FIRING EMPLOYEES to make Payroll (Landscaping Business)

Would you rather just not have Jason around right now? Probably. This is the business turnaround show.

We have frustrations on our side of things, and I'm sure he has frustrations on his side of things.

Effort stinks. I need numbers.

Yeah, you're just a number. No matter how hard you work, you're never gonna be anything more than a number.

There have definitely been times where I've wanted to get out of the business.

Today we're in Kansas visiting Luke and Logan from Warrior Outdoors.

Not a lot of people get to see their brother every day, but, yeah, it's super stressful.

Last year, they did almost $1.33 million in revenue. And even though sometimes I feel rich, I also feel very poor. They tend to overthink.

That's how we get stuff done. Like, really get it done. So.

Yeah, but they only have $6,000 in the bank.

We are back to zero again. Like, our payroll has been out of control.

They have over $300,000 worth of loans. They have a ton of equipment. That is not where the money in the business is at. And no one is being held accountable. Why do you think you can't hold people accountable?

I'm not very good at that.

So you just avoid confrontation, and you don't want to tell people what to do.

Luke's going to be heartbroken.

I think I'll be okay.

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

He knows how to play the game, and I'm not that good at it.

Is Jason the operations manager? Is Logan the operations manager? Is Luke the operations manager who's my boss?

It's ridiculous.

I travel the country fixing struggling businesses. We just said right before this, if we had to right now, given all the information we have, we need him.

Go.

This is the unlock. Our goal is to give Luke and Logan a strategy to turn around the business in the next six weeks. This one I'm so confident on. If you do this, it'll change everything. I want them to do it, like.

Tomorrow from the stressful side of things. I'm totally down for it.

For seven years, I ran the business with my brother, which we were really small. Like, we had $30,000 or less a year, very part time while we were in school. I know what it's like to be running your business with your brother and there being conflict, but I don't know what it's like to be running your business with your brother and the business being in debt. Like, it Is like when I was with my brother, we were both making good money while we were in school. So like 15 grand a pop for each of us paid our way through college essentially. Hey, guys. How's it going? Good.

How are you doing?

And you're Logan, right?

Yes.

And you're Luke. Luke.

Yep. Awesome.

Great shop space you got here.

Yeah.

Hi, I'm Logan with Warrior Outdoors, currently the maintenance manager. Sales manager for maintenance. I was like 12 or 14, like when I started working full time here. I worked for Luke for the first, like six years. I started another, like an insurance brokerage company. Ran it for like two and a half years and then I came back. So I've been here for about three years in this capacity.

Building a business with someone you trust is always a good idea. And because family is. There's inherent trust already built. It's a common connection, like, oh, I'll start business with that person. And it's not a bad thing. There are some great businesses that are built with family members. There's also a lot of struggle that comes along with it.

My name is Luke Whitlow. I oversee the design build side of the business. I started it to like get through college kind of a thing. I'd come back every weekend and mow and then Logan would help me.

So, like, for us, it's not a big deal. Like, we have similar morals, we have a similar thought process and you know.

How to make everyone mad and you know everyone's failures and weaknesses and their past and everything that goes into that.

Like when we're on a project together.

Oh, we know the next move.

You don't need to talk like, it's crazy.

I bet we'd be three people on a mo crew.

Yeah, easily.

It's ridiculous.

Yeah, my wife does all the admin. She's inside.

And to have your wife in the office makes it even more difficult because then you can't go home and like disconnect from the chaos. You have to just keep talking about it. So how long you been at the shop been?

Since 2020.

Is that when you got the house or just started building it?

Yeah, we just moved in here before we were running out of our parents place. Like south of town.

Yeah.

That's Luke's house right there.

Yeah.

If you want a tour of that, you might need to give my wife a heads up.

We used to work in the basement before this and it was awful.

And then there's not a lot of work life separation.

We'd be working to like 7, 8 at night and the guys are like.

You guys don't work. And I was like, they just didn't see us.

Yeah, so they do like 1.2, 1.3 million in revenue last year. Looks like they're on track for like 1.5 this year. They were at 529 for the first five months. Like, they're honestly really 1.3, 1.4 again this year. Honestly, unless there's something I'm not seeing, they might be counting all their money. They're earning it like so like their accrual and not that cash accounting that could be the case. And so like the past few years, has revenue been about the same or you've been growing pretty quickly?

It's been pretty similar the past few years. Prior to that, we were doubling revenue year after year. We got to about the 1.2 mark and have kind of plateaued. We've gotten gone up and down a little bit this year. I think we're tracking a little bit better.

I think we'll hit 2 million.

Yeah.

Second half of the year is where A lot more of the revenues for you guys then.

Yeah, we had a horrible beginning of the year. I don't know, just contracts just didn't get inside until like a month later than normal. So we had about a monthly start as far as install and all that kind of stuff. Kansas is a weird place.

It is a weird place.

A lot of landscaping.

Yeah, we're small for.

There's a. You go like five miles from here. You got epic. They're probably 25 million. Signature is probably 50 million. Hermes does about 50. There's a lot of landscaping. So we keep like our skid loader here. We have like a mini excavator. Those are our old fleet of mowers that I'm selling.

My very first stand on was that model.

They run pretty well.

Yeah, they're great.

You had this since like 2020.

Yeah, some of them are 2018 even.

Really?

So they got like 2000 plus hours on them. Yeah, they're ready to kind of be moved on. So then you guys got all the.

Vertexes this year then?

Just got.

Just got them weeks ago. We were running all John Deere's and we loved them. They started breaking really. So like kind of at the end.

Of their lifetime, it's like 45% maintenance and then it's like 20% snow and 30% project time. They have a ton of equipment. Was this all this shop sits in the back built already when you moved in?

Shop was existing. We've just kind of improved the property a little bit. And then we just recently brought in our office trailers.

Well, so no problem with the neighbors.

Or anything like that. Well, so we kind of.

Oh man.

This year is the first time.

This year was the first time it's out actually been an issue.

We're.

We're working on like rezoning and all that stuff. So that. That's been a huge money suck, huge undertaking.

Oh really? Yeah, Just to get it rezoned.

Yeah. Cuz like they made us resurvey everything. They made us commercial code. Yeah. We got to get through commercial code and all that stuff.

So did you bring the trailer in after that?

