FORCED to Turn Down $60,000 Dream Jobs

Every day you brace yourself, you're just like, all right, you just got to get through the day and just put out as many fires as you can and then just go home and just chill out. Like, I don't want to keep living like that anymore.

Still feel like you're behind. You come in the weekends, you still feel like you're behind. You can only feel like that for so long.

Today we're in Illinois visiting Matt from Brooksdale Landscaping.

Is it a people problem? Is it a leadership problem? Is it just like a direction problem? Like, what is it?

I think we can actually build something that'll last.

You're going to quit this business by a death of a thousand cuts of not wanting to be here?

I would say it's definitely to 100% burnout.

Last year he did $1.3 million in revenue, but He has fallen out of love with the business.

It's kind of crazy, you know, kind of nuts.

I think it's only up from here.

And we're having to work more and more than we ever had to. Like, why am I in our balance sheet trying to figure out what's wrong when we have a bookkeeper?

He fell out of love with the business.

Yep.

And as soon as I hear an entrepreneur's fell out of love with the business, if they don't change, usually in 2 to 3 years the business is gone.

I'm just so exhausted.

He is on the treadmill of growth with no finish line in sight.

Maybe sell a portion of it, sell some of it to some of the guys.

It's a great day at Brookdale. I mean, I like it.

Some of the guys have been here for 8 years. That's where, like, a lot of the pressure's coming from. Kyle's left college for it. He left college for it.

I was just trying to go to college. I chose this because I think we really have a good opportunity here.

A lot of pressure doesn't come without its weight.

That risk is proportionate with the size that that business will probably become. And so if you play it safe your whole life, you'll probably have a small business. This is the Business Turnaround Show. My name is Mike Andes. I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn Care and HomeWorks Software. I travel the country fixing struggling businesses. It changes everything in the business. It's hard. Our goal is to give Matt a strategy to turn around the company in the next 6 weeks. All right, we have flown into Chicago. We're at the hotel the night before. We're gonna go visit with Matt Baker. I'm gonna watch his application video and look over some of his numbers.

My name is Matt Baker and I run Brookdale Landscaping. We do landscaping, primarily mulch installations, some mowing, and then we're known for our holiday light displays. We do commercial displays throughout the winter, interior displays, Christmas tree rentals, high-end decor, decorated garland. So, um, that part.

Okay, we have already heard like technically 10 different businesses. Having a $1.3 million business, I would rather him have a $500,000 annual revenue business, but he just does the Christmas lights. I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is going to be a lot of disorganization and lack of systems, not because of his problem as much as he's had— he has so many different services.

Our annual revenue last year was $1.3 million. This year expected to be around $1.4 million. I wouldn't say we have too many financial struggles. Maybe just me spending too much or maybe too much on marketing. We don't need to and stuff like that.

All right. So two big hallmarks of a business that is around $1.2, $1.3 million revenue. It's stalled its growth. And at the same time, the entrepreneur is adding services and spending a bunch of money on marketing. This is usually a business that is very difficult to systematize, and it's proved— proven by the fact that it stopped growing. The $1.3, $1.4 million is this year, but it grew really, really fast because he added a bunch of services and spent a bunch of money on marketing. But eventually, if you don't keep the customers and it's not recurring, and you're spread thin with all these different services, it usually plateaus around this size.

We have 12 employees. It's just a lot for being 25. I'm kind of curious, like, how you handle that. And we have Lori, who's in the office. We have Leslie, who does admin for the Lightville side. My mom does accounts payable and accounts receivable. And then we have Paul, who's like my right-hand man, who does all the estimates and kind of runs the crew.

So we got 5 overhead people. Okay, here we go. Admin wages. For admin wages right now, they're paying $178,000. That's just payroll, let alone not tax. So like, let's just call it $225,000. That's like 15— over 15% of the revenue is being spent just on the wages for the office and admin.

We're really struggling with processes. So in the beginning, the business was about getting new clients, you know, marketing, providing good quotes, communication. And now the business is about leadership, structure, processes, workflows, standard operating procedures, and really struggling to streamline everything. I'd like to love my business again. Right now it's I'm pretty burnt out. Just, we're really struggling with the structure and being fair to everyone. It's been really challenging, and you can see the guys getting frustrated because they feel like we're not doing our part.

It's a little disorganized because there's so many added steps and complexity when you've added all these extra services. And I know his intentions are good, he wants to keep his crew busy year-round, but a lot of times people jump to adding new services to fill their off-season when they could just push through what's hard, and that is selling more and better to your existing customers for the services you already sell. And so I'm going to guess I'll be pushing that very heavily. And 5 admin people or 5 overhead people to 12 people total, that's a lot of people in the office. And a lot of times you get a lot of bloat in the admin or overhead positions when you don't have simplified services. That same size business could run with 1 person in the office if they were doing 1 thing. But now you have this $1.2, $1.3, $1.4 million and 5 people overhead. It's because he has all these other services.

Great crew. Some guys have been with me since high school. I would, uh, I would love to talk with you, pick your brain, and hear how you could help us and make sure that we can grow, cuz right now we just, we can't grow, and the guys want a career.

Whoa!

Hi, how's it going?

Good.

How are you?

Good.

What was your name?

I'm Lori.

Lori, I'm Mike. Good to meet you.

Nice to meet you. Hi, I'm Lori. I do anything related to coordinating. Paul arranges the schedules. I communicate that information out.

Hey, Mike.

Paul.

Paul.

Good to meet you. Yeah, nice to meet you.

Absolutely.

What's y'all's dynamic?

Because, like, you're the owner. Yeah. Are you basically the ops manager?

Uh, yeah, I'd say so. Part owner, operations manager, whoever needs to be some support to keep things going.

Yeah.

Matt kind of operates the office.

He like steers the boat and I'm kind of like rowing it.

How much does this cost? Like the shop space with the warehouse and everything?

This unit is like $280,000.

Oh, you bought the unit?

Yeah.

Smart. Okay, cool. So most of the storage is actually for the light side of things.

Yeah, not much for landscaping.

Yeah, and you started with the lights. What year was that?

2012.

Oh wow.

Yeah.

You started with the lights back then?

Yeah.

When did you add the landscaping in?

Oh, sorry. So the light show was 2012. It was like a light show. Okay. It wasn't like for customers. It's like for me.

Oh, okay, okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then I started mowing lawns. When I was 12. Let's just take it back a little bit. I'll try and keep it short. So this, I never intended it for any of this. This never was my intention. It all started to fund a holiday light show that I started when I was 12. It was a neighborhood light show. It was like my hobby. Christmas lights are my hobby. And to do the show, you needed money because all the equipment, lights are expensive. And I started mowing lawns and I didn't want to work at McDonald's. I knew I could make more mowing neighbors' grass than I could work at McDonald's to fund this light show. Then people started coming to the show and saying, oh, you have a landscape business? Well, could you come do our lights? I'm like, yeah, sure. So the business grew as this light show grew.

