$600K Landscape Business Puts His Marriage at Risk
In this episode of The Business Turnaround Show, coach Mike Andes visits Alex, the owner of Black Belt Landscaping, to diagnose and fix a struggling $600,000‑a‑year landscaping business that is drowning in debt, operating at a 1‑2% profit margin, and straining Alex’s marriage. Alex and his wife Maggie describe long 14‑hour workdays, financial stress from $110‑130K equipment debt and $13K credit‑card debt, and a bloated service mix that creates operational complexity. Mike identifies three core problem areas—numbers, efficiency, and overhead—and proposes a six‑week turnaround plan: cut low‑margin services, sell unused equipment, eliminate the part‑time admin role, have Alex take back estimates, implement strict time‑blocking (phone off at 6 pm, admin slots, dedicated family time), and focus on high‑margin core services. The goal is to reach $1 M in revenue with a 20‑25% profit margin while restoring work‑life balance. Over the following weeks Alex follows the plan, sells equipment, releases the admin, re‑takes estimates, and adopts the new schedule, resulting in reduced overhead, improved cash flow, and a healthier marriage. Maggie’s support and the 4L framework (Liquidity, Leads, Labor, Leadership) are highlighted as key to sustainable growth.
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Running a business is freaking hard. I'm either going to fix this or I'm going to quit.
Today we're in Boston visiting Alex from Black Belt Landscaping.
It's tough because my wife will tell you, she feels like she's second.
Last year, his business did over $600,000 in annual revenue, but he has over $100,000 of debt and has less than a 2% profit margin. You have your admin person, you, and a salesperson on Fridays. The business cannot afford that.
Okay.
We got to cut her.
Okay.
His wife is tired of him working 14-hour days and being stressed out of his mind.
If I kept doing that, it's one of those, so when do you want to sign the divorce?
I want him to be successful, but I want him to be happy and not feel like his entire life is this business, 'cause we have a life.
You can only hear that so much before it starts to get to you.
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 Alex a strategy to turn around the company in the next 6 weeks. When we don't have any revenue growth and there's no extra profit, then there's either a problem with the numbers There's a problem with efficiency or there's a problem with overhead. It's one of those 3.
Oh, we're having some great weather today. We're getting lots of things done. It's gonna be like this all day long.
We've got—
yep, my, my swamp. My name is Alex. I'm the owner here at Black Belt Landscaping. We offer anything that I can do on a regular recurring basis. So the guys came in to help me load stuff around, move some Move some things around.
Good attitude, great at teaching, great patience, and he's just a leader. Like, if that's one word I would use to describe him, it would be a leader. He's just a real go-getter.
He's very much a boss. There's no, no other way you can put it. He's very much a boss, but he still feels like a very good, friendly coworker.
No, I'm glad you got a read on Colby. He's, he's such a good kid. We just hired him this year, but it's so like hit or miss. Like, I'll look and I'll be like, I have no idea if you're enjoying this. Or if you hate every second of this. Uh, what's black belt? So I have a black belt in martial arts. I've been training for 24 years now, um, in martial arts. There's a local studio near us. Actually, Brandon over there, I stole him from— he was working there and now he works for me.
He's great to work for. I think that's the big thing. Like, that's why we are— I have no problem coming out here in the rain to, to do this. It's like I'm happy for him, you know?
It's kind of like The second family over here.
It's how I am with my team. Like, if they break something, it is what it is. Not a big deal. You let me know. Let's fix it together. I don't let myself do that with myself. It's never, it is what it is. It's always, hey, you screwed this up. You gotta do better next time.
It's something a lot of people can work on, but him, it might be organization. Just because I feel like he's always putting out some kind of fire.
Which then leads to the angry prayers of, why couldn't I be better? Why did this happen?
If there was somebody or some Way to manage that, and he could focus on just growing the business. I feel like he could first of all have a little less stress, which is good. But he could really like exponentially grow the business instead of having to micromanage people out here, people over here.
That's definitely been one of the one of the more challenging things because I always want to get it right. Trying to calm down and like be more thankful and be like, what are you gonna do? It is hey you screwed this up.
Yep.
Guess what? You're gonna screw up again tomorrow, and you're gonna screw up the day after that.
So far we've got that they've been having some struggles in the marriage because of the business. She's a physical therapist and has basically been the breadwinner for the home, but he's been working like 7 days a week, seems really distant in the relationship. There's been some struggle, but they're starting to try to figure it out. But the challenging part is usually I would tell someone, because he's doing like $600,000 in annual revenue doing a bunch of of different services. I usually tell them like, cut back to your most profitable services, go all in on those and be profitable. Like raise your prices, go into profit mode. The problem is he has $100,000 of equipment debt, like $130,000. And then he has another $30,000 of credit card debt. So it's really hard to scale back and go into profit mode when your monthly interest is like $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 plus monthly payments. So I gotta figure out what the math is to see if that's even Option, or if we actually have to continue scaling. The other trouble is he doesn't really know what he wants. He doesn't know why he would keep growing. So we'll dig into it. Maggie, and she is on camera or not? She is. Is she mic'd up?
Hey, you should have. Why didn't you say something when he was handing you the microphone?
I didn't know why he was handing me microphone.
All of a sudden, I was like, yeah, okay.
To be on camera.
And is she working in thirty minutes? Is that going to work?
Yeah.
Okay.
That's that's all you had to say. Yeah, right.
Just hey, so that's wrong.
So Maggie and Alex try again.
As the first lady of Black Belt.
As the first lady of Black Belt.
Ooh, it's chilly.
Hey, hey.
Hey, Mike.
Alex, good to see you, man.
Nice to meet you.
Absolutely. And you're Maggie?
Hi, it's nice to meet you.
Great to meet you. From what I see, we have $30,000 of credit card debt.
That's come down. That's only $13,000 now.
Because right now you were saying that like each payroll is like you're floating money. So how are you determining how much you pay off towards the credit cards? Is it like over certain thresholds, you know you're safe, and then you just put the extra towards that?