That's what started it.

That's a trailer. That's what started it.

It was a. It was a mess when we brought the trailer.

Oh man, that stinks.

The county called me and said you were doing the wrong thing, so.

Oh man.

We just figured we were outside of city lim. We just didn't think about it. So now we're trying to do it. I mean we always try to do things the right way, but.

This is Jason office. He's our production manager. He's out there.

And did he just recently start on the production side?

Yeah, this year like three months.

Okay.

Two or three months in.

Okay.

What's your name?

Jason.

I'm the operations manager. So I just had mouth surgery.

So you're all good, man.

Don't talk too much right now.

And is Jason, does he kind of go between the crews as well as at the office here or is he mostly in the office?

A little bit of everything. He also does our irrigation.

Are you Alexis? I am. Hi, I'm Mike. Good to meet you. Nice to meet you. This is the headquarters. Yes, welcome. It was a month ago when they did the turnaround application. This is the middle of throwing rush. It should be in a better spot now. Knock on wood. From your old's perspective, where's the current pain? Like in the business? Like obviously you've grown a bunch this year. We've had some unexpected stuff with the county thing. What do you all currently see as the constraint?

I would say the before the money, it'd be the people.

Early in the year, we brought on our first manager.

And it's Jason.

Yep.

I kind of took over here in February when I started again. Six guys. We got it up to 19 and I let a couple go. But now the group we've got is pretty solid. We don't have a ton of turnover. Our culture has gotten a lot better. Like we switched to vests because that's what we decided we wanted to do. And like getting them to just wear it. Wear it. It was me and Luke managing it like we had that solved. Now that Jason's managing, all the old bad habits that I had, like, worked really hard to fight are coming back.

We have frustrations on our side of things, and I'm sure he has frustrations on his side of things, but I think that overhead is kind of like straining us a little bit. And we're also not really sure how to use a manager and what to expect. It's just been hard on the follow through side of things.

I'm guessing that's just the expectations with Jason and that whole role and what that looks like. Is that the major kind of thing when you.

That's my major thing because he's my direct guy.

And so have you basically said to the crew that you report to Jason? Yeah, got it. And so you've been completely removed?

I should be.

Yes. Okay.

But he's not.

Got it.

Very involved in day to day.

Got it. So. Which is tough for both people, Jason and yourself. Right?

Yeah. Before he was here, I was the irrigation tech. It was very difficult to try to manage crews, design sales, and be out in the field for hours on end fixing irrigation systems.

Right. You or Jason basically have to be the manager of the job if there's irrigation involved. Yeah.

On.

On your project is most of them have some sort of irrigation involved.

Every property. Yeah. When I say commercial, a lot of it's estates, like 40 acre houses, all irrigated, big systems.

Okay, so got it. So you got maintenance, repairs as well as just even install. Right, got it. And how much of those contracts are. Is it all commercial?

We're probably 70% commercial, maybe a little bit more.

And a little bit of residential. Yeah. In the business right now, about what, 60% is maintenance?

Yeah.

Easily probably more. A little bit more than that.

Yeah.

I think I have. I've already sold a million dollars in maintenance for this year. For this year so far. Burn little million one. And then Luke has already done a couple few hundred thousand.

Yeah.

We have like three big jobs that are finishing up on install this week too. So that'll help on the cash crunch.

And then from. From Alexa's perspective, do they call her throughout the day in terms of like routing, dispatch or anything?

I do all that.

Okay, got it. All right. You do?

Yes.

So what does Jason do?

Yeah.

Okay. Two brothers working together. One of them has their wife in the office.

They also seem to have a lot.

Of Employees for the amount of revenue they do, they have up to 20 employees, maybe 1.2, 1.3. Context My location that doesn't do projects, just mowing. Did one just shy of 1.2 last year with about 8 to 12 employees doing 1.2 like they did having between 15 and 20 employees. It's going to get a little squeaky. Especially when a bunch of that is subcontractor and pro and projects with a bunch of material cost. If they are having quality control issues. Hiring a manager is not a great solution for fixing a problem. So it just kind of seems odd to me that they hire or like, you know, bring in an operations person if not an owner.

We have a lot of personal issues. The money just adds on top of that. You know, about two years ago we lost about a half million dollar account and that set us back.

Maintenance contract?

Yeah, maintenance contract.

It was very difficult to recover from.

And they, they hadn't like told they like we're just out.

Well, we had had the, the account for what, eight years prior to that.

So it was kind of like the foundation of the whole business.

Yeah, it was. We had grown with them like exponentially. And so when we lost that account, it definitely had us backpedaling, but we actually were able to make up that revenue.

That that year when we lost a $300,000 account, I made that up this like within a couple months. And then last year I grew another $400,000 in contracts.

And is that door knocking? Is that cold emailing? What are you doing to go.

Yeah, both. So most of it I'll go door knocking. Then there's some big property management companies that I'll just go after those guys. I thought we were good beginning of this year. We were in the best spot we've been in a long time. And then we were back to zero again. So I've been personally floating.

It's definitely been stressful.

And when on those projects, how are we collecting it? 50% down?

Yep, 50% deposit and then the remainder.

Is due upon completion.

And so it's, it's that 50% completion part that if we're overtime and all the rest of it, we're just burning in the cash.

Yeah, we're just carrying it basically.

And is it 50% down to secure the job or at start or.

Yeah, start, basically.

Okay, is it start though or is it like when they book the job two or three months?

It's at start. I want it to be when they book the job. And we've had a few people do that, but I haven't been super strict on it.

So are you usually collecting that check?

Yeah. Or.

Yeah.

Okay. In person?

Yeah, usually in person. Or they'll pay online or something like that.

On projects you think it's 50, 50 or like what's the split of people paying at start versus when they accept?

I'd say most people pay right before.