And so right now it's still about 60% landscaping, 40% lights from a revenue perspective.

Right around there.

Yeah.

Yeah. Maybe, maybe getting closer to 50/50, but yeah.

So lights is really the thing that's growing more right now.

Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Uh, I think Lightville grew like 30-something percent last year and landscaping was like 15%. And so in the beginning it was fun because it was like us chasing the client, commercial clients, coming up with something unique, sourcing unique trees, giving that little attention to detail. Like we didn't have much pressure because there wasn't that much staff. Half year, and it wasn't— there wasn't that much overhead. It's like, it was really fun up to about like $800,000 revenue. The holiday lighting really grew when he came on, when we rebranded to Lightville, which was 2020.

Kind of spend the key, like, he's been able to like sell the work and like have that role, and then I would be able to just make sure it got done.

And so like, it was kind of flexible, right? Like, I can come in and I can work on all these quotes. I could, you know, tell these clients like, hey, we have this rock product, this mulch product, and we have, you know, this tree. And I could sit down with the client and create really cool contracts that fit their needs and really cool displays. Well, now we've grown, obviously that doesn't work because it's, you know, you got to be simple and streamlined. And so they're wanting like a unique display. I'm like, I don't have the time for it. Like, we can't— like, we can't change display at all. Like, it's got to be the same. Like, there's just no way I can source new decor for you at all. Like, I just don't have the time. So I think I've gotten further away from the reason why I loved it so much because it's gotten bigger. Kind of like, to your point, now that we've grown that's so complex, we haven't been able to take on new displays or anything like that because I'm so overwhelmed and bogged down that I can't, I just can't. It's part of the reason why we're here is 'cause before it was to build a business that creates the coolest holiday displays so we have all this unique decor. Now that it's grown, it's like, well, that's not work, it's not working 'cause we can't even take on displays that are calling us. So like the holiday lighting season has started. I'm like, we're in the thick of it right now. And the reason why I'm a little frustrated right now is because our ideal client that we've been trying to, I mean, we'll work past, 3 years for, but now they're coming to us. And like, we've had hotels in Rosemount with like $16,000 budgets. We even had a city with a $40,000 budget for a big Christmas tree. One proposal working on, it's a $60,000 light show tree for like a city fountain plaza. These are all jobs that we've been working so hard to get, and like, here they are, and I don't even want to deal with any of them because I'm so bogged down and everything else is going on. It's like, we're passing up the opportunities we've all been working hard for the past 3 years. They're right in front of us, literally right now, and I can't even get to them because I'm just so exhausted.

It's crazy.

Crazy, because these are the jobs that we've— these are the jobs that we've been wanting forever. Like, you know, these are, these are it, and they're right in front of us, and we're so exhausted to even deal with it.

And so what's the goal of business? I know, like, in your application video, it was kind of like you fell out of love with the business. It feels like it's gonna become cumbersome as you've grown. But like, when you look at the business, what's the goal of the company?

Um, I would say to grow sustainably, right? So like, be able to grow without like, um, just exhausting yourself. And so it's just leading to a lot of burnout because every day you're just spitting out fires when it's like, well, man, we have all these people here and I can't actually do the work that I need to do or like to do because you're just putting out fires every day. And so, yeah, I would say it's definitely to 100% burnout. The guys used to work here just for a job, right? It was like their summer job. It was like their high school, whatever. And now it's changed. Like they want a career and they're actually looking to us for a career.

We really, really like our team. We really like our guys. We want to make sure that everyone's taken care of them, ourselves, everything.

So growing it so that they can have a career and then maybe that I don't need to be as in the weeds and I can be, you know, put more of my creative energy into the business. Maybe sell some of it to some of the guys. I mean, some of the guys have been here for 8 years.

What about you, Kyle? How long you been working here?

Full-time, this will be my 3rd year, but as long as we're working with Baker, I've worked for him for about 8 years.

Well, I started working with Matt back in high school. It's a good career. I enjoy working out here.

We used to play hockey back in high school.

That's how I met him.

Awesome.

It's been a fun ride.

Well, this would be my 4th year doing landscaping. I've been doing landscaping ever since I got out of high school.

To be honest with you, I just really like what I do.

I think we can actually build something that will last here at Brookdale.

It's nice, nice break from the landscaping when we go over to Liveville and then vice versa.

The reason I love working at Brookdale is I love the boys, you know, got a good boss, you know, got a good manager.

The team is amazing. It's a great group of people to work for. And with.

I've always been good friends, so I've always been happy and excited to see him grow what he's built, and I'm happy to contribute to it.

It's my second home, basically. It's, it's a great day at Brookdale. I mean, I like it.

I love seeing the guys come in all enthusiastic after a day's work. They're covered in mulch head to toe, and they're all grinning, you know, and it's, it's just fascinating to see who smiles the most when they walk in that door.

That's where like a lot of the pressure is coming from, is because they want this career. They're staying like Kyle's left college for it. He left college for it. Zach left college for it. I mean, that's where a lot of this is coming from, I would say.

I was just trying to go to college, figure out a career. I chose this because I think we really have a good opportunity here to build a company and make a lot of people happy.

It's not just like Matt's hobby anymore where he could play with lights and do a crazy tree for someone, right? Like, you know, it's a business and people depend on it. And I think that's where the growth is really coming down from.

It's also where the pressure comes from too. It's a lot of pressure, you know, looking at us to figure it out. And we're okay with that, but it doesn't come without its weight.

Yeah, like, I don't think we're going to solve that today, but like, I definitely think having some thought around that is important because otherwise you're just on this treadmill that really goes nowhere.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's like, well, why grow? Like, does it actually serve the require— like, if the goal is to just have a career for the team, well, we could just make this really profitable, give them a piece of profit sharing. Giving equity gets really messy, but like profit sharing, making sure like Paul has incentive. So if you want to take a week vacation, like, you know, it's being run well, you reduce the services, you cut out the complexities. Like we can create systems all we want or just cut out the things that are causing problems. Yeah, a lot of times I see the first 3, 4, 5 years of business being where you are constantly sacrificing in order to be able to invest back into the business. But once the business has got to a certain point and he's already doing $1.3 million in revenue, if you can no longer see how sacrificing for the business helps you personally, you start to resent the business. It's like your slave master thing. It tells you what to do, when to wake up, how hard to put effort. Like, it has always told you what to do and has constrained you from doing what you love. And so when I look at all the services you offer, like, the fastest way to make this business where you don't feel like there's a lack of systems is just cutting out complexity and the myriad of services being added. Residential, commercial, project mowing, like you got everything. And so if you looked at each of those individual sectors, what I would call services or businesses of themselves, you got businesses that are doing $150,000 to $200,000, some businesses doing $300,000. Like you got 8 businesses jammed into this one thing. Even multiple DBAs jammed in this thing, multiple websites jammed in this thing. Being clear about like, okay, my goal is I wanna love this business, what does that business look like? And then trying to chart towards that Is really important.