I try to keep, if I can, about a month's worth of revenue in the bank as much as possible. And then it's one of those like, cool, we're over that.
How much could we potentially allocate to And so, but, but there's basically just the $13,000 credit card and the rest is all equipment.
It's equipment, it's trucks, it's—
Okay, and but the balance currently on that is like $110,000, $120,000?
That sounds about right, yep.
Okay, and if you had to guess, if you added up all those payments per month, what is that right now?
Somewhere between like $2,500 and $3,000, give or take, a month.
Yep. Okay, you were saying that you're gonna be able to get a You loan. do get some prepayments at the beginning of the year, and then that's why as you hit middle of the year, it actually gets squeaky is because you burn through that cash.
Yep. We get a bunch of money in, in like March and April. So we do renewals that we send out every year in February, and then we offer, you can do à la carte, you can do a paid in full, or you can do like 10 payments from March through to December. So some people will pay in full upfront, and that's how we do a lot of, like this year we had a lot of repairs on a couple of the trucks that we had to pay for. Any like large bulk materials Materials. Last year I bought, like, I wrapped and bought a, like, ramp rack, new truck, all that. And we used some of that money for it.
What percentage usually pay upfront?
Paid in full, I would say maybe 5 to 10%. Oh, so it's not a lot. So it's not, it's nothing crazy.
But you're using that capital, like truck repairs, any equipment you might need, et cetera.
We use that almost like a line of credit of sorts of like, we need to get the season started. Here's the things that we need to fix so that way we can start the season smooth. My thing was always, I'll give up my 20s to live like nothing else in my 30s. I'm 28 now, and that hasn't quite happened because I was always like, oh well, I'm 22, I've got time. Oh, I'm 25, I've got time. Now it's one of those— it's become reality of like, you're 28 and you didn't do any of those things that you talked about.
Are we spending much on marketing and advertising, or is it just coming in from the website?
It's, it's coming in from the website, from word of mouth, through like posting on Facebook, honestly, through like the sign on the building. That's primarily how we get business.
Okay, and is most of those leads coming in during spring then? Like March, April, May?
It is hot and heavy in spring, yeah.
Okay, and is that when you also feel like you're dropping the balls? Just like everything from a labor perspective?
100%. Things will just like quietly burn. Like getting back to customers will quietly burn because I'm working on trying to fix the hiring process. And then this is on fire 'cause I have 30 people asking when their quotes are coming, when we're showing up, why their bill is too high, and Why haven't I gotten back to them? So then we put a pause on this and I go and work on that. April and May, the phone never stops. It's always— it feels like it's always raining. And just like, that's when, if we have new people in, that's when it just feels like everything starts to slowly like fall apart. And then come July, August, things slow down a bit and it's like, okay, now we gotta collect and put together all the pieces that fell apart in that spring rush, essentially. Invoices haven't been sent out for 3 weeks and now I go and now it's one of those like, all right, I have a month of invoices. There's no money in the bank. How am I going to make payroll? So then we got to burn out, you know, $20 grand of invoices that haven't been sent, which again, now we're focusing on this fire while the other ones slowly burn. You know, a piece of equipment dies. And I'll be honest, I am far too cheap and I need to work on it to let someone else work on my own equipment.
Let's look at 2023, 2024, 2025. Maybe just kind of walk me through what the revenue has been in each of these years.
I know '25 was $600,000. 2024 was $450,000, I wanna say.
Okay.
And then 2023, I believe, was about $250,000.
Okay.
Year to date, from the P&L I got, it's like low single-digit profit margins. Is that—
Probably.
Is that what you pretty much expect it to be? 'Cause of the prepayments, there's a big chunk, but then you are paying the rest of the year on that.
Some of it, yeah. I would love for it to be higher because you can only operate at 1, 2% for how long before you're like, this is just— why not go get a real job? Well, a job not working for myself. My best man at my wedding, one of my best friends, probably the one that's actually blowing my phone up right now, he owns a landscape business 15 minutes— hop on the highway, it's 15 minutes north of here. He would love nothing more than if I closed my business We worked together and I went and was his operations manager.
When we don't have any revenue growth and there's no extra profit, then there's either a problem with the numbers, there's a problem with efficiency, or there's a problem with overhead. It's one of those 3. So I will attack the business in those 3 regards. It's one of those things. After doing years of these turnarounds, over 100 of them around the country, I realized that leadership was the constraint to most of these businesses. And that's why I created the school community at Home Service Boardroom. to be able to take your leadership skills to the next level and get you past $10 million in annual revenue. So if you've already passed $1 million and you realize that there's a lack of training managers, compensation models, and changing yourself as a human being to be the leader that is required to get you to $10 million, click the link down in the description. My question, though, is more important when I see this and then a plateau is like, what is the motive for you to grow? Do you want to grow the business? Like, all this coaching is just going to be basically around what you want to do. And so I need clarity, or do you have clarity around what size of business you want to build? How does that serve you? Have you established what that goal is?
The goal is to get the business to $1 million top line, and I would love to do a, you know, have 20 to 25% profit on the bottom.
Okay, and what's the motive for growing it? Because you can, you can build a $200,000 margin, profit margin business on $600,000.
I would love to be able to provide for my fam— like, if my wife didn't want to work anymore, I want her to be able— like, once we start a family, if she's like, I want to be done working, I want us to still be able to live where we live, live the way that we live, without her needing to work. So that way she could step back and be with our kids if that's what she chose to do.
Yeah.
I would also love to be able to grow it to then offer, you know, things like profit sharing or investing more into the team that's working with us. You know, I'd love to be able to bring my team up and bring them to like, if they want to make 6 figures in lawn care, I'd love to be able to provide a pathway for them to be able to do that with me. Some of my problem might be that I always keep this big ambiguous goal of like, this is what we're going to do. And rather than sitting down and being like, okay, but what does that look like a year from now? What does that look like 2 years from now?
So like clarity on that's important because I think in 12 months we can get the current size business to 25% margin. I believe that. Which one serves you the most? 'Cause the second part of like creating a hierarchy inside the organization, people to move up inside of all of that, does take a larger size business. You're not gonna get that at $600,000.
