He ABANDONED his $800K Landscape Business!

Am I a little bit embarrassed about it? Definitely. I need a lot of help. I feel like I'm maxed out with what I know to do. We constantly spend money, spend money, spend money just to stay in business. My employees started turning on each other.

We hired some experience, you know, but with experience came.

He goes, there's another problem. Oh, another problem, Another problem. And that causes panic.

I hate losing accounts.

Everything is your fault.

He gets in his head a lot. I can tell.

The fact is, right now, we're over $100,000 in debt. We're not making enough profit. There's not enough cash. We're stressed out in our. Our mind, and we're not creating opportunity for our guys because we can't afford to.

Today we're in Augusta, Georgia, with Brandon from May Landscaping. And last year, they did over $700,000 in annual revenue. However, they only have $5,000 left in the bank. And Brandon, the owner, has separated himself from the team and from the business. Let's see if we can turn this thing around.

What's up, brother? How you doing?

Good to see you.

Absolutely. Dave, I guess you've seen a few notes that I've sent over.

Yeah.

But I need a lot of help. I feel like I'm maxed out with what I know to do.

Okay.

I'm the son of a landscaper who. That's my dad. He's still running his business.

Me and Brandon, we all worked for his daddy years ago. Worked together. I was running a maintenance crew for his dad, and he moved home, and we was going to plant church, and he come to work with us. Did that for a couple years. Well, about a year or two. And then I ended up getting out of it. Brandon, I noticed, has started his business in 2018.

Got it.

But he called me in, like, 2020. He calls me and says, pat, would you ever get back into it? And I said, for you or your dad, yes, that would probably be it. I said, I don't know. Yeah, I was watching this business grow, and Brandon's super intelligent on the advertising, the marketing, the new generation, what I call like. With his dad, it was good old boy system, word of mouth. He always had word, you know. With Brandon, it was the advertising, taking me to that convention to learn, you know, all the things Brandon does to try to grow his business. I love.

I've seen how far dad got with his business, and I've sort of mimicked what I've learned from dad, but I don't know where to go from here. And I feel Like, I've gotten myself into trouble with debt trying to, you know, come up with payroll that I think is appropriate for where we're at as a business. Like Pat giving him a salary. I. I don't know if that was the right thing to do. I just thought it would be a good thing, but I don't know if it was the right thing.

One day, instead of being paid by the hour being paid, serve, be a small partner, you know, 2%, and let me run all of it. I don't want to run my own business, but I'd love to help his grow in whatever capacity, wherever needs. And we don't talk money, you know what I mean? I know he does. He's good to me.

I was a youth pastor at a church in Ocala, Florida.

Okay.

And then we moved here and we started a church. Got it for all my friends that were into drugs and alcohol. They were. I was just hearing about what was going on in their lives. So, yeah, we moved back here, we started the church. And then, long story short, with my daughter having autism and finding all that out and then grinding hard at night while still working part time for my father during the day, we essentially decided we need to make a change. So I resigned from church planting in 2019, and here I am with my business. I started my business in my last year of church planting. I want to take care of my family more than anything. So that's why I started this business and that's why you're here. Because I kind of feel like. Because the business isn't doing as great, I feel like maybe I'm failing my family. I can't even remember my middle child's toddler years because I was so engrossed in ministry. And I don't want that to sound like ministry is a bad thing.

It's just fully encompassing. It's 24 7.

My ambition was I'm going to grow this thing. I'm going to make it work. And I took a lot of time and energy, and so I don't want to do that again.

I understand Brandon's desire to be in the ministry. In fact, my grandparents and my dad both are ministers, and I understand what it's like to grow up in that environment. But between that and the desire to minister and give and pour out to other people, and the fact that the business is taking. Taking away so much of his time from his family, those two things are literally draining him of all the time and energy he can possibly have. And the business is left with nothing. Therefore, he can't see what's actually going wrong in the company.

When I looked at information, I see several things in terms of that jump out. But I want to know from your perspective, which ones are the stressors? Obviously, cash right now based on end of year is 5,000 in the bank. We have 30,000 in credit card debt. We have $50,000, a long term business loan, 24 month business loan, and then 120 ish on equipment and trucks.

