INSANE! $1.2M Business but Employees Aren’t Getting Paid?!

We're so in the red this year or whatnot. But then on paper, you see, oh, they hit 1.2 million. Like, they can't be that far in the red. Well, a lot of stuff goes on behind the scenes. Like, yeah, we are today.

We're in Charlotte, North Carolina, with Connor from Augusta Lawn Care.

Fifteen trucks, a car, a dozen mowers. So much stuff is breaking all the time.

Last year, he did $1.2 million in revenue, but he lost $150,000 and went into massive debt.

We're already technically not making payrolls because me and my wife aren't getting paid new, bro. Yeah.

What you. What are you paying for this?

It's expensive. It's like 15 grand a month.

15Amonth? Yeah. Fixed expenses are over 50 grand a month. Yeah. Like, when we showed up, like, I didn't know about $15,000 a month. That changed everything. Dude, the fixed expenses are way too high.

Hey, cars are not working. I'll put it on my personal card for now.

Oh, dude, it's so bad.

Like, we have $500 today.

From a cash flow perspective, this is crazy. My name is Mike Andes. I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn Care, where we have over 170 LOC the world.

We've gotten a letter from OSHA. We've gotten a letter from the state labor board, and I'm assuming we're getting a letter from an attorney. It's bad. It's. It's grim.

You can't do that. You have to grow the 2 million, plus you're getting fired.

Today is Monday, January 27th. It is 10:48pm Mike will be here February 19th to try out, turn things around. I hope we make it till then.

As long as someone is willing to work hard, they can usually work themselves out of this.

If bills that are due, we're behind on payments. Like, at what point is it gonna click with me that it's probably a me issue, not a them issue?

Until his quality drops, customers start leaving yellow slips, fly through everyone's inefficient.

I feel like a terrible husband because I just keep telling my poor wife to hold on and believe in me. Who knows how long that'll last?

He's going through everything I went through last year, but he's to do it with his partner. And I think, actually that's the thing that's really difficult right now, is that she might be weary in the fight, which is understandable. But, like, I can only imagine having a dependent or someone that you're supposed to be leading during that time because I know I wouldn't have been great during that time. You're working 18 hours a day and you hardly have your head straight.

It feels really melodramatic to say this, but it's probably one of the lowest points I think I've experienced so far.

We had talked about previously that he needed to just focus on training general managers and he failed to do that.

We have, we have payroll on Thursday. We're still like $10,000 short.

A few of his old GMS are still with him and they're good employees. Just horrible gms. And I think I have license to say that since they self graded themselves a C and a D. I kind of feel numb.

This is kind of tired.

I haven't felt.

You're kind of like.

I shouldn't be operating a vehicle right now. It sounds really bad.

It's not good.

Dude.

This is a nice shot. Mercy. Hey, good morning. How you doing? Good to see you.

Matty.

Good morning. What's your name?

Mike.

Mike, fantastic name. Good to see you. Tommy.

What's going on? What's going on, dude?

New shop, bro.

Yeah, it's a disaster right now. So, like, don't mind that. Cause like, we just moved in Monday. Super fast story. So. Had my own lawn care business. Started watching Mike's content online. I was like, this is pretty cool. Basically was becoming a knockoff. Augusta.

I'm Kayla Hutchison. I am co owner, I guess, of the Charlotte locations with Connor. He always watched Mike's videos. He had Hutches lawn care in Toledo.

I was running my business and I had like 40 customers. And I was like, well, if you can't beat them, join them. I didn't know how long it would take to come up with $25,000 to like join Augusta.

But then he saw that there was an opportunity to be a GM for some of Mike's locations.

And applied. Got a call from Chuck, like the next day. He was the regional manager running Charlotte. He's like, hey, we're starting five new locations down here. They're actually Mike's locations.

We kind of started them throughout 2020 23. And in July of 2023, I actually started one of them myself.

I was like, sweet, I'm gonna move if I get the job done.

He applied. It all happened in like a matter of days and a weekend or two after that. We were down here looking at apartments. Moved in within the month.

He decided to take a job out here as one of the general managers for my locations. And we did $900,000 across the five locations in the first year. But then he came in and took over for the very first time as an owner and did 1.2 million.

I knew it was gonna already be really hard, like, me jumping from being a GM of one.

I knew Connor could do it. It does make me a little nervous, but I believe that Connor. Connor's a smart dude. He'll figure it out.

2024. Mike sold me five of the locations, and then here we are today.

We basically went one day from being a GM to an owner.

It was literally a weekend. Yeah, it was Sunday. I didn't even know, like, I'd be able to get something notarized on Sunday, but I'd had the papers signed by Sunday. I think that's the timeline. It was, like, three or four days. It was the craziest, easiest, fastest deal I' done in my entire life.

He started a couple locations for me throughout 2023, and then 2024 a year ago, he became an owner.

One of the big things I learned this year, because we did another business buyout, is, like, just having buyer and seller incentives, like, completely aligned. He wouldn't own the locations anymore, but, like, he's still a franchisor. He has 100% incentive for me to stay in business. So, like, it was just, like, super easy.

Now that's a huge step for anyone to go within two years, go from being an employee running 10 to 15 lawns by yourself on the side, to then being an owner. The accelerated rate of learning that he's having is why he's having all these the trouble. So, like, growth sucks cash. Growth creates chaos, but also accelerates the amount of learning that you have that is required to succeed. And that's what he's experiencing. A very accelerated rate of learning. You probably could get them rolling out the door. So you just do your thing.

Don't worry about us for a minute. What's going on, guys?

You can run the leaf back, right? Yes.

Let's help them get loaded. Nothing for a hitch pin, baby. That hitch pin comes out, we lose a trailer.

They didn't. It's the GMC keys. I think we need to put the tag on those still. They'll figure it out.

All right, folks, when you leave a trailer, you leave the hitch pin close to it. Otherwise, this pops off.

Boom.

Trailer. Not good. Not good. Where did.

There was black trash cans out here. Did you guys put them in your truck up right in front of me? I'm losing it, man.

Still waiting for someone to put A hitch pin on this thing. Safety first, folks. Safety first. Try to find one.

Can't find one. These are. These are just going to be trash cans. Yeah. Careful with all this stuff everywhere. I apologize. Don't want you backing over something.

Here, here, come. Come with me. Let me show you how this is supposed to look. See, this is how it's supposed to be done right here. Just chain it right there and then it stays there forever. Boom.

Very good.

I mean, can you guys just use loppers real quick and like cut those branches into a little bit smaller pieces and just toss them in the gmc?

So when you go to dump Connor, would you happen to know where a hitch pin is? This is the vein of my ex.

This whole shop or this the hitch pin?

Just the hitch pin.

Okay. I was gonna say this shop is.

Oh, when you move in, it's real. Oh, this one. That's right.

That's right.

Hey, now we safe. Now we safe. Boys. You have to do like a year lease in this thing or what do they require?

3? This is the rest of the office. So.

Whoa.

So there. This is like a welcome area. I have no idea. Maybe we'll just do like interviews, whatever. Or it just will become an office. I don't. These are the girls offices. My wife's here. I did not know. She snuck in. There's Kayla.

