Fixing 10 Businesses in 10 Days ($250K Lawn Care Company)

For the past couple years, I've traveled the country fixing struggling businesses. No, we need to make more money. If you go into Spring Rush without collecting that money, it's gone. Is that legally compliant? I have no idea. I just know you will make more money. So we're going to be doing a vlog for the next couple of weeks. Going to be kind of showing the behind the scenes. How do you actually use 100 grand to grow the business?

Looking for a hike?

There's no hike.

Found a homeless encampment.

Look in the iPad. Promise. Whoa. We almost died. So you're going to see a lot of eating, joking around. We have two members of the media team, Francis and Zach. My wife is with me as well. She's the trip coordinator. Name is Andis.

Yes, sir.

Both of you married in the family?

Yes, I did.

So you're like a gold digger.

Well, we're going to be taking RV from this side of the coast over back to Seattle. We're going to be visiting 18 different businesses. Nine of them are Augusta, lawn care location and nine turnarounds.

Walker, no. That will close you here at 6:30. It says.

We'Re starting to get word. We're supposed to leave at 6:30. They're not out yet.

Fire alarm.

Get ready.

Sucker.

Well, we got a brisket egg burrito from Bucky.

Wait, is there egg in that?

Yeah. Dude. What? Look at this. Look at this. See this ingredient list? Literally 90% of it. 90% of it is a tortilla. So no tortilla beanie, no jocko at Walmart yesterday. So I had to go with this random uptime energy. It's a solid five out of ten. Five and a half on a. I give it the half because there is no coloring. It's clear.

Bro. Means you're not dying when you drink this stuff.

Goodness, yeah.

How am I supposed to know what flavor it is?

You can't see inside of it, bro.

You ever had a Yoo Hoo in a clear glass bottle?

I don't know what a Yoo Hoo is. Wow. What's a Yoo Hoo?

It's you who judges me, man. What the hec.

Today we're in Tennessee visiting Eric from New Grounds Lawn Care. The business will make $250,000 this year. But Eric's employee left and he has been working seven days a week. I have a new guy who just started. I'm not very happy with it. Just smoking cigarettes on the go. 140 in case he's not paying himself from this. The thing is, he's not taking any money out for himself. There's $5,000 that he took out, it looks like for himself.

Next few years, I'd like To get to 500 of recurring, try to get into more like selling more project based stuff.

Why are we not doing 500,000 this year? Because you're like on top of 250.

Or 200 right now. Well, I'd say this year I'd say the constraint, the main constraint was labor.

And just a function of like how long can we do that so that we can grow. Yeah. And then the next question is like, hey, right now if we had two or three more employees would actually be a good thing. Or we actually start losing money because we don't have systems in place, our pricing isn't correct and everything else really you're just going to have to buy a premium service and not making 50 bucks an hour. Yeah.

Okay, so you're thinking 15% raise.

Oh, at least. Oh my God. Dude. I get so like.

These ones remind me so much of when I first got started and how painful it was is like I can very much feel their pain very much though. So tough. And it's so funny. I was like, yep, you're on the right path. Just keep doing what you're doing, dude, it's gonna stink. For a Eric's star employee left forcing him to work seven days a week in the field.

He recently got married and bought a house.

He recently got married and bought a house.

He doesn't know his numbers. And I found out he's only making $50 an hour.

He doesn't know his numbers. And I found out that he's only making $50 an hour. Let's spend the rest of it. Yeah.

The goal is to grow quickly. Wouldn't it be a good strategy to keep it low?

And then so you're kind of speaking at both sides of your mouth.

Right.

You're saying, okay, I don't really wanna get too many jobs. And I see this fear of getting more leads. Cause if someone leaves, then I'm dead.

Yeah.

So yeah, there's definitely two roads you can go here. One is we raise prices. We make this much more manageable. I just tend to believe like right now you have more stress by getting more leads. Cause you're almost stressed that if one person leaves, this all is gonna like be right back on your plate and you working seven days a week.

So how's that coaching for the vlog?

It was good. He was a little indecisive in terms of what he wanted in terms goal. So it's difficult because I don't want to just tell someone what to do. Like, I want them to be like, what's your goal and how can I get you closer to that? But I was like, do you want to be in profit mode? Yeah, like those are precious. Like, no, I want to grow. Like, oh, we're in growth mode. So it's difficult a little bit to like pinpoint exactly what to tell him because he was very open to anything I said but didn't know. Like, I didn't know which way to push him. So we ended up going to growth strategy because he has plenty of capital or like enough capital to keep growing, doesn't have a lot of debt once you eventually get out of the field. So I was like, okay, great, let's get to 500,000 annual revenue. I know it's scary to leave a couple thousand dollars on the table.