So they can accept. You like do the whole process and then like as long as they pay before the day I start, yeah. There are four reasons why every business will stop growing. I call it the 4L framework. Either you're going to be constrained by your liquidity, cash in the bank, the amount of leads you have, the amount of labor you have, or the leadership in the business. So from a liquidity perspective, I think there's certainly like a cash flow issue and that's very typical with project based work. Whenever you like, end of this week, we will have, we will have more money in the account immediately. There's a cash flow problem simply because it's like we are counting on the job to be completed when we should have collected all the cost of goods sold prior to the job getting started. We should never go negative on a project because like you're going to be profitable on a job. But if we're going below zero for any period of time, like, well, I got, I caught 50% here, then we did the job and then I ended up making a profit here. Right. We made money. But if it takes, there's our deposit, we're making money, but then we have all of the labor going out. This is the part we're trying to avoid. It's like there'll be times where you have a $200,000 job or five $20,000 jobs and you have this massive roller coaster. Sometimes you $100,000 in the bank, sometimes we have $5,000 in the bank because 100 grand, you guys know it's here and they're gone tomorrow. And even though sometimes I feel rich, I also feel very poor on the project stuff. What's our hourly rate that we kind of are targeting?

First we're shooting for 85 an hour.

Got it. And then in terms of our close ratio on accepted estimates, is it pretty high?

Yeah, it's probably about 70 to 80%.

Got it. And you're basically hand holding that whole process.

Yeah, I am literally doing every single aspect from start to finish.

Okay, and what's the average ticket on those usually like 20, 30,000. What's your speed ticket?

Yeah, it can definitely vary. Like we have a job that's 100,000 right now. One, that's 51, that's 20. So like, they kind of fluctuate depending on the different aspects of the project.

So their target hourly rate is $85 an hour. I wonder if they actually hit that much on commercial maintenance, just because if you look at how many employees they have versus their revenue last year. On the other portion from the maintenance side, what's your target hourly rate for maintenance?

And we do 85.

85, that's pretty good. Like, what's your base pay here?

Most guys are about 18s are starting and most guys are around 20 and 22.

That's actually pretty good. Especially if your base pay is 18. If your target hourly is 85, your means you're hitting the target. The 25 rule. I always target where base pay is less than 25 of the target hourly rate. From a foodie perspective, we have cash flow. We also have. How much credit card right now do you think?

30.

30. So it's just floats, I'm assuming, like when you have cash. So we'll face them with a credit card off.

Yeah, we pay it off completely every 14th of every month.

Got. Okay, so we have a little bit of credit card debt, but I'm assuming you just kind of keep managing. It's like you're floating that card. When it comes to liquidity in the business, they have a lot of credit card debt and they do have a lot of loans on all the equipment. But a lot of those loans are collateralized with actual assets, trucks, mowers, etc. We have big skid steer in the back. That's fine. I'm not too worried about the equipment loans for that credit card debt. And the fact that we have hardly any cash in the bank is very, very scary.

Yeah, it's super stressful. So, like, I've been paying for it.

And on the project work, how far are we booked out right now?

Two to three months, probably.

Okay, and is that pretty consistent?

Not always. I mean, we're being in a seasonal business, there's always those fluctuations. I would love to have a bigger funnel.

The next question though becomes like, wait, great. How do we just bombard you with leads? When it comes to leads, as the next constraint in the 4L framework, we've gotta make sure that we can actually control our lead flow.

I don't feel like that's something that we ever had dialed in.

We've.

We've started with some marketing with some mailers and stuff like that, but I don't think we've had the quantity to actually get real results. We've posted a few things this year and that's about it. We haven't gotten a ton of content. I actually really enjoy doing that, like making content and stuff like that. But I'm not. I don't. I don't feel comfortable with it, I guess, or feel like I have the time to do it. All of our business up to this point has been word of mouth.

And when we started the install division, it was what, three years ago? And we, we got like two or three couple 200,000, two, $300,000 jobs, like right off the bat. And then it just kept kind of flowing. Up to this point, we haven't really had the need for marketing, but we haven't really. Like, we don't do marketing. Like we're just not marketers. I don't know how to market. It's always outbound for me. I would say leads coming in is not a thing I always call especially for commercial.

On your website. I don't see a ton of project stuff from the top of the, like the very top. I see leaf cleanup and I see residential as the form to fill out and get an instant quote. Right now in the business, we're making all of our profit from projects and commercial work. And that website does not screen that to me. If in the middle of spring, in the middle of summer, like right now, we're showing fall cleanups, not a great idea. We're not going to pitch that service during the summer. Instead we're going to focus on design build. I would really recommend seasonal offerings on that website. Right if we're at the beginning of the season or like January and February when everyone's renewing contracts, we're highlighting commercial maintenance. We're putting our crews on big mowers on big properties. We are saying sign up, get your annual contract. Property managers in XYZ county like you're going after them at the end of the year. Because we don't really want to focus on snow. We're going to focus on our contracts, those massive commercial contracts and the renewal around January 1st. So like banners and pictures as well as like your current form, like your best real estate is spent right now on recurring mode because it's an instant price form, which I'm a fan of simple estimates. Let's go.

Love it.

It's just a funct of that is not where the money in the business is at. And so if leads is our constraint, we're not hardly getting any inbound for commercial and we're getting enough inbound for design build, we need to scrap the part of the business. Probably make up 10% of our revenue when it comes to the best real estate on our website. And so I would, I would talk to your designer and just really think about, okay, like how do we reprioritize for this four months of the year, we're doing this. For this. Four months of the year we're doing this. For this four months we're doing that. If you're trying to sell something in a store, you put it near the checkout. You put it like that's the most, most coveted space on the shelves because it is the highest frequency purchase. And so if you want things to be purchased often on your website, your storefront, put them in the front, like tell people about it first. If you want people to put an Esme request form in and submit one and give you a call, make those the most important call to actions on the website. And right now, if you standardize much of your like product offerings or what products you install or every single one custom.

They're very custom, I would say.

Okay. And have you ever looked at changing that?

I saw that.

I say yes.

Okay.

A part of our problem with our guys is they don't know what they're doing because we do everything. Like we are doing right now. We have a patio. We're doing a screened in porch with a fire feature that was 4x4 is going out.

Yeah, yeah.

And then we're doing a water feature. Water feature. Rebuild.

Water feature, bro. That's a whole nother level.

Yeah. Lighting system.

Lighting system. Like all that's happening today right now.

Is that a function though? Like you offering everything because you need the work?

Yeah.

Okay. When you go to a client, I'm assuming like what do you bring to show them?

Yeah. So I actually have a 3D rendering program that like does the exact material we would use. So they would have a very real world like representation.

That's in the second meeting. What about the first one?

In the first one I'll have like a, like a unilock book or something.