Yeah, and the other thing too is that I found at $600,000, like, if someone's out, I'm going out into the field. I would love to be able to take a 2-week vacation and like not have to worry, like the business runs itself, have people and systems in place where like it's not, a little bit larger size of a business where I could have a GM where I could step away and not be in it So involved and focus on whether it's growth, focus on family, like not have to be here every day. This is all that I, all that I do. A vacation not in December for 2 days will be great. A vacation for an afternoon would be awesome.
Is that the real stress right now? Is the, like, is the business sucking everything from you right now?
Mm-hmm.
Okay, because like your application video was like a Sunday afternoon.
It was Sunday at 7:30, and I was working on fixing An hour, so that way our crew could go out the next day. And I just don't even know where to start, where to prioritize my time. It seems like no matter what I do, I'm working on the wrong thing. You know, when I'm here at work, all I'm thinking about is all the things at home that I need to be doing for my wife, for our family. But yeah, that was probably the point that I was like, I'm either gonna fix this or I'm gonna quit. That's what I've been stuck doing for 4 years now, at least. It's everything that I do. Like, my free time is work, my sleeping is— like, it's all just work, work, work, work, work. I struggle because if something goes wrong, I'm the first one to say, don't worry about it, I got it. And I'll just put it back on my shoulders.
What do you think right now? 'Cause I'll come back to that. What do you think right now the business does? Like what's its core competency? 'Cause you're adding a bunch of services. You, even this year, I think you guys started adding fertilizer.
Yeah, we added it. We added it last year.
Okay.
But like you guys do a bunch of stuff.
We offer anything that I can do on a regular recurring basis.
Like weekly mowing, biweekly mowing. We do like whole yard refreshes where it's super overgrown. We'll come in, we'll fix it right up.
We do spring and fall cleanups. We do aeration, overseeding. We're getting into fertilization.
Mulch installation. So if you need— you have some mulch beds that need to be freshened up, we'll go through, we'll edge it, weed it, throw down some new mulch.
And then we've got other services we do, you know, brush cutting, planting. I'll do a water feature too, just because I think that it's fun.
We'll do some stone refreshes as well. Planting, pulling up stumps. Anything that you don't want, we'll take out. Anything you want, we'll put in.
I already know I'm gonna get told later not to do water features because they're difficult and complex, but that's okay. Generally, the team can go out, they can do that without me.
But they can't sharpen the blades.
Yeah, I've— we've tried to train, and then you get a month in and then you find out that they've opened their driver's side door and they're peeing in the middle of the street, and then that's a phone call of, hey, I didn't think I'd have to teach you that, but we can't do that. We had one guy come in on a stolen motorcycle. Who then was like, hey, I need to tuck my bike down in the side of the shipping container. So I was like, what do you mean? He's like, oh yeah, I just— I saw it and the key was in it, so I took it to get to work. I'm like, cool, you can go home now. And we changed all the locks for all of my boxes, and that's why everything has padlocks now. Yeah, the team that I've got right now, it's— I have— I'm stuck with a team that doesn't necessarily have someone that wants to be a leader. I have 2 employees that are content to work.
When you say they don't want to be leader, is that a foreman or is that you?
Like, as a foreman, like they don't want to lead the crew. They don't want to take responsibility of like, all right, this is my crew. I'll take care of like the maintenance. Like the blades need to get changed. We do that on a regular basis.
Why is it the foreman's job?
Generally, that's how it was when I had— I had 2 leaders in the past and that's how we set it up. That's what they would do. They just kind of took ownership of like, hey, this is my truck. They showed up on time. They took direction well. Like they were serious when it came to getting the job done. But they weren't just like serious all the time. They knew how to let loose. They knew when the crew needed a break to chillax. They knew when we could joke around. They knew when we needed to focus and buckle down and get to work. And it's really been like since 2025, it's just, it feels like running in circles trying to keep up with everything now more than ever before.
Yeah, like my objective is to be able to build the business though and the systems in place regardless of who's operating it. It works because if Brandon leaves and all of a sudden we're back in a pickle.
Yeah.
And same thing that happened when you had 2 of your really good friends, I think, was that was like super solid, ran everything well. The problem is it can become a dependence that now we don't build systems in the business or the profitability for the business to where when those people leave, like we are back at square zero. And that's what I don't want to happen. 'Cause it's just like, it's tumultuous to run a business like that. You're just basically hoping and praying no one leaves. I think anytime I hear a business that has 10 different services they offer and they're so small, like $600,000, Immediately, I think they should cut services because addition of too many services adds so much complexity, makes it so hard to systematize, so hard to hire, so hard to train. So almost immediately, that's where my head goes. Once I stepped into coaching with Alex, I realized that the risk of him quitting because of the pressure at home is actually greater. So I'd be looking at every single service.
Yep.
Do you have homework for now?
Yes.
Just look at items of service, like revenue by service, and chop the bottom half.
Okay.
Because I guarantee there's 1%, 3%, 4%, 1%, 3%, a whole bunch of services in there. And what I want you to do is look at those, and you will probably be the person that does all of those things. It's gonna be tough because like, man, that's like 12% of revenue. That's 14% of revenue. We'll get there. We will, we will make up for that. Don't worry. But like, that is what's sucking all your time right now, and that's why you have an admin person at $600,000 annual revenue, which I don't think you need an admin person. Okay, based upon the fact that he doesn't have Hundreds of recurring clients, so there's not a ton of service calls. And then he does projects with— for 2/3 of his revenues come from projects, meaning 1 or 2 projects a week. You're not having a ton of calls, you're not having a ton of estimates, maybe 2 estimates a day right now during the busy season. That's not a lot. You don't need a full-time admin person to do that. And I believe that he can manage those leads himself and those incoming admin tasks. Does that person work full-time, part-time? What's their schedule?
She does part-time. She does 5 days a week for 4 hours. So, 20 hours a week.
