Fixing 10 Businesses in 10 Days ($800K Lawn Care Company)

I'm driving this RV from Raleigh, North Carolina, to Bellingham, Washington.

Day 10. We finally crashed the RV.

Our goal is to turn around 10 businesses in the next 10 days. Even if everything goes smoothly, I just want you to not have that pressure.

Four days of this is hard. Ten days of this is just insane.

In the past three months, you've actually proven them wrong. You've proven it works.

That's showing signs of sleep depriving.

Sleep wasn't guaranteed.

And I know that's hard to hear. My name is Mike Andes, and I travel the country fixing struggling businesses.

We need more time, which I'm not.

Saying it's bad, not saying it's impossible, just saying it's extremely difficult. And today, I'm taking you behind the scenes as we take this RV and do just that.

Oh, my God.

Some days when I wake up, I feel like I'm dangerously close to a religious vision.

The thing is, there's a thousand other people that watch this that don't talk about this stuff. And therefore, all the people that struggle with this feel like they're all alone.

What's too.

I cannot imagine it. I've talked to Brian about this. I cannot imagine the pain you're going through as a provider wanting to try to make this work. Multiple millions of dollars.

You know what I'm saying?

Not if you take it away from me.

We slept in a Cabela's, and now we are heading to an Anytime Fitness in Boise, technically in Eagle. And then we're gonna go hang out with Alberto, the CEO of Householder Eagle.

So this business is actually owned or used to be owned or kind of is owned by Nathan. He was on the turnaround show a couple years ago. A year ago. And we talked about switching from doing the work to being more of a subcontracting model. This becomes a whole different business. Managing subcontractors is so different than actually doing the work. Right. Because now you. You become a sales organization that has to, like, manage other businesses. And he did everything we talked about down to the T. Has, like, one local general manager, has, like, 34 plus subcontractors. They do cleaning and lawn care for all sorts of different areas. He has a CEO that now kind of runs the business. So he's out of town. And they're gonna probably do, like, they're on a run rate right now, like 60 to $80,000 a month with pretty good profit margin, like 20 to $30,000 a month. It's been a slow build, and it looks like in the past, like, three to Six months. It's.

Okay. All right, let me open up.

I'm going to watch this video. You ready? We don't have a video, dude. I have nothing. I got piano sent to me from Bri last night and that's it.

I guess, since that's all we have.

Yeah. Let me look at this, Pino. So it's. They have a little bit of credit card at 13,000, but like, probably they're just paying that off each month. Not too concerned about that. But if you look at income, it's like January, like 11,000, then it went to 30,000 in the spring, then 50,000 during the later spring and 70,000, 80,000 in August. Like, they're growing very quickly. And then from a profit perspective, they were negative in the spring. And then the last three months, 30, 25 to $30,000 in profit each month as they begin to scale. So I think getting the infrastructure with the gm, his CEO, that kind of managed things for him, getting all the funnels set up correctly with marketing shout out to him. And I think people will watch this. Like, I should do that too. I don't want to do any work. It's harder than it sounds. I'm actually changing the whole business model. We're no longer actually in the business of mowing grass. We're in the business of generating leads and then finding and creating a subcontractor network and then maintaining quality of that. Ask yourself, realistically, what are you best at? And then try to focus on it and then guard. Ie hire other people in the other areas. So he was really good at sales, but operationally, like, like, I just was blunt with him, like, you're not good at this. And then, so what, he did get a general manager and a CEO.

Okay.

Hello. Hi, I'm Brianna.

I'm Ezra.

Ezra Ezrin. Ezrin, nice to meet you.

Hi.

Alberto.

Alberto, I'm Brianna. Nice to meet you. We've been corresponding over email. Did you. I hear, right, that you flew in from New York. Oh, my goodness. Just for this?

Yes.

That's crazy how much we. That's how much we think of you guys.

That's so sweet. Thank you so much for. Wow, that's. That's a big deal. Thank you.

We wanted to have you for. For lunch after. I know that.

I felt so bad. We've been late to everything. That's not even an exaggeration. Like on the itinerary, I have, like, we get here at set or at a certain place at 7, we leave at 11. And it's like, we have been behind on literally everything.

Well, we appreciate the time that you guys.

Of course.