This shop is very centralized. We can all start in the same place and we're not separate anymore. I also think having the office here is a game changer. If they want to talk to us, they don't have to chat us. They can come into the office and ask us.

So that's her. And then my sister Hayley Jo just moved here to get started on the team. So she's working in there with her. And then this is Amanda's office.

I don't even have my own personal office, man.

Yeah.

Goodness.

This. I don't know. We were just putting like the printer and other things in here.

Well, there's a bunch of offices back here.

Yeah, there's. There's way too much office space.

Do they allow you to sublease or not?

Yes, we can. So technically, yeah, to do a sublease, it's like we have to pay like a fifteen hundred dollar fee or something.

Like that becomes not worth it. Because if you get say 2000 and then another 2000.

Oh yeah. I think it will help with a lot of things. I think team morale will be a big thing because if you have one crew that's had just a really crummy week, maybe they had a bunch of projects that just went sideways. Coming back and seeing other crew that maybe aren't in the bad moods may help change their moods a little bit.

We're thinking like south Charlotte office over there, North Charlotte office here. So it's like right now it's kind of. This would be like Thomas Parsa and then Cody on that side.

We've really never had everybody together. Whenever I started it was just Mooresville. Then we opened all these other locations whenever Mike started all of them at that point they all were off in their own little world. I was by myself in Mooresville, just running stuff over there.

I also think with South Park, south park was just always so far away from our northern location. So it was always separate. So I know that can be hard. Even Connor said it when he was active acting as gm. Down there you're completely separate from everyone else. Whereas this shop is very centralized. We can all start in the same place and we're not separate anymore.

It's been a crazy change. Like actually seeing all the trucks together, seeing everybody together, just. It's awesome.

We'll go, we'll go around.

What was your name?

Cody.

Cody. Good to meet you, man. Absolutely.

Cody, Thomas, this is Carlos. Jesse.

How's it going?

I'm Jesse.

Nice to meet you.

Carlos. Good to meet you. Absolutely.

So this is the Mooresville stuff on this side for the most part. Common area stuff where we take off like the leaf facts and whatever extra stuff. All of this stuff is getting hung up on the wall.

Like just basically combining all three where you're currently. We're split up.

Yeah.

It'S six. Yes. We're talking like it's three though because we kind of merged the territories. We kind of referenced them like there's three. Huntersville, Morrisville and South Park.

Must have been nice having them all here though.

It's just like finally I know what's happening. Like I can know what's happening in all locations at like one time. Like I've never in like a 24 hour period, like one day been able to see like all the teams, like.

How they all show up at the same right time, etc.

Right. It's, it's going to be a little tough for drive times. Right.

But I think pretty central compared.

It is.

It's, it's good. It's like I can believe you get.

The central to Charlotte.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Would you. What are you paying for this?

It's expensive. It's like 15 grand a month.

15Amonth?

Yeah.

$15,000 a month is crazy.

Yeah. Like, when we showed up, I didn't know about $15,000 a month. That changed everything.

That means if you do $150,000, sell 10%, just going to rent.

Oh, man.

It took off the table. The option to try to scale back and make it profitable. So I've. I've had my own location before, doing 1.6, 1.7. And we scaled it back, made it super profitable at under a mil, under a million by just raising prices and cutting people out and make it super efficient. Simple services plus debt payments. 20, plus salaries. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 is 45. Plus insurance is 50. Yeah. Fixed expenses are over 50 grand a month. You can't do that if you have an additional $15,000 a month on a shop space. You have to grow to 2 million plus. And so that's not like, oh, this is like, it's not even an option to cut this and raise prices dramatically. This is grow at all costs.

Right now. We just needed to apply, of course, because, like, it's just. It's bad. It's grim. You don't have a business if people don't get paid.

Dude, it's so bad. From a cash flow perspective, this is crazy.

You have to do 200,000amonth if we.

Can'T make a payroll. Like, we're already technically not making payrolls because me and my wife aren't getting paid. So, like, as soon as, like, the guys don't get paid, it's like, well, no business anymore because nobody comes in. So we'll talk about it later. But we had a GM that said he was doing oil changes on a truck.

Oh, I saw that. I saw it. Is that the one over there?

It's actually. It's that one right there. So that engine has a tick now, which is like sweets, like, shakes.

We're so in the red this year or whatnot. But then on paper, you see, oh, they hit 1.2 million. Like, they can't be that far in the red. Well, a lot of stuff goes on behind the scenes, like, yeah, we are. And I don't think Connor's afraid to share that. It's gonna be interesting when this does come out and people are like, oh, he wasn't kidding.

He didn't have the debt, and he didn't have $15,000 a month. He could be good, but this is like, it's too much worse, dude.

I don't even know where to start.

So looking back at 2024, I know we talked at the Beginning I said hey, look, focus just on the general managers. Where did we go wrong in 2024?

Looking back, I think I was like too reactive. Whoever called me with like a problem that day or like the lowest performing location, it was just like, like that's where my time went. We were also trying to have five general managers. Like we just continuously like tried to like put a GM in place without me having like a great like system or procedure for like training them. It was more, I think the words abdication more than delegation. It was like I just kind of threw them into it and it was just like make these run. Like you make more so run. That was terrible, terrible training. That, that was not training actually. So like of course they would like not succeed. I mean the biggest thing this year is like trying to lead leaders, manage managers, train trainers. Like it's just like you know, some people come pre built with different skills or have different jobs or life experience and so they, some people know some things and not other things. And it's like I didn't know how to, how to train a GM basically. And it was just, it was just a constant battle. Like I would just find myself back being gm, forgetting about the other locations, trying to like re stabilize a, like a collapsing location kind of.

I should even talk about this on camera or anything, but we just had in the past we had gyms that just weren't doing what we needed to be done. Like they're just sort of skimping out on stuff, not actually doing what they should be doing to get their salary. They're just sort of doing the bare minimum with that stuff. So just it definitely hurt the locations a lot. And then they weren't selling jobs and everything. So just everything came crashing down with that stuff. For us, that's why we're trying to get everything turned around and fixed up.

We had a team member leave recently and.

One of the other guys on the team was like letting me know, you know, that it's something he's heard multiple times that management's just like really under qualified. That's the reason like a couple people have left recently. And so like yeah, like you're, they're not wrong. Like I'm, I am so under qualified to like be in this position. Like I've never like I just was trying to figure it out this year I guess. I don't know.

You know, it's one, one skill to learn, you know, how to run a business. Then it's another one to how to employ people. Then it's Another skill, like, like, how do you find general managers and train leaders? And so these are just different skills that he's had to learn very, very quickly. And that's why he's having this much pain.

Started a marathon without being in shape, trying to get in shape during the marathon. So.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, they were right. And that was like a lack of like training on my, my end.

You know, that's like. That was like all what last year was. It was just like we didn't have, I didn't have good processes.

And then the acquisition, when does like is. Are you paying. What's the monthly payments on that?

Right now it's just under 10, $10,000 a month? Yeah.

Basically. There was another competitor in his local area that was in one of his markets and they work together really, really well. And this is really professional company. They mostly just do fertilization though. How many, how many came over on the acquisition with 150.