Yeah.

When it's low hanging fruit. Also, it's going to be the difference between like making a couple thousand dollars or lockdown mode.

Yeah.

In per month in office and making 10 to 15 grand.

Right.

On winter services. Well, I think they'll probably interview maybe out back and then we're going to head to that job. Is this the cool house you were talking about?

Yeah, it's pretty cool.

There's a couple cool houses that I don't know which one you guys want.

To see, but one of them is like, the guys hate it. They'll hate me if I, if I send them there. I know, but the other one's pretty neat.

Low vlog. Unfortunately, Francis isn't gonna be coming to the gym with us, so you're not gonna be able to see him. Winch £350 for his warm up or squat £500.

This weather's still perfect.

It seriously is.

Thank you.

Sweet. Okay.

Yeah, we'll shoot you guys a text when we're our way back.

So we started our day at 3am Flew all day. I don't know how this math maths, but we essentially got to the hotel at 10:30pm so it was pretty dang late. Like in our rooms by like 11, like finishing, like dumping all of our footage and like charging all the gear. We're looking at like midnight. So it was a late night night and an early start. We started this morning at 5:00am so.

Yeah.

Easy, easy.

Honestly, very typical day for a turnaround. It's just that we're gonna have 10 days of this.

Exactly.

So turnouts typically go like this at this beautiful property.

In Tennessee. We're gonna. We're gonna shoot the drone up real quick.

Drone operator. Last time Zach flew the drone, he crashed into a spot semi truck. So Zach is off of drone duty. I'll be flying this bad boy. I've also crashed a couple drones in my day, you know, so I'm not saying I'm above it. Let's hope for the best here.

The drone. The drone got disconnected. Let's see if it crashes.

Almost crashed him again. Sure.

Thanks again, Eric.

Absolutely.

Appreciate it. Laters. Hell, yeah. Good luck. Thanks, guys.

All right, so we just finished filming with Eric. Really cool guy. Next stop is to get the rv, so this will be we. Sayonara to the good old. What is this car?

Mazda.

Mazda. Not recommend. Don't recommend. Don't even remember the name of it. And we'll be getting in the 34 RV, so we'll see you there. Now we're like vloggers because I did that.

All right, so what's the cost per day of the rv?

I can. I can do a price breakdown. So for 10 nights, it's 1,320 bucks.

Not bad.

For 2900 miles, it's $1,131.

Not bad.

Fee. 50 bucks. Environment fee. 995.

Okay. What's the environment fee?

I have no idea.

What are they doing for the environment?

Yeah, I want proof that they're doing something for the environment.

Yeah, like, what are you doing? Planting trees.

That'll be about 4,600 bucks.

And does that include the mileage? Yes. That's not too bad.

We're definitely going over the mileage, though.

That we told them. Now why are we doing that? It's because otherwise we'd be getting a bunch of rooms every night, Right?

This actually, it saves us money, I think, or we break even. But it's also just, you know, driving an RV across the states. Who gets to do that?

It's hard to work here too. Honestly. If we had a desk here.

Right after this. Go from gym, barbecue, get an rv, get in the rv, drive the rv, Go to Jason Murphy's house in Louisville, then drive to.

Springfield, Indiana.

Springfield, Indiana.

Sleeping at a Walmart tonight.

I need to do a.

We're sleeping at a Walmart tonight in Fishers, Louisiana.

Indiana.

Indiana.

It's gonna be a long night. We're sleeping in Louisiana. It's gonna be a long night.

Probably gonna let the professional cameraman drive as well.

Oh, God, no, no. Or near it. No, he's busy.

He's busy.

Your first test is to start the motorhome. If you can't get it started, we are not gonna let you take it with you. That's how we keep all the stupid people off the road. Now, you're still gonna see them, because we can't control everybody, but they did not come from here.

You're not one of them.

I was really worried.

Welcome to our humble abode. We have the cooker situation. Brand's very concerned about how much propane she's gonna be using for the cooking. The hood obvious does work. Microwave, Very good. We got a sink situation. Oh, look at this. Okay, this was a little dirty. Not gonna lie. I would expect a little cleaner. All right, then. Freezer needs to be cooler, but okay. Whoa. It's a legit shower. Oh, my goodness. Dude, Zach will not be able to fit in there, bro. I'm, like, too tall for this thing.

Oh, my God. That's crazy.

You're not gonna fit.

This is how I. I am in actual showers.

I know.

You're gonna crouch down under the water.

Yeah. He said we're not allowed to shower properly. He said turn on real quick and then turn off again.

Yeah, a little military shower.

You know, the showers. If you're gonna shower in here, do what we call calvary and dry showers. Turn the water on, get wet, turn the water back off, then start soaping up, turn the water back on to rinse off. Shampooing. I would avoid it.