Of course. Traveling in an RV has proved to be way more time consuming than we thought because we have to consider, like, everything.

Yeah, I would say they're probably on Track for like 700,000 because of their growth rate for this year. And if they can bring in, I think right now it's like a 20% margin. Not bad at all. So. Pretty proud, Very proud of Nathan. Everything he's done last year is all I got. It's all the numbers I have.

Do you think it'll be worth it for this one since he's not there, to also do, like, a zoom call and, like, get him and his thoughts in between?

I don't know. I really don't know what this is. I don't know if this is a turnaround. I don't know if this is a coaching. So I need to talk to Zach and say, what are you thinking here? Because I have no notes. I have nothing. Is this just like, hey, we're checking back with a turnaround and they're doing fantastic because they did what we talked about. Cool. End of show. See you on the next turnaround episode.

I don't know if that's what we're looking for or are we trying to actually, like, do they have questions and need to get to the next level of the business? Because I do see some threats to this business model. Like, you can get white. Like, you can go from the same way. It's scaled very quickly, it can drop very fast. But I think we can make something really cool of it. You know, it would be great to make this a 2, 3, 4, 5 million dollar business. Very possible. We'll find out.

Hello.

This is Rafael. He's our field manager.

Sweet.

Oh, nice.

Yeah. Yeah, it makes things happen when I'm in New York.

Yeah.

Cool to see you guys.

Oh, yeah, yeah, we completely did what Mike said.

Like, it's.

You're gonna be surprised.

We.

We have no more, like, equipment.

Like, zero.

We sold it all. Yeah, we. We sold it out. And then. Yeah, we just used Nathan's skills, which, you know, just do arbitrage type of model where we. We just find the deals and then we sign it to contractors and. And then we, you know, we work, coordinate, make sure that the quality is good. But yeah. Yeah, instead of. Because, no, I. Nathan took too hard. You know, everything that Mike was. Was asking him to do then.

And.

And then we added cleaning. We thought, you know, we need to adjust to our Name because it's not only lawn care. And so we, we moved to Eagle Pros rebranding.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Definitely gives more of like a whole house.

Yeah.

Vibe with that.

Yeah.

I like right now, if they bring $700,000 to the table, I think in my episode I told them like, hey, if you do $4 million in revenue, you'd bring. Dude, they're probably doing exact. I would love to go back to the episode because I think what I said is $4 million in revenue and you'd make like an $800,000 business. To be able to do 800,000 as a subcontractor, you need to be selling $4 million worth of revenue. Yeah. Because you're getting 20% of it. Yeah. So your $800,000 business is going to have $4 million worth of administration. Yeah. Yeah. So an $800,000 business for you is probably going to look like three to five people in the office, which is again, a totally different business. Yeah. Which is what I'm. I would say I am better at. That's what I'm picking up on. That's why I think you should go down that route. I think that's like I said, if you take a 20% cut and that's basically what they're doing. So I'd be really interested what I told. Because I remember the title. I feel like this, this 16 year old runs a $4 million business without employees. And I was like, it's clickbait. But I think he's actually done it. I think he's done it. Basically. No actual doing the work. Has the admin team like we talked about, sells over the phone and instant quotes. And it's on the other side of the world right now. Letting his business be managed, making $30,000 a month in profit. Not a bad gig. Not going to lie. It doesn't matter. Being resourceful and being willing to be stupid. Like if you look at the financials this year, in January, he started making like 5,7000amonth in revenue. I bet you he started working on a. Six months prior to that and was making like 0, $100, 300, probably losing money every single month. And because he's trying to set up the contractor network, trying to run ads, trying to set it all up. Probably spending hundreds of hours figuring it all out without any revenue. And so most people are just not willing to do that. They're like, oh yeah, I would love to have a business where I make 70, $80,000 a month and then I bounce the other side of the world. It still makes me a bunch of profit, but they're not willing to put in the six to 12 months of losing money every month. Like, I don't see last year's revenue and profit and loss statement. I guarantee you he lost a lot of money.

There you are, sir.

Hi. Okay, tell me names. Brianna Ramses.

Should I take off my shoes?

I mean, it's a farmhouse. You really don't have to.

Okay.

David.

David, Nathan's dad?

Yes.

Brianna. Nice to meet you.

Are you the wife? I am.

