Fixing 10 Businesses in 10 Days ($1.1M Landscape Company)

I'm driving this RV from Raleigh, North Carolina, to Bellingham, Washington. Our goal is to turn around 10 businesses in the next 10 days. We've spent $1.69 million over the past couple years doing the turnaround show. My name is Mike Andes, and I travel the country fixing struggling businesses. And today I'm taking you behind the scenes as we take this RV and do just.

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.

Oh, my goodness. Dude, Zach will not be able to fit in there, bro. I'm like, too tall for this thing. Anytime you're getting an RV from a collision repair center, there's a bunch of damaged vehicles everywhere.

Everything is so shaky and radly.

Went to the Walmart bathroom, brushed my teeth. Now I'm waddling back to the rv. It's not all glamor.

It is real.

Truck stop yoga. That's crazy.

It's a lot of nights with five hours of sleep in a row. You have to get up and do it again. Tomorrow you work non stop. In between those five hours of sleep, there is no real resting. You get up, you do it again, go to sleep. You get up, you do it again. You drive eight hours, film edit, get up and do it again.

Hey.

How'S it going?

Got your mouthwash.

Hey.

Never enough salt.

How's the breakfast bowl coming?

So this business owner is crushing him. Growing very quickly. I am very concerned, though, about his cash position for the off season. In January, he had $3,000 in his bank account, and now he runs a 1.1 million doll. So his offseason is brutal.

You know what's so funny? Sorry, I don't mean to distract this anymore, too, but when we. When I got off the phone with you, I was in Wyoming and you guys released a video like the next day. But it was filmed a couple days earlier. And I heard to Brianna, she was like, we still have no one signed up in Indiana.

RV is booked because there's no going to ask. Hopefully we can get someone in Indiana.

We're still looking for another applicant. Like two. Oh, man.

Come on.

That's great.

Yeah. So today we're going to his shop first to film the guys rolling out, and then we're gonna go to his house, which is like four minutes down the road for coaching.

So I'm not getting out in the first part? No. The reason I don't get out at the turnaround when we first get there is because I don't want everything to go to chaos for their day because they forget stuff once I show up. So the team gets out, makes all the videos, makes everyone feel comfortable, puts microphones on them.

You guys are so cool.

On the phone and stuff.

You guys are.

You guys are great people. This is awesome.

Otherwise, I hop out, all the team is watching me. They're all nervous. They make mistakes. Like, they don't load stuff up in their truck correctly. So the team's gonna warm them up a little bit. You know, Francis is a very friendly face.

Like, it took what, like, probably three to six months of us doing turnaround trips where it's like, okay, the team, the media team needs to talk to everyone first without me around, just to lower everyone's gu. Real people. You know, maybe sneeze, got some snot trick on your nose, something. It's like, okay, is this the camera guy? Is this Francis? You know, he's a good guy.

Then around 12:15, we're gonna depart to go to Iowa. That's gonna be quite the drive, I think, like around almost six hours. And then we get to Devin's house at coaching at 7pm It'd be great if we could get there a little bit earlier. But that's what's projected.

All of your time attention is the architecting of this business to make tons of money.

Then we're gonna do coaching with him for two hours and go to our campsite, which is 10 minutes away from him.

It's just another easy drive for you, Zach.

Just another easy drive. At least I'm well rested.

And we made good progress, though, like, in terms of driving yesterday. If you look at the map, we're kind of like. I was gonna say a third, but that's a bit of a stretch across the country. We just went really far north. Yeah, way up north.

How was the drive yesterday?

Really long.

But it was. It was fun. I just, like, turned up the music and, like, hung out and ate a lot of gaming.

The secret to driving really long distances is sugar, sugar, salt and music. Navigate's really bad.

Well, that moment.

High school in college, had an internship with the Colts. That's what I thought I wanted to do. Hated it. So I'm like, let's try to get this lawn care thing about the llc. And then hired my first employee. Bought my first truck and trailer. 2022. First year we did just under 300,000 revenue. Second year we did like 460. Last year we did 770. And this year we're on track to.

Do 1.1 for three months solid. January, March, he lost money. So whenever you have three months of the year where you lose money, bad things happen. Through the winter, you had stuff up.

Until Christmas, we were slammed. And then, like, the week before Christmas is when everything stops. And it took a week to take down Christmas lights because it's quick, right? So January, February is tough.