Okay, and so that's costing you $3,000 almost a month-ish after taxes and stuff?
Probably a little bit less. She's $19 an hour for—
Oh, okay, pretty cheap.
Yeah, it's not super expensive.
Let's just call it $2,000.
Yeah.
I want that to cover all of your— go towards your debt.
Okay.
And then I want that to go towards like the payments. That almost covers it if we can just get rid of her, right? So, when I said like, hey, there's 3 problems. We have pricing, We have efficiency and we have overhead. She's overhead.
Okay.
Now, the reason we need her is because you're out in the field doing 1% tasks. You're doing fertilization.
Yeah.
On revenue, like what, 2, 3, 4, 4% of our revenue.
Yeah.
I understand your subcontractor did a poor job.
Yep.
But also, like, I'm sure there's builders out there that do a bad job. Should we just start building houses?
Yeah.
Right?
Yep. So any excuse to leave my office Is a great reason to leave my office.
When I say cut out your admin person, why is— does that make you afraid? Or are you like, I can do it, no problem?
I hate admin tasks so much.
Like what?
Answering the phone. The customer communication stuff I'm not a huge fan of. And just same thing, doing like the invoicing and billing and stuff. I'll be in the middle of working on something and then the guys will be like, hey, such and such a thing is acting up. Don't worry, I'll come out and look at it. And sure enough, there I am 15 minutes later in my truck coming to look at this thing that could have waited until the weekend or that night.
When an estimate comes in, She's setting up an estimate for you, right?
Yeah, it's either me or one of my guys.
So the way he hired me was we were training martial arts and he was like, in a couple of years, I might have a position for sales. And I said, okay. And years went by and it was just, you know, he did his thing and I did my thing. And then he was like, one day he just hits me up and he says like, hey, position's open if you want it. I'm like, I'm there.
So I've been coaching him and so he will go out On Fridays part-time, and he'll— and he started doing some of the sales.
His business is not ready for a salesperson. All right.
Yep.
So you know the drill. We got sales, operations, and admin.
Yeah.
I'm having trouble with me for estimating, um, because it's, it's a very different per house. It's very different per customer. Um, it's very much like you kind of have to do a little bit of critical thinking. It's not just like a formula that you can follow right away.
At $600,000? We don't need a salesperson.
Yeah.
I understand that they want to do that.
Yep.
And in a one-on-one meeting, that's when I'm gonna talk to them about the growth of the business and the objective that down the road you can do sales. But right now we gotta make money.
Yeah.
'Cause the only division that makes money is operations. And so the thing that sucks money is admin and sales. I don't need someone doing sales, and I don't really need someone doing admin if I refine my systems enough. When the phone rings on your cell, 'cause that's— she works 20 hours a week. There's 168 hours in a week. So she's working 15% of the week. When it rings on your phone, how often are you able to pick it up?
Rarely.
30% of the time.
Okay, so how often are we getting the whole like voice message and then getting a text and then that coming through?
For a while it was 100% of the time.
Like they're actually doing it? Customers are doing that once they hit you?
I'd say like 70% of the time. Like if we can't answer, 70% of the time we'll get a a text message because we follow up with that text of, hey, sorry we missed you.
Are you asking them to leave a voice message or just straight saying, hey, we'll text you?
So in the voicemail, in our voicemail, it asks like, hey, we're not available, I'm out in the field right now, leave a message or send us a text message and I'll get back to you. If they leave a voicemail or if they hang up, either way, Quo will automatically send them a text message that says, hey, sorry we missed you. If they hung up without leaving a voicemail, hey, sorry we missed you. If they hung up and did leave a voicemail, Thanks so much for leaving a voicemail. If you have a minute, if you text us, if you can text us in your details, we might be able— we'll be able to get back to you faster. It's just trying to capture information quickly so that way I can read it and just type it into Homeworks, basically.
All right, now this episode of The Turnaround Show was actually recorded before Homeworks released the MCP and API access at Homeworks, meaning MCP is your AI chatbot. It now connects directly to your Homeworks account. API allows you to connect on the backend to be able to like create custom dashboards, applications, and connect it all to the information inside of your account. Now, the thing that he's talking about right now, a lot of this now can be done completely automatically between applications using the MCP. So just your Claude or your ChatGPT, it connects directly just with your login information to your Homeworks account, and you can set up automations like this without having to copy and paste between applications. All of it he's talking about now can be done automatically just with a few connecting points using AI. So it's a phenomenal jump forward. I believe this is the future to be able to use AI to take all the data inside of your HomeWorks account and be able to give you accurate reporting, accurate data, know your churn, you'll know your customer acquisition cost. There's so much information there. So definitely go check it out. Go check out home.works/connect and get more information about the API and the MCP access. Because HomeWorks is one of the very first home service softwares that have both For our users. So let's get back to the episode. At your size of business, there's maybe 2 calls, 3 calls a day that are like really legitimate from customers. And so I don't wanna be paying $2,000 a month for that right now, especially because I feel like a lot of the reason she's there is for 2 reasons. Number one, you don't like talking to customers. That's fine. 2 is you just hate doing admin. But because of that, now when you have an admin person, you lean on them as a crutch to not have systems in the business and simplify things 'cause she can just kind of, Do stuff for you. She does answering phones. Yep. Does she do billing?
We just started training her on that last week.
Is she scheduling?
Not yet.
Okay. Does she manage your inbox and answer the phone? That's mostly it. Does she put together estimates?
No.
Okay. No, we.
Okay.
We got to cut her.
Okay.
If she was doing all that other stuff for you, I'm like, okay, she's worth two thousand dollars a month. And it's nothing against her. Yeah. It's just the business is not ready for it.
Yeah.
She's finally started to like. pick things up and understand how things flow and where things go and how to go through that. And so to be like, hey, you know, I know I hired you a month and a half ago, but things, things are changing and I need to let you go. That's definitely going to be the most difficult part of the whole thing for me is having to have that conversation.
Like, how many leads a week do we get right now?
Right now in summer, we're probably at about 10 to 15 leads a week.