In terms of a debt, I was worried that I was too far gone and that my business wasn't going to be able to survive. Where we're at right now with the debt that I have, I'm at the point where I don't know if I can recover from this. So that's why I was just sitting out here just thinking and cried a little bit and was thinking through everything like, can't believe this is happening. You were a pastor for a church plant that you resigned from. And then here you are now five years into your landscaping business and sounds like this is going to fail.

Now if you had to take a stab at what the monthly payment is on between the credit card, the $50,000 business loan, I know there's 2,400amonth for that and then, but then also the equipment, is that 6 grand ish, if I had to guess, yeah. Okay, so it's about six grand a month and just payments right now.

Yeah. Okay.

And is most of that equipment on 0%, like 4 or 5 year terms?

On 0%, 4 years. The trucks are between 6 and 8%. The loan just hit the one year mark. I hate paying that thing. But I feel like the biggest stressor for me is the credit card. Yeah, my credit card is a nightmare for me. And what I normally have done when cash gets tight, instead of materials that I use the credit card for, instead of paying that off, I use the cash to keep everyone paid. I want to sell the house. We are getting it ready to sell right now and we're going to use the funds to pay off debt.

Okay.

So that's what the hope is.

How much equity is in the house?

Now assuming the realtor, from what my realtor is telling me, she's going to list it between 260 and 200, 280 and I owe 94 on it.

Obviously not the ideal world situation, but it's also like when cash is low and like it's a way to reset, you know? Yeah.

Selling the family home isn't a great solution, but it is a solution to Be able to add liquidity to the business and sort of get a restart on everything. Because we only have $5,000 in the bank right now. And because of that, that's the only thing we can think about. And in the 4L framework, you've got to figure out liquidity, then leads and then labor. If we can figure out the liquidity problem, I don't think we have much of a leads issue. Overwhelmed with work. So the next thing that we got to figure out is how do we solve the labor problem.

I might be overstaffed right now during this time of year, but what the hard part is, is I love my crew. They're all buddies. Ethan and Cameron are brothers. Trayvon, they're like a trio. They're like best friends. Like, I've got such a great team and it was hard to find.

Yeah, I like Brandon. He's probably the best boss I've ever had. In general, he cares about his workers. And you don't really find that in.

Many jobs they have good attitude. And Brandon's whole business is faith based and culture and image. And you don't tolerate any kind of anything that makes the business look bad. He'll get rid of it.

The people we've hired, Pat's a pretty good judge of character. And the fact that he's signing off on all the guys that currently work for me, he likes them all. It means a lot about the people working for us right now.

Look, it cannot be overstated just how important it is to get the right people on the bus. And when it comes to hiring, it will make or break your business. I've had locations before that has the wrong general manager or the wrong team. Take the most profitable location and turn it to be unprofitable and vice versa. Taking something that's in shambles and making it super profitable because the right people were in place. It's easy, Easier said than done when it comes to hiring the right people. And it sounds like Brandon's previous crew almost took out his entire business.

I mean, we had some terrible people working for us.

The crew before this, they just didn't stay on task and do what they were supposed to. They really were just here just to go home. So they weren't really worried about the properties and everything.

In 2022, it. I mean, I got jacked up with meeting with my employees. They were at each other's throats. We had. We had about 11 people working for us. And we grew like super fast that.

Year because you got the whole bunch of free accounts Someone gave to you? Basically, yes.

It was like overnight. We had to figure this out. I acquired two of his employees and then we had to hire a few more because we were also picking up accounts. It was spring and so it seemed like it was great until my employees started turning on each other. We were doing P4P and it was. I didn't know enough about P4P. How to help my guys through it all.

Problem I had with P4P is you gotta be willing to split with somebody equal.

Right.

You know, maintenance. If you got a two man crew, they gotta pick up where you're weak and you pick up where they're weak. And it's gotta balance out.

Yeah.

So it's hard to train somebody on P4P. When we got Parker, my nephew came in. I put him in the truck with me. And at the time, we had two other. We had two maintenance crew. I had it to where back then, me and Parker, our goal was to make the truck a thousand dollars a day. We made 200 bucks a piece a day and we make a thousand dollars a week. Loving it. Yeah, Crushing it. Parker got a little greedy after a while. We were making good money every day. Parker wanted more. Parker went to him and said, I want this and I know y' all can't do it if I'm not part of a team and this is what I want. And Brandon said, I'd rather let go of a couple accounts than to give you. You. You strong arm me into. You're going to pay me X. We let go half of the maintenance.