We were just looking at the pictures.

Oh, yeah.

It'S the best. I'm so grateful that we can travel together because it'd be pretty hard if we couldn't, so.

He's such a great guy.

He's the best.

He was here about a year over a year ago. I believe they were just giving the history about the previous turnaround they did here. And it's so cool to see, like, everything that Nathan's implemented after the coaching. It's so cool.

Well, like I say, he's been a great mentor. Nathan has. He's really taken to heart his input, and he knows that Mike knows the formula, and he's had enough experience that he can synthesize based on his situation and come up with pretty good recommendations.

Yeah. So I'm curious about how you are able. I'm curious about how you're able to manage it from New York.

Okay. That's because of my family's relationship.

Yeah, exactly. Because, you know, at the beginning, Nathan was actually working with the guys and everything. He had a bunch of equipment. And he would also actually let the guys order some of his equipment. You know, I think you guys, if you saw the video, he had a lot of equipment in the shop. But then Mike said, you know what? Your skill set lies in finding clients. Like, you're good at technology, marketing, and all of that. Why don't you focus on that? Find clients and then assign those to.

Contractors and then you just subcontract everything.

Subcontract everything, Exactly. Yeah. And so with that model, you know, marketing and everything is happening online.

Yeah.

You know, and you know, you can run it from anywhere.

Do you want me to reposition the camera that's downstairs?

I mean, if you want, you can do like a little interview.

Okay.

Using that camera.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, Sounds good.

So we have.

Yeah.

Out there in the bar.

Cool.

Yeah, let's do good stuff and I'll grab myself.

Anything for me right now?

I think we're good.

Here's the deal. Mike Said you're not gonna have time for lunch.

Oh, no.

And so you'll just be telling Mike, oh, no, we can't use that trouble.

Thanks.

Are you helping me or filming me?

A little bit of both. I don't know if it's a little bit of both. I'm filming me grabbing it.

Okay, cool.

A little bit of both.

So let's put the table over here where this camera is essentially.

Okay. All right.

Turn your side that way. I can do Ronin here, because wide.

Shot, obviously, you there, and then I'll just be here.

Easy peasy.

Mike, would we rather have it here and shoot between them at mic?

No, definitely here.

Yeah. Okay, cool.

Married that man.

Oh, yeah.

You married that man? Didn't marry that man.

Oh, my goodness.

I'm like, where's Mike's one? He gotcha. He did.

He scored.

I'm just super cute. I'm so happy for you. That's so fun. My older son's waiting. He's like, I want to meet the legend, Mom. The legend. Yeah, he's in the camp.

Her.

Well, now you're half the legend. We just stick together as the legend.

Yeah, you're one, so you're part of the legend now. David, good to see you again. Absolutely. It's a great place here. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry it's so jostly on the road. You're having to do the work. Oh, no, no, that's not my. That's there. They have to do. Well, great to see you, and good to see you too. Nathan's been gone for six months. He's gone for two years. He's been gone for six.

Oh, he's been gone about four. Oh, really?

Okay, I'll take. Yeah, there's just nothing like doing the.

Work of the Lord.

Yeah, he. After that, lawn care.

You know better.

Anyway, he's. He's loving it.

Congratulate you on your beautiful wife.

I know, right?

I am so wowed by her.

Thanks for coming back out. He's such a great mentor for me. Oh, good. No, he's a great guy. He executed so well on everything you talked about.

Thank you.

Hey, everyone, it's Mike back in the studio. But this piece of paper was goals that I wrote down in 2018, and one of them is to travel the country fixing struggling businesses. And I wanted to say thank you for making that possible. This whole turnaround trip is paid for from the members of Copilot CRM, Augusta Nation, as well as home service web design. Thank you for being part of this. I Know you're never going to be on these, on the show necessarily or in front of the camera. But it's because of your support that we were able to spend over $1.6 million this past year traveling to these businesses, hiring the media team to travel, all that's involved to make the show possible. And it's all because of your support. So thank you so very much. Now back to the episode and remember, the full turnaround show for the businesses that we're visiting today will be posted in the next few months.

How's it going?

Hello, Alberta. Alberta. Got it.

He's my field manager.

So. Field manager gm, our CEO. Yeah. And then he's one of a contractor. Yeah.

What are you studying next?