I fit.

Dude, that's crazy.

Dude, I think that's crazy. There's not even a sealed door. It's just this curtain. Pretty dirty, dude. You should have seen the other one.

The bed packages and the kitchen packages. He was like, oh. Bri told me, for any amount of money, you could buy better stuff. And we were like. Like, yeah, absolutely. While getting it from that checkout place.

Where you're like, yeah, absolutely.

Three personal kits and then the kitchen kit.

Yeah, okay. Yeah.

Now that's gonna be 225. There's 350. You're gonna be spending all the other.

On that stuff for rental. If you want to, you can go.

To Walmart, buy a whole lot of stuff.

Way better, way cheaper.

You're getting a pillow, a sheet, pillowcase, a couple of towels, and some hand towels to rent them. So that's what I'm saying.

I mean, yeah, maybe we'll just swim through Walmart. I think we get cheaper and, like, new, which would be tight.

Anytime you're getting your RV from a collision repair center, there's a bunch of Damaged vehicles everywhere.

Dirty.

Yeah.

I give them low marks for cleanliness. There's so much, like, little spots where like. Oh, like take all this stuff. Like, that's food. Okay.

I won't do any weird monologuing while I'm in there. Sean thinks that it's important that I wear this mic while I drive this rv. So we're see if he really reviews the footage while I pull it out here, because so far, he has no idea that I'm talking. Now let's see how big this RV really is. Oh, this thing's for babies. This RV is for babies, dude.

Oh, my God. This is actually so wide.

Have you ever been in an RV before? Like on a road trip?

Yeah, we did one when I was a kid. It was smaller than this, and all of kids slept up all up there. It was actually pretty much like this. It was great. We drove down to Oregon, dude. That's like the only time I've really gone RVing, though. And I was probably.

6, 5, 6. Maybe 7. Maybe 7.

That's a perfect size for this.

Yeah.

All three of us. All of us. Three kids laid up top. Not that we were very height challenged with this anyways. All right, here we go. We're moving.

Figuring on the big, you know, big open road. Nice, wide and slow.

Everything is so shaky and rattly.

Yeah. It's like driving a house.

What was that?

Oh, God.

I feel like something fell off.

Don't worry about that though. You probably didn't need it.

This sounded way more luxurious when you.

Pitched it to me. I'm not gonna lie.

Good salesman. I like how my mirror's shaking, so.

It's.

So.

It's really cool.

It's like, am I there or am I not there?

Am I there?

That mirror is cracking me up.

Here you can see the actual rv.

Except it's the side of the rv.

Yeah, I was trying to do that, but like, that side.

So my name Mike Anders. I travel company makes and struggle businesses. They're behind the scenes. And then we go from the east coast to the west.

Are you doing a front flip?

Yeah. Yeah, Right. You ready? Our goal is to turn around 10 small businesses in the next 10 days. Come along for the ride. Ah, that was a lousy set. That was sick.

What's up? Hello.

How's it going?

Blockception.

You know what? I have perfect idea.

Get work done. Well, let's go.

You're gonna help her?

No.

I'm sorry, Brenna. Not paying attention. I know. Thank you.

I'm thinking three for now.

All Right.

I got Princess.

Yeah.

I took you on a mission.

Yeah.

To get three dozen eggs and a gallon of milk.

Holy.

Don't worry, Francis. You don't need to help out.

Oh, thank God. I almost started feeling bad, but then I realized I'm doing my job.

Cut from this.

Another Walmart.

Oh, yeah.

We're going five hours to another Walmart. It'll probably be closer to six because we're humans and we have to take bathroom breaks and stretch breaks and stuff like that, so.

All right, folks.

Hey, folks, it's taco night here in the rv. We have a whole fridge stocked, maybe.

A little too stuffed.

Anyways, we have everything we need for about a week.

Five pounds of ground beef.

I don't know.

You know, I'm a little bit uncomfortable eating ground beef out of a paper tube like this, but you gotta do what you gotta do, you know? Great value. So, yeah, we're gonna cook this out and hopefully not drop any more cans of anything. I will check back in once I set the smoke alarm off.

Maybe it's because the lights are on.

Oh, it went.

It was very close. Bang.

Just keep going. Just keep going.

All right, let's put my envelope. Anything up. Ready? Aim.

Oh, yeah. This is propane Fire. I feel like this is, like, an app.

That was anticlimactic. Oh, there's plastic there. I think that actually did that.

Look at that. Speed.

So this is the appetizer, right? Ten days, dude. Four people, one rv, beautiful scenery, Skateboard or two.

Broken ankle or two.

But, man.

What a life. What a life.