There is. There is debt. There's $256,000 of debt. I'm not super concerned by that. When you're growing by 4 or $500,000 a year like he is, I am a little bit concerned by the fact that we're doing 130,000amonth in revenue, has $60,000 in the bank, and we have an off season where we lose money. How can we make sure that's profitable? Because as you've been growing so much.

Even matched at 50% almost year over.

Year, that does suck cash. And so if we can just make sure we don't lose money during those.

Few months, we'll solve a lot of problems.

So instead of trying to attack the cash flow issue with him, I'm probably going right after the off season, because if you don't lose money for any month of the year, you can be a little bit more aggressive on how much cash you have in the bank because you know it never goes down. And as long as you never go down.

Begin now, it's like, how do we just prevent that? Because in my perspective, like, I. I like to have one month of revenue.

In the bank, right?

So 130, 140, then that's where I'm like, okay, now I'm trying to expand. Let's grow, etc. At 90, you're okay as long as you don't go back into the off season and lose 50 or 60.

Right.

And so as long as you're like, hey, I know you want to grow a big business so, like, we can default more aggressive and not go for the month worth of revenue. The bank, I would be tempted to say, instead of doing a prepaid discount, do a. Our prices are going up. Unless you prepay, then you get your prices locked in.

Oh, that's good.

So I would probably do the 10% and then be like, hey, for the first X amount of people, still put the urgency in there. We are allowing you to go ahead and lock in your prices for this year at the current rate. If you prepay. Okay. And I send that text through copilot, right? Yeah. Not captivated. Okay. Oh, do you know how to text them? Through go buy it.

Oh, I know.

Are you an enterprise? Yeah. Oh, bro. It's free. It's free. I know it is. He did not see as a problem. Like personally, I saw like $5,000 a month in debt payments. Hardly any cash is a huge problem. He feels very comfortable. Like he for the very first time is getting a paycheck. Feels relatively good about the business. Feels like he's not in a cash crunch. So should we go in there and like convincingly as a cash crunch is probably the wrong move. It's like, okay, great. You're comfortable with two weeks wor of revenue in the bank. Okay, let's just build on that. That's it.

I was like, I was genuinely shocked about your opinion. I was like, oh, wow. That's cool.

Cool.

That was great.

Okay, that's the four L's wrapped it up.

Yeah.

Now we are doing the six week plan.

I don't know. I feel like the six week plan failed in person.

Yeah, it's true. I thought the majority of the plan is. Would be almost better in less than six weeks.

Because of the time of year is.

The next six weeks. He like has to do it. Okay, cool.

Thanks so much.

Thanks so much.

It's a pretty busy day with the crew today.

It's a little chaotic with two trucks.

Oh, two trucks then I heard.

So it'll be a little crazy. Other than that it's pretty standard.

We're almost out here. Long enough for me to take this completely off. Almost.

Do you want this?

Sweet.

This is mandatory. Shop that for my, you know.

Right.

Cup of milk with two scoops of protein powder.

It's really blending in there.

Yeah.

Like cocoa powder with water. You know what I'm saying?

Go legs first.

So how easy to do this is we show up at the property after looking at some of the numbers, do coaching, talk to the team, do some recording at some of their properties. Our B roll, which is basically like them doing the work. And then we shoot what's the 4L framework and we call Mike minutes. We got a six hour drive from Indiana, Indiana, Indiana, Indianapolis. And now we're headed to Iowa. And we got another coaching call or coaching tonight. So he's meeting us tonight. And then tomorrow we're meeting his general manager to do the actual on site videos and all the other stuff. So that's the plan. We're going from Indiana to Iowa. Six hour drive in between.

Hey, where are we at? What's happening?

It is time to eat gas.

We are 30 minutes into the drive. Five and a half hours.

Nice.

We've been driving for 30 minutes, right?

It feels like forever.

I filmed the vlog about an hour 10 minutes ago.

POV room tour.

Yeah, exactly. Where you'll be living for the next.

10 days Max is popping in for.

A quick 30 minute stint.

I don't want.

Jinx up, champion.

Francis.

Like, I can't sleep.

You guys.

Any questions on it?

I'll figure it out.

Yeah, I would just be like, turn slow.

Brake slow.

Brakes. Brakes are slow. I would get like. I've been assuming people tons of space. I haven't been going faster than like 70 is like it starts to rattle and sh.