Okay.

Very nice. MBA or stuff.

I remember going through that.

It's, it's semi useful. It's semi useful.

But most of what I got was actually there's relationships. They were all professional managers already.

Yeah.

And a lot of the corporations like Amazon, Boeing and Microsoft in Seattle were sending their, their management teams to the course.

Okay.

And so it was very different. Everyone's like, they have a job. They're not really trying to like start a business. They're just trying to become like move up in the order. Oh, okay. The P and L, that top line revenue is only the revenue coming to equal pros. That correct.

I think that 99 of people should not try to do that business model. I think that Nathan has, has the skill to pull it off. And I also think that Alberto is super smart. So they'll figure it out. But like they have such incomplete.

Data to be able to scale it and they're already jumping like, oh yes, we should scale this. Like no, no, like we haven't actually even proven the model. I'll be very prescription on this one part. Do not expand it into markets yet. Okay. Yeah. You're going to frustrate your field manager. Okay. Yeah.

Because that's where like what you, what you've solved in the past three months just doubled up. Like I think you, you in the past three months, you've actually proven the model.

Yeah.

If I would have come four months ago, I'd be like, this is shaky. Yeah, you've proven it works. So just trying to get them to slow down. They're ambitious, they're young.

Just slow down, figure out the model and then determine whether or not it's actually scalable. And there's, there's proof that they know they can't scale this in the fact that they're taking their model and Changing it.

By having employees instead of 1099s. So figure out the model before you scale it, nail it, then scale it, as they say. And you know, it works in this market. I would just double and triple and quadruple down on it for six to 12 months.

Okay.

Because the way if I went to any other business I hate. Quadruple your business the next year, I couldn't say that would go from a million to 4 million because they have to go buy $200,000 worth of trucks and equipment. You don't need to.

Yeah.

So I would just focus much more in terms of, like, it's like when Uber would take go from city to city, they went very strategically, but they plowed money in and, like, really scaled one market before going to another one.

Okay.

And went one by one, they would send, like, teams of people to there. And, like, they had an opening strategy, like, grand opening strategy. Okay. Right now, we do not have the money to do that correctly. Okay. And the reason I fear that is because we also don't have a proven customer acquisition cost model outside of lsa. And LSA is not enough to launch.

In a new market.

Okay.

So in my opinion, I would say take the next six to 12 months. Do what you've done the past three months. Just keep optimizing it. Okay. Like, just make it better and better and better. Mostly in operations. I know this will do well because you've already proven the last few months. You. You just focusing.

Yeah.

Has already really good results. Yeah, that sounds great.

Yeah, man. My pleasure, man. When do you fly out? Tomorrow. Tomorrow?

Yeah.

Oh, dude. You're, like, literally in and out. Cool.

Yeah, it was really. The whole party was for you.

Photographers.

Thank you so much. Thanks, Mike. Thank you.

Bye, guys.

Thank you. See it.

Oh, my God.

All right, wait, we do need to locate one. My case. Do you have one on you only?

Yeah.

What's the case?

Yeah, no, my case. No, my case. Okay, let me go look at this.

One more case.

Wait.

Yeah.

I guess I did have one with me.

One from you.

Sick.

All right, great. Farewell.

Boring. Yeah. I was hoping they would give me a cookie.

Get a cookie.

Cookie.

And I was like, absolutely, yes.

Dang. Do you want a cookie? I was like, no, I'm working. Thank you. I was like, oh, why did I do that? Who am I? What have I become?

We got this from the lovely Larson family who opened their doors and, like, went above and beyond. They made us so much food, and I feel so bad, but, yeah. This is insane. Everyone that we come to Usually is like so. Well, I should say 80, 20% of people who we come to are like so gracious and so thankful for Mike's coaching that they sometimes do things like this, which is wild.

It's kind of sweet, it's kind of nice.

It's very wholesome.

Make sure it doesn't slide everywhere while we drive.

Oh, he ain't moving. That'd be great actually.

Should be good.

Wow, that's perfect.

First try.

Dang.

I was so close to stopping it too.

I think my body's gotten too used to the torture. I think I woke up way too early to this morning. I was like, wow, nobody's up yet. Why did I only sleep a couple hours? This is the one time we could sleep more. And my body was like, oh no, butterfly can't go. Literally. What are your thoughts?