Along those lines just to kind of.

Show them what the materials would look like. Generally.

This is my recommendation. So we used to do the same thing. It's horrible. I. Trust me, trust me. This one I'm so confident on. If you do this, it'll change everything. Okay. Don't bring a unilock or Belgard or any other. Like you are just opening up a can of worms for that Customer to be overwhelmed with options, overwhelmed with design, overwhelmed with color, overwhelmed with the fact that that picture looks great, but is it going to look good in my backyard? Then I need a design to validate these two things. I would recommend you have a product book. Yeah. The best example of simplification and standardization is actually in restaurants in general. The more menu items, the cheaper the restaurant. So you look at Denny's, you look at fast food restaurants like it's a huge menu. If you ever go to a really, really fancy restaurant, you're talking about two, three entrees, and they cycle them out. They are certainly not simplified. They're very complex dishes, but they're standardized. They stick. The same few things that you all have created from pictures that, that you have installed. And if you don't have one, you can find one online pretty easily. But you're going to say, hey, like when it comes to papers, these are the two or three pavers that we installed. You don't tell the customer that. You just say, hey, this is the gray one. This is another design that works well. Like, we only had two papers. We eventually got to one paper. The design was like a pretty complicated five piece design. It was Rio from Belgar. Like, it was a very specific kind. We only ever did that paper. But it's because I had four different pictures in my product book of it in different scenarios that I feel like, okay, this is gonna be a pathway. Great, we'll turn to the pathway page. You like this? Yes. Okay, great. I'm using that. It also makes the design process like 10%, like way shorter.

Yeah.

Because you have the two or three things you drag in very simple. And you could eventually probably get away from even doing a lot of the big designs up for like 10, 20, $30,000 jobs. Because your pictures tell everything. And so if you want to be paid well, you either go super, super custom. And every single job is different. And every single job is its own special snowflake. But if you're going to do that, the owner very, very skill is going to have to be on the job. And their goal is to be able to move out of the business. And if their goal is to move out of the business, try to do it in a way that it would be easy to replace yourself. And then what's really great is your labor gets trained much faster. So we got to where we had one type of block, one type of paper, and one type of natural stone for patios. And we trained all of our crews on those three things in two days. And after that they just knew how to do it all because we were like, okay, great. When do you see a wall? You see on a slope this way. And we're going, we have to put against the angle. Then there's other times we're going into the wall. Okay. We of these scenarios at our shop space. And then they could do it all like they had seen it. And after they do them like three or four times, they're so efficient. Cuz what kills me on custom is you get there and it takes half a day and it's like we put it together. Oh, take it apart and then take it put together and then back and forth. Finally we get. Then we can just copy and paste. You can cut that whole first part out just by saying this is the same type of product every single time. And there's way less management on your part because your crew just gets so good at installing.

Right.

All right. So that's where like I do think leads solves a lot of this problem. Because you got so many leads, you'd be like, okay, we're going to cut this service out. We're going to have this service out. We're going to cut the service out. The challenging part, you have built the infrastructure of the business in a way you have to do $1.5 million. There is no like, hey, let's go back and take a couple of these services out, kick Jason into the curb and like just focus on our core four things. Because you've built the infrastructure, you need 1.5. You're still in terms of the debt, the two of you, et cetera. I don't see any world in which a business is profitable at this. With 1 point less than 1.5 million. With 2 owners at the top, an office person full time and definitely a production manager. You don't even get any leads coming for residential.

We'll get some.

We'll get some random.

Yeah.

Trickling in.

Yeah, we'll get some and we'll pick. We usually pick them up, no problem. But it's not that many. It's probably one every two, three weeks.

Really? Wow.

Yeah. It's not a huge influence.

Okay.

I don't know, Lexus, am I wrong on that? How many times do you get calls for like maybe for mowing or anything like that?

Maybe a couple times a week.

If it's like a true residential, like they just want their yard push mode. We lose that account every time, you know, like we're definitely not set up for that. A lot of our stuffs Are like mansions. They're nice. So, like it's pretty much a commercial account and we just fit right in with that.

Basically, to me, it sounds more like you're both involved in sales. One's involved in the front end getting the leads, one's on close.

Yeah.

So I run basically the whole install, like design, build side of things and then Logan runs the maintenance.

Got it. And so you both control your sales for those two distinct sites.

So I do all the design and sales for install and then Logan does all the sales for contracts.

Any contracts that come in the delineation really is department. So all design, build, all maintenance, sales for both. The way they have it currently set up, every single person that comes in as a lead is going to have to be handed off between the two owners. And so that is going to cause some toe stepping. Is there like five other things you're also managing in the business?

Yeah. So I handle like CEO and then I handle all the sales. I could handle the production for sure. I have been for the last two or three years. The my thought process was Jason handles all the production and gives me time to actually do more outbound because I feel like if I had the time to do the outbound, we could double, which is what our goal was. Our goal was to be around 3 million end of this year, end of beginning of next year. That hasn't really happened and he hasn't really taken it over like I thought he would with the experience he said he had. I feel like I'm stuck in limbo between going and doing sales and actually being a good account manager to our accounts and fulfilling the production.

Logan doesn't have any time to do outbound sales because he's busy doing operations and doing the work of the manager that should be managing the crew once work comes in. From a production manager perspective, is Jason managing both crews?

I'm doing install still.

Okay.

So I only have two install crews, so I'm able to manage them pretty well.

So you're basically soup to nuts. Everything design, built. Yeah, got it. And then maintenance leads come in, he hands those, then hands off to Jason. Jason manages the maintenance crew for Jason. Has it been difficult with the crew, like between him and the crew, or is it between, like him, middle management and you all? Has that been more difficult?

I think the second relationship is a little bit more difficult from our side of things. He's very good with people. All the guys seem to really take to him, respect him. It's just we may not be seeing some of the things that we were hoping to see. I have a hard time pinpointing the problem. A lot of our productivity I feel like is kind of slower than it should be, which could have to do with training. But I feel like nobody ever takes my budgeted hours seriously.

The next constraint to growing a business is labor. And right now we have the fact that there's low efficiency. There's not a lot of camaraderie or great culture in the business. And that's in part due to the fact that we don't have a clear role for operations. Is Jason, the operations manager. Is Logan, the operations manager. Is Luke the operations manager who's my boss. There's not any clarity around the management of the labor.

