The Confession Booth with Mike Andes!

This time of year is when I see a lot of home service business owners burn out. It's the middle of the year, you finished spring rush, you've grown a lot, or maybe you haven't grown at all, and you're just burnt out. And I want to talk about burnout and what you can do to prevent it, and hopefully, if you're in the middle of burnout, get through it. It is not a function of you being perfect. You will have moments in your entrepreneurial journey where you want to quit and where psychologically you'll feel tapped out. If you notice a lot of the people that call into the confession booth or I do turnaround shows for that are struggling, a lot of times it is once you hit that $800,000, $900,000, $1 million in annual revenue where you start to feel the psychological stress building up and burnout is nearly inevitable for the vast majority of people. This is why less than 10% of home service businesses will build a million-dollar business, is because the amount of psychological stress you'll have to go through and not quit in the meantime in order to get there. And so the reason that so many people, 99% of people, are not going to build the business that you are trying to achieve, like, I wanna build this size of business and it's gotta make this much in profit and it's gonna, in order to get there, you will have to Overcome what 99% of people are not able to. And so, psychological stress is a feature and not a bug of a bigger business. We talk about the 3 different stages of stress as you grow your business. First is physical stress. You're out in the field getting the work done. Second is financial stress because now you hire people and your gross margins start to sink because you have labor costs and wages and more insurance and more trucks and more equipment and shop space and all the expenses. And then the third part of stress as you begin to grow the business becomes psychological. And the volume and intensity of the problems that you are going to face only increase the bigger the business gets. It shifts from an occasional once a month bad online review to happening where every single week you're letting someone down because you got 20, 30, 40, 50 people out on the road every single day working for your, for your customers. It goes from a bad review to a lawsuit. And then from a lawsuit to someone threatening you, a partner or an employee. And then it starts to trickle into your personal life because you're so stressed out of your mind that when you go home, it starts to affect your wife, your family, your kids, and even your physical life. You start all of a sudden overeating. The weekend you're lethargic, you don't feel productive, then you start to drink. These are all habits that start to get picked up as a result of this thing that we call burnout. Burnout. And so I want to first address the fact that it is a feature and not a bug. The psychological stress you're feeling of a bigger business happens as you grow because now you feel less in control of every problem in the business. In the past, if there was a complaint from a customer, you go out and fix it. In the past, if there was a problem with a flat tire, you go out and fix it. And when you were that person out in the field, the laborer doing the work, you only dreamed of one day someone else being able to solve those problems. But then once you get there, you realize that you feel this sense of loss of power because you are no longer the one that solves the problem and you're relying on other people. And inevitably, because they're human, they will at some point let you down. And so during times of burnout, you— a lot of times you feel like everything is bad. It feels like everyone's against you. You can feel the cortisol literally pumping through your veins. It's hard to sleep. You get anxious. Little bumps that usually you just like no problem get over suddenly feel like a huge deal. And your heart is racing, you start to be short with your family, your spouse, you blow up at things, you damage relationships, and this is all many times a downstream effect of this label that we have called burnout. So I wanna give you a couple things that have helped me get through these moments. It is not a function of never having them again. It's a function of how do I deal with them when they will inevitably come, because with growth of your business, you will add new skills, new people, and new customers. And with all three of those, I will likely come to a place where I am letting people down, I am letting customers down, I don't have enough money, and there'll be times of stress in the business. With growth, stress is just a necessary byproduct. And stress can obviously be a bad thing. It can cause people to want to quit. It can cause people to do dumb stuff. It can cause people to blow up at employees or at family members and do permanent damage during a time that is otherwise a short-term problem. And so what I encourage you to do when you're burning out is put a lock and key on long-term decision-making. Because very rarely will you think clearly during a season of time when you're burnt out. This means making decisions around relationships, decisions around long-term business decisions. Be very careful how you conduct yourself as a leader in front of your team, 'cause what you say might be a one-off statement, but it could damage the entire organization if said incorrectly, if you say it at the wrong time. If you say it with anger. These are things that happen when we're burnt out but have a long-term side effect. And it will absolutely keep your business small if you cannot manage your emotions during these times. And I understand that it's very difficult. And it's not that you will ever be immune from burnout. It is you will have to deal with new levels and types of stress as the business grows. And these things have helped me. The first one, is diet. Now, before you're like, well, you're gonna— certain type of diet. No, I just want you to track everything that goes in your mouth. Because if you cannot control this motion— because none of you are being force-fed, none of us are being force-fed— and so if you cannot take control of this basic thing, you will feel out of control in many other aspects of life. And so, this is something that I have locked in 100% of my schedule because it's, I wanna take it off the table. But if you can, the whole sense of burnout is that you feel out of control. You feel like circumstances, people, customers, employees, family, competition, the market, you feel like everyone's against you and you're out of control and that causes anxiety. And so, the only way to be able to One of the ways to be able to combat that is to get in control of the things that are controllable in the moment. 