Sure.

Otherwise we're just like, well, we're kind of trying to grow sustainably, but we also don't want to be running ahead with our, like a chicken without a head. But we also want to be servicing our team and giving them a career and potentially letting them own the business. So like having clarity would be helpful.

You still feel like you're behind no matter what.

It's every day you brace yourself because you're just like, all right, you just got to get through the day and just put out as many fires as you can and then just go home and then just chill out. Like, I don't want to keep living like that anymore.

Leaving every day late, you still feel like you're behind. You come in the weekends, you still feel like you're behind. And I'd really like to shake that feeling because you can only feel like that for so long.

Anytime in any relationship that you love something or someone, you will deploy discretionary effort. And in order for this business to go to 1 point— from $1.3 million to beyond $3 million plus, he's got to have discretionary effort and he's got to love the business again. And you will never love the thing that you feel you have served and is not giving back to you in any way, shape, or form. And I know when you've grown as quickly as you have and you're as young as you are, it's like, well, like I don't really know what I want. That's okay. I think as you get where you want to become a great leader, having a vision that you can actually rally people around is really useful.

Sure, 100%. Yep, that's my weak point for sure. Me being young is more mental. It's more personal than really business. With me being my age and everything, it's just a lot. It's really draining. So I'm losing touch with friends. Weekends I'm exhausted. You can't really relate to anyone because no one gets it, right?

And just the responsibility.

So I noticed— this sounds so dumb, but there was a day off maybe in March where all the guys went skiing.

February, some of the guys went out to Colorado, took a skiing trip. There's really no income being made, but we still all hang out as a group and stuff like that.

I'm like, well, shit. I love to go skiing, but I'm drowning in paperwork. Or my friends live in the city. They'll get a day off of work randomly, right? And that's a day to do stuff around the house, to take a walk, to go to the beach, just to be a kid, be a 20-year-old. I've been at this since I was like 12, right? So a day off with no one in the office to me seems like a day to get a lot of stuff done. Like, I couldn't imagine being at the beach right now. I think that's more like the age thing kind of I'm struggling with a little bit more. Like FOMO maybe. You should, like, yeah.

I think it's also a thing that you crave though. Because like the thing that you hate doing is getting in the weeds. Right. Zeroing out though, like what's the mission of this business? Why do we exist? Why are we growing? Why are we adding this sector? Why are we, like, that would probably be the thing that also gives you a lot more discretionary effort in that area versus like, we're gonna go get some more lights clients. You're like, okay, cool. I think a lot of entrepreneurs are in an abusive relationship with their business. The business has always told them what to do. It has always taken away from them and it has never given anything to them. And for that, the entrepreneur resents the business and that's what keeps it from growing.

So then how do you find your north star? Like how do you, cause there's obviously like a million different directions you go. How do you find, like how do you figure it out? Like how do you?

Yeah, like the thing that stands out to me when I look at like your application video, like what you were saying, is you like either directly or implicitly said like you fell out of love with the business.

Yep.

And as soon as I hear an entrepreneur's fell out of love with the business, if they don't change, usually in 2 or 3 years the business is gone. Because eventually your attention goes to something else, and then all of a sudden the team starts to fall apart.

Sure.

Eventually you find something else you're passionate, love. Yeah. All your attention is on it. Your love is towards it. And then the business kind of goes to waste.

Right.

To the wayside. And so when you're leading a team that you care about, I think it's, to be a good steward, it's like, let's make sure that I do have clarity. And a lot of times it's just like, it's really simple. The number one thing we gotta do is make sure you stay loving the business. The only way to fail in business is to quit. And so when I look at the entrepreneur, the person that owns 100% of the equity, if they quit, everything else is gone. The employees don't have a job, Customers aren't served. And so instead of going after these other details, I'm going at the heart of the issue, which is we've got to keep the head of the entrepreneur and the business owner in the game. And so sometimes taking a step back, staying in profit mode, not growing the business, or focusing on the areas of the business that you actually are passionate about, keep your head in the game long enough so you don't quit when the times get hard. The overarching cloud over the business is that if you don't like it, eventually this business will not work. It doesn't matter how much money, it doesn't matter. Like, if you don't love the business, Eventually it will show up on the P&L. I think part of it too is like you've hit this plateau again. Like you grew very quickly and then now you're at $1.3, $1.4, the business looks very similar. It's not like you're having new problems, new things to work on. It feels redundant.

Yeah.

And you're hitting your head up against the wall of like, I don't have systems in this department and you will likely not grow past $1.4, $1.5 without a huge amount of stress on yourself or you changing the business. And so I don't want you to keep beating your head up against this because you're like, man, I did $1.3, then $1.4, then $1.4, then $1.6.

I'm just, I'm hitting my head up against And eventually, like, all right, forget this.

Yeah, no, you're right on.

Yeah. Yeah.

Because you're 25, you're 26. Like, lots of opportunities will come your way. You will have another love in your life, whether that be a girl, whether it be another business, whether it be an opportunity, whether it be an investment. And if you hate this business, because after 3 years of beating your head up against 1.4, 1.5, and you're doing stuff all day long that you hate doing, you're going to leave.

Yeah.

And so, like, the ultimate insurance for this business is make sure you love the business.

I think the big question is, when I'm 30, am I gonna look back and be stoked that I gave my business my all, put me in a spot that other people may not necessarily be in? Or am I gonna look back when I'm 30 and be like, man, I missed out on all the social interactions, making friends, traveling, moving around, trying different things, kind of being like a free spirit in my 20s? And I think that's just kind of like the question that been trying to answer over these years. This isn't like related to this, but I just got like, just like entrepreneurial questions. And what I'm blown away with you is how do you, how did you like, you have the bookkeeping service, which I'm on the waitlist, right? So like, how did you say, hey, I want to start this bookkeeping service and then hire a bookkeeper and know how to hire a bookkeeper, what to offer, and then grow it even if we didn't have like all the customers? Like, how do you like command center, right? Like, how did you figure out like, hey, I want to use command center?

Command center is the centralized office or admin that we have for Augusta Lawn Care where we have over 80 agents They were answering phone calls, doing texts, doing email, running payroll, all the admin-related tasks. So the business owner, especially when they're first start getting started and growing quickly, so they can focus on sales and operations instead of admin. When they're a million-dollar business, maybe they'll get an office manager, but I don't want them when they're first getting started figuring out how to do admin and email and answer the phone. That's what Command Center exists for.

How did you just figure out like the structure and everything behind all the different things you do?