It's just so different because I was in the field for a lot of years and it's a lot easier to keep on top of people when you're out there and you can kind of drive production. But because of the lack of production, we're behind on jobs and then we have to pay overtime on top of that, which really cuts into the cash flow. Also, I also don't do a great job of like harping on people. That's. That's never been my manage management style. Like, I've never yelled at anybody in my life.

We have a lot of damaged equipment, a lot of damaged property that we have to deal with. And then productivity, they just don't. They don't get what's going on and they don't really care to get what's going on. They kind of like to just come in. Whatever it takes is what it takes. They don't care to look at the budget hours, no matter. I had it pretty good when I was managing it. I hadn't started like getting on, on track with that, but we're like 60% productivity this year.

Yeah.

And that's been killing us with overtime. I mean, we just been.

Is that blend between both departments?

Yeah, yeah, we're pretty close to that. So that's part of our problem. Like our payroll has been out of control.

From a labor perspective. We have all identified that there's like low efficiency also. It feels like there is really no care for like hitting budget hours. There's no buying like just culturally, there's not a lot of buy in. And then I would also say we have a manager that right now we have disconnected expectations from what they think they're doing versus what we think they're doing. Okay. And so have you talked to him about like, hey, this is like, what can I do? What has the conversation been with Jason?

It's been sporadic.

I'm not very good at that. Like, I am the worst person at accountability with the guys, and especially Jason, because Jason, he's super smart. I don't know, not manipulative, but, like, he knows how to play the game. And I'm not that good at it as far as, like, managing him. So I've just been struggling with holding him accountable. I thought I had been super clear about what I wanted, and then things just aren't being followed through on, in my opinion. But I also haven't been, like. Like, every week meeting with him. It's like, I would tell him something, and then, like, two weeks later, I'd be like, hey, did this happen? He'd be like, no. I'd be like, okay, well, what can we do about it now? It just continual cycle like that. And then he's had a ton of medical issues. He had all his teeth removed. He's been having surgery, like, every couple weeks. So he's in and out a lot, and we want to be understanding to him, but, like, he's missed a lot of work.

I think a lot of their.

The.

The things they see as problems in the crew is just a function of, you know, and then them saying they don't hold. Hold the team accountable is actually like, you can't hold anyone accountable if they don't know who they're accountable to. Who am I accountable to and what am I accountable for? Are the two questions you have to answer for a team member in a team meeting, for example, is everyone looking to you as CEO?

Yeah.

And then what. What if he says something like, in. In the mean, like, is he an owner? Like, what. What's the rule? What's the dynamic between the two of you in relation to career? Do they see you as the owner really, or do they see, like, this is a joint thing going on?

It's definitely joint. To be honest, I don't even know if they really understand that he'd be the CEO, to be honest.

So you look at both of you running the business.

Yeah. Just technically, we're almost running, like, two separate businesses that kind of overlap.

Design, build, and maintenance. Who am I reporting to and what are the metrics of success? And neither of those things are well defined. And so it's not that they don't help hold people accountable. They haven't created systems in place to be able to hold anyone accountable to anything because they don't have a system in place for it. They don't have metrics and they don't have any roles and responsibilities as a leadership team. So people know who to report to. Have you talked to Jason about like his role performance, anything like that? And how has that gone? I have.

Didn't go super good. He thinks he's doing really well. Yeah, you're just a number. No matter how hard you work, you're never going to be anything more than a number. It's just. Yeah, do your thing.

You're here.

I'm not super good at that.

Yeah.

Accountability, like I said. So it hasn't gone anywhere.

Generally this really kind of goes more to like the leadership stuff. Like what I feel I'm seeing is like sales, operations, and admin, obviously Alexa's admin. And then I'm really split on who sales and operations. Because you kind of are operating as two different businesses, right? You're kind of like, like sales and operations. Slash Jason for maintenance. Sales and operations for Design build. A $5 million business is gonna look like you have an estimator for design build and you have an estimator for maintenance stuff. You have an operations person for design build. You have an operations person for out doing maintenance, and then you have probably admin with a couple assistants underneath. But that's a. That's a 4 to 5 million dollars business. Ever considered one of you doing sales and one of you doing operations?

I think Luke's a great operation guy. He just doesn't want to admit it. You know, I'm a better outbound sales guy, so that's why I took that on. I mean, I probably upsell our book about 25% of what I sell. So if I have a million dollars in contracts, make myself $250,000 in upsells, but most of our projects are just like one off things that we don't do their maintenance. They just want a patio or something. He's not going to go cold call apartment complex. He's not going to go do that. Like, that's me. I do that.

Like, this has been our problem the whole time. It's just like, like feeling like we're both good at certain things in certain fields, but struggling with other things. I know Logan's a great salesman.

I don't have the industry knowledge to do the design stuff that he does as far as patios. And I wouldn't even know how to bid it. I think I'm better at holding people accountable than Luke as far as operations, though. So I don't know, we kind of overlap.

So the only limitation from saying you are Sales and your operations is you can't sell the design build because you don't have the experience. And he can't keep the crew accountable in terms of operations on the maintenance side. Yeah, got it. Lots of crossover.

Yes, very much.

And we struggle with roles.

Yeah, that's very difficult.

That's been one of our biggest things we've been trying to fix.

But yeah, you're basically, you guys are crossing over departments, sales and operations, and you're crossing over like service mixes. Because like the fact that you can still talk to his crew and tell them what to do immediately there's like, oh, like I have two bosses, which is just, just confusing for them. There's. There's no like, like clear leadership. Jason might be. That might be actually a result of him like feeling that way is like he doesn't really know his role. He doesn't have clear expectations. He didn't have benchmarks for success. Etc. I'm assuming, like, both of you have pretty shared aligned goals for the business. Business. What is the vision for the two of you?

There have definitely been times where I've wanted to get out of the business, to be honest. One of the reasons Logan came on was so that we could grow it and sell it.

My vision is be like 3 to 5 million, have every aspect of the business handled by somebody and to where me and Luke could step out for a week and then not fall apart.

If it's a marketable business, it should be a profitable business. So, like, if it's something that we could keep going, we would definitely do that.