The original list we bought was like 150 or 160. I think we have like 120 remaining right now. It's kind of upsetting. We lost like 20 or so like immediately. Like they canceled between when I signed and like when we got started. That doesn't even include. There was one big commercial contract that we didn't re get this year. That one hurt though. That was like 10 or 12 grand a month. That hurts. Losing that if the business is doing, you know, 50, 60,000amonth. That's like. That was the whole margin right there, right? That was the 20%. So our first week on all the lawns, they were all like 12 to 18 inches tall. There was one lady who had a.

Buttload of leaves and the leaves fall out here.

It was bad. They lived in pretty much a jungle.

One of the neighbors is like, y'.

All brought an army here.

What's up with this?

I'm sorry. Like we were blocking up driveways.

We had a. I think I might have seen this on a video. Like there was like five trucks on the road. Yeah, let's go.

We were out there like seven o' clock trying to back it up. Like a one lane little neighborhood road. They couldn't do anything for a week. So then they went back. But they didn't go back and cut the lawn slower. So they were already like a little bit taller. Then they aerated and seeded. And that was like a month before. Yeah. And so like we had all the lawns, they were all like 12 to 18 inches tall. And I have like a whole, like a whole New team, like, nobody with experience. And so it was like, that was a nightmare. We needed good guys in South Park. I was super thankful. That was like, when we did the buyout and it was like. And Nick was always there. It's been giving me opportunities to step up and lead in ways that other jobs have not let me do. Connor, when he started up south park, it was just him. He couldn't afford to be there all the time. So me and a couple other guys were like, we actually gotta show up. And so we, like, we started leading team meetings and actually doing our stuff, even if he wasn't able to be there.

I mean, with the team. Most of the team we have right now, we've had them all winter long. Like, they ended up the spring season, spring, summer season with us. So I've just learned so many things along the way and just that's what. We try to push that onto the team so they can learn from that. Especially, like, quality efficiency.

And it was awesome because it added a camaraderie. And we're like, we just trusted each other. We got there. And like, if I was like, bro, I can't do this job on my own. I need help sometimes they would be like, hey, the job we're on right now, we'll talk to our customer, hold off on it, and we'll come help you. And it was the best. And we get five stars.

Looking back on that, do you think it was overall good? But do a learning experience? Like, how do you have in your mind?

The one thing I wouldn't do in the future, though, is, like, they kept mulch and bush trimmings for all these customers and bed maintenance. So, like, we have mowing in leaves. We have, like, no upsellability on any of these customers.

And so they basically sold him all just the mowing part. Of 150 customers, only about 120 of them stayed. What stinks is that he can't upsell the mulch, installs bush trimming on some other services because it's part of their contract.

It's really tough because, like, all our trucks say landscaping on the side.

They call you for that.

They call us for that. It's confusing to customers. And it's also just hard to be like, yeah, we can do that, but, like, we also can't. You know, that's theirs, don't we? We can't do anything with that.

So for the acquisition, it was 300,000. Still, like $2,000. Customer acquisition cost, almost.

Yeah.

Well, I kind of have a trouble with is twofold. Number one is that he's paying almost $2,000 per customer.

Customer.

That's extremely high customer acquisition cost, given the fact that he is able to produce customers for less than $100 using door hangers. Like, in my mind, it's like, why didn't we just go out into that market and do a massive door hanger strategy and not spend $300,000 doing it? Second off last year, I think it did make him take his eye off the prize of, like, just training his general managers and saying, focus on the current 450 customers he did have. And instead he went to, like, the next thing. He's ambitious and he's a hard worker, and I get that. And he. That's why he'll succeed. But it's also the thing that led, like, the shiny object last year.

That was another thing that, like, compounded and backfired on me, was like, I was trying to scale a team, go through another acquisition and add Christmas lights all at the same time. That was a terrible idea. Like, you can only do so much at a time. And that's. That was just me being dumb and ambitious.

You have 450 customers. Keep those. Don't go after 150 new ones. You lost 30 of those. And you probably lost a whole lot more of the 450 because you just took your eye off of, like, training your employees, training your general managers, keeping quality standards high.

Churn is always also ridiculously high. Like, we just. We capped at like, 450 until we did, like, the acquisition right around there. 450. 470. We were there, like, all year, but, like, we were adding Moe's all year long as well. But it was also because, like, we lost over 250 customers last year between all locations from just May till the end of the year.

And that came at a huge cost. Now he's paying a $300,000 ticket for it.

So, like, that sucked a lot of cash. And then I was like, I knew that if we could make it to now, south park would be fine and it wouldn't be sucking cash anymore. But it's like, it didn't. The other locations are now unprofitable. Where it was like Morrisville and like, the Huntersville were at least slightly profitable during that time. So they were feeding south park and that growth and acquisition. And then now south park is, like, feeding the other locations. But we're still like, zero. In the beginning, it was, like, work hard to like for me so that I could, like, say, I Could have something right or just to like prove that I could do those things. But then, you know, now it's like, yeah, there's a lot of people counting on.

So there's definitely been a change from the Conner before moving here, but not as significant of a change as I. As one may expect. Just because he's always had the, had that entrepreneurial mindset. Just when he actually started to become the entrepreneur, he's had to enact that a little bit more. And it's not just a mindset anymore. It's your life, it's your day to day.

Like we have guys that literally can't get gas right now.

So like they are incapable or they.

Don'T have a mind, like their cards don't work. Like we don't have. I think we have like $500 right now. It's like if we knew it was this bad, like a hundred percent. Shame on me for like letting us get to this point. I got really burnt out at the end of last year and that sucks. Like I would rather have physical stress and strain like all day long. The emotional justice sucks because like, you know, it won't not work. Like this will work but if it didn't like I'd be like letting 17 people down. Like I can't let that happen.

He does work long hours. At first it was a little bit hard, but then it's always reassuring when like we do finally get time to sit together. Like this is a short period of time, short period being like probably a couple years. But it's a short period of time to have a good long period of time afterwards.

Yeah. So like I know that they want to start a family and it's very difficult when you have a business that now can't pay you. And that's extremely taxing not only in the business but now. Like personally, like I've never seen someone actually so supportive as Kayla is to Connor. Connor is a big thinker. He moves really, really fast and that can be detrimental to the business sometimes. Like she has unwavering support and has thrown her full weight into like the admin side to help with that.

My dream wasn't to be in the office. My dream is to ideally be a stay at home mom when the hair happens for me. But I like that I took the opportunity to start this office because it gave me a better understanding of the business. And now that I have that understanding, I can appreciate what Connor does more.

I really enjoy working. I just like, especially like, you know, as we start, start to have Kids in the future, like I don't want, I don't want both their parents to be like not there and like working and stuff like that. It's my goal to like always make all the kids games and stuff like that. But I know I'll just be like working, working a lot and like during summers and stuff like that. It's like I figure right now it's just like this is like the work portion and then later on will come the like the life like the family portion of things.

She's extremely supportive. However, when you're wanting to start a family and there's no money and that's very stressful and they're like well can we even bring kids and be able to support them, etc. That's stressful for a mom, for a dad, for anyone.