Ten days in, I'm ready for my own bed.

A.

Reason why there's no men consignment sources. Because they ruin all their clothes.

Yeah.

100. They keep them until they're completely torn and at that point they're still useful because then they become a rag, you know?

Exactly. So let's break down this.

Do you think if we open the door there's gonna be more or less flies?

Yeah, there's gonna be less because there's already capacity.

We already had fly capacity.

Do we want to film before we eat? And then we can break down this.

That's what tonight, isn't it?

Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. Today we're in Idaho visiting eagle crows. They do cleaning and lawn care services strong enough to scale this business model. And the number one focus. The number one. And the number one determining factor of operations is usually operations manager. What's been said in coaching it went pretty deep with the whole like cac knowing your CAC and lifetime gross profit and all that stuff.

But well it's good because this is like the model sounds so easy. Oh yeah, I know the model sounds so, so easy. Even when you told Nathan initially I was like, like it just sounds too.

Good to be true. Cuz it is.

Yeah, like it is definitely too good to be true. Like you just find a bunch of people to do the work and like.

Name every other gig economy that worked. Uber door dash all they had billions of dollars just funnel and.

And like have they worked yet? Are they? Did they? Are they?

Oh, doordash. Doordash. I would say.

Weren't they non profitable for a lot.

Of billions and billions. Like line cuz the gig economy you have Two marketplaces, you have the the provider and you have the customer and you have to do both, which is like I've got to go spend gobs of money to get people to sign up to drive for Uber and I've got to go find the people who want to use Uber and they've got to match up perfectly. So the same thing is true franchising. Yeah.

You have to go get all the franchisees and then you have to support all the franchisees like and like their customers.

Which is why marketplaces is so hard to build. Whenever you have a two sided marketplace, also the most valuable because they're so difficult. So that's why these companies have huge valuations and people do spend billions of dollars in the hopes that they create a marketplace that's two sided. But like the likelihood of success is so low. Like name, you can name 100 food delivery companies have gone out of business. We're not saying it's bad, not saying it's impossible, just saying it's extremely difficult. And for the vast majority of people it would be be higher likelihood of success. Just go create a service, market it and get paid for it.

Yeah.

So funny.

The difference like yesterday, dude, I was so tired mic and stuff. I was just here for it. I was like, literally I had like an interview.

Sleep makes all the difference.

I'm just thinking like I liked it yesterday. Yesterday just flew by. I didn't have to think too much.

Really.

So nice, man.

Look at the caramel at the bottom. Sugar free golden eagle from Dutch Bros.

It is so I have nothing comes close.

No. We tried one other thing on their signature menu and it was like blah day compared to this. Completely bland.

Nice, nice, nice with the windmill and everything.

No, this is a life. We have one more night in this rv.

Thank God.

Home stretch.

I was just telling Zach too. I planned perfectly. If my one hoodie didn't feel fly out of the rv, I would have had the perfect amount of clothes. I'm one hoodie short.

And more importantly, I just want to point out the scam of light ice that Dutch Bros. It's filled up to the stinking brim. Dutch Bros do better. I love this stuff, but you can't do this to me. There's a scam, okay? It's like 80% ice and we asked for light ice. What are we doing here, folks? No wonder the founders sold 120, $25 million worth of shares yesterday. I would do after having this.

Could you understand them? Yeah, they were a little horse hump. I'll be here all week.

Just cross interview state or am I like, completely off bomb base there?

Yeah.

This is the divider.

This is.

Is the Columbia River.

There it is. Oh, my goodness. We back.

We back.

That's a really small sign.

That one's pretty bad.

Ste.

Our RV broken into back here. This is sketchy. Make sure you lock that door on the way out. Put something over those cameras.

Suggest the.

And the custard guy.

I'm trying to pull up tomorrow's turnaround.

What are your thoughts on this rv?

This rv?

How's your experience been? How would you rate us on a scale of 1 to 10?

10 out of 10.

That's right.

My wifi's not working very good.

How was the chef on this trip?

10 out of 10. Is that all?

9. 12 out of 10.

Tomorrow's. Casey. Casey.

Brody.

Brody. 20 employees. Epic lawns.com.

Something doesn't add up. 20 employees with like a million in revenue.

What? And he does pest control.