A week? And how many of those are qualified? Are those all qualified being set up for you?
I'd say of 10, I'd say about 6 of them are probably qualified, 5 to 6.
So, and you're setting up an appointment with them?
Yeah.
And what's your close rate on those?
Uh, about 50%.
Okay.
But she has not been in the workforce for a few years now. She was taking care of her dad and then came back into the workforce. So it's not like she left a previous job to come work here, because if she had done that, I would feel horrendous. I mean, I'm still not gonna feel great about it, but I definitely would have It would have felt worse for sure.
I will come back to this, but like, I want to, I want to go after more for a second, the— this just on the personal side of your time everywhere right now. Like, where is that all going towards? Things like maintenance of equipment, getting the crew ready, fighting fires? Is that most of what your time is spent on?
That's what a lot of my time was spent on. It's the small little things that I've worked on every single day incrementally. It's not a problem. But when you hit April and you're working, you're trying to train new people.
Something breaks, we need it for the day, he has to come out and fix it himself.
Make sure all the work gets done.
We ran out of something, he needs to go out and get it.
Bounce around the weather and you have a tight time frame.
Small things like that where they just add up.
It's one of those like, I'll work on that tonight, and then tonight turns into tomorrow night, and then tomorrow night turns into the weekend, and then the weekend turns into, I'll work on that next week.
You know, there's maker's time and then there's managing time, and I feel like His making time is always interrupted by managing something else.
And they quickly become bonfires, and then as I'm working on fixing my bonfire, all of the other little fires start to burn. In the past couple weeks, it's eased back a little bit where now I'm in my— I am physically in the office more often, and that's where I've been working on, again, just pumping all that information into, like, the notebook for her to reference. I've been working on— again, I do this, I do the scheduling right now. I'll go through and finalize and send out the estimates as well. So that's where I'm spending a lot of my time is, is doing those things, is getting the scheduling and the routing done. And then just trying to really in the past month has been working on putting all of these systems and questions that she has had into that notebook and trying to make the systems that That makes sense, so that way she can do her job.
And when a business is at $300,000 to $600,000 in revenue, it's a weird middle because you kind of need and want someone to do admin for you, and there's some calls and emails coming in. But if you're not growing and you're going to stay in that revenue range, you've got to do the admin yourself and you've got to do the sales yourself. You can't delegate those, get off the truck, and be fully overhead to the business. At that size, the amount of revenue that you produce out in the field $100,000, $150,000 in annual revenue that you could produce out in the field doing work is likely the entire profit of the business. That part's pretty straightforward. I need to make sure you don't quit.
Yep.
Because I feel like you've been doing this for 13 years.
Yep.
And when I see plateau of revenue and I see no profit, most people are like, why even do this? Because you've already mentioned going out and getting another job.
Yep.
Which I'm okay with if that's what you want. I support whatever That's—
so I have a very good friend of mine that's 15 minutes, like, further up the highway who wants me to come run his office. Okay.
All right, Maggie, do you think he should do that? So Maggie is Alex's wife, and she was kind of standing on the corner. I knew she needed to leave about 20 to 30 minutes into the coaching, and I wanted to get her perspective on what she thought of Alex and the business before she left. Don't worry, you don't have to do it on camera.
Don't worry. I want him to be happy. I want him to be successful, and whatever that looks like, I'm happy with.
Okay.
As a couple though, like, do you think he'd be more happy either one?
If I'm being 100% honest, I don't think he'd ever be happy working for someone else.
Okay.
But I think at some point I don't want him to be so stressed.
Okay. All right.
And is it the stress financially, you think, right now? Or is it just the amount of hours that he's pouring into it?
I think both.
Sorry to be talking about you right now.
You're good.
It's just a lot of times the spouse has such good insight because they're removed from the business.
That's why she's here. Yeah.
Yeah. So a little bit of both?
I think both. I see him work 14-hour days every day of the week, and I'm— I can tell that he can't do that forever. So I want him to be successful, but I want him to be happy and not feel like his entire life is this business, because we have a life, a personal life as well.
And so— It's tough because— it's tough because my wife will tell you, she feels like she's second. Um, she'll tell you that she's the first one, that she feels like she's second to the Pistons. You can only hear that so much before it starts to get to you.
Define what, like, that would look— in the perfect world, what would that look like? A certain time off? Not working Saturday, Sunday? Like, what would be a baby step towards that direction? Because I'm gonna work right around whatever you say.
I think being able to come home after, you know, 5 or 6 o'clock and be not, I'm gonna sit on the couch and I'm gonna work until 10 o'clock doing admin stuff, or being able to like shut off for a couple hours and like have family time. Like, it doesn't always have to be that every single night, but having a couple nights a week where he could come home and just be like, You know what? I don't want to do the dishes tonight. Can you please do the dishes? But like small, like easy tasks that I know that he could do regularly.
Okay.
All right, we're gonna work with that then. So that's the most important thing. And on that note, I gotta go to work.
Thanks, Margaret. Bye. You know, we've been together for— it'll be 9 years in October. So she was there. That would have been 2017. So that was— I just bought my first truck. Like, she's been there through, through all of it.
Okay, so all right, let's plan around. That was really useful because we're going to use that as—
that's why she was here. I was like, I know they're going to ask you a question, I know it's going to be helpful, can you please come?
I really wish she would have been able to hang out a little bit more because I think she would have eventually came into the conversation and realized just how important And the business was to solving the stuff at home. And then like when she said the only thing she wants is for him to be happy, what she's really saying is, I hope he's happy so that when he comes home, he's the husband I expect him to be. I expect him to be confident. I expect him to be able to provide. I want this from him. What she said though is, I want him to be happy. But if someone's happy and fulfilled in their role and they're providing for their family, they come home as a different person. And I want him to show up like that as a person too, but I've got to go to the root of the problem. And that is? He can hardly focus on anything he's doing with you because he's thinking about payroll and credit card debt and a whole bunch of equipment that he doesn't use. What's going to happen? I guarantee this. If you take over sales 100% now, and that's no longer trying to create systems for a salesperson.