Yeah.

Louder than it does.

This feels a lot like the D's. Like. Well, the last time you drove a D trip, didn't you almost die?

Well, you were underneath it.

Let's try to keep you.

Trying to keep you inside at this time.

I just understand exactly why he's wanting to do that. Usually it's not a move I would recommend, but we will find out in approximately 45 minutes. But right now, we're gonna eat num nums.

What?

Do you want anything else?

What? Huh?

Have like a fork?

Yes, you can.

Does anyone else want some of this or should I just eat out of this?

Francis, do you want more?

No, no.

Harder.

Is that leaves.

Coming off a skittle rat?

I can't even taste the cookie.

So Zach Briar from earlier.

Buyer. Buyer.

I thanked him for having us out and for the donuts that y' all enjoyed it. And he was like, ha. Enjoy them. You guys have been such a blessing to me over the years. Such an honor to meet and spend some time learning. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, folks.

Francis, no.

See this box of donuts? This was completely full.

You sure you don't want any Celsius or donuts to go or anything like that?

Oh, dude, I'm definitely grabbing a donut or two.

Take a box.

Oh, my gosh.

I don't care which one you take. Yeah, take them both.

Oh, seriously, take.

What three hours ago? But there you go. And it fueled the editing of the last vlog, so.

Hey. Yeah.

Straight.

Honestly.

So that is three out of three turnarounds that have followed up and been very thankful for the coaching.

Not that we expected.

No, no.

Everyone here like, oh, we better do it.

Post post. See if we keep the streaks all the time.

That's right.

Exactly.

Sometimes it's like great coaching.

Seeing the video live can be hard. Yeah. And then a month later, even if they have a really hard video, they've.

Always come around and they're like, thanks for working with us.

This is very suspicious looking.

You swear this is ibuprofen?

Do you think he promises ibuprofen? Oh, my God.

They're all really stoked for us to get there. My family's waiting, so we'll have an audience.

Last year he did 500 something. 550,000. This year he's gonna do like 800. 900,000. So solid growth.

To still be decently profitable. Not bad. Okay, that's his Pinot. But the real question is, let's look at at the balance sheet.

Okay. He's a ton of equipment. We have $176,000 worth of long term liabilities. So that's Sheffield Financial for mowers. Wells Fargo for the skid loader. We got Permagreen. We got bank of Iowa for the cars, trucks, another from Ally. Okay. So we got quite a $176,000 of debt. Nothing to sneeze over.

So how this works is Zach contacts them and talks to them prior to us coming and kind of gets a general overview of the business for me, and it gives me a voice note of what he thinks about the business after talking to them. So I'm gonna listen to that on my cellular device if I were running a little late.

When you're road tripping, you just never know how long you guys been on.

On the road?

Yeah, today, like seven hours. What's up? How's it going?

I'm keen.

How's it going, Francis?

Yeah.

So we came from.

Illinois.

Yeah. Briana sets up everything for the candidates and screens them all and then picked.

Up the RV in Knoxville. Then this morning we did one a turnaround in Indiana and then drove six hours here.

So. And then if they make the cut and they're in the route for the RV trip, then she sets up a call with Zach, Zach contacts them, calls them, and just kind of gets some overall information for the business. So I'm not going completely blind. And he calls them. So let's go ahead and listen to audio for this turnaround we're going to right now.

This is the voice recap for David with Creekside Turn. This one is very interesting. So he started the business back in 2017, David, and has slowly scaled it up.

So our fertilizer division, which is our largest division company, actually has the biggest amount of people just because the volume is making kick out a lot more. So Matt might talk to him tomorrow.

There is a lot of, like, tenure here, and that's kind of, like, one of David's, like, leading morals is he wants to create a career path for his guys. So he has an admin gal that's been on the team for, like, five years. She handles, like, everything, leads estimates.

Side note, for the turnaround show, admin people always know the dirt on the business. So when we go to the turnaround show, we always want to talk to the admin folks because they see everything.

Customer complains, like, everything, and then dispatches that out to the right general managers. There is an operations manager, been on the team for, like, four years, in front, in charge of, like, mowing and, like, keeps tabs on the fur manager. Because there is also a fertilization manager who's just, like, newer. And then there is the brand new operations manager for the landscaping division. Very nearly, he's just getting into this. And then also his father runs, like, the books, the financials, and, like, all that whole side of things.