It was more about I'm not working with him because he's slow or I'm not going to do a good job at this account because whoever did it last week didn't do a good enough job. So I'm going to fly through it and get my money. And so it just became super confusing for me to navigate. And I tried to make it work until we got to July. So from roughly February to July, and then when I got to July.

I had my first panic attack since 2013. I have something called panic disorder. So I feel physical sensations all throughout the day. It's really just my body doing its normal thing, but I pay it. I guess from what my therapist tells me is I'm more acutely aware of what's happening inside of my body. So, yeah, I'm having to work through those things. And I'm glad that I am in therapy, man.

I don't. I wouldn't be able to be sitting here with you right now talking. If I weren't in therapy, he gets.

In his head a lot. I could tell the work overwhelms him. So he end up, like. You could tell. It gets to him, like, immensely, and it helps him. It makes it where it's harder for him to focus, get everything right, get the quotes done, get stuff like that. He's on it. Like, He's. He's gone 24 7. Trying to make sure everything's good. But then, like, the overwhelming stress and stuff is what's really getting to him. Try to help him out as much as I can. Like, if I had to stay over on the weekends, I more than welcome to. I don't really mind. I get paid on salary, but, like, if I work over 40 hours, I can work 70 hours in a week, and I'll be okay. Because I'm not here for the money. I just want the business to succeed.

I couldn't even, like, move. I was on the side of the road. I called Brittany to come pick me up because I couldn't even drive anymore. And I was just very, very afraid. And so went back to therapy again. And then I was tired of the culture, the toxicity happening with my employees. And so I let go of all the accounts that I acquired, all of them. It was probably 30 or 40 accounts that we just said, we can't help you anymore. Didn't sell them. For those that I acquired in North Augusta, I gave them to a friend of mine who is a business owner in North Augusta. And then we went from roughly 35,000amonth in maintenance revenue down to about $14,000 a month in revenue. And then I let go of a lot of people, and we just started over. Letting go of all of Those employees from 2022, I felt like I was letting them down, and I felt like I failed. And I've honestly felt like I've been trying to recover from 2022 up to this point in January of 2024. What it's helped me realize is that my identity isn't based on failures in my business. It's created a lot of headache for me two years later and having that headache and that burden of feeling that I failed long ago, two years ago, it still feels like I'm still that failure Today in the wrestling match that I constantly have right now is remembering who I am and not what I've done, because what I've done typically makes me feel like that's who I am. What you did was you didn't run a successful business in 2022. What you did was you hired all the wrong people. What you did was you lost all of these accounts. That makes me feel like a failure. That's not who I am. And so I'm learning more and more about who I am. And it's not based on my failures. It's based on what I'm going to do about my failures. Long story short, we're. We're trying to recover from 2022 still. I think a lot of the effects that we're feeling today are from what happened in 2022. I wasn't able to close quotes. I'd go to quotes. I'd let it sit for two weeks before I'd get back to them. Just mental mess. So we got To January of 23, funds were low. I got that big loan so I can make payroll, and that was the first business loan I've ever taken. So I looked at it in two ways, like, hey, cool, I'll be able to build some business credit now. But I feel like that was a mistake, too.

What do you think needs to be done to prevent the same issue when we get more team members again? What was the critical error when there was 2012? Guys? Bunch of work that, like, from a leadership perspective, needs to change.