We have a need to grow to 3 million so it can support both of us. And the management needed to do it because neither of us are super great at accountability. So we're like, we need to at least have a production management level so that they can have that. And that was my goal.

Yeah, I kind of saw a couple times where they inferred that because they didn't yell at people and they weren't harsh with people, that therefore they couldn't hold people accountable. Why don't you guys think you guys are good at holding people accountable? Accountable, I keep. I've heard this a lot. Why do you think that?

I struggle personally with conflict. Like, I'm not. I'm not a confrontational person.

Right. But confrontational and keeping someone accountable, very different. So, like, why do you think you can't hold people accountable?

Just haven't.

So you just avoid confrontation and you don't want to tell people what to do.

I feel like personally I've held myself to, like a relatively high standard for how I perform and everything, or I have in the past made the assumption that everybody else is going to have that same mindset when they approach something. And then I've been let down a lot after that. So I've been trying to kind of reframe how I've been looking at things.

If the standard isn't defined, you can't hold them accountable. So of course you're not going to hold anyone accountable because there's no standard by which to measure them on. So let's create the standard and then we will focus on is someone measuring up to that standard. All right. From a leadership perspective, this is the part where I feel like actually is the biggest squeeze and the biggest opportunity here. It's unclear as to who's running this business, who's at the top, what the dynamic is here. Even, like the thought of, like we moving the shops this year because they don't believe we're actually working and we just need to get in front of them. It shows some level of, like there's. There's a disconnect a little bit. The last constraint in the 4L framework is leadership. And right now we don't have any clarity of where's the business going, what's our role, what's our success metric? And we've got to figure out what sales, operations and admin functions of business are responsible for. Who's responsible for what and what is success look like in the sales department with close ratio and certain metrics? What does operations look like in terms of successful in terms of efficiency score and people showing up on time? And same thing for admin. We've got to make sure we have clear roles inside the business. Suspend belief for a second and pretend like there's no cameras here and we can take this out if it needs to be. Would you rather just not have Jeff Jason around right now? Like, if you just push a button, he's just gone and you're able to manage the crew, would that be the best thing? We can cut this out?

Probably.

I think that's what the business needs. It can't afford another manager right now. I think they're the classic business where basically they've got ahead of their growth and they've built the infrastructure and the leadership team for a larger business. And I'm not against that. If you have plenty of capital to pour on marketing to be able to make sure the business actually gets that size, when we have 1.2 to 1.5 million revenue, let's just say this year it's going to be higher. 1.5. We have two owners. We have someone in the office. We like a fourth production manager on a lower margin because it's commercial work and we also have a lot of subcontractors and design build. Like our cost of goods is higher. We have like a, like a relatively low margin to work with. Now. If we were able to scale up and because they had delineation between the four roles, he was able to focus just on sales. And this year we're going to do 3 million. Very different conversation. So not against having other managers in place, but if you're going to scale past one point and start getting a whole bunch of general managers in place, you better make sure the business has plenty of capital to actually scale that size.

The reason I haven't let him go is because I feel like I haven't fairly done a good job to tell him what to do.

Okay.

So, like, I feel like to let him go, it's because of, yes, some things he's doing, but a lot of it's because of I just was not.

A good manager for him. I think he'd feel blindsided.

Yeah.

From my side of things, I. I think he. He is under the impression he's doing a good job because he's trying hard and he shows up like, like he just had a surgery the other day and he was here on Monday. He's trying to be present. Like he's just had stuff outside of his control in some cases that have pulled him away. So I do feel like he'd be a little bit blindsided.

I feel like, not that I owe it to him or that the business should support it, I personally feel I have done him a disservice. Like I should give him another chance. That's the way I feel.

But if we look at the success metrics of, say, a crew, it has only diminished once we got a production manager in place. You know, whether you. Not you think you can, can or cannot hold someone accountable, your crews performed better under you than the current production manager. Like, if a production manager steps in that has experience, they. The crew efficiency and morale of the team and people showing up on time, being safe and all the other benchmarks of success should go up and they have not. And so whether or not a production manager effective at a job is not whether or not someone can, they can yell at someone, not whether or not they can have a hard meeting with someone, it's what is the success of their team? Like, the success of your, of your team determines the success of the leader. And so if the current leadership, the culture is degraded, people are showing up late, they're not wearing their uniform, there's a bunch of just low care for that business. That is the success metric side, which I'm going to measure the manager. Then the next question because, well, have I not set them up correctly to make sure they can do that? Have I not actually told them what they should be doing and what success metrics I am actually tracking? I think that's where I would first start when it comes to, you know, the labor side of things, the low efficiency. Look, we gotta have a meeting with Jason and not say you're doing a bad job. Not saying, I thought you were gonna do this and you did not. Like that will not work. Like we've already kind of tried that. It doesn't work. Like no one's going to take that. Well, very, very rarely, unless someone was raised in a very militant home, when they react to someone saying you're doing a bad job, like it's pretty obvious based upon the interaction with Luke and Logan, they think that he shouldn't be around. But they also are very gracious in the fact that, hey, they take responsibility. They didn't set him up for success. How they handle that conversation with him, it'll be very telling as to whether or not they actually do the rest of what's on the six week plan. Because if that conversation goes well, they should be able to retain the employee. Retain sounds like his sons. Jason's sons work for the business.

My oldest son's coming in and helping. He's doing fabulous. He's the next generation in on it.

Big old boy, he's bringing home 5.

600 bucks a week.

He's loving it like that. We retain all of them. If they just have that conversation, do it well. If it doesn't go well and they start casting blame or saying negative things about his performance, that is not the time and place to do it. And you got to be self reflective enough that if you're going to say, hey, I'm taking ownership of the fact that this person wasn't successful in their role because I didn't set them up for success, then you've got to be able to not say in the moment, even if they lash out a little bit, the negativity that you want to, you have to withhold that. And so if we actually want to give Jason a shot at it, it's simply a measure of like, hey, let's get really clear about what success looks like for a production manager at Warrior Outdoors. Here's the efficiency score. Here's going to be what our overtime looks like. Here's what percentage of revenue is going out the door to wages and maybe safety cases and callbacks, for example. This is not confrontational. I would actually say the thing that you said to me, me, which is like, I don't feel like I have set you up for success. I haven't given you a good shot at this. We want to clearly define what good looks like for production manager so that you can know if you're doing a good job. So I don't have to say anything? You don't have to say anything. And that we're all speaking the same language because you're speaking the language like efficiency and all this. He's speaking the language like effort and you're like, effort stinks. I need numbers. And so like, let's just, okay, these are the things that we're actually going to benchmark because some people, some people, their benchmark is effort. It's like if you just show up and work really hard and after a surgery just walk right back into work, you're good and that's fine. But you are very much the opposite. I need these numbers, I need these efficiencies. I need people to be showing up on time. So make those the benchmarks of success. And then you don't have to tell him anything. The language of the numbers, tell him each thing. And so when you need, if and when you need to let him go, the numbers will just tell him the story. The six week plan to turn around Warrior Outdoors is as follows. Number one, we've got to collect money faster to solve the cash flow problem. I think the first thing is like tighten up deposits.