So am I missing something here? Is this what growing pains feel. Feels like? And that's kind of been the main reason for reaching out to you guys is like, okay, am I on the right track? You know, these are our goals. And, like, you know, we want to put Kian into position, kind of a general manager position to, you know, operate and run this thing.

And.

And, you know, we have bigger ambitions and, you know.

Yeah, it's a learning curve. You know, we're really.

This has really grown last couple years.

Okay. So based on what he's told me, told me so far, there are five people that are overhead. Unless the quote, operations managers are in the field. Usually if someone's an operations manager, though, they're not in the field. So if there's three operations managers, one for each division, plus an admin person that's full time, plus his dad who does the books, plus him, he's out of the field. That's a lot of overhead. All right. Yeah. So that's helpful for me to kind of know what you want from the business. Yeah. So as we go through these, I'll keep those things in mind. So, like, I don't optimize, like, let's make this thing super profitable at 900,000. When you're like, no, like, that's not actually what I want. Yeah. So that's why I asked, because I don't really care what you do. I just want to make sure you get to that goal.

Yeah.

Yeah. And so, like, if the goal is $1.5 million, I would call you, like, in that role that you mentioned, like, you're the gm, you have a. You find a sales operation admin manager for each of those departments. In operations, you're probably gonna have a couple different, like, crew leads or department managers underneath your operations manager, because you have a distributed kind of setup. Yeah, but that's how I kind of see that envision. Like, the GM is the person that does not need to be in operations. Right. But they're running the metrics, they're running numbers, creating systems for sales operation admin to run smoother.

He, additionally to talking about systems, wants to start franchising, has already started the process of franchising his business. He does not have a second location. He has this one location. But he wants to start franchising not as an opportunity to scale the organization, but to create a career path for his employees. Like to go from technician to owner.

Okay. That is Devin. I'm gonna guess that I will be encouraging him to not franchise. Here's the good news. All of that can be accomplished without franchising. Yeah. Right. Like, I do not believe, to be perfectly honest, that franchising is a good move. And I know that's hard to hear, but, like, all of what you just said can be accomplished without franchising. And franchising. Extremely painful. Yeah. Financially painful. You will not make money on 20 to 30 locations. And, yeah, like, when someone. When someone says, even when they're making the FTD, like, we'll do 20, 34 locations, and we'll see if it works out. I would tell every franchisee to run away. Because if you quit, they all quit. Yeah. And if it doesn't work out, they all lose. And so franchising is. I'm doing this forever, and I have to do it, because if I don't, I will not achieve a certain goal. And I believe you can achieve the goal you have for your team without franchising. It's expensive. It does not stop at 20, 30 grand. It does not stop with FDD. It starts with registrations. It starts with licensing. It goes to the copyrights and to the trademarks. It goes to an attorney. Then someone challenges that trademark, and then you're gonna go to court a party. It goes crazy. We weren't profitable. We had a hundred locations. Yeah. And you. The reason you have to do that is to be able to actually provide enough support to the franchisee to where they want to join. So you got to put out tons of cash.

Yeah.

Yeah. So I franchise because I realized that people were not going to listen to the content that we make on YouTube. And so instead it was like, hey, I'll get people wearing the same jersey and same brand as me so that when I say stuff, they know it's in their best interest. And I'm not just dreaming a consultant or a YouTube influencer. And then to do the have the impact we want in the industry, which is to change the level of professionalism in the lawn care and landscape industry. To do that, we need a thousand locations all doing the same systems.

So that's why I needed a franchise.

That said, like going into that those years I was out of the business and the business was, was producing around 280 to $300,000 in owner's distributions for me. So I'm not seeing that level yet of this business. So franchising in that sense, I don't see it. However, he wants to do it more like for his team and for them to be able to grow. Awesome. I just think there's more efficient ways of doing it because it's extremely expensive to set up a franchise, maintain a franchise, do all the registration and licensing fees and if he sold 10 of them to his team and they gave him some royalty or something, he wouldn't even break even. Like, we didn't make any money until over 100 locations. I think though, everything that you're saying can be accomplished. I just would strongly recommend. And, and the thing is this the reason, the reason I hardly ever push so hard against is because people think that after I say that, it's because I don't want competition in the franchise world. And that's not true. I don't want you go to things of pain that it would be to go the franchising when you don't know for certain you can get to 50 to 100 locations very quickly. Okay. Because it is a drag. And by the time you, you get there, you've lost Keenan with the whole reason you did the whole thing. Yeah. And instead if his only goal is for his team to move up inside the org or like start their own locations, do some sort of like a employee stock ownership program, like an esop.