And then now we have two other office ladies and the goal is by this May. So she'll have worked in business one year to get her out of the office, be a stay at home mom and just like take care of the household, keep me in order. Because that's like that is a full time task. And it's. Yeah.

The predicament he has is that three of his locations were stuck in the profit wilderness, which is 200,000 to 500,000 annual revenue. It wasn't, they weren't making enough to actually sustain a general manager.

The number one issue I'm seeing right now is GM efficiency. If there's work on the schedule, you assign yourself first, then you assign your team. If you have estimates you can take work off depending on like drive by or in person, half hour, hour. And it didn't happen. And so I was like okay, I'm now going to make the schedules, just follow it. And then we didn't follow it all next week. I guess I'm, I'm just on the phones. I know we have like a hundred thousand dollars plus like outstanding in estimates. Not, not collections but like just pending estimates even. Which is what I have all the guys doing right now. Like we have $500 today, we need money today. We will just call people and like close jobs. Because if you guys close jobs, the office can do 50% deposits right now. But then I can like, I can instantly transfer those funds. Just call these people. Like yes, we have other estimates on our board. But like right now these are all sent like just get yeses on these please. And then we can collect deposits on projects or get them on the schedule they should be able to do. Yeah, I mean if they can do 15 each day and you do a little bit tomorrow, just today. Do some follow up calls, get drive bys done different things like that. Sometimes I feel like I have to like do things for people or like help get things done. I don't know if I am very unclear and just give really bad direction or like I've really like sometimes I'm like holding grown men's hands. What truck are these guys taking? Is there another truck we can just take? Like they can just get going. We gotta figure out we gotta not put trailers in here so that we can pull all the mowing trucks in and leave these loaded up. Can you take part this truck here? It's okay. The glass is okay now. It's just don't like don't wash it and don't take the tape off. Where'd those. Did you give me those keys back for P8 that you moved there? Okay. They're in that pile right there. Toss your guys's keys in here. They're all numbered.

How. How are the GMs not doing what you scheduled them to do?

Like it just like it just never seemed to get done. It was just like distraction after distraction. I don't know. And so cuz they've got to be producing right revenue.

They have to be.

I know especially during like this season, right?

100 like I, I can't have a general manager just not producing revenue.

There's guys on the team that are really great and some that are better in certain areas than others. Like maintenance, sales, operations.

I mean it depends on the team member too because you need somebody that's willing to learn. Like they come in, know nothing. It's like you have to have somebody that wants to be able to learn, wants to grow with the company and everything. Like because there's been. We've had a ton of people that just don't care. They just want to come in, get their paycheck, leave and then they don't provide the quality that we want to provide to all of our clients.

That was the first week I had Thomas step in in Morrisville after we let that last GM go and somehow he had 55 BH done his first week as GM and still had a half a day Friday.

There has been like different teams that are using different trucks that are like supposed to be for other locations. But we have a few trucks down in the south park location. So they're using like hundreds of gun south parks who are just taking trucks off each other. We're using some of the Mooresville trucks.

For different Things like, it's just like one of the things I think that will be important with being at the shop is just making sure we get on the road. However, like also in the future, ideally, it's like these are your trucks, these are Huntersville's and Mooresville. So that like each team's just coming out the door independently.

It's sort of just grab and go as you please. Right now we're definitely gonna need to get that organized to where it's like Mooresville, Huntersville and South Park. Just take from that location. And it's not all just jumbled together in crazy. That's been wild. Like today it wasn't the best because we haven't like, we got all the stuff in here. We haven't had time to sharpen blades or anything. So we're there trying to sharpen blades, get the team ready, like everything and just. It was going wild this morning. Whenever you're sharpening t want to get back of it, let it feel like that.

It just all depends on the practice with the team and what they need to learn and what they're willing to learn.

That's like. Another thing is like, it shocks me how many things are broken right now as well. It's like, yeah, we didn't have like a ton of funds to fix things, but it's like we also are clearly just not taking care of things. We have a truck that was crashed. Dump trailer, dumped all its hydro fluid. We have one truck that won't start, one that isn't. The guys said there's something wrong with driving it and has a burning smell. We have one truck, the ramp rack is broken on it. The guy has hit something. I had nine vehicles and one trailer on the excel sheet of all my equipment that needed something done. It's like we're just like being way too rough on things. Fifteen trucks, a car, a dozen mowers. So much stuff is breaking all the time. That one dumped all its oil yesterday and doesn't have third or fifth gear transmissions. Shot that one leaks, oil starts really hard. There's another one over there that has the engine issues because the GM said he changed the oil and didn't. And then the car has basically no transmission. Probably just end up getting rid of those because we can't afford to fix them. But okay.

Yeah, man, just. It's the fixed expenses, dude. It's tough. As soon as you increase fixed expenses, what you do is you increase your break even point. And when you increase your fixed expenses by $15,000 a month, you probably increase your break even point by 50, $60,000 a month. And like the whole reason we have command center at Augusta is that people don't have to go spend $15,000 in rent because you have the, you have the loan payment 10 grand. You have the $15,000 on this.

Yeah, this. And tell me if I'm wrong because I mean like we just got here. Like I would try to get out of it if, if it makes sense. The thing was last year I was just like too reactive and running everywhere and it was like, oh, I have a broken open piece of equipment. I can't get it done because X, Y and Z, whatever. Like I don't have any team. I have to go do all the work but I can't hire like I don't know how to train people to train how to train people, lead people to lead. Right. And like that was what I failed at last year. And this is like this place is expensive, but it's like that's just a hedge against that.

Now that being said, he, he looked at this as like a last ditch effort to save the team because he needed to get everyone in the same building. Because he knows that last year like the, the number one thing I told him when he got the location is like the biggest skill that you'll have to conquer this year is training leaders. Like how do you lead leaders? It's a very different skill than leading team members. These are people that want more autonomy. These are people that need direction still. They still need you to know the numbers. They still need you in the weeds. You've got to show them, not just by example, but actually training them. And he knows that that was the thing that he struggled with. And I think the acquisition really took his eye off that prize in 2024. And that was spending two or three months focus on buying 150 other customers when like the current 450 that you have need general managers to run these locations efficiently. I think it's the right move to bring everyone into one house. We need to basically get at least $200,000 a month in my opinion to cover fixed expenses and run a profit and be able to get the position in a place to be able to afford the balloon payment. The question is like how do we get there is. This is a GM plus run model. The strategy he was using before at Augusta Lanca we call the working GM model model. The working GM model is between 500,000 to 800,000 in annual revenue. And our goal is to try to over the course of three years get a $200,000 in profits. The trouble is all his locations are like that 300 to 4, 450 range. They're not large enough to actually make profitable with a gm. And because he does not have the GM to run those profitably, I'm recommending that he moved to the GM plus model. That's where the business has 1.5 million or more under one roof.

I think me and maybe like, like one of the GMs, like me and Thomas could easily sustain like what we're going to do this year together. Like we would, we would work a lot but like me and one other person can do this now. If I just had somebody to help me like operationally help me fix equipment.

I think it's like you sales, Kayla as admin and then Thomas as ops. I think just getting them in one spot is going to be super helpful. Like you have do have eyes on them. The 15,000. It's just you're stacking yourself up again. Like it's so much fixed expenses, princess.