You just start and then you Constantly ask the customer how you can serve them better. Anything that you mentioned, I still have plenty of problems to work on. Our number one value is constant improvement for the reason of like, I know when I start I will not be perfect. And so my only focus is what's the pain point of the customer and I'll solve it. And it'll take you a long— like the bigger the business gets, the longer it takes to solve each problem.

This is just curiosity. Like when you started your home service website company, like how did you start that? Did you find like a web designer?

A lot of those departments, like those ancillary things I've started is like I wanted to afford a killer, but I couldn't afford them. So we offered the service ancillary. To be able to subsidize their cost.

And did you have to take like a financial hit in the beginning to do that?

Oh yeah.

And you were just comfortable taking that financial hit because you knew down the road?

Because it aligned with the why. Like the why was big enough for me to realize I needed those components. Adding the software is like the worst 3 years of my life, like trying to get this up. But I know in the long run I need the software for the franchise. And so like, that's why knowing the why is so important. Because like when you want to quit, when there's issues out towards you, when it's sucking money out of your pocket like crazy, when you see no evidence of success, you have to have something to fall back on. For every business I've ever started, started and that exists today, there's a period of time where I wanted to quit. For the franchise, it now has over 200 locations, do $75 million in revenue this year. But when we were at 90 locations, we weren't making any money. I was pouring money back into the biz. We were negative profit. And I was living in the office in the closet so that we could do that. And we didn't— I didn't have hot water. I had to go next door to be able to take showers at the gym. That was not fun. The media side, same thing. I did 5 years of making content on YouTube before I made a single dollar on YouTube ads or making any dollars from courses or whatever. When it came to the software side, the first year we grew a bunch, a ton of bugs got in, and I spent days sometimes without sleeping because of all the problems and the pressure I was going through. Every single one of those, within about 2 to 3 years after that low point, is when I'm so glad I pushed through. Now, when it comes to the franchise, the software, the media, Why did I push through in those low moments? It was because my why propelled me and pulled me to get past those times. And the why was I want to change the level of professionalism in the landscape industry and I'm going to need media, I'm going to need software, I'm going to need the franchise to do that. And so it wasn't ever an option to quit during those low moments because my why pulled me past those hard times.

Yeah. So the reason for asking is because in February we go negative, right? Because we have all this overhead, but there's no revenue. So you're like negative, like 26, 30, $1,000 and you're like, wow, like, geez, is this really worth it? And I'm like, man, this is just like one business, right? Imagine like with you with multiple. So yeah, I was just curious about like how you stomach all that.

Well, like the size of your risk will correlate with the size of your goals. And so like, you know, I lose hundreds of thousands of dollars a week when we were in the middle of stuff with software. And like as the product looks the worst, you're dumping more and more money into it and investing more and more. So like that risk is proportionate with the size of that business will probably become. And so if you play it safe your whole life, you'll probably have a small business.

Yeah, right.

So solving the biggest constraint in the business, the biggest problem is always on the other side of that moat is the castle. And so if you're able to figure out how to— how do I get revenue in February? Oh, I can pull demand forward. I can make offers to my existing customers and pull them. That's the thing no one does. But it's also the thing that unlocks the most profitable business. Absolutely.

How many, how many times has your why changed? With Augusta Lawn Care, like the North Star?

None. Like, it was mostly because, like, after I got in the accident, it was a function of I was very clear I wanted to help other people not get in that same situation. That, that focus for me on, like, the media side, like, the franchise was realizing that no one listens to the content unless I compete with them. And so now with 200 locations, I compete with most landscaping companies and now they'll listen, right? And so we can see, we can see directly when we go into a new location like P4P, for example, people will start adopting it in that area because they see, oh, Augustin moved in. I've got to start paying my guys that way, doing profit sharing or whatever. It's like that's how we have the impact on the industry. But it all ties up to that. Every business stops growing for one of four reasons. It's either a lack of liquidity, a lack of leads, a lack of labor, or a lack of leadership. I call this the 4L framework. And right now I'm really going to zero in on what are the opportunities in each of these categories to be able to grow the business. From a liquidity perspective, I don't see any problem with the business. You have plenty of cash reserves. You have a decent enough profit margin. I don't— one thing you mentioned in your application video is you spent a lot on marketing. I said I saw $20,000 last year in marketing. Is that accurate?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. All right. And what are you spending that on right now?

We haven't done any marketing this year. There's a few in there, but that was like for the website or like stuff like Google Ads that we paid from last year.

But no, like Do you have a paid ad strategy right now?

No.

Okay. And is that because you have constraints around the crew? Is it because you have constraints on the office space, the admin? What's the constraint? Why aren't you like, throw this thing to the moon?

Great question. So because when we, like last year, we were spending money on ads, he could get to the request right away and make sure that that customer was heard. Now he's out in the field and I've been bogged down. That request comes in from paid ads, like, damn, you know, they're not getting that service as quickly as possible. And so then you're wasting money because they're just going to whoever they got to first. I think we waste money on marketing because we just can't get to— we can't service the leads as quickly as we need to. But we'd like to be able to do that again. But he needs to be available to go take that estimate as quickly as possible.

Got it. So he's doing— you're doing estimates and you're also managing the crew day to day. So you have to balance those two things right now. Management of the crew is essentially a full-time job. We don't have time to go get to leads that are coming in.

Exactly.

Yeah.

I'd say that like right now, a lot of my time is in the field and I'm kind of pulled away from booking the schedule, doing estimates. I'm kind of dropping the ball in that sense. I'll work a full day in the field and I'll come back and I'll have all these clients that responded to me or asking for work or looking for estimates on this. And so it's hard for me to stay on top of everything. And right now I feel like I'm dropping the ball a little bit on that sense. And so that's what I really want to work on. So working on training up the field staff to be pretty strong where I don't need to be out there. And I know for like, I feel comfortable that they'll get all the scheduled work done every day and the week's, you know, revenue is hit and I can go service the estimates and start filling the schedule for, you know, the next month and taking care of things.

And what does chaos look like for those guys? Like when you say, hey, I'm managing them, you're not out there doing the work? Is it like stuff going wrong, mistakes happening, equipment failure? What are you like? What's the firefighting look like?

I would say more so of just getting like just an extra hand on site, just getting the job done and getting everything done without the day going super long. And then also being more like a detail-oriented, pointing out little things that I notice, like say, like they're not— they don't pull all the little picky weeds, a little mulch on top of it. Like, being out there to reiterate those things and kind of get a feel for how it's going firsthand. Good morning.

Good morning.

May was a really good month for us. A lot of things I liked and some areas I would like to see some improvement. The client communication reviews have been really well.

A lot of clients are really stoked. They're also noticing, Kyle, I think you're talking to the clients, ringing the bell. They are loving that.

All right, let's have a great, great June when we get time.

Summer's coming.

Weather's gonna get a little warm. Pack plenty of waters. We'll do our best to bring cold drinks to the job sites.

So a lot of like fine details of training. End of day, you're having to help them wrap things up. It's like, hey, this job's gonna go to 7 unless you go there and get it done by 6.