Or like joint ventures with them or profit sharing of high degree with them, because doing franchise just for, let's even call it 5 or 10 of your employees, you will not make money. You will lose money hand over fist. It's honestly the only way to keep mowing as a service. Because right now like the numbers on the mowing side is so bad. Yeah. So I would either say like, like if I was, if you were like, hey, we just want to make. Make as much money as possible. I would like just cut. Because it is where all of your debt is at, and it's probably losing money. If I had to guess, it's like a negative 5% margin. Your projects are probably at 20 margin. And then your. Your county 30 or 35. Right.

By the time you're factoring in repairs, you know, oh, we got a drive back for whatever reason, or the second.

This whole shop space exists for the mowing, essentially. So, like, if this whole thing is built for 250,000 in revenue with all of this, these assets.

Yeah.

And the other location produces 70% of the revenue. Yeah. And has half the employees. Yeah. Like, you know, do you guys need to do an interview? I know we're way over that. Yeah.

What time is it?

Way too late.

We'll make a really short interview.

Okay. I want to get your thoughts real.

Quick, and then we'll let you go to bed.

Let's get a photo.

I thought that might be a nice bathroom.

Hey, thanks for listening. I really appreciate it.

We out here hustling. We out here hooking up electric. We out here helping out. What you guys see? Was it a cockroach in the fire pit? A honeycomb. Yeah.

Figure it out. Made of honey.

Oh. All right, we need to turn on the amps. Ready? Yeah. 20, 30.

There we go, hustling.

Dude, does that mean we don't need a generator?

That means we can turn the.

Car. So young have you over.

If I'm overwhelmed, Zach, I'll let you know. No water tank.

Snake water.

Just remember, our tabloid is not potable.

It's not what?

Potable.

Like, you can't drink it.

Oh, is it potable? I don't know.

Wow.

Dude, it was super meta. I hadn't really thought about until, like, we talked about with him. He's like. So I still remember thinking, I wrote it down. Did I send you the picture from, like, five years ago? Things I wrote down right when we started Augusta. So I got this notebook. I found it. It was from right before we started franchising. And I was like, hey, in five years, we're gonna have X amount of location. I forget what that was. But in there, I said. I said, I'll be married. But also I said, we will travel the country and we'll help businesses that are struggling, and that only could be possible. We made money. And so, like, that clarity is what unlocked in the past few years. It's like we just need to focus on making money so that we can go do all this Stuff. And, like, so it's like, I don't hide it anymore because I know if I make more money, I'll be able to do more. Like, if we made a bunch of money, we would hire more people. We make the turnaround show better. We get better applicants. We'd just be better private jet time.

Now you're crossing the line.

Like, I was looking up today for my slideshow for the book launch, and we've spent $1.69 million over the past couple years doing the turnaround show for all the female 1.6 million.

We got to up those numbers. Numbers. If you want to help more people.

That's right.

But it's like, if I can look at that.

It's like, if we can look at them and be like, okay, that's a cost. But it helped people. Like what he said at the end.

What you're doing is, you know, extremely important and impactful. And, you know, I'm someone that came from dropping out of college and getting judged.

Like.

You'Re mowing lawns.

Like, why?

You know, oh, you just have a little push mower and. And, you know, listening to a lot of your content and listening to some other, you know, people over the years, you know, just. Just keep pounding through and. And getting to that point to then where people realize, oh, you know, they're not just people who mow lawns. They.

There.

It's much more than that. So, again, very appreciative of it.

My pleasure, man. What he said at the end is a result of us going the tournament trip. The tournament shows the result of us making more money. So, like, why would I not make that the goal? Because everyone wants to help people. Everyone wants to go do what we're doing, but they don't want to just get clear to the fact that you got to make a bunch of money before that.

And, like, everyone actually wants that. If your team wants to make money, that's why they're having a job up. So if we both have the same goal, it actually makes it much more cohesive. And so there's a lot of people in the world that do a lot of good things that are sponsored by people that make a bunch of money, but someone needs to make the money. And so sometimes it's like, my rule is that I will be the person that makes the money.