Yeah, yeah.

Hey, it's tough, dude.

This might be the guy that said you're getting gas. Hey, cars are not working.

I'll put it on my personal card for now.

Okay. All right, I'll get you cash this evening.

Bye.

Yeah, so that's One of the GMs, one of my best friends actually from college, she is buying gas for one of the trucks right now on his personal garden.

How much do they know? I know the GMs probably know a little more, but like, like, do they generally know the current state of the business?

Yeah, like we just talked about that. I'm like, I've moved all of the money from all of the accounts into the Huntersville account. And like it's still not letting the card go through. They know. I don't like try to hide or lie to the team in any way. But like we definitely haven't been quiet about the fact that there's like issues. And so like, you know, my wife and I talking about things, things like people have definitely overheard.

So I mean it is scary because you're fully vulnerable. Like opening up about that. He already does or is very open with the numbers, especially having Thomas Like Thomas 100% knows where we're at. Our GMs 100% know where we're at.

He has access, like I say all that to say he has access to like all the bank accounts, all the logins to everything. And so like when he logs into his relay app, he sees Everything. So, yeah, he know, like he knows what's going on 100%.

Try to help him out as much as I can. Anyway, like, I was here till 8 o' clock last night. We're trying to get some. Some stuff straightened up. So it didn't look as hectic whenever you guys came in here. Was still a little hectic, but I don't think it was awful for our third day in here. So we're just trying to optimize as much as we can, just keep going from there.

The crew, maybe we're not saying, like, hey, we're this far in the red. We're like struggling to do payroll this week. But, like, they know Connor's not trying to hide it. If they came and asked, he would tell them.

Well, it's definitely going to be a headache, but I hope I can help him along the way and we can just sort of figure things out as we go. I know there's a bunch of things we still need to figure out that it's not completely dialed in, but we'll definitely get there and I hope to help them achieve that.

From the team's perspective, do they look at themselves, the ones that were GMs and now are team members. Do they look at themselves as GMs still? Or have you like, hey, this is totally different ballpark. Now that we've moved in one shop, everyone's out in the field.

We haven't done any changes like that. I was gonna leave everything separate. Like, that's why, like, we're going to try to sort out like, south park rolls out of that door, Huntersville rolls out of this door, Morrisville rolls out of that door. It's like, keep track of your equipment and keep your things separate. It's a mess right now and it's hard to believe that. But yeah, that was the goal, was to just leave them separate. I was saying, like, if we needed to, like me and with the help of one person, I think we could run them all together.

What if you. So that's where my brain's going. What if you thought of this as one location and then. And as individual spots of the territory. Have enough people to. And you. And you have a great gm, you then break it off.

This has easily been the most mentally unstable. I've not mentally emotionally unstable that I've felt like mental shifts, I guess the emotional rollercoaster. It's insane. The physical side doesn't really affect me. Like, I wasn't like physically burned out at the end of last year. And emotionally Just, like, done. It was just like, things just, like, really felt numb when he started.

He started with very little funds. He knew this was gonna be very difficult because when I gave him the locations, it was a function of like, hey, you don't have a lot of capital. You're gonna have to do a lot of boots on the ground.

And he did.

He used door hangers to grow the business, but some of the locations didn't get above that profit wilderness. And he doesn't have the capital required to keep them growing and still fund the company. But if you had 200 grand right now, this is like a great, great business just to be like, hey, put the 200 grand in. Grow this to the 2.5 million this year, and then they're all in profit mode. And you can actually make, like, profit with a general manager in place. But when they're at 250, 300,000 in annual revenue, you can't make a location with a general manager make any sense usually. And so he's got it. He's got to, like, walk this fine line of making more profit but also continue to grow the business, which is difficult because I see excess capacity in each of them. But when you add it all up, you have, like, way too much as a collective. Not a much for each one, though. So, like, my thought is, okay, if we have sales, operations, admin covered at the head level, and then everyone's in the field, and then we look at all these trucks as one location, we say, okay, we don't actually need four of them. We get rid of some fixed expenses. We get some money on the balance sheet. And then as locations have 5, 600,000. Okay, I want this one in profit mode. And I have a good general manager, works with me for 612 months. I know they're super solid. Then I break it off and say, okay, this is now your side shot.

Yeah, no, we definitely, like, we have really good guys on the team. I think we just potentially have people not in positions that they should be or just are too premature is what it seems like. Especially now that we've combined everything. We don't need all of what we have anymore. It's like we need to pare back down, grow, and then refill those spots. It's like things like that become available.

You're making sure everyone's making 30 budget hours a week. There is no GMs with this. With this size at 1.5 plus, like, to make it profitable, you can't have that many GMs and people being Responsible for their own schedule and they're not doing it. They're self grading themselves as a C and a D. If they know they're doing a C or D job, why are they a gm? Same as employees. They're probably really good out in the field.

I, I agree. It was like people knew things were bad. Like we reviewed the scorecards and they're like, yeah, I knew like, you know, it wasn't great. Like they're self grading that. It's like, I wouldn't say they don't work hard. I think they just are like they.

Don'T know how to be a general manager.

Right. They're distracted and like they're giving themselves a cnn.

They know they're not like, if I told I would you tell them straight to their face you're not a great general manager? They know it. They're giving themselves a C and a D. And so instead of letting do that, let's make them a team member where they are probably an A minus or an A where they're going to go make, make profitable for the company. I would, I would. Because right now I think your team is based on what I saw this morning, confused by the GM thing because there are people that are named GMs or like they think are GMs but like they don't operate like GMs. And so I think you're going to have to strip people of titles.

That is a part that's hard for like the ego. Right. But not that they can't do.

The position that they're currently in. It's just like I need to learn how to train people and like take that time. And also we just don't necessarily need these positions now. If like that's the case, then you know, giving them a second to think about that because they also have families and whatever else.

Your time currently worried about them being good general managers is now just spent spent doing the schedule and telling them what to do. And so yes, you're going to micromanage everyone for a while because we need them to be all profitable on the field. We can't have it where like they're creating their schedule. They come at the end of the week. Okay, so how many budget hours? Like you like it's six to seven budget hours a day. Everyone's on the schedule. That's it. Even today there's currently three people in the office. But even two, let's just say there's two people in the office. There's two general managers that were also in the Office doing calls and upsells, etc. And there's Connor. Well, if you have five admin people, like five overhead people, I like that ratio be one to five, five, which is like one admin person to every five people out in the field, which in this, in this case, they should be having like a 20 to 25 person crew optimally to be profitable and efficient. Well, when you only have 10 or 15 guys on the field during the off season and you have five people in the office like that, like five people being overhead, it's very difficult to make any profit. Like, you could, you could even have it where down the road. It's like, hey, once your location gets to X amount of budget hours per week, then you kind of get more time to beat the budget. The general manager. But there's just no reason right now, like, you're doing the scheduling. Like, Thomas is doing a lot of the, the maintenance stuff. Like, what's the general manager doing?

Thomas is. Thomas runs a really efficient team. Like he'll, he'll do 40 BH in the field and all his estimates and all his stuff like that. Like, he produces the best quality work. Yeah. By far, hands down.