Yep.
If you take admin over, no longer like trying to figure out admin systems, you're going to get done just as fast, but you're going to get done without them coming into the equation and you have to train them and all the rest of it. I want you back on the field. You're gonna have estimates still to do. You still probably have 2 a day.
We— so what we've actually been structuring this year is we put— we schedule them all on Friday. And so that's what it's been for Brandon, is he works Monday to Thursday, and then on Friday he'll go out and do the estimates. So we could just keep scheduling them, whether it's beginning of the day, end of the day, or blocking like a day.
On those Fridays, was he coming with you on the sales?
So initially at the beginning of the season, he was coming with me on the sales to train him. And for the last 2 months, he'll go out and he'll do it. He'll take the video, and then we would sit down together and he would come up with the estimate completely on his own. We'd sit together, we'd review the numbers that he came up with, where they were at, if they were high, if they were low, why they were that, and then we would adjust them together. And we've been doing that for the past couple weeks.
Yeah, so it's like tripling the amount of time per estimate. Yeah, right, because he's going out, he's thinking about it, he's coming up with it, then you guys are doing it together, then you're revising it. Versus you just being like, this is the price. This is the price. And just being honest. Like, hey, my hope is that in a year we get to go back on the offensive and we can grow this business to $1 million. And at that point, I want to get you in sales. But I need the next year or 2 to get this business established financially. And that means I need to go out and do sales.
Okay.
This guy runs multiple successful, like, multimillion-dollar companies. He came in and looked at it and looked at me. He was like, what are you doing? Like, if you want to grow, you got to do this. And so I think by putting it into that perspective, that'll help a little bit.
So I think having the conversation with him is really important. You are still gonna do Friday estimates. Yep. Okay, 6 PM phone off.
Okay.
All right, phone off, no more work after 6 PM. Okay, you get up as early as you want.
That's good, I have to water all the hanging baskets in town early anyways. In town?
Wait, wait, wait, wait, you're watering hanging baskets?
So if you drive down Main Street.
Yes.
I water the baskets that are hanging down Main Street in town. I go out in the mornings and volunteer to water the baskets that are in town. So like, I'm up and out super early every other day. I don't get paid for that. I volunteer on the committee. That's why I'm doing it, because I have the truck to do it.
There are other trucks in town.
I know.
I have seen a few.
I know. If I kept doing that, it's one of those, so when do you want to sign the divorce papers? As opposed to like, let's be— as opposed to now, it's like we're intentional with our time and spending that time with each other.
You are doing this out of the goodness of your heart for the community, but it's coming from the person you love most.
Yep.
And so I think there needs to be a negotiation of like, which of those 2 things do I value more? And can anyone replace my love for her? Or can someone replace me watering plants?
Yep.
Hard decision. Potentially if you've been here for a long time, etc. But like, if that's what— every other day you're doing that, it takes an hour?
I usually do it— so I usually start that at like 4 AM. I'm usually done by like 4:30, 4:45.
Okay, so we are talking 2 hours a week.
Yeah.
Right, that 2 hours a week is date night with her.
Once my wife finds out that 6 PM is when I'm cut off, she's gonna hold me to that standard religiously. When Mike is like, it might be tough, like, for me it's gonna be tough. For her, she's just gonna Thanks. Like, she— no doubt in my mind, I'll come home and she'll collect my phone.
If you do that, she will give you grace when you're like, I actually need to work. If you abide by it 99% of the time, when you're like, hey, I'm swamped and I need to work all weekend, she'll be like, that's fine, because you've honored one, one, one commitment to her. As much as I don't like prying in people's personal life, and everyone has just lived the way they want, it affects the business. So much. So I can talk all day about business and the 4L framework and P4P and all these systems, but if the leader is leaving a toxic relationship or they're unhealthy or they don't sleep, they're never gonna show up as the leader that is required to build a bigger business. So this is the new time block. This is the new paradigm. 8 to 9 or 7 to 8 with the crew, get them started, be a leader, take your team meetings, whatever.
Yep.
Back here, 8 to 9 o'clock, when the alarm goes off, you're out and you're going to a job site. Likely by the time you hit nine o'clock, they've hit their job site and they forgot something, or there's a material or something. And so you're going to bring it to them, and then you're going to work with them until five p.m. You're going to come back here knowing that your phone's blowing up throughout the day, and have that hour of admin time from five to six. And at six o'clock, the alarm's going to go off, and you're going to go home, and you're not going to touch your phone again.
I will leave my backpack here. There you go.
There you go.
You got a little lock on it, a little timer.
Yeah, right.
So this is this is. If you do this, it will be painful for 6 weeks. The 4L framework shows the 4 reasons why every small business stops growing. It's either a lack of liquidity, a lack of leads, a lack of labor, or a lack of leadership. And once you get enough money to get enough leads and you get a bunch of leads, you need more laborers. And once you get a bunch of laborers, you need more leadership. And so this is the constant cycle of growth that every business goes through. Let's identify the current opportunities and each of the 4 facets of the 4L framework and then dive into what exactly needs to happen over the next 6 weeks to turn the business around. So 6 weeks, here's what we're gonna do. First off, we're gonna sell equipment that's not needed.
Yep.
And so you already know the equipment that needs to get sold. It's gonna help bring down the equipment debt.
Yep.
The thing is, it's not gonna bring down a whole lot of principal, that $2,500 or $3,000, like unless some of it has debt on it. Some of the stuff that needs to be sold have debt on it.
No, I don't think so.
Usually not, okay. So that's fine. It'll give you a little bit of cash in your pocket, I assume?
Would it make more sense to put it, pay that—
100%, yes. Do you think you have $13,000 of equipment that's not being used right now?
I could probably get up to it pretty quick.
Oh, 100%. So we're gonna sell equipment not needed and we're gonna pay off credit cards.