'Cause in the moment, it doesn't feel like anything is in control when you're in burnout. And you feel frazzled and completely stressed out of your mind. But what you can do is just track whatever you're eating. I don't care if you're on carnivore, paleo, keto, Mediterranean, I don't care. I just want you to track it. I don't care if that means just documenting your notes app or getting an actual app like MacroFactor or one of the other hundred ways of tracking your calories. Just track it. It's all I ask. Second thing I want you to be able to take control of is your body. This comes in the form of working out. And again, I don't really care what type of workout you're gonna do. I just want you to sweat and I want you to lift something really heavy. And so you can sweat in a matter of 10 minutes doing burpees or jumping jacks or squats, like air squats or push-ups. When it comes to lifting heavy things, I just want you to do it. I don't care if it is a shoulder press, a bench press, if it is a squat, if it is weighted lunges. I don't care. Just lift something really heavy. It helps shock your nervous system and it gets you back in control of something. You have control of your body. And being able to demonstrate this gives you confidence as you feel like you are out of control, like your life, your business, your finances are out of control. It allows you to have some structure that you can control, which is I can track what I eat, I can control what goes into my mouth, and I can control the fact that for 30 minutes I am going to exercise. Dan Martell says, "Tame the body, tame the mind." In other words, if I can tame my body, and I can control it, and tell it to do certain things, it tends to allow my mind to relax, and prove to myself that I can take control of certain elements of my life, including lifting heavy things, doing hard things, and then hopefully increasing the threshold that I'm able to endure of pain when it comes to the stress in the business. Again, I don't really care what exercises you do. I just want you to do it for 30 days, 30 minutes per day. The third thing I want you to do, and that is little things. What I mean by that is recognizing that not everything in your life is bad. And this is very hard to do when it does feel like everything is crumbling around you. Whether it be a relationship or the business or an employee or a partnership or customers or a service or equipment's going down. But you gotta realize that not everything is bad. And there, there are elements of your life that things are going well. And so if you are going through a time of burnout, there are small things that can still be considered huge blessings in your life. You are holding an iPhone. You are watching this right now on a device. That the vast majority of the people in the world can't afford. You slept in a bed last night. You got in the shower, and when you turned on the water, it was clean water. There wasn't cockroaches coming out of the bottom of the sewage. The fact that last night while you were sleeping, your laptop was being charged. You have power. There are little things that you can be thankful for, and especially once you get out of like the first 10 or 15 that pop in your mind, it actually gets really difficult. But forcing yourself, forcing yourself to realize there are little things in your life that are positive, and then intentionally finding those things throughout your day. Like being thankful for, oh man, that clock is awesome, I love that clock. Man, it is so awesome, I have the oscillating fan. You start to train your mind to look for the positive, and here's the thing, it's not going to be easy at the beginning, 'cause everything right now feels like it's out against you. The vendor, the dealer, the employee, the customer, everyone's out to get you. And so the only way to retrain your mind into back— back into thinking more positive thoughts is to force it to start finding and identifying small things that are positive. And it's really small stuff. Like, man, I am thankful that I have the legs to be able to walk and get this job done today. I am thankful that I can hear right now. And despite me not wearing ear protection all throughout the first few years of my growing my business, I can hear just fine. I'm thankful for that. And then finding those little things that are usually just lost in the chaos and the monotony of the day, but finding those small wins and those small things that are going well to hopefully retrain the brain into finding those things. And then, because here's the thing, when you're stressed out, when you're burnt out, your brain is trained to find the stress. And then attack it. But you can't. We are not built to stay in a state of flight or fight 24/7. And this is why you feel that anxious, can't sleep, that just like that tension inside is you're not built for that. Most of the time back in the day, that served us well, which is I'm sleeping underneath a tree and there's a bear. The first thing is cortisol and like the shot of adrenaline going through my veins so I can jump up and run after the— after