Right. So he's training in equipment.

Okay. Right. Okay.

You're like, I need you to replicate yourself across the system. I don't need to do scheduling. I'm going to handle all those core quote GM things you crush out in the field. You produce really, really well. I need you with someone else with you every single day and cycle through every single team member. If there's 10 people, that means every week he gets one day with them. And if they're not good, we're gonna cut them. It's not a matter of like a test. It's like, is this person trainable? Can I get them up to speed? Because we have even the next four weeks, he could hit every single person for two days. I do need the equipment. Like, I just need the equipment. And I need you to cycle through people, training them up to your standard that by spring rush, by middle of March, when things are starting to grow, everyone's dialed in. You don't have to worry about your scorecards. You don't have to worry about Bud, Billing, schedul, do all of that for you.

Spring rush is going to be crazy, especially all of us trying to get out of here. But we'll have all this stuff done in before then. I hope we can get it done before that. But there's, there's a bunch to do. But I think we've got. I think we've got a great team with us.

So when you have another Thomas, that's when you're like, oh, I'm willing to lose this person if I don't make them a general manager. I now have a location. I'll split off and give it to him.

There's one guy right now that is. He's really good. He just struggles with like the GM side of things, just due to training. And then that's like a me problem. It's like, I fear I would lose him if I just told him he was on P4B.

Right? So then you say, hey, look, six months from now, this is what I want for you. While you're here, watch Thomas and do everything he does. Thomas is an awesome gm. Like, we know that. And then you use him as their example. Watch him in the morning, watch how he interacts with his team. Watch how he hustles throughout the day. Watch him for six months. And if you can become like him, I'll have a spot for you. Because, you know, in six months you'll have these locations sizable enough to where you. Okay, now we step back and say, okay, do we break one off and give it to a gm? We know it's in profit, but we're going to raise prices again on these, these ones. And this person has exemplified the fact that they are hungry to learn. They actually track time. They understand budgeted hours. They're not giving themselves B's and Z's. Like, if you're not hitting 30 budget hours a week with as, as in a GM, you're getting fired.

No, yeah, I agree. It's like, it's just a requirement to keep the job.

Once we reach like a certain point that we're wanting to get to, we're going to try to split them off and sort of get back into our location so we don't have this crazy drive, which will suck too, because then we'll be leaving the rest of the team. But I think we'll still be all right with that.

So I think we lean on him for training because, like, that's actually a huge weakness in the team. But if you're going to be stripping out all your GMs, you need to be doing a lot of scheduling and still a lot of admin related stuff. Right? You have admin covered. You're going to focus on sales and scheduling. Essentially.

First things first is like, Talk with the GMs, get all that settled. You know, they're free to make all their own decisions. You know, so, so I have to make sure Thomas is on board with like helping me just like run the whole thing. Like it's. Of course it's going to be extremely hard for him. And then the other two GMs is just like making sure that like they're on board with like what's going on because like that is a part that's hard for like the ego. Right. But you know, giving them a second to think about that because they also have families and whatever else. They'll probably make the same amount of money on P4P, which is the nice part. But it still is like, it still will probably, probably feel like a step.

Back, you know, for the most part. Everybody should be on board. Then we'll definitely talk more to them about that. But then I'll should be good to go.

We're going to a hundred dollars an hour, by the way. Yeah.

Did you just switch that over then?

Yeah, I was really concerned about that because like with our churn, like, I know that there's like many customers that are like, we're gonna send this out and we're gonna lose a lot of people, but like, I can't not right.

Did you already send it out?

No.

Okay, so you're waiting. Do you want to wait until spring rush on that?

We were thinking about waiting to start, but like we need money today.

So like it was just, I was just gonna throw them into hardcore profit mode. We're gonna raise prices. The website forms are already raised to what the new rates are and like we're getting those already, which gives me hope that like we'll be able to still continue to gain enough customers replacing churn, different things like that, and even grow a little bit.

We had talked about in the Mike Myths mastermind we have with owners every day, and he had talked about, about doing a price increase. I said, why don't we just say, hey, these are the new prices for the upcoming season. However, you can get a 15 discount if you pay for the whole season. Well, technically the 15 discount is what they're currently paying, but for the whole year. So you'll be able to collect all that cash without actually getting a discount. The reason I don't like most people doing prepayments, he's like, hey, pay for the whole year and you get 15 or 20% off. That's your profit margin. In this case though, he's doing a price increase on top of that if they don't pay in full. And so that would allow him to get some short term replacement to Be able to get through the spring rush with some cash on hand. Because if we can hold our breath for even two months, I think that your. Your churn will be less on the price increase. Because in two months, this place gets.

I mean, growth sucks cash. We have to onboard a bunch of people, though, as well.

And, like, we have $500 today, so then it's okay. We need liquidity. Because I think, like, I think you'll get to 750 customers pretty easily this year if we just get there.

Yeah.

So there's really five things he's got to get done in the next six weeks. He can do this. I think he can turn it around. First off, we got to do the prepayments, marry with the price increase. So sending out the email to all the customers, your price is this. And then having the down sell, essentially be a discounted pay in full for the whole year, bake in the price increase into the existing prices, but have the option at a lower price to pay for the whole year. That'll get us cash up front, money in the bank. Like, the same thing happened at Bellingham. This is Bellingham shop, literally 2.0. The difference is with Bellingham Shop, I scaled it back because I didn't have the fixed expenses. You don't really have that option. Like, with the fixed fences you have. You have to go up. There's two ways to go. There is a route where you say, I'm going to go after fixed expenses, and I'm going to be ruthless. Like, and I just, like, I'm getting out of this lease, try to ask for deferment. So give me three months. I got to get through this. Could they get, like. I'm thinking about three months.

Yeah.

Like, as much as I like, I believe in you a lot, and I know that you'll grow, but we need three months of breathing room right now so that we can get to the place where we go to profit mode. The second thing is get deferment on the payments towards the acquisition just for three months. It gives us a little bit better cash flow throughout the spring rush and gives us capital to be able to continue growing. And I. I think if you raise prices now versus in two months, it's very different how the customers react to it. And you lose a third. Because we raised in Mooresville and we lost 25% of customers, and it's because we raised now and then we did the exact same Mooresville raise when we were in profit mode the year after, and we lost, like, a few customers.

That was one of the things that really hit me from. I think it was the unsold turnaround.

So first off, what I messed up on, I got stuck in growth mode. Growth creates chaos. Heard me say before, growth sucks cash. But growth also creates chaos in the business. And I got stuck in growth mode. I kept growing. We literally tripled in a matter of just 30 to 60 days.

That speech at conference was, oh, it hit home too much.

I messed up on, I moved too quickly. Every problem seemed like the end of the world. There was multiple times I went more than 48 hours without sleep multiple times. And it wasn't a matter of me working hard. This was anxiety not allowing you to sleep. This is your heart racing and feeling like no matter what you do, even if you did fall asleep, you'd never wake up rested. That's what this felt like.

