,000. Okay. Where we come back days and days, and people will pay for that. Some people pay for four cleanups, and you're at $6,800, and they pay it. I can't believe it. This is the oldest rig here. I'm having a hard time getting rid of this because this is my baby. And it's got, like 180,000 miles on it, but it does fine. 20 foot trailer. Tyler usually takes that, but one of didn't show up today.

Okay. Over the past few years, has it been where you got like the third, fourth, fifth truck? Like, has it grown in quite another years or setting?

No, I think those trucks are quite old. That's an 07. We have a 2013, a 2012, a 2016, and a 2022.

How long has Tyler been with you?

He's the only guy that's been with me. These other people I just hired was three weeks ago. Two weeks ago, Mike.

Usually I'm by myself. We hired this other guy because you got people that always say, yeah, I know how to do this and I know how to do that. You know, you're always gonna have people like that. Anybody can say, yeah, I was a rocket scientist. All right, build a rocket ship then. You know what I'm saying? Like, you gotta prove it.

So it's been him and I. Mary had neck surgery. She had to recuperate. So I've been out on my own doing all this. Morning till night. Morning till night.

Believe it or not, I usually am the person that loads the whole trailer into their wheelbarrows and then they hike them and spread them. But typically, it's a minimum of two people that are usually doing this.

I feel like I'm killing her because she's 64. Mary, did you just put those wheelbarrows in by yourself?

No, I didn't put them in there.

The last thing you want to do is say, go out there with these guys. She can't mulch. She can't do anything, but she can supervise. And I don't mean that.

Mean when you're circuiting about 45, you have to start thinking about, how do I not do physical manual labor? You can do physical labor until you're in your 50s. When you're in your 60s and your 70s, it starts to get tough.

And if anything, it's. As we age, it gets a little more difficult to keep the pace because we're not young at zero like you guys.

But what you can do in terms of your 60s and 70s is more mental work. Like you can still run the office, you can still do estimates, you can still meet customers. You gotta switch to that when you're in your 50s. It'd be a rapid rate of change. And after someone's that old, the question is, can they change? And I'm optimistic. But, but I'm also a realist.

I've been doing this for 38 years. So people I have high retention. Like people I've been with since a kid, 18, 19, 20, they've been with me. And a lot of people who sell their gazillion dollar homes, they'll go through five owners and still give my name and number to say, you need to.

Keep this person, you know, even all her trucks we put on there asked for Janet because, you know, her family was prevalent in the community.

Like, if you want to add a constraint and bond the business, just do that. Tell everyone to talk to the own.

So right now I think there's three trucks and trailers out, which is unusual, Mike, because when I texted you and was asking you, I only had two, Tyler's and mine. So we had boom, boom, boom trucks sitting there not making any money.

For someone that's.