They get website.

Yak lawn care, pest control.

$150 for Reinforce.

Financial.

That's the biggest one I'm looking at here. I need some help. I really appreciate that. I mean, if you're interested, that'd be great.

Thank you.

Is that a new one?

Tomorrow's. Okay.

Wait, for real?

Yep.

Yep.

Nice.

All right.

What are we doing? I think we can just pull in 93. Well, thanks for calling him.

Did you find it right away? No.

Oh.

What are you laughing about?

Mike's joke. Oh, he should have been there.

Yeah.

Slides in the front. Slowly.

Slowly at the front, as they say. You good?

You see.

Any helps backing up?

No, I can just see just fine. Hopefully there's nothing around for us to hit. Be pretty easy.

Think that's good?

I don't know if that's good.

That's what we need to be hooked up to.

Wow. You misplaced it.

Son of a.

Well, and the stupid thing we have to do over anyway.

A.

Guy supposed to be on this. It's supposed to been the craft.

Yeah.

There.

Yeah.

He realized that after he hit the tree. Yeah.

Oh, there is two.

Dang.

Pretty bad.

Pretty bad, dude. It looks like it's cracked all the way up too. And this part maybe if we, like.

Squint, draw some stuff on the bottom. That's really funny. They'll never look up.

Maybe that's what happened to Tom Cruise. Maybe there's, like, damage down there.

Yeah. They didn't even clean the rv. They might not even notice.

I'm pretty sure they didn't clean the inside at all either.

Yeah, it's.

It's disgusting. So, like, if they're not even looking at the RV when we return it, maybe they'll have no idea.

Yeah, we gotta do some sort of funny drawing on the bottom that pull all the attention down towards the bottom.

Classic drawing.

Yeah.

So they look and they're like. And they just walk. It's dumb. I should have had my gown looks.

Should have listened to me when I was like, all right, I feel like that's good enough. Is that good enough?

I mean, it's true.

Do you think that's good enough? Oh. Oh, it keeps going.

Oh, God. Had to move it again.

Oh, I'm so happy.

This is vlogged.

Do we need to move it again? Just grab the hose.

Oh, yeah, that's a good point.

I can't believe how hard you crashed into that tree. That's crazy.

Yeah.

Well, maybe it could be fixed.

Have you tried turning it off and on again? Have you tried turning it.

It's so bad. It actually sucks.

It's actually horrific all the way up to top. I know.

And the worst thing is this always happens towards the end where you're like, oh, wow, we did it.

You know what they say, Steve.

You were as tall as me, you'd be like, oh, it's way worse than it looks.

I think day 10 is taking a toll on you.

Day 10. We finally crashed the RV. But it's okay. You know, we still have one day. Maybe it'll get fixed on the road.

We got a vlog.

Maybe the open road will fix it. You never know.

Really makes you think.

Yeah.

Lavender oil will be the trick.

Yes.

Peppermint. Everyone knows pitch for it. Whoa.

He punched it in the butt.

And water floor scale with our current.

Current rate of damage the RV do.

Is right now, I feel like we're doing pretty good.

10 days, maybe. Only 10 grand to pay for those 10 days.

That's true.

They're like.

It's total.

Dude.

This technique is wild.

How long is that?

On our reservation, it says there's a facility code. I don't know if it's to the laundry three or what, but I did do a screenshot in the chat just in case. It's 1944 trans.

At least we can finally put I crashed the RV in the title, not clickbait. It must have gone around.

Someone cry.

I am like.

Oh.

Cool.

My guess will be to do $2 million.

Wreck the RV twice.

I'm gonna get gain some clothes washed so that I have clothes for tomorrow.

I can't believe nobody overreacted. This is so lame. Nobody's thinking of the vlog.

That's the problem with everyone on the Mike Andes team is we all have.

Higher lows and lower highs.

It's a big problem with our team here.

Oh, my God.

Mike. Andy's killed his media team.

You guys, anything washed?

Okay.

Is this also where we.

$3 in quarters.

We have four here. What's wrong with these people?

Dude, are you supposed to eat quarters? How. Like, how do these people have so many quarters?

Oh, my God.

How bad do I need my.

Yeah, I take you back. I think I'll be okay.

Had multiple tens in it. The trash just ripped open.

Wow.