Yeah, and kind of like delegate tasks. Say the job's wrapping up and we have a crew of 8 guys. We really don't need 8 people there. 3 people can go start the next job or something. And that doesn't really happen unless I'm kind of pushing that forward.

And why does a job go over that long? Is it just like the job was misquoted, the budget hours are inaccurate, they got behind? Like, what's the reason that you're getting pulled, or you're pulling 8 guys to a job site that should have 3?

Usually we need like all, all 8. It's more of having 8 like solid guys. So we lost a couple, uh, guys that are with us working on training them up up. And so that's kind of pushing, pushing things back and just requiring me to go out there. It's not so much as the quality. Our field manager is really good at withholding quality. Any additional notes from field managers? Anything you want to address within the team?

Two, just the weed whacking.

Make sure to weed whack the edges, please, before we start mulching.

Get underneath the plants.

If you're not going to get underneath the plants, then don't do the plants.

I hate going back and redoing stuff. Up and grabbing mulch out of the trailer after you guys have already cleaned up. So they got that, but, uh, more so just extra hands, just keeping, keeping things moving. Why I'm pulled in the field right now more is just to keep the days from going super long. The guys work really well, it's just, it's like shorthanded.

But you like hiring people and recruiting, and so finding people, I'm going to assume, is not a huge problem. No, it's training them, getting them up to a certain level of of competence.

Yep.

Yep.

Yeah. And then also they— so like one letter, I'll give you a good example. We had one guy, he came on board. I knew this was gonna be an issue, but I didn't address it. He was a shoe detailer and we told him that, uh, or like shoe cleaner or whatever. Um, he called him shoe detailer, cobbler. And so we told him that, hey, like we are known for our attention to detail here. And he was like, we did it, but we didn't give him an example of what our attention to detail is because in his line of work, his attention to detail is microscopic, right? We had to let him go because he would spend an hour with one wheelbarrow where the other guys have moved 26 wheelbarrows each, right? He's like, "Well, you hired me for my attention to detail." Well, you know, not that level of attention to detail. So I was like, "Oh, okay, wait. We got to show these guys what we actually expect and we can't assume anything." I think that's where we're struggling.

I have a really famous saying. It's called double cheesing. And it's like when you're double working, you know, he was a big double cheeser, so he would like really take his fine time trying to spread the mulch, like, you know, almost like he was spreading concrete, you know, he wanted it nice and flat, you know, he was just kind of double cheesing on that, you know, while you had everybody else, you know, halfway done with the property, you know, because he would just really take his nice time, you know, which is nice, but at the end of the day, you know, you kind of got to get the ball rolling a little bit, you know, especially if you got your other guys, you know, really pushing and, you know, you're on the same bed Spread it on your hands and knees for 15, 20 minutes. You know, it takes up some time and just wasn't a good fit, you know, but it happens. You gotta, you know, pick up the guy. You're never gonna know until you pick him up, you know, and hire him, give him a chance.

Right now when you're bidding on the project, I'll talk about landscaping for now, 'cause lights is a little bit of a different beast, but for the landscaping side, do you use budget hours? How are you bidding the jobs?

This is a sore subject. I would like to. I think our vision maybe sometimes isn't clear on different topics. And before it was fine because it was just me, him, and, you know, some small crew. But now that there's more people involved, we may not be seeing everything. It's really driving everyone nuts because they— like, the way he will say to handle a certain situation might be different than what I would say to handle a certain situation.

So if you go to a job, or either— I guess you go to a job and you're looking for mulch install, is it like like, okay, I think it's going to take X amount of yards and X amount of hours. Is that essentially— um, how does it work now?

Purely depends on the service I'm quoting. For mulch, it's purely yards.

Okay, how many yards and multiply it by a dollar amount.

Yeah.

The crew though is not using any sort of budget hours, like they're not saying, hey, this job is allocated 8 hours a day, 6 hours, 4 hours.

Some, some jobs, if it's one that's quoted by hours, we'll put in like, this is estimate is for blank amount of hours, and that kind of gives them like a mindset to kind of shoot in between, but we don't like structure out the day like this should take this long, it should take that long.

Right.

Okay. Yeah, it's funny, I actually think having pay for performance actually solves your leads problem because right now when you're going to be putting a job on the schedule, the crew is essentially incentivized to take as long as possible because they make more money. There is no incentive to do this faster, do it efficiently, or make sure there's no mistakes because why? Paul has come clean up our mess. And it's not a matter of like them doing a bad job. It's a matter of making an environment where they actually want the job done efficiently and to a high quality standard. And right now there's no incentive for that. Like the longer they clock in, the more money they make. And so like, yeah, the job will go until 6 or 7 o'clock cause they make more money. They're now in overtime. And so you'll go protect them cause you're like, I don't want them working overtime this week. When reality, they could have got the job done faster. Like they didn't really need the 45-minute break 4 times throughout the day. A lot of people wonder why I'm so passionate about pay for performance or P4P and why I created it, why I wrote the book, why we have all the free training, why I created the software. It saved my business. And after I had the workplace accident and got caught underneath the dump truck because I didn't have systems in my business, it was the first thing that I implemented. And the next year I went from being unprofitable to making over $280,000 in owner's distributions from the same business with less employees out in the field. And that's why I'm so passionate about making sure that this fundamental system of PPP is implemented in every business.

Yeah, I kind of think that we have our crews kind of like special in that sense. Maybe I'm just totally blind on this, but—

I would say we're really fortunate that the crew leader's been with us for a while now and very trustworthy. And they don't— like, our crew guys put their phones in the truck, put their head down and work. Like, they are hard workers. That is an issue with the newer guys. And they even bring it up that the newer guys are, you know, taking much longer lunch breaks than what's typical here or lollygagging or whatever. But like our core group of guys, like they're phenomenal. Like we haven't had to worry about any of that with them.

What you want to do though is create a culture where those people are incentivized and make more money. The new guy either gets flushed out within a week because no one wants to work with them or they rise to the occasion and stop being the person that's dragging them down.