I think I need to be more involved. The fear is that I'll experience what I experienced in 2022, where I would show up in the mornings and I would be bombarded by employees asking for advances, demanding advances, giving me ultimatums on increasing their pay. People I just hired, they'd come to me in a matter of two to three weeks. Hey, I need more money than this. And that was so stressful for me. And I didn't know how to handle all of that. So I basically ran away from our shop property. And I. I've only been back a handful of times since 2022. It's. It's been. It scarred me that much. I. I just don't want that to happen again. And I felt like by me being present, that I was causing problems. But I realized that I just. I hired all the wrong people in 2022. And right now I feel like I got a great group of guys and then I'm doing them a disservice by not being present because they're not the same people. They're not those. Those people. They're not at each other's throats trying to steal their jobs, steal the jobs of those who are crew leaders and foremans. There's a lot of backstabbing going on within the culture of the business, and it was scary. And so for me, personally, I've been afraid of experiencing the backstabbing. I've been afraid of experiencing individuals hitting me up for raises on the spot, individuals hitting me up for solving personal issues in their home life. One guy didn't have a place to sleep one night, and he told me that he needed me to get him a hotel room. And it was just like, all this pressure of just taking care of everybody and making sure everyone's happy, and I couldn't do it. I do feel like whenever I'm involved with the operations side, that I can direct traffic much better than pack and direct traffic. I'm a better people person than Pat is, I think, as well. And that's where we started having the disconnect. I think in 22, I was very. I was present. But the people I hired, they're pretty sketch folks. I mean, I was just hiring anybody who would come to work just to make sure that we could get work done. I wasn't training them. I was just hoping they knew enough. So I think the mistake was on my part, not taking my time to hire folks and finding the right people. And maybe I grew a little too fast with acquiring that business. That's what I assume, but I don't know if that was what actually happened. That's the way I feel at this point, though.

I think my big thing is, like, going into this spring rush, for example. Like, it's probably. There's probably more leads. Like, there's gonna be opportunity to grow, and I don't want to fall into, like, okay, well, we're gonna now grow. We're gonna get more employees. And the same thing is going to happen once we hit 10, 12 employees. Because when you go from four, five, six employees, like, someone, like a strong leader, like Pat, for example, can keep a hand on people enough to where things don't get out of control. But then when you start getting 10, 12 people, there's subcultures that start happening inside each crew, and then the people start going against each other. And that's when, like, strong leadership is needed to keep that from deteriorating the culture of the business. Especially if you're not hiring people that aren't all, like, super great, right? If there's going to be weaker players, that will become the default standard if there's not strong leadership. And so, like, having team meetings, for example, like, is something that's super important, right? And as much as, like, in the past, it might be like, well, when I was there, the crew asked Me for things like, well, if they don't ask you, you, then they're going to talk about it together and there's going to become some cahoots thing. Like you want them to say stuff to you and it might be hard things, they might be mad about something, they might be asking for more money, but like, you got to get them to flush that out to you because otherwise it'll brew inside their brain. And with the crew all day long. And so, like being there present for team meetings, like, even if it's a huddle every morning for five minutes or if it's twice a week, we have more of a longer 20, 25 minutes, you have to present yourself as the leader. You're in the morning to solve their problems in one given instance. And I want a huddle of five minutes where they do have literally every person has three questions for you. That is going to save you though, 30 text messages throughout the day, which is currently taking you all day long. And that causes panic and anxiety when every single moment you look at your phone, there's another problem. Oh, another problem. Another problem where if you just be there in the morning for five minutes and answer everyone's questions, they get less frustrated and then you don't have fires literally happening all day long. To my general managers, I expect one thing, be there first and be there last. Because when the guys show up and when they leave every single day, in my opinion, whoever is at the shop is the leader. Because, like, I got there this morning and like, I would, if I was just a new guy, I'd be like, Pat's the go to guy.

Yeah, yeah, right.

And if he's not the go to guy in the form of operations, like in terms of, you know, how to direct traffic better, you got to like establish, hey, here's the lines of command. Pat is going to do projects. He's a foreman. He's going to take care of these projects to completion. But he's not going to direct traffic throughout the day. That's going to be me. But the crew needs to know who to reach out to. Like right now, if they have a problem, who are they reaching out to for, say a scheduling issue. Is that going to Britney me? Okay. And then who are they reaching out to? Look, in the morning, if there's equipment.

Down, they will reach out to me for that as well.

Okay, so that, that's the part where for them it's gonna get confusing because they don't see you. They need to know exactly who to.

Contact for what gotcha okay.

It sounds like to me like they have like, this kind of pseudo leader in the morning, which is Pat. But then anything that goes wrong is you. What is going to happen. Even if the business starts to do well, they are going to start assuming you're, like, making all this money. You're not working hard, you're on a beach texting them. They're literally going to start assuming all these things. And so, you know, I think obviously down the road, open book management helps with that sort of thing. But at first it's like, let's just communicate.