I think he said one of the issues was they stayed in growth mode too long. Like they just were infinitely in growth mode. And I was like, we, I don't know what profit mode is. Like we've never been in profit mode. It's just been grow, grow, grow. Like since I've joined Augusta, like it was Huntersville scale Huntersville then, then they literally created the starter position for me to like go launch the other locations that were like not doing as well. And so, like I've just only known growth mode. And it was like last year, like two acquisitions. And so the mission is figure out what profit mode looks like.

And so then it's a matter of, okay, we have six weeks, we need short term cash. Then that's the scale part. Like, how do we actually grow with this? My concern with the growth part, because I think with having all the websites, I up all of it coming. Here is your first spring restaurant. You have your own office. Like, it's going to go really, really well in terms of sales. Can we fulfill on them and not burn through half of them within six months? Can we not burn through half the customers that join in March, April, May, by July, August, September because of bad quality, bad standards, etc.

That was a, that was a really good takeaway for us this year too. We just have to get good. Got to stop with yellow slips and losing customers. And like door hangers work so well. Well, dude, like let's just put those out more and better. We don't need anything new.

We just came in and we said, okay, everyone is getting retrained and it is, it is like brute force in the truck with them. Don't do this, do this. This is different. This is how this is going to work. The challenging part when you're trying to scale is you don't have time for that. You're trying to go do the sales, you're trying to juggle all the stuff. But like in reality, if the actual team members out in the field doing the work aren't doing it correctly, everything above it just gets affected. So you have this turn thing at the bottom where everyone's just falling out. And then admin goes crazy, you have yellow slips and it was inefficient. You're driving all over the place. Like if the work isn't getting done correctly, everything above it will get messed up. And the challenging part is like that costs money. Like to retrain people. It costs your time, which right now is really should be spent on selling to outgrow this problem.

I also just thought like I can just work my way out of this, which like we're going to. But it's going to come back to me as basically just being like, like a big location gm. I wish I could just like work my way out of this. I also wish I couldn't. I didn't have to sleep. You get like so much time back, dude.

If you have a little bit of debt and you're a smaller business, you can simply just work harder. When you have to make 150, $200,000 a month to break even because you have $15,000 per rent, you have $10,000 a month for the debt pay down. Like when you have like $25,000 in just rate over overhead costs, let alone the wages for office, etc. When you have it that high, you can't just outwork the problem because you can only produce if you're amazing. $20,000 a month in revenue doing mowing grass. If you're amazing, if you were hustling maybe 25, but not 150 to 200,000. So he can't outwork this. He'll have to improve leadership and those skills of leading his general managers or just training his team and getting a higher standard across the team so that way they don't lose customers. But you have to. He'll have to work through other people. People. Because now at this size and the scale of fixed expenses, you can't out produce it yourself. Yeah, six weeks essentially. That's like how I, I really think about it. And it is. You can get Thomas back on the training crew, you can get this shop space organized, you get rid of the trucks, you can get him back on maintenance in terms of the equipment. So it's like, not a drain on you all the time. You can get re controlling of the. The whole general manager thing. There's no general manager here. You're the general manager. You're gonna. You're gonna figure out what good looks like, like, for a larger organization at GM plus model, you know, a good GM for five, six hundred thousand dollars looks like. And that's Thomas. And yes, we could break him off, but right now, if you broke him off, you would be out here by yourself doing equipment. The third thing is restructuring the way the general managers are currently working. Instead of doing any management, just getting them back in the field, producing efficient labor, being profitable to the business, actually completing budgeted hours. And the fifth, like, the last thing is Connor's gonna have to have some hard conversations with first, the general manager to say, hey, look, you're back in the field. And two, with the team say, here's what we gotta do to turn this business around. And I'm gonna be stepping back into general manager. I'm getting my hands back on this. And that hoorah moment of, like, bringing them together, like, the underdog mentality of, like, in the locker room has gotta happen. If there's any shot in the world they're gonna turn us around.

Where do we go long term? Like, so, like, of course, the vision is sort of start breaking these back up to just operate independently with GMs, right? It's like, this is like, how do I avoid this in the future? And, like, set us up now for that. I mean, we have a lot of big goals. Like, hopefully, if we can, like, figure Charlotte out here, 10 to 12 locations around Charlotte in the next five years, and then in the next 20 years, 100 locations, we'll. We'll see. Yeah, I'd like to have. If Mike's goals are a thousand, I'd like to have, like, 10% of the locations. So, like, if a region, right. If I have a regional manager, if, like, Thomas just continues to, like, work towards becoming, let's say, north Charlotte regional manager. If a GM sticks around for five years, but he has five or six locations, he's literally replacing a new GM every year. And that's. If, like, they perfectly all line up, that's just one a year, right? Every single year, it's just like, replace one. And like, I talked to a few guys at conference, and it's like, those that understand that either our GMs are, like, have GMs or, like, it takes, like, six months to get A guy. Good. And so, like, how do we just set ourselves up for that to, like, go back to, like, the.

Just go slower.

800,000. How do we just not avoid this in, like, the future? Like, just the whole thing, like, collapsing again.

Because, like, going slower, going slower. It's 100% going slower. The reason we're in the position of what happened last year is because first off, you bit off a huge battle, and that is growing from 0 to 1.2 in one year, effectively going from employee to 1.2 million. So that's the first. First, you know, speed. Then you get an acquisition. Most people don't get an acquisition their first 20 years of business. Right. So you bite that off. And so that is fast. Like, we need to slow down. And, like, thinking in terms of, like, one location being broken off a year, which means when you get to the third and fourth one, there'll be. Guys have worked here for four years, and you have all the trust in the world built up, and they know every system in the business versus three, four months.

Oh, you're good.

Like, let's try to get you in a GM thing. And then it does take six months to get up speed. Like, if someone's worked here for three, four years and you're giving them that fifth and sixth location, it's. It's. It. There's a slam dunk. We won't get to 100 if we don't get to six or seven. So, like, in order to stay alive, sometimes you have to slow down, get your feet set back underneath you, make the businesses profitable, and then think about expansion. Think about location. 90 does us no good if we can't make number five profitable. Sometimes you just got to realize that, yes, you have massive aspirations, but, like, we won't get there if we don't just. Just take what we're currently doing and make it profitable.

Yeah, Yeah. I guess I was just asking for, like, how do we get to, like, 10 or 12 around Charlotte, like, a north and a south Charlotte territory? Like, how. Because, like, this. Like, eventually I'd want something towards the bottom half of Charlotte. Right. So that starts getting to be its own area. And then this could even shift. The shop can shift more north so that it's more central between Mooresville, Huntersville, Concord, Cornelius.

I don't think about that now. We're getting too far ahead of ourselves. This is what caused us to do the acquisition, I think, prematurely.

Yeah.

Is like, well, what about this? Like, I get. We want to do South Park. I understand that, but, like, we need to make this one thing work. And if we make this one thing work, those other ones will come down the road.

I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired financially. And so, like, if that means just like relaxing for a little bit, as in like, just not like pushing growth, growth, growth, like, that's fine. Like, I don't feel like I'm earning or deserving.