the bear, the threat, the stress. If that feels like it's happening every hour of the day, eventually that's when you burn out. It's the, what is a useful mechanism for us to deal with it, which is stressor, fight, go after it. But when that's constantly every single day, and this is the reason most people give up and why most people should not be entrepreneurs, is because it is not a normal function to every single day have problem after problem, problem after problem. Some people can endure that for a month or a few months or a year or two, but when it happens for 5 years, 10 years and you're growing the business and there's more stress, more problems, higher intensity, bigger mistakes, bigger lawsuits, massive errors that cost you thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars. We're not really built for that. We're built for short-term stressors that we go attack. But when that's constantly happening, that's what leads to burnout. And so, these are 3 things that I have done to ensure that I can get through a period of burnout. It still happens to me. There are still times I do not want to get out of bed. Still times I do not want to do the work that's in front of me. The times I do not want to look at my phone because I know it's blowing up with problems. Times that people are saying things and doing things that make me mad, but I can't say anything about it because I've got to control myself. And in those moments, you will feel burnt out. I will feel burnt out. These are 3 things that are very small that help me get through those moments, and that is tracking what I'm eating. Making sure I can control the 2 feet between this table and my mouth. Controlling my body, working out, taming the body so I can tame the mind. You know, do it for at least 30 minutes every single day. He's like, what? Well, you need a rest day. Look, when you're out in the field working 7 days a week, you were working out 8 to 10 hours a day. And so a lot of times when you hit a million plus and you start getting out of the field, you start losing this part. Is when you start gaining 40, 50 pounds, having unhealthy habits, and all of a sudden you realize you haven't been in the gym. And I just do it 7 days a week, so there's no negotiation as to which day is a rest day. Like, I'm just doing it every day. It's like, that's not the most healthy. You're cannibalizing your muscle. It's hypertrophy. It's not going to help you gain muscle. I just want to do it every single day, so I'm not negotiating which— is it Monday? Is it Sunday? Do I take Saturday off? Just do it every single day. And then finding the little things that despite all the chaos around you, you start training your mind to pick up on the little stuff that is going right. Because for all of us, anyone watching this, there's something good going on. There is. Like, the device in your hand is worth more than what some people make in a year. And so I had this huge privilege when I went to Africa to get a reset on what things in life were really required to be happy and satisfied. And seeing orphans and people in clinics that had nothing, their family didn't want them, their parents didn't want them. They were hurting and in pain and still being able to be happy because I got them bubbles, because I got them a soccer ball, which over there was like a dollar, 50 cents that I would spend on a soccer ball and it would keep them busy the entire day, all daylight, 12, 14 hours, the kids out in orphanage for a dollar. And for all of us that hold this in our hand, we have 1,000 of those right there. We have clean water. Very few of the people watching this listening to this went hungry this morning. Like, we gotta be thankful for these small little things and identify them because otherwise we're trained to look at the negative. 'Cause in the past that has served us well. Attack and defend. When in reality, if that's your constant mantra, you'll just constantly start fighting everything and you'll get stressed out and you'll burn out. Versus realizing that this is a feature and not a bug of entrepreneurship. But I will have to train my brain to look for positive things. Things that are going right. Things that aren't going well. And if I do that, I will probably be a better leader for my team and it will inevitably probably fix the problems that are showing up. 'Cause I'll be the better leader, a better leader for my team. They will probably start fixing problems before it even gets on my plate because I've not been the reactive person that says dumb stuff in the heat of the moment or when I do feel burnt out, I'm not going to make permanent damage to a short-term problem that's in the business. Alright, this is the confession booth. This is where you can call in. We make it completely anonymous. You don't have to share your name. You don't have to share the name of your business. But if there is something I can help with or walk you through, I am happy to do so. And I make this because it is hard enough to go through entrepreneurship alone when you feel like you can't reach out to your competition when you're going through hard stuff. And a lot of times when I hear call-in shows or Q&As, you're kind of posturing because you don't want to look bad in front of your team, your family, your friends, other people that might know you on— they're listening to the call. And so I make these videos and I do the anonymous thing so that you can share what you're actually going through and hopefully get some help. And for people that aren't calling in to realize that you're not alone, that other people also go through times of difficulty and stress and depression and burnout and mental health issues and crises and have like— other people are going through it too. And if they can get through it, you can too. So that's why I make these videos. So let's go ahead and get the first caller into the confession booth. Can you hear me okay? Welcome to the show.