Towards that, okay. I chronically over-prepare for everything, so I have backups for the backups for the backups. And those mowers are never gonna see the light of day again. Same thing, like in my lineup of trailers, like I have 2 dump trailers next to each other. My dump truck that is not running super great right now, like that actually has a loan on it. I'm probably gonna have my mechanic fix it and I'm gonna try to sell it to get out of that loan, I think.
Next thing is we are going to talk to Brandon and we're gonna take over Friday estimates. The next one's gonna be the hardest, and that is we're going to release admin person. Again, this is not a long-term strategy. Like, you're not gonna get to a million dollars answering the phone and doing email. I understand that, but I also believe you can be $150,000 of profit at this current size of business if we just focus. And then the time blocking that we've talked about, which right now the main time blocks I want to honor is 6 PM Phone off. It is admin slots at the beginning and ending of the day.
Okay.
Those are the main things.
Yep.
If you get phone off by 6 o'clock, admin slots, and date night— if you do this, you'll keep your sanity.
You won't quit.
You don't want Maggie to quit either.
Yeah.
Like, it sounds like it— the first year of marriage is like really important. And if you've been working 14 hours a day every single day—
Oh, for years.
But but with her, yeah. I don't want her to quit on the business because she's involved in the business just as much as you.
Yep.
And just comes at the expense of what she wants most, which is time with you.
It's real simple. It's real easy. You can even see here on my board. I even put block schedule and Google and homeworks. It's been there for weeks. I haven't done it yet.
This really just shows the value of having a coach or someone else to look at your business that is not constantly. in the operations every single day. It's known as Solomon's Paradox, meaning Solomon was super smart and wise for everyone else's problems, but like seriously messed up in his personal life. And it's because he had vision into someone else's third-party problems. And so having a coach, a consultant, a competitor, someone else to come in and give you advice, it's not rocket science. And to them it seems very clear because they're outside of the problems of your business. That's going to determine the profitability of the business. And I think this is a plan for the next 12 to 18 months. But if you do this, you'll have $70,000 to $80,000 in the bank.
Yep.
And you'll be able to go do marketing, get a salesperson, get an admin person, and actually accelerate to a million and keep your sanity.
Who needs that? Straight up, this is still like something that I'm so wildly uncomfortable with, but the opportunity to work with someone who at such a young age has accomplished so much and just operates at a completely Completely different level. And what— it's a 50-minute video that's gonna go out and 15,000 people are gonna see it. If you look at it from a cost-to-value perspective, it's a no-brainer. Like, it costs zero actual dollars. It costs, let's call it, a day of your time, and it costs you being willing to just be vulnerable. You are able to give back by doing the turnaround, and it helps you out in the long run.
All right, it's been 6 weeks, and let's check back in with Maggie and Alex and see how the turnaround went.
How are you? Good, how are you?
Give me one second, I gotta move your audio through to one way or the other. So some of the equipment is sold, some of it is still actively for sale right now, um, but over the past month, especially because I've been out in the field, we had one person leave, and we'll cover it in a second too, but, um, it's I don't have the office manager anymore, so we were able to funnel some additional money from that and it's all paid off already, which is awesome. And then we'll just kind of be able to use that extra money that comes in from selling the rest of the equipment and put it back as profit or keep it even.
Super excited about that. That was really the worst part of his debt was just the credit card debt. And a lot of times when you are in a pinch, if you're just trying to get cash as fast as possible, Look for the things that are not being used 80 to 90% of the week. And so having extra trucks sitting around doing nothing when you're taking out high-interest loans is crazy. So kudos to him for taking action, selling off the trucks.
The second item on there was talking to Brandon and taking over the estimates again, which we probably did that like 2 or 3 guys after you got— 2 or 3 days after you guys took off. And he was cool with it. He totally understood it. And he's again, he's kind of bought into what we're doing here. He was like, that's all cool, man. He's like, when you're ready, you know that I'm ready for it too, which worked out well. Third one was releasing Tammy from admin. So initially my plan, because Mike had mentioned, he was like, if she was doing these five things, you could keep her. I'm like, maybe we can see if she can learn a couple of these things and find out. So we started, and I was like, cool. This is like these are the 2 things you're already doing. The next one is invoicing. And it just was not going well. It was not clicking. And so she— we ended up releasing her because I was like, listen, like, we either have to do these, you got to be able to do all of them, or we can't do any of it at all. So we did that. And so I've just been, you know, blocking the time at the end of the day. And as the day goes on, sometimes I'll have one of the other guys drive the trucks from site to site, and I can do texts and schedule messages and invoices as the day goes on. So I don't, I don't love it, but we're making it work, and it's been going pretty well. The next point then.
Yeah, no one really wakes up every single day wanting to do paperwork, but you can't have a full-time admin that's costing you $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 a month year-round on a business that's doing $500,000 a year in revenue. When you start getting $700,000, $800,000, or if you're growing really fast, then yeah, having that admin taking the overhead hit, that's fine. But when you're in a cash crunch, you gotta make things work. And so I'm really glad that he's been able to do time blocking and handle the admin without needing that overhead person. And as demonstrated when it came to them trying to do invoicing, a lot of times if you don't have a super capable person in the office, you spend more time just trying to teach them than just doing it yourself.
The next Point down. Uh, one of them was doing like 9 to 5 in the field and focusing on ops, um, which is pretty much what I've been doing. Um, you know, I, I roll out with the guys first thing in the morning. Uh, one of the team members that left was kind of right on— I think they knew that they were going to be let go of anyways just for performance reasons. Um, so they left and went somewhere else. So I've just kind of replaced them on our mowing crew. So I've been out there Um, every day from start to finish. If we get back, um, early, I do a couple extra things around the shop, just trying to organize things, make it more streamlined for the team. Um, and the last one on there was, um, time blocking with the admin slots, which again I've been doing, and then trying to be home, uh, you know, at around 6, which I feel like I've done a pretty good job with. Um, and then just setting up on there, it's date nights, but Really like intentional time for the two of us to be together. Um, and after you guys left, we actually set it up so that Monday to Friday, getting home by 6. Um, Saturdays I'm usually here in the office or doing other business-related stuff. And the trade-off is that on Sundays, um, I don't do any work at all. It's our day to be together and to do things together, um, which I think we've done every single week since then, pretty much. Um, which has actually worked out really well. Like my phone, when we get home now, there's a little spot when I walk in that I just plug it in it, it gets left right by the door when I come in. So I think that that's been good as well. It's one of those, then it's really hard for me to do work and I have to do other things, which I think has been good. So yeah, that's, that's kind of where we're at. We've been able to kind of fire through some of the, for the most part, a lot of those, those points.
