Employees Take Over his Business... it FALLS APART!

Do you want to even do the business? Because it feels to me like you want to get away from it.

I was ready to just kind of give up.

On the balance sheet, it said you have 400 grand in the bank.

Yeah, I don't like 10 minutes every single day.

Not a whole lot of people want to work labor jobs.

What do they think of you? Like, what do they think you're doing?

I mean, there was a couple times, yeah, he'd stop and get a shooter here and there, but, I mean, he wasn't, like, drinking on the job, I guess. I guess he was.

This sounds terrible, but I've never really been in love with this business.

Today we're in Missouri with Jesse from Edwards Lawn Care. Now, Jesse has said that he's doing around $400,000 in annual revenue. I'm not really sure if I trust that number because the numbers seem to be all over the place on the profit and loss statement and on the balance sheet. So I don't really trust those numbers. So let's figure out what those numbers really are. But the problem is he doesn't seem like he's focused on the business. He literally moved away to California and just kind of let the business run on its own. Let's see if we can turn this thing around, make it more profitable, get him to know his numbers and grow the business.

Jesse, what's up, dude?

Hey.

Is this your place?

Yep.

Cool.

This is mine.

Awesome. How long you lived here?

Eight, I think eight years. Hello, my name is Jesse Edwards. I own Edwards Lawn Service. I have five employees. One of them is a office assistant. She's a local virtual assistant. She works from home. Because we don't have an office space. I have four guys out in the field. We typically have one or two more. Three throughout the summertime. My annual revenue right now is 470. I decided to move to LA to sell solar for eight months and try and either make an exit or just see if the business would run itself. One of the hardest things in my life that happened was in the same month it was three years ago. The guys all left during COVID Then she broke up with me, moved right in with another guy. Just all at once, right before the spring. I was out there trying to save the 20. It's all been a blur. Yeah, it's crazy.

And that when you moved out to.

California about a year after got it is when I did, I was running away from problems that I just needed to press into and do the work. Mike talks about this a lot, but the woman in the red dress, Alex Hermosi, says that, you know, it was. It was a big distraction is what it was.

Was the business still running while you were running?

It was. Oh, interesting. The reason this is here, my twin brother's in a wheelchair. I hired him to, you know, answer the phone, send invoices. As you can tell, I was like, I was ready to just kind of give up. I started a mowing business because it was low barrier entry. But then, you know, I realized I have an expensive job. Then I hired employees, and then that's a whole nother animal having employees.

And so when you were gone in California, the business was still running here.

Yeah.

And then was it just you remotely kind of operating it?

Yeah, I was just talking to my brother every day on the phone.

So he was. He was doing remote kind of office work. And then out in the field, was there like a leader or a manager?

Yeah, Tracy.

This will be my eighth season. And then I took one year off two years ago. So I came back and I love doing lawn care. You know, lawn care, tree work, shrubs, Just kind of all of it done primarily since I was 18.

So when they left, I went through 31 employees. It was so tough. I'm 31, and the stress, like, I was like, this could kill me. Yeah, it was. It was a lot, but I got through it. I kept getting a crew of, you know, three or four. Three or four. Just people kept leaving.

We had quite a few guys to go through last year. Last year's problems was pretty much a whole lot of personal problems on guys and not showing up to work on time. There was a couple guys that got fired from running from the cops. You know, just things that we are not going to tolerate.

I've left this job like three. Three times I have said since I left. The first time, I'm nobody's. Because that's what I felt like whenever I worked for Jesse. The first time that I worked for him, because, I mean, he just overworked us and I underpaid. And whenever me and Tracy quit together, he had quit and I'd quit because we were both underappreciated, undervalued, underpaid. And Jesse just wanted more from us.

So how long were you in California?

I was there for seven and a half months.

Okay, so basically one season. And then. So when the guys were, like leaving and stuff like that, was Tracy hiring people and, like getting them all set up or you just basically let it, let it be?

Yeah, I was. I just pretty much wanted to Just be on autopilot and just run.

Jesse going to California, I understand what he's doing, you know, but with timing and everything, that's. That wasn't a smart decision because he came back and he was really mad at me and Tracy. He was upset with the company, how we were running it. And it's like you left. We were here working 60 plus hours a week.

I was out there just hustling, trying to make it. I just wanted to see if I could. I really have never. This sounds terrible, but it's just the truth. But I've never really been in love with this business or the industry. This might sound weird to some, but it's just. I always want to do something like, sexier. Yeah. You know.

So you went and did solar sales. Right.

Jesse's longtime girlfriend broke up with him and immediately moved in with someone else. And I get that's very difficult on a personal side. But then he picked up and just left to go to California as just sort of a way of. To cope with that pain. And I get it. However, for the business's perspective, being thousands of miles away when you only have a few employees can be very, very hard. And the fact is, the fact that he even has a business today is surprising. He's extremely lucky. They had this Rock employee that really kept the whole thing together while he was gone for years.

From a cash perspective, what I'm seeing on the balance sheet is that, like, there's tons of cash. Like, that's not a problem.

So I don't know if that's been updated. I'm trying to learn. I literally watch. I'm taking your MBA course right now.

So how much cash is actually, like.

About around 85 right now. I really never knew how to look at my numbers, but last year so had a situation. I switched accountants. Comes tax season, and I called to the firm and like, oh, he's no longer with us. So nothing was getting taken care of. I thought at the time I paid those taxes. They're like, hey, you owe $27,000 from 2021. I'm like, what? Like, I. I don't know. I'm realizing, like, I'm listening to you and others, like, your accountants don't do everything for you.

So right now, if we've gone from 300,000 in the bank, basically, to 80,000, is the business basically a sucking cash?

What sort of. I'm sorry. I kind of got lost there. There was another. There's two other things that happened.

I.

Well, I bought two mowers to try and get a tax write off probably sounds crazy, but I made a $30,000 investment and this was before all this happened because I've had that money sitting there and I've wanted to buy another house or just some sort of investment. So really that's just probably poor management on my side. Yeah, but it's like the unforeseen with the tax situation. Now I know to have an IRS account and I have to be checking it every single year. I guess apparently sometimes your CPAs don't see those things or maybe it was just switching from one to the other.

So I don't know what this $30,000 investment is. I don't like to pry into people's financial lives too much, but honestly, why are we focused on that? Put the money into your business. For most small business owners, the best return on investment, the best ROI is putting the money into your business and, and growing the company. Otherwise we get the shiny object syndrome, which is like we're doing some investing over here and do some real estate, we're going to do some stocks, we're going to do some crypto. And all these things cause you to be distracted from the business. And I have evidence that he's distracted because all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he got a $27,000 tax bill. That is a telltale sign of someone not paying attention to their business.

So in terms of the day to day operations in the business right now, what's sort of your focus? Are you doing sales most of the time? Because basically what I've seen is you show up once a week to the shop and then what's your day to day look like?

Yeah, so right now it's everything. I feel like what I'm trying to focus on is sales.