We can't be waiting a few weeks after a job has been accepted for that deposit. We've got to collect it right away. 50% down payment immediately, collect that cash as soon as possible so I can go use it to go buy the materials and the supplies required to do the work. Right now you're doing a lot of that in person, right? Like the sales process and they're going and collecting the check, etc. Is there pushback on getting the check like right when they accept or even just on doing like through the estimate online?

Not, not a whole lot, to be honest. I just feel like I maybe, I don't, definitely didn't come from a sales background. So I feel a little bit unconfident in, in some Circumstances where I'm asking people for money, I guess I don't.

Think it would add any friction whatsoever to the sales process. It's just a function of making the ask. Like we need the money no matter what. So like we gotta make the ads. And so if you take a couple little things, I. E. A manager that's in productive, probably adding to your workload as well as really bad cash flow on projects, we would probably be okay. Like you're probably at 15% mark and that's not horrible for this size of business. Especially with two owners, you're both taking distributions. So tightening up deposits simply comes down to setting clear expectations from the estimate. Like on the estimate you're saying this is required to get the job on schedule. Again just change the terms. And then when you're selling the job, instead of saying like once you accept or just say to get on the schedule, they just require a deposit which is required. Deposit. Once you deposit, we lock you in and then you use that on your follow up process to create scarcity. Hey Mr. Jones, we're booked out two months. We do need to get that deposit to get you locked in the schedule. Just so you know, we do have a few big projects coming down the pipe. I'd love to get you scheduled ASAP so we can just secure that spot. Like we do not put anyone on the calendar unless they hit pay. The second thing we gotta do in the next six weeks is make sure the website is updated to show seasonal specific offers for season specific services. Like our six week plan is season specific offers.

We just never spent the money on the website because no one goes to it. You know, like we don't get like traffic to it. And I'm sure once it's there it's awesome.

It's also a function of like the reason we don't get any leads from it is because of the way it's built.

Build.

Yeah. Right. And so she's already saying we're getting two a week or so. A couple weeks. And it's because the thing you're highlighting is that we just changed two leads a week from residential mowing to like one massive design build. And a property manager. This business looks very different. Right. So I would really revolve the entire website around that truck. And then I would highlight the different types of off like the main services, design, build and commercial maintenance in that area. Like right on the top there. I think I'm meeting with Jason and all we're trying to do there is definition of success. So in the Perfect world, he stays on board. I think the next best case scenario is he leaves but on good terms. And then worst case scenario is he leaves and goes sour. I also think that standardization of product for design build. I would really, really recommend standardization creating a product book and instead of taking Unilock, you take Warrior Outdoors product book and you make a design really nice. I'm sure she's great at Canva. Sure she is. Yes. Fantastic.

She is.

Yeah. See like look like, give us a couple days to give her all your pictures. Be like, these are the ones we want to highlight. Don't highlight the ones you know that are really hard and you lost your shirt on.

Yeah.

This guy was like, yeah, I knew.

Exactly what pictures were going about. But they're not.

So like you know which ones. Right. I do believe if you standardize the design side enough, this is the unlock. This, this is fine. But the unlock here is you standardize the design side enough so you can take over sales, you can take over operations and you don't have a production manager. That business will do $2 million very profitably. They are hitting the capacity. When you have two managers like that 1.4, 1.5 million. Like you need a better management team to be able to get to 3, 4 or 5 million. And so they're hitting up against that. There are a lot of leadership things. I actually like kind of glazed over because I can't even address them if we don't have clear roles. What's easier to repl your job if I'm trying to hire someone is sales. Yeah, not your job is sales operations. You gotta manage the crew. Have a defunct middle manager that you don't really know what's going on with and that you don't have any metrics for success for them. Like it's easier for you to hire a salesperson. And by the way, you don't need to know how to do all these custom things. There's four different types of projects we install and here's your product book to go sell. That's an easier role to replace. Let's simplify our roles and make sure the roles are clear. So I can't talk about close ratio. I can't talk about even like follow up mechanisms and certain other systems. I would have to be able to scale the business business. If we don't have just the fundamentals of organization in the company. This is the unlock. It is, it is. We got to simplify and standardize enough on the projects to where you can sell and that's Something that we don't talk about for a business doing 2 or 300,000 because the. The solo operator does sales, does operation, does admin. But this size of business now, you need to specialize in order to be able to get. Take it to the next level. When I hear what you guys are saying, like, the goals of the business is that you eventually be able to hand this off. We need to, like, focus on that. What does that business look like? It looks like very standardized projects to fill in the gaps of a maintenance business that is dialed in, like, on efficiencies and the labor side.

Yeah. Luke is having a baby, like, this week.

Yeah.

So he may be out.

Yeah, I should probably keep my phone on.

He may be out for, like, a little bit. So we might have to input this, like a couple weeks.

Okay. You got six weeks. You got six weeks.

So I'm looking forward to it. I think just having that clarity will allow us both to excel in our roles, because, like, this has been our problem the whole time. It's just like feeling like we're both good at certain things in certain fields, but struggling with other things. But having that clarity so that we can actually complement each other, I think is going to go a long way.