Yeah, this business is built on my gut and then having those good guys in the field You're right, and that's not sustainable, 'cause your business is built on systems, not just— Just a few guys.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. A few solid core group. And you can keep those solid core group of guys, but what you don't wanna do, the most discouraging thing for them is to put losers with them that are not incentivized, that churn out fast, that are not trained, that don't care about the quality of work, that don't care about how fast they go, and they're over here just hustling. And I would like to make sure they get paid more than a few dollars more per hour than the person who's lollygagging. And so that's where like the pay for performance part, as much of it is, is, well, I trust my team. I do too. But the minute I walk out of here and then hire 5 people that I've never met before, 'cause someone else hires them, I need to make sure everyone's talking, like walking the same beat of the same drum, which is we're efficient and high quality. And pay for performance will help do that. And the bigger thing is not so much the efficiency part for you. It's actually the fact that it is very hard to schedule when no one cares about the budget hours. I remember before we had P4P, that year being so frustrated because I knew there were people on my team that were making $1 or $2 more per hour than someone else, but they were probably producing 2 to 3 times more profit for the business because they were efficient and they're constantly hustling. And I'm like, this is not fair. And then someone else come along and ask for a raise and they deserved it, but I couldn't afford it. We weren't making any money. And I said, there's got to be a way where based upon how how hard you work and how much money you make this business. That's what determines how much I pay my employees. They're like, well, I'll work 40, 50 hours a week, I'll get paid. They don't care how long the job takes. It's very hard to schedule. And so you're going to have downstream effects of like not being able to hand off admin stuff and scheduling. And it's going to be hard for him to even schedule like estimates because he doesn't know how the jobs are going to finish at the end of the day. Whereas when you have budget hours and your crew knows budget hours and they're getting paid based on that, when you pay someone based on how long the job is going to take and how long it should they always get it done on that time. There's no like, oh, we're working till 9 o'clock tonight. It doesn't happen because like everyone knows this job is 48 hours. There's 4 people on the job. We're going to be there for a day and a half. Like it's very regimented and you can schedule weeks in advance of knowing exactly which day we're going to be on the schedule at someone's property.

So I'm, yeah, I'm fully agree. Like I've been wanting to do budget hours for a while now, but I haven't been able to come with a system to create those budgeted hours properly. So how do you—

You're doing it. You're doing it now, just in a different way. Right now you're like, hey, we have this flat kind of dollar per cubic yard for mulch. Yeah. And it kind of— we just move the number up if we think it's gonna be harder access. I just want to define that. I want to be okay. Instead of just having this flat rate per cubic yard, I want you to say, what are our costs? Mark up the costs. So instead of charging $100 per cubic yard, let's— for being installed, let's just charge $50 per cubic yard to cover our costs and have material markup. And then that'll be our materials. And then we'll have budgeted hours and we charge a certain rate per hour of work. So let's just start, just say it's $120 an hour. Okay. It's 8 hours. It's $960 of labor. Okay. It's 10 yards of mulch at $60 a pop, $600 of materials. I have $600 materials, $800 and whatever I said of labor. Boom. There's your bid. They also looked at jobs like they said 16 budget hours. This dude, we'll do this in 5 and they'll get paid $50 an hour for that day.

Yeah, that's cool. That's really cool.

And so now the goal is like, I get the job, I'm looking for areas to make this faster and make it more efficient, not just be like, oh, if I don't get it done, Paul's gonna come bail me out at the end of the day.

We've actually tried to dabble it with the guys in the past, and like really only one seemed interested. The others, uh, seemed a little standoffish. And so I know it's the right call because I'm always worried about labor exceeding our allocations, right, budget. So like, I know it's the right call and I know it's what we need to do, and I'd feel much better about this business if everyone was aligned. I'm just nervous about taking the time to implement it, the feedback, and just kind of going through all, like, the growing pains of implementing something like P4P. Like, if you're doing a plant job, you're putting— you have your, your plant markup, and then you have your labor, and then it's not the whole job. It's just they're getting 33% of labor revenue. Labor revenue.

And that's why they look at budget hours, because, okay, 10 budget hours Hey, we make $100 per hour. That's $1,000 for this company. I make 33% of that. We're making $333 a day.

What profit margin are you seeing a lot of home services businesses running? Like for like general maintenance, mulch?

Unfortunately, mostly like zero.

Really?

But yeah, like the average home service business is still single-digit profit margins. And so you can get above 20%, but if the reason it doesn't is because all of a sudden if labor is 60%, 70%, of my revenue, I'm not making money. And so that's why if you look at last year and you just take how much you paid in wages, look at your labor revenue and figure out, oh, it's like 40%, okay, that's not so bad. If I gave 35%, I know I'd be better off. And so when a crew member makes $50 an hour, I don't care, let's go, because it's still 35%. Yeah, it's locked. And so now when you look at a job, you know the profit margin before you start because you know the cost of materials and you know the cost of your labor, right? Assuming they beat budget hours.

Yeah.

And that's why you want them to be making more than base pay, you want them hitting budgeted hours.

Okay, this— if you don't mind, I don't want to steer off track.

You're fine.

But this brings to one of the questions I had for you. And so, and I've heard you mention in one of your videos about admin should be no more than 10% of revenue. But how do you justify or know when to go over that percentage? Because you know you're growing. So like in the beginning, like you hire an admin person that you may not need right now, but you know in 3 months you will. So you your numbers are skewed, how do you handle that? Are you like always like, it's 10% or I'm not hiring anyone?

You know, growth sucks cash, and like, I allow up to 15% for all admin-related stuff. So that includes my rent, my shop space, my, the wages, which is the biggest part of it. 10% is good, 5% is like lethal, but you're only gonna get 5% to your point when you're not growing super fast, you don't have to, you're not spending a bunch of money on ads, you're very much in profit, profit mode, you've cut out all the services that are not recurring. Like, that's very, very low. And so I would not take that benchmark as gospel as much as I want it to be as low as possible. But I understand I will need more admin if I'm growing. And now if it's 25%, we have a problem.

Sure.

But I would not look at the gospel truth. I would just look as a benchmark because I've seen companies that do 20% in admin and they still make 20% profit, but they're HVAC companies.

Companies.

So they're charging $250 an hour. I've also seen the opposite when it comes to cleaning, where they have a 5% because there's not a lot of admin, it's all commercial cleaning, and they still have no profit margin because their labor is 70% of their revenue.

Yeah.

So it's a decent rule of thumb, but I would not stick to that.

I mean, even— and it sounds so silly, but I just want to question that from Mike Andes. I'm on his bookkeeping waitlist. We've gone— we're on a third bookkeeper. Start off great, but then just slowly— I think this is one of your questions too— then they'll slowly just kind of like go into the shadows and start— things start like getting missing or or not doing something properly or whatever. And it's just like really frustrating because once again, we have more people now and we're having to work more and more than we ever had to. Like, why am I, why am I in our balance sheet trying to figure out what's wrong when we have a bookkeeper? Or why am I trying to get payment from a customer when we have someone that's supposed to be following up with invoices? Or why am I, you know, calling a commercial client to get their light bill contract approved when we have someone that is supposed to be handling that? This. So clearly there's something I'm doing wrong, you know, with that, which I'm trying to figure out what it is. There's a lot of crossover and it needs to be simplified. So I'll give you just another prime example. So sometimes like he'll do an estimate, right, and he'll send the estimate out and then the question comes back to Lori about his estimate. It goes to Lori. Well, then he had to run out in the field to go take care of the guys and we got to get back to the customer, so then I'll respond to the customer.

Customer. How are you seeing that message?