Even Pat. Pat calls me. He loves to communicate. I think he just maybe leans on me a little too much sometimes.

Yep. But he's looking for leadership.

Maybe that's what it is.

If he was a business owner.

Yeah.

He'd just go out and do his own thing. He's worked.

He works hard. Yeah.

Etc.

He'd do projects.

He'll work extra hours, man. He comes in on Saturdays. He's on salary, too. Like, dude is a star employee. Definitely learned a lot from those bad experiences. I learned who was committed to this business. People like Pat. Pat was with me through all of that, and he still stuck by me even though he saw how weak I was. Not being able to get out of my truck sometimes because I physically couldn't move my body, I'd show up to a job site and then all of the dread and all of the physical sensations, my legs would go weak, my tongue would go numb, my hands are tingling, and I would. I would freeze in my truck at a job site. And Pat knew what was going on, and he'd say, we got it, boss. And he'd go out there and he'd make it happen. Like, people like Pat. Watching that makes me go, I am so lucky to have people like him.

So he just wants a leader. And because you haven't been present, he's reaching out because he's looking for that leadership. And so he's a great number two. And he's very cognizant of the fact that he's not a number one, which is exactly what you want.

He doesn't want to be a number one.

He said he's like, I'm not a business owner. I don't want to own my business. I just want to work for these guys.

He does. Yeah.

And so let's.

And he's super committed and incredibly dependable. Like, you don't have to. You never have to worry about Pat.

So the thing that you want to give him is a Little more time and a little bit more attention as a leader.

Right?

Because he's not seeking like if he was just looking for a job, he'd have another one. If he was looking for a business, he'd go start his own. He's looking for a leader. And the fact that he only wants to work for you or your dad says he's looking for a certain type of leadership because he needs the leadership that one little five minute huddle isn't going to solve. And then sometimes he's going to ask you questions and you're like, I trust you. Do whatever you think is best. You don't have to solve every problem. And it is human nature to go to the source of the answer that is simplest. So if you become the simplest form of getting an answer, he will keep coming to you. If you empower him to make the decision and you back up even if it's incorrect and the outcome isn't exactly what you want, he'll be more confident in making decisions and you backing him up instead of you being the crutch for everything that he has a question about.

Hey, what's up, man?

Hey, Brandon, real quick.

Hey, what's up?

I was taking my drip line, everything working fine. But when I come over here to the box, she had it unplugged. So I plugged it in and put it on manual watering and found a zone and ran it. But am I supposed to cut it back off? We don't plug it, leave it on auto.

They'll still be on the time she had it preset to. If you just turn it to auto, you'll be fine.

So plug it in, cut it on auto and I'm good to go.

That's right, you're good to go. To empower Pat, I really need to be the leader he's looking for is what I've learned. And I think that is the correct approach is things like showing up in the mornings when he's there, being there in the afternoons when he's there, meeting with him personally off to the side because he's my right hand guy. So I need to spend more time with him to answer any questions he has about future projects coming up and develop. I think there's a level of trust that's still yet to be developed between me and Pat that I didn't think I needed, but I'm realizing I do, which is why he keeps calling me. Because he's unsure of these jobs, he's unsure of the game plan and who makes the game plans. Right now it's me. So I've gotta come up with a way to communicate better and to invest more into Pat than what I'm doing right now.

Brandon is super fortunate to have Pat as part of his management team to be able to run the operations. It's super important as you grow a business, especially past $800,000 in annual revenue, that you empower your managers to be able to help run the business. It'll take stress off you as the owner and it will allow them, if they're an A player, truly thrive and grow with the business.

I do believe you should open up the books.

How do you do that? Like as far as. Is there like a. You mean just kind of post it up?

It's a little come to Jesus moment. When, at, at a team meeting.

Oh, tell them how much debt we have and everything. Oh, okay. So just tell them State of the union kind of 100%.

Especially with your current team, you have a lot of confidence in them. I think you can get 15 to 20% more output from them simply by opening up the books.

By opening up the books. I'm glad it's, it feels like a relief because I'm actually going to take the pressure off of myself by showing my guys that I'm not just this filthy rich business owner raking in all of these profits while you guys are making your, your money out here AS employees, as W2 employees. I think, I think Mike just brought up a good point that this is just going to really help everybody get on the same page and to want to grind and work harder. Am I a little bit embarrassed about it? Definitely. Because at the end of the day, I'm the leader and I let this happen.