The hardest thing for them is going to be standardization of the project because you are walking away from work and those projects, they're going to want to take on that. They have to, like, realize they're not going to probably win those. But we already know that Logan knows how to do the sales. He just doesn't know how to probably, like, put some of the numbers in the software and do some design work. But he's already sold, like, water features, so they'll be just fine. Alexis, you're always the office person, always has all the dirt. They know all the skeletons. They know everything wrong in the business. So, like, anything from your aspect, like, when you've overheard kind of like the general direction, anything, like, doubts or, like, questions you have, I'd say my biggest concern is not implementing it immediately. Like, right now, they got a fire under them, and so I want them to do it, like, tomorrow. Okay. Like, I want it to happen immediately. Bravo. Bravo. It's like music to my ears. They tend to overthink, and it becomes easier to just keep the more time they get away from it. Great. That's why you're here. You're gonna hold them accountable to make sure it happens.

Alexis always is doing that, though, so we're used to that.

That's how we get stuff done. Like really get it done.

So, yeah, if she wanted to, she could probably be a better CEO than me or Luke. Cause she's so aggressive with that stuff.

We're gonna put timelines. Let's go. We need to dream. Okay. All right. All right. So, number one, the tightening of the deposits. That's going to be 24 hours. That is simply a decision made now on the sales side, which is currently still you. We got to get there, but, like, within 24 hours. We don't leave the job without collecting. And we're using scarcity as a way to make sure that it's deposit. Second thing is clear offers on the website. Within 24 hours, we're going to make a request to the web developer of what we want changed. We're going to be clear with what those things are. So within 24 hours. You can ask that within. Let's just give it two weeks. Because sometimes web designs are slow. They'll have it changed. Perhaps ambitious. Two weeks is ambitious. Yeah. She's kind of slow. But three? I would really hope so. Okay, well, I'll give you three. It's okay. Number three is meeting with Jason. Number three is gonna be in three days.

Let's go.

I would have a meeting between the three of you in terms of how that meeting is gonna go. I would have some notes. You're not gonna go into a blind because you both have admitted that you don't like confrontation. This is not a confrontational meeting. But we need to have organization so you don't stumble your way through. And then emotions get flared up and you start saying stupid stuff. Nothing negative is said within three days. We're doing that. And we're gonna promote Jason. Either promotion away from the business or promoting the irrigation department in a year. Hopefully we can bring him back. Only positive things said there. Alexis will keep you accountable. She'll throw darts at you or something. If you are saying negative things, she will. Okay, Seth, that's three days before the standardization of the product and design. How long will it take us to make a product book?

I don't think it'll take that long.

A week or two.

Okay, so one week to make the product book. So one week is product book. We're gonna do another week, and this could be a day. But I'm gonna leave you a week for it. And that is training around the design software. Anything that you think he doesn't know that he needs to know. Might mean you go out and do a few estimates with him just to make sure you're both on the same page and easier transition. Also, during that training process, you're thinking about things like estimate notes, like, hey, what are the gaps here that we need to standardize? One week of training after one week of creating the product book. And so what are we looking at? August 1st, you're gonna be the salesperson starting August 1st. Yeah. And then that week, we call you. And then we started working.

How's it going?

So we will know whether or not we hit these benchmarks.

Yeah.

Anything else, Alexis, besides timelines on this? That's all I can think of. Okay. All right, cool.

He's got a really good, like, gift of understanding, like, where we're at without, like, knowing us or spending a lot of time with us. Being able to come in and, like, just with some financial numbers and then, like, 10 or 15 minutes, just even beforehand, just getting to know us. I feel like.

That'S a serious gift. To be able to, like, do that, but have that perspective and then have actionable stuff for us to do, I think really is super valuable. So I'm. I'm excited about that.

Yeah. I was super impressed. I was like, dang, this dude.

Just get right to it.

Like, he knows me better than I know myself. Yeah.

I was like, what the heck is this? But, yeah, no, it's super cool. I'm, like, super appreciative of him and coming out and all that.

Yeah. Hey, man, thanks for letting us come by. I appreciate it. Absolutely. I appreciate you letting us come out. There's a lot of other people that are in the same boat, same problems, and so if people say dumb stuff, just ignore them. They're just being whatever. But there's a lot of people that take a lot from someone like, your size and be like, okay, if they have problems, and I'm trying to grow to that size, maybe I need to redo my business now, so when I get that size, I don't have that same problem. Right. So I appreciate it. It's really a part of the community and just trying to give back to them, so. All right.

Thanks, guys.

Thank you.

You'll have a good one? Yeah. Enjoy the sunshine. It's a little hot today. Good night. This.

Really well. He took it really well, and he's just been. It's been a lot better fit for him, I think.

He.

It's more his groove, his. His cup of tea, I guess. So he's been killing it on the irrigation side, and so it's been going good. It's just, like, one of those things where you. You build it up bigger in your head than it actually is, you know, then it's. It ended up being no big deal at all. Yeah. So that's what he's doing. Irrigation tech only. We moved them from salary to hourly. Like, same rate, but just hourly. So he got everything. Same compensation. As far as, like, how much he's getting paid, it's just a little bit different.

We're reworking our. Just our terms, basically. So all future work is going to have that set up to where we collect the deposit in order to get onto the schedule.

So Luke had the baby.

He's three weeks old. He was born on July 3rd. So.

So I've been kind of. I've been holding on the. For the sales and. Or sales and operations for a little bit so Luke could have some time with them. And then Monday morning we're hitting it split. So I've been doing all the sales meeting for the install though. So, like, I think I have pretty much 100 of the sales now. Luke's gonna hit. Hit the ground running hopefully next week, Monday for operations. Like, Luke's been working on getting that, like, while he's been off, he's been working on getting that. That, like, set system, like the written, like, product sheet and exactly what we're going to offer. So we should be able to implement that in the next couple weeks or so. That'll make my life a lot easier for sure.

Yeah.

Yeah. And we're working with our web designer also to kind of bring those seasonal offerings to the forefront and then also kind of simplify our standardized install offerings also just so we can have a little bit more direction when somebody clicks on our website. So they're not always just, you know, a leaf removal page or something like that. So that was definitely kind of a. At least for me, it kind of hit the pause button on most things. My family definitely my priority over the business. So that took kind of forefront of my. Of my bandwidth. And then Logan's done a great job holding down everything in the meantime. So that kind of ate into our. Our productivity as far as our goals. But I think we got a lot of things in place kind of getting ready to. Getting ready to go on all this.

So. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. Every time I get on YouTube, I see a new Mike Andy video like, oh, is it ours?