Like, it's not about deserving, Connor. Like, it's a matter of. I wouldn't not do this first off if it was a matter of I didn't think you're working your butt off. The difference between your F minus and their C minus is the effort. I knew when I sold these locations you were taking on a monolithic task that most people can't do. And I knew it'd be like the worst years of your life. And I know, like, even like with Kayla, like, I'll talk to her private league. I know it's hard personally when you.

Have like.

Like not this, but just like issues where you get to like, these, these blocks.

Like, your goals are so much bigger than these. Like, how do you, like, not just feel defeated, like, you're like, I can't get past this little thing. Like, how am I ever supposed to do anything that, like, I have hopes for?

Cuz 5 years ago you were worried about like, what, what, your car payment? You like, you laugh at the, the problems you had five years ago.

Yeah.

In five years you're like, dude, 15 grand a month.

Yeah, what?

15 trucks? Like, that's how. That's the only way to get through it. You will laugh for the problems you have today. In five years. You're doing it for five years ago.

Yeah. Like, the struggle, it's hard to see that, like, in the moment.

Oh, dude, tell me about it, bro.

Yeah, I know, you guys, it's killer.

But like, it's the only thing I'll keep. Ethereum. And like, then it's like, well, do I regret making the decisions five years ago in order to get to know, Okay, I made it through that. I will make it through this. And I will look back in five years and look at these problems like, ah, what a child. And you're gonna grow a lot. Like, you're gonna grow out of this.

I see like a lot of people.

In the world that just like, want to complain about things but not present any solutions. And I just don't want to be one of those people that's like.

You know, the world is screwing me over. It's like, well, let Me just do something about it. And every day I find out it takes more and more work than I thought.

If we can get it into a 2.1, $2.2 million business and several locations in profit mode. Looks really good now going to 2026 versus this year just gonna be brutal because you're trying to grow and make sure you're profitable enough to cover a lot of fixed expenses. Because your fixed expenses don't look so bad when you have a 2.5 to 3 million other business.

Right.

Ups and downs. Pretty much immediately after Mike left, talked with Thomas and Kayla, got them on the same page as far as what the game plan was going to be that it'd basically be him and I running things. We've. Him and I have been here till like 11. A few nights together. Yeah, it's, it's been rough. There's. There's been some times where like I just get in the zone listening to music and like, like sorting things out or working on things and like doing oil changes and like next thing I know it's like 2am and I'm like sweet. I have to be back here in like four hours. He's, he's for it. The dude's always down. Like Thomas was made to, to run a lawn care business. Like he, it. All of this stuff just makes sense to him. I, I couldn't, couldn't have a better right hand man, that's for sure. The next day we talked with the managers, you know, let them know basically they were going to be going back to being P4Pmembers. But it wasn't the goal for forever.

They both didn't want to go forward with that. So you know, we gave him a couple weeks worth of pay because I know it was like not a planned thing and they both left and, and it'll pay off for him. I mean we're going to make sure that it works for him, you know, because like he's taking on so much more. Like he is spending these late nights. So. And he'll basically be the only manager. So he's, you know, he'll get decent profit sharing and make good money this year because that's the whole goal is to, to print money this year. So he's gonna make it rain. Then we talked with the team the next Monday. No real questions there issues or anything. It's not like anything changed for anyone. If anything it was like people felt a little bit better about it.

And then. This has nothing to do with the turnaround but Monday we started mowing so we start in the first week of March and on the first day of mowing, two of our best guys got caught smoking weed, so we had to let them go. And we were already. We're already pretty short staffed, like, for going into mowing season. Like, we've lost our top guys considerably fast, like between the managers and then these guys. And it's just like, oh, come on. It's so silly. And there's like. That was. The conversation we had to have was like.

All day long. I would have loved to keep these guys, but they put everybody's. Everybody else's job, like, on the line. When you do something like that, like, when you're doing that, like in the trucks, it's like, come on. I guess that was a good teaching point for like a learning point for Thomas. And I was not. Everybody's immune. Like, you're not above it. Even though. Even though we're already like, understaffed, right? It's like we have to protect everybody else's jobs because, like, even if somebody else got into an accident with them.

Even if they didn't cause it, I.

Was like, that's the way I explained it. I was like, that's would be. That would just be wraps. Yeah, that would be. It would have been really bad for culture too. So yeah, it's a really hard choice, but I think it's the right choice as well. So.

It was really meticulous. But I think something we learned this year was raising based on the customer. It takes a lot more admin work, but actually raising just based on the job versus like a flat rate is. Is a lot more helpful. So we did. We've done flat rates in the past and I've seen a lot higher, like customers leaving after those price increases because some people are kind of like already where they needed to be. So there was a few people that didn't get increases this year. Some people got more, some people got less. But we kind of made sure that everything was pretty dialed in as far as the pricing. And so I think. I think that helped a lot, which is surprising because I know our quality wasn't always the best and we weren't always timely with things. And like, things weren't just weren't being managed totally properly. So. So it's good to know that even with all of that, like, we've still retained a decent amount. We do have 50, almost 50k in the bank today, so that feels nice. And payrolls next week, so. And we're billing weekly, so that's good. We'll probably feel like the first time have like 70 grand in the bank or more. So that's nice.

I think we've had 20 prepays. That's one of the reasons we have so much cash in the bank right now. Now is I set the limit at 30 people to prepay for the year. I think we've had 20 people prepay so far. And we're, I think we're offering that through like mid March. So we still have a few days left. I assume we'll, we'll hit 30, which would be just under 5% of our customers.

I didn't want to pull too much.

Revenue forward because like that is then bad as well or just discounting too much revenue for the year even. But definitely pulling some of this forward has helped a lot. And then selling, starting to sell things. We're starting to get rid of some of the trucks we have. Haven't got rid of any of the trucks yet. We've been able to address like a lot of the maintenance issues. We still have a lot of small equipment to work on. Their biggest concern was like, they just wanted to make sure that like this wasn't going to happen again. Right. Because like if it's a major cash flow issue, if we're doing enough revenue, that's fine, but it doesn't matter if like you're not. You have to be X amount of profitable because like that's not on the P and L, right. So like you gotta, you're only looking at that bottom line to make sure that those payments are going to continue to be made. After we talked, they just wanted to make sure that like we weren't just like going to be kicking the can down the road. Sat down with me, worked through some projections and stuff like that or like explains like a little bit more on how to correct my projections that I had. I reworked them, sent them over to them. I'm still waiting to hear back to make sure that we're all good. But I, I'm pretty sure they're going to give us two months. They're definitely good business guys. Like they want to, they're going to make sure they get their money. But. But they also know it's like they're not going to get much if it, if it just falls apart because they want the money this month. You know, I did a little bit deeper dive on that quote. It's slow is smooth and smooth is fast. So you can't really drive super fast with square tires. Liquidity capital cash is like the lubrication in business. And so there is one thing that I was thinking about, which in no way is going to change, like, what I'm doing right now. But, like, the fire that, like, urgency that I feel right now, I hope I can still have this in the future, especially when we're in a comfortable position and have a very healthy business. Because, like, I don't want to not grow aggressively, like, within limits, if that makes sense. Like, I don't want to. I don't want to get complacent because, like, we. Like, there's still so much I want to do, but that's not the goal right now. So we will. We'll fix this first, and then I'll worry about finding my fire again.