And I know that's scary and it's frightening to share the numbers with the team.

I'll do it.

When you're struggling, the downside most people are afraid of sharing their numbers is, well, what if they get nervous? Like, whoa, there's hardly money in the bank. Like, and we're in a whole bunch of debt and all the rest of it. Like you're have the printed P. Ls and the balance sheet. They're not going to understand that. So you're like, okay guys, here's the balance sheet. Here's the long and short of it. We have 30 grand in credit card debt, 50 grand in loans, another hundred plus grand in equipment and trucks. There's our debt. We have five grand in the bank right now. Here was our profit and loss statement. Guess what also does not mean much. To the them, but they can look at it like, why did we spend X amount on trucks? Why do we spend that much on fuel insurance? And now you get to start explaining these things to them. And after opening up the books, they start to realize that things like crash trucks aren't going to be good for the business. So now it's like, oh, I'm going to come an extra couple minutes early and clean up the trucks, Because I understand just how bad this is for.

The business, Especially when the business is struggling. Opening up the books and showing the team the numbers absolutely empowers them to take control of their job and actually make an impact on the business. And if you're struggling, it's kind of like rallying the troops. And then like, let's be the underdog and let's all come together and actually turn this business around.

The question is, do you want to stay at six people and we just make it really profitable and we raise prices, or are you trying to grow the business?

I think I'm always trying to grow the business. And I think maybe that's where I get in trouble is because I don't think I know how to grow.

Okay, well then why don't we take a year, year and a half and make what's currently we got profitable and instead of trying to grow, because, like, I think that based upon the fact that you took a bunch of new customers for free, basically, which, the fact that they're free usually is a pretty good sign that, like, they're not the ones you should have.

They were terrible.

But, like, that is usually brought about because you're trying to grow, grow, grow. And like, that is the motive, I think we need to switch it to, we are making this thing profitable. And instead of next year trying to go to a million dollars and get a bunch of employees, we're going to try to do 700,000, be extremely profitable on it.

I love that.

And so that comes in the form of, okay, how many leads do we, like, are we bombarded with leads during spring rush?

Yes.

Is on the maintenance side and the project side.

Correct. Okay.

And so then the question is, okay, during the slower season, this time of year, is most of your revenue coming from those recurring customers that like, keep project, like mowing or stuff throughout the winter?

Yes.

Okay. Because that's my concern. Like, when I look at the profit and loss statement, you're losing money during your. Your offseason.

Yes.

So I would say during spring rush, let's just focus on maintenance, new customers. Okay. So that way we don't have to turn off the leads or, like, ignore them or not get back to them for two weeks. And so I would govern a certain time, like, for example, April, May. We're not going to put more than X amount of budget hours per week of projects. Or maybe, like, we're going to keep Pat and one person busy, busy on projects, but we're not going to be, like, pounding estimates out for projects and trying to get more in there, because we know those are going to dry up. So what we'll do is during April and May, we're going to focus on new mowing customers. We know there's initial mows where they haven't mowed their grass in three weeks and now it's completely overgrown. But then we can. We can really get as many of these recurring customers as possible and then push out the projects for July, August and schedule them out. You'll still go out and do the estimates, but you're not going to try to get them on the schedule next week. I think that the current crew can do 800,000 in revenue and have a 20% profit margin.

Wow, that's amazing.

And so instead of trying to throttle everything towards, like, let's grow, grow, grow. We already know growing employees is going to stress you. Right. Instead of trying to like, oh, we got to have better leadership, I'm going to change the way I do that. I'm going to fix myself. Let's just take what we currently got and make it really profitable.

I love that.

Like, if we say, okay, 20, 24, we're just focusing on profit. We're gonna have X amount of recurring customers. And once we hit this number of customers, we're gonna raise prices on everybody.

Okay.

And you gotta figure out, okay, so we. Let's say we have three trucks. Do we have three trucks for recurring?

No. Two.

Okay, so two. If there's two people in every single truck, we can do X amount of jobs.

Okay.

We're gonna grow to that in spring rush. And when we hit that number, we are gonna raise prices on every single customer. Customer. Even if they were literally last week, they just started their first mill.