Gloria forwards it to me because he's out in the field.

Okay.

Yeah, that's just role delineation. Yeah, right. Like right now you guys are doing everything together. Are you doing estimates or are you not? Are you doing estimates? Are you doing operation? Who, like, who do I contact from the admin perspective when there's a problem with admin, when there's a problem with operations, the crew, there's a yellow slip, like having clear routing. Like that's why making the admin your router is important because then they have to know who do I contact? And if there's an hour delay because he's busy, that's fine. We never cross roles.

I think that's also like where the part of the burnout was coming from is because we're trying to build it so that people have clear roles and not wear many hats. We're still wearing a bazillion hats when we're supposed to be getting away from that, and we should, you know, so how do you— where's the disconnect? This is where we're really struggling with, I would say, now. Is the delegation of those tasks. What's the workflow that you built so that everything works flawlessly together and people may not be in the same room?

Yeah, so that's the hardest part about Command Center, 'cause you have 80+ agents dealing with 200 locations, right? So every single time there's like, something falls through the cracks, you're like, how can we solve this without changing everything? So for example, in the case of the payment thing, you just make a system that when payment comes in, the minute The minute it comes in, it must be recorded. It doesn't sit on your desk for an hour. Also, we just don't take checks, 'cause then it is instant, right? So like, there's certain systems that instead of like, I'm gonna create the system around like, okay, when an invoice, a check is here, then we have this Slack channel, then I have this automa— versus like, we don't accept checks. So sometimes you just can eliminate a whole like, I need to create SOPs for this versus like, can we just take this out completely by and remove the variable?

That's awesome. Is your command center like the one that's relaying that message to the customer explaining like, hey, we don't take checks. Like, how does it, what's your process like that?

Yeah. It's just like, hey, this is our process. Like honestly, if someone's like, I wanna pay a check, it's like, we don't accept check. Do you really think they don't have a credit card?

Right.

Yeah.

They would've died during COVID Yeah. Right. So like, I would just like, you just stick to your system on the upfront versus let's solve the 20 things that could happen wrong if they send a check.

I would say the hardest thing is things change a lot. They're rapidly changing. And so trying to keep up with, we're going to do it this way and then we're going to do it this way. And, you know, and I'm kind of like, okay, what would you like me to do this week?

Just miscommunication is the biggest problem that we usually have. We don't want to come back and do something because we forgot something or something was missed or wasn't communicated correctly.

Those, those type of changes. So when I'm the one that's on the phone with the clients, it's like, okay, well, I know I told you this, but now it's this. So there's that part of it. It's my credibility.

So how do you— I mean, just kind of go back to the same thing, but how do you ensure then that when a customer calls your command center, right, or works with your estimator this year versus last year, that's exact same experience? Because I think I think part of my frustration right now is I would like that, like, I, I would like that to be this business, but depends on who you talk to— Lori, me, or Paul. Like, his estimates look different than mine. Like, you know, what Lori might say or the way she responds might be different than the way I respond. So how do you make— how do you ensure that whoever you're hiring is following the exact procedures that you, or standards that you have set up?

Yeah, you can always create ways and guardrails to make sure that happens down the road when you have multiple people, for example, answering the phone, or right now have one person answer the phone.

Yeah.

Okay.

Right. So you're in your level. It's not a matter of when you create a system for this. It's like we need to create a constraint that you guys don't answer the phones. As the business grows, if communication is filtering throughout all levels of the leadership team, you're just going to be compounding how many times every single customer gets touched. So if someone has a complaint and it goes to one one person, they are the router for who should actually this complaint go to. Not let's all be aware, be problem aware, all give our opinions, and all of a sudden we're wasting 3, 4 times as much time on that problem compared to just one person knowing about the problem and then finding the solution. And then what happened is as you scale, you create— you tell that person in that position, they are responsible to create the SOP to duplicate themselves. Okay, you want to be an office manager? Great. We're now at $2.5 million. We need more people to answer the phone because you're— we're falling behind. You're going to become office manager. Here's your incentives. In order to get this, you've got to create an SOP for these tasks that you can delegate and give to someone else. And now they just copy their skills to someone else. Not 3 people. Like, it's impossible to systematize.

The other part of it is if there's something that's a challenge that you have to deal with, you put in the time upfront to set up the system and while that may slow the process down, you've set up the system and now the system runs for you. So you've saved time here ongoing by investing time up front.

Be able to provide the answers or like, I'm just because like Lori's busy nonstop. She comes in here Monday morning and leaves, you know, Monday evening. It's just slammed. So I just like figuring out that aspect of like reworking the workflows.

But once Once it's set up, then you know where you're headed. And the only thing that complicates that is then if massive changes get thrown in, because then now your system's not built.

You know, I think maybe she's doing a lot of the scheduling work right now, so if she's more client-focused and Paul handles the schedule, I think I could see that really working really well. I'm just worried about overloading Lori's workload at the moment. Moment.

Make sure she's great. And then when, as you scale, you say your job— like, part of someone moving up in their next position is there's 30, 60, and 90 days— is creating the SOPs for someone else to come do their job.

That's our problem.

Yeah, I think like we started doing really well and not crossing roles, and then, you know, the workflow started going crazy. So we lost some employees, kind of need— and just he started picking up things where I was dropping the ball, and I'm coming— yeah, I was kind of everywhere.

Yeah, you notice I haven't wrote anything down while I've been saying all these things because these are all downstream effects of not having pay for performance.

After our pay for performance discussion, all the— most of the questions I had, I kind of just would answer themselves, right?

Because if you solve that problem, which is a very hard thing, you have to restructure the way you do debt estimates, the way you communicate with your team, the way you talk about compensation, the way you hire. If you change that though, now what happens is less of you out in the field, meaning now you don't have to create a system around how the admin doesn't hear from me for 3 hours. So let's not figure that out. Let's just figure out the fact that why are you gone for 3 hours and out of touch? So I don't want to, I don't want to be on here like the weeds of like, what about this problem? Like, this is all a downstream effect of this problem, and that is your crew has no incentive to get the job done fast, efficient, or to a high quality. It all is still falling on you. Because if that solves, you get time for estimates, you get time to be able to respond to admin, you no longer need to cross over roles. I happen to believe if you had time on your hands you wouldn't have to step in.

Yeah, and I think I got to first, like, clean up our services, like, just clean up the stuff all over the place and really simplify it so that'd be a lot easier for her to just take on all client communication. But yeah, I'm all for having the clients having one phone number to contact, one email, and one person to deal with.

I only have 3 things for you. It's really simple. I think you can do it in the next 6 weeks. Implement pay for performance, get videos of all the estimates, attach it to the client's profile so the admin can see it. That video goes with the crew. Between the job notes and the video, the crew should be able to do the whole job and not bring you in. If they do, system failure. That's like red alert if you have to come back on a job site. If they need clarification, where it's like I either made the video incorrectly or there's not enough clarity in the notes. Third thing, centralized comms admin. Between those three things, every single other thing you've talked about will get solved.