So kudos to him for getting back in the field. Obviously everyone wants to work on their business and focus more on the architect side of things, but shout out to him for jumping back in, realizing that this stage of his business with where the cash is at. He needs to be out producing revenue. I think one of the biggest things I've actually taken away so far from his recap video is the fact that his wife Maggie is on the call. That's big because when we were there, she didn't really want to be on camera. She had to leave about 20, 30 minutes into us showing up, and I could just tell that she kind of resented the business and didn't want to be on camera. And I almost felt like maybe Alex was just, you know, having a consultant come out or trying to get help but wasn't super bought in that it was actually going to happen or anything was going to change. So I'm like super excited that this whole time she's like nodding, very supportive, and just on camera to support him. So that's probably the biggest one I've taken away so far.
You're being humble. You absolutely crushed it. Maggie, do you want to add anything to that? It seems like you were like, um, validating everything he was saying as far as like he's been on— been home on time and everything like that. Is there anything you want to add?
I just want to compliment— he's doing a really good job. It's been a long time of trying to find like a better work-life balance for him, and I feel like we've finally like been able to find solutions that really work for him. Like really leaving his phone at the door when he gets home, and like he got to do things like hobby things the last couple weeks, and I haven't seen him do that in a hot minute. So it's been really nice to kind of see him like kind of come back to life a little bit outside the business. And like, even on the hard days, like, he still can come home and like find joy and find something that is meaningful outside of work, which I think is really important for him.
That's awesome.
Her saying that is the big W in this entire turnaround, 100%.
Okay, did you stop watering the hand baskets in town? I have to ask.
So no, I am obligated to doing those through through the rest of the season. Um, but it's one of those now I've actually been able to get into a pretty good system. I, you know, I'm up and I do it before she's even awake, so then by the time I come home, um, a lot of the times I'll be like helping to cook breakfast and getting us both ready to get out of the house. I'm honestly, I feel like it on the days that I water, a lot of the times I'm more helpful in the mornings than on the days that I don't.
I would agree, yeah.
Because I'm like, I get up and I start working.
Um, how are you How have you been adjusting to taking back the admin tasks and working in the field full-time?
It's definitely been a lot. I still definitely don't enjoy doing admin work, um, but it's like, it's— that's the point where this is at. Eventually, that's going to be a point in time, um, in the future where that won't be the case, and it's just a matter of like, cool, so we tried to get there too early. It needs— if we're going to keep doing it, it needs to grow a little bit more, um, before I can kind of trade that back off. And so I think realizing that I tried to come into it too early and finding a way to really intentionally like structure the time around it has been more helpful as opposed to just, cool, you have to do field and admin and having no real guardrails around it. I think having those blocks and the guardrails has been super helpful. Um, and it makes it so that I get it done in a more timely manner instead of it all just being super open-ended, open-ended of We'll just get it done.
Well, thank you so much for having us out there.
I really appreciate it. Yeah.
As well, thank you for opening your doors. And I know it's— it can be a little intimidating to just have strangers with cameras come in and film everything you're saying. So I really appreciate that you guys let us out there and had the humility to ask for help to begin with. So is there anything you'd like to add for the end of the episode, or are you okay?
I think the biggest thing, like the biggest takeaway from, from the visit was more like Because for the longest time, for the past year, I've been trying to think like, all right, what do I actually want to do in the business? And I feel like having Mike come out and have— and talking with all of you honestly was kind of eye-opening of like, this is the actual direction that I want to go. These are the services that I want to focus on. And kind of trying to spend a little bit more time of like— because Mike asked like, cool, so why do you want to do these things? And I didn't have a good answer at the time because at that, like, I've just been so burnt out this entire year. I'm like, Because this is what I've done for so long. So I think being able to have him come and like ask that question of like, so why are you doing this? And to pause and be like, huh, I don't actually know. It's been able to give me time to like think and reflect on like, why am I actually doing this? Why do I want to do this? And I think that's, that's been huge and has made me more excited to like do the work that I don't necessarily love or want to do. It's like, all right, well, this is the reason you have to do it right now. Um, and it's just, it's made it easier to do it.
Maggie, is there anything else you'd like to add?
I think it was really powerful for him to hear the lesson on patience from somebody that's not his wife, because I tell him all the time that he needs to be more patient about things and that he's probably going too fast, too much, too soon. So hearing the lesson on like, maybe we need to step back and take some things back and be a little bit more patient about the pace of the business Just hearing that from someone who is so successful and so like very clearly knows what he's talking about, I think was really powerful. Much more powerful at least than coming from me.
All right, shout out Alex and Maggie. Phenomenal turnaround. They pretty much executed on everything we talked about. So obviously the reason we go out and do these turnaround shows is to help the business owners. It doesn't cost them anything because of the support of the community. The biggest reason we go out is to be able to document it for everyone else that might be going through the same thing. But it's awesome. It's like a cherry on top when they actually execute, take action, and run with it. And I think it'll only become more evident over the next 3 to 6 months that he made the right decisions. Because a lot of times things like cutting out a little bit of payroll, selling a few trucks, is small at the beginning. But every single payroll he's making an extra couple thousand dollars that goes into the bank account. And with the time blocking, I think the biggest thing of this entire turnaround is the fact that the support of Maggie is palpable compared to when we showed up now. And her ability to be able to support him through the low moments and make sure that they're a team is like everything. And so your spouse pulling the opposite direction is just such a very difficult thing to manage, let alone with the business struggling. And so for them to both be on the same page and pulling the same direction is the massive win of this turnaround.