Really? Yes. Okay.

We're gonna raise price because again, price increases should be determined by your capacity, not by the time of the year, whether or not it's sunny, nothing. It's like if we hit 140, whatever it is, 170 customers. We're raising prices because anything above that, we know we're gonna be working our guys overtime. We know we're gonna be struggling for the two trucks that if one of them goes down, we're in a really bad spot. We're gonna put pressure and we're gonna have to hire more people. So you hit capacity, you raise prices, you hit capacity again, which I think we can do twice this year.

Really? Again, Raise prices twice this year?

There's no reason not to because don't think about it.

I personally love the sound of that. I'm just like, I don't know how to do it. I felt bad for doing it once in three years.

Yeah, that God forbid we make money in a business.

When we raise our prices, we're gonna probably lose a couple of accounts. That's okay. Which I drives me nuts personally, losing accounts. I hate losing accounts. But I guess that's just part of the business. And so we're going to be okay with that. We're going to accept that. That's a personal goal for me is to just accept it. When somebody doesn't want May Landscaping. I hate it whenever someone goes, I don't want you anymore. That feels like it hurts.

I also see people that are committed. I see an owner that actually cares. And so when I see that there is. We're at 40% below capacity. All your profit is sitting in the extra. Those extra 40 customers. So when you think about your capacity in terms of maintenance or projects, anything below capacity, the difference between where you're at now and your capacity is where all the profit sits. Because what you're telling me is that you could literally add 1512 to 15,000amonth in revenue without adding any more trucks to your fleet, without hiring any more people. And so that's why raising prices is not dictated about how. When we last raised is a question of am I at capacity? Great. I have two options. Do I want to make more money or do I want to grow the business? If I want to make more money, I'm going to raise prices. If I want to grow the business, I'm going to go increase capacity by buying more trucks and hiring more people. Is in part like, I'll take this from my perspective, like, as being raised in a ministry home. It's like sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice for everybody else and feeling bad to ever take something for yourself. The fact is, right now we're over $100,000 in debt. We're not making enough profit. There's not enough cash or stress out of our mind. And we're not creating opportunities for our guys because we can't afford to.

No, we can't.

And so fixing that is not selfish thinking that everything we must sacrifice for is a problem with, like, our psyche. And I say our because I have the same thing. Everything must be hard. Everything must be sacrificial for others. Everything must be giving. And eventually what happened a year and a half ago happens. You run out of steam. You have nothing to give. And what we need to do is build the business in a way where you can give back. Because I think the ministry part and that passion is still there. It's just we don't have any resources to actually deploy towards it.

Money is a tool that allows you to get so much more accomplished, and it simply magnifies whatever you're trying to do, whether you're trying to give back to the community, create more jobs, give back to a charitable contribution, whatever you're trying to do, you can do more of it with money. So instead of trying to hide from it, just embrace the fact that we're in business to make more money. It might not be your grand vision of what you want from life, but I promise you, making more money will allow that vision to come to pass.

I would say all of this has to be done and can only be done, though, if you're confident in yourself. And I think that's the blow that happens when in the past, you have no record to look back at and say, I have executed and I have performed well and I have made this business profitable, and there's no pride in what you've built. It can be difficult to be like, I'm going to go home a leader. I'm going to start communicating with my team. I'm going to raise prices on customers I know, like, and I've been with them for years, that confidence needs to be reinstilled. But winning begets winning. And, like, we need to focus on the small wins because I need, within the next four to six weeks, you have the confidence to be raising prices on people.

I do feel like a little bit more hope now that someone has looked into my situation. And there's, you know, I feel like we're totally just laying everything out on the table here. And so this has meant a lot to me. If you're like me, you're probably embarrassed. You're probably. You probably might have little to no hope that turnaround is even possible for your business. And I thought that up until today, and I didn't think that I would have a good conversation with Mike today. I truthfully felt like I was wasting his time. He's here because he knows he can help. And I believe he can help. And I would encourage anybody who is having doubts about the future of your business or you have confidence in yourself as a leader to invite Mike to come see you, because I truthfully feel like he wants to help you. And when you got somebody like that in your corner, I think that that can help build your confidence, and it can actually give you hope like it's given me.