At our size, how many— is it reasonable to think that one admin person can handle all this, or would you need two?

I think right now you have a lot of admin bloat because of a lack lack of systems. And so at your size, to have as many people in overhead as you do is too many, in my opinion. I don't think you need to get rid of anyone. I think you can grow though to $2.5 or $3 million without getting any more people if you have systems in place.

Sure. Right.

And so I believe that right now what you see as efficient, which is them asking you questions, could all be done without that process and get them their time back. Like, I'm just— you guys are wasting so much time yourself. You're wasting a bunch of their time. 'Cause they don't know what to do, they're unconfident, they don't know who's contacted them, there's no record. I'm assuming you guys don't keep notes inside the, like call notes inside of the account. Like if someone calls you, yeah, like, pfft, yeah, you can't do that.

Lori's pretty good at it, I'm not good at it.

'Cause you're out in the field, right? That's why you don't—

I don't have the time, I can't.

Yeah, that's the don't let you do comms, right? Let the office do the admin stuff so they can keep track. Like we have, over the course of years, we have call notes that are pages long, but it's searchable database. That I can quickly find, oh yeah, 2 years ago we did tell them that. But everything is documented because it's going to the admin. It's never going to be documented when you're out in the field or doing an estimate. You're like, you're quickly answering a call from a customer. You're not going to document that. Yeah. And you'll like over the 6 months if you adopt the systems where these things are like notes on the job will happen as a byproduct of doing this. That's why I'm just trying to chunk this all up. Like if we solve these 3 things, almost everything we've talked about gets solved. Everyone, like, I could create a system around how to make sure your emails get routed to the right person, or just like, why do we have these emails in the first place? And so I think that's what I'm trying to attack, is very much a chunked up problem. You will have a whole bunch of other problems down the road trying to get these things implemented, but everything you've talked about will be solved by these 3 things. Many times the reason a small business stops growing or plateaus is because the entrepreneur is solving the same problem over and over again out of wanting to feel productive. Productive. So the things on their to-do list is a lot of the stuff they keep doing the same all the time instead of focusing on the big problem, the big hairy thing that's gonna take changing the business model, changing how everything is done. And right now for Matt, that's pay for performance. And we can talk about the systems and the automations and tweaking little things in admin, or we can just attack the big 600-pound gorilla that if he'd spent an entire year focused on, we'd be able to have a huge jump for the business. But a lot of us will stay where we're currently at because we just enjoy solving problems, and it's easier to keep solving the same problem 100 times instead of focusing on the one big hairy thing that, if solved, would change the business. That all goes back to this, and that is the reason those 3 things need to be done is because you're, you're going to quit this business by a death of a thousand cuts of not wanting to be here and doing those 3 things, which will be hard, all 3 of those will be hard. If you do them though, you'll be able to have time to do things that you do love in the business. And if you do things that you love in the business, you won't quit.

Right. Absolutely. Yeah, you're right on.

And so I also think that if you, if you have some time and you get that time back, you will get more clarity as a leader in terms of why does this business exist? What am I doing here? Like all these existential questions that happen when you're 25, 5, like, I understand where they're— I got them all too. You'll have answers for them. Sure. And so when it does get hard and you're like, this is a lousy time, you'll push through it because you know why you're doing it.

Right.

Absolutely.

Right now we don't know the size of business we need. We don't know why this business needs to get any bigger. We are going to grow sustainably. Don't know what that means. Like, these are bundled terms that we have no definition for.

Sure.

Because I want to have good culture. What does that mean? Does it mean I have a career progression? Does it mean I have a certain amount of hourly rate? Does it mean I can offer benefits? Like, what does that mean? But like, you can't do that when you're chasing your tail around who's contacting a customer about a wreath that fell off. I just don't want you to quit. And I say this because as soon as I say here, I know someone is not loving the business, especially you have so much options being so young. Like, you will leave in a heartbeat if you fall in love with something else.

Sure.

And then you fill in the blank of what that is. It could be a girl on the other side of the country. I'm moving, right? I want you to be able to love this business, 'cause when you do, you will deploy discretionary effort towards it. And when I see a business that has grown very quickly and then plateaued, a lot of times the owner has stopped thinking about the business when they're in the shower. And I don't mean thinking about like, I need to do the billing. Like, how do I solve this constraint? What system can I do? What can I, what exciting, what gets me excited about this business? That has disappeared. And I want you to get that back by getting rid of a lot of these things that you currently hate.

Okay.

He talked about we didn't have any ad spend, no low speed on getting to the requests, and then no pay for performance. The biggest things that we've improved since Mike was here was we haven't necessarily done the videos for estimates, but we've really improved the pictures using Company Cam, the notes, the measurements, and really getting all the details with pictures for the guys and really spending the time to put the notes in Company Cam so that when they pull up to the job site, all those pictures pull up. So not quite there at the videos. I would say the biggest thing, biggest improvement would be the centralized communication to admin. So rather than the clients asking Paul a question and then Paul responds, and then they ask Lori a question about scheduling, and then they might— within that time frame, I'm asking Lori a scheduling question, then I go back to Paul with something, and then Paul forgets to relay that to Lori. Now we're getting better at saying like, hey, giving Lori an email. That's probably been like one of the improvements. That's really improved. I would say my inbox isn't as full as it used to be. I think the biggest takeaway I got from Mike is I always thought that people with very successful businesses, you hear about like SOPs and writing them down and everything like that. I think that was really constraining. That thought was really constraining. What I found fascinating with him was he doesn't really get into the nitty-gritty of how to do something. He's just very clear on his expectations and very clear on his goal. He's very clear on what he expects from his team in certain tasks. And, and doesn't get into the tactical so that he doesn't get a million questions either. And I thought that was very fascinating. Probably the biggest takeaway I've gotten from Mike Andes, I would definitely say my communication to everyone has been much better. And it's been much better in the sense where I'm not telling them exactly how to do something, I'm telling them the why I want to do something and the end goal I want of that. I think that's probably the, like, the biggest breath of fresh air I've gotten from all this. And I also really, what I noticed with you guys that I'm really trying to work on is everyone I talk to at company had the same shared mission. Like they all were all on the same page, they're all on the same team, they all have the same goal, all the same values. So that, that's another like really big takeaway that I'm trying to slowly implement here too. We did come up with a really good training program that's also very clear. Before it wasn't clear. The way Mike communicated and how clear he was really, really sparked me again. I was, I was blown away. So that kind of like Like, now I'm really excited with the business because it's more of like upgrading my skill set and not so much about like all the garbage you deal with. Like, that's why I'm kind of like excited again, because I feel like we're going into a new phase and we have to, you know, become the person that can operate in the next phase. So I think that's why I'm like excited again.