Hey. Hey, Mike.

Hey, can you turn me up, Jace, a little bit? I can't hear him very well. Hello, hello, can you hear me now?

Hey Mike, yep, I hear you.

Cool. Jace, I can hardly hear you.

I don't have a— like triple.

Sorry, go ahead.

Yeah, so I want to make this pretty short. Um, I don't have a really big problem in the business. It's mainly just how I'm getting from one person, me and one person in the field in a lawn care company, to at least that second truck, and if I should do that this year versus not, or this year like profit mode versus, um, growth mode for this year.

Okay, and right now are you at capacity?

Just under, but we're at capacity every week, but I'm still fighting a little bit on projects to close for like smaller soft tape projects to close at the end of each week. But we're working at least 3 days a week, me and a guy, doing projects, doing recurring mowing 3 days a week. And then that last— we're doing 10s, so at least 3 10s, and then projects have been filling that last 10-hour day. Um, pretty consistently week by week. Um, we are hitting capacity every week, but we're not like super booked out, right?

So it really comes down to your level of confidence that you can get enough leads to fill a second truck. The most conservative route would be to fill almost your entire week with recurring revenue and/or book out the schedule with one-time jobs on that extra day for at least 3 to 4 weeks. That'd be the more conservative route before you go buy another truck and another setup, because buying that other truck and setup is not going to mean you get more work. And so I want there to be an abundance of work. In other words, either recurring, filling the schedule, or for that extra day, if you're going to keep projects, I want that 4 weeks booked out before I think about another truck.

Yeah, I've closed a couple projects this weekend. We're probably, um, probably 2 weeks out, I would say, right now. Um, which isn't too crazy. My only kind of unknown is whether or not I could find 2 good people to run, um, without— the guy I have with me could definitely be a crew leader, um, but it's just the uncertainty around getting those 2 people in. And if I'm out of the field or part-time out of the field, I'm pretty confident I can at least get enough work to fill 3 guys.

Yeah, so it comes down to also like if you are very growth, like if growing is the most important thing to you and it's not being profitable or being conservative with your finances, if you think that you getting out of the field, you could immediately sell twice as much work, then you could probably do that. You're just going to have less profit over the next several months. And so it really comes down to how much cash you have on hand and if you're willing to take the short-term L by going out, hire these people, then probably spending money on marketing and spending all of your time on sales. I'd be very cautious because a lot of times when people do that, they do one-time projects to fill the schedule, but it is certainly a function of your risk tolerance.

So as far as how to go about it, I just, I guess, market for, for 2 people bringing on, buy a truck, trailer, mower, And then just have the guy be a crew leader and then go from there, I guess.

Yeah, it sounds to me like you have a really good employee now. They can become the crew leader. And if you're going pro growth, which is like, hey, pedal to the metal, let's go. I'm going to try to fill the next 4 weeks with projects. And so just one day. So that could go very quickly and then go hire these people. But know that I really want to fill most of their schedule with recurring work. That's just this. The big cautionary tale I would say to anyone that's like, I wanna go pro-growth, great, you can fill a schedule with projects very quickly, but all of a sudden that work disappears in a few months. So be very careful of this notion that like, oh, I can fill a schedule very easy with projects. And so I would spend every dollar of the marketing budget you might deploy towards the, the growth efforts towards recurring revenue, knowing that yes, I could sell 4 projects and immediately book out a month. 'cause you only have one day a week you have to fill. But just know when you get twice as many employees or you get a second crew, you now have increased the capacity for budget hours by double, which meaning now you're gonna have to fill their entire schedule with projects. So either you jump out and do estimates, which now your profit drops way down 'cause you're not producing revenue, or you strategically go into this being like, okay, I'm actually going to hire one person and they're gonna come work Fridays and do projects. Great. That means the other 4 days, instead of 3 days a week, now 4 days a week I'm going to do mowing. So I can increase the amount of budget hours and really extend it and increase how much I'm utilizing my trucks for 5 days a week. And then now I'm over capacity. I've hit capacity again, but now it's 4 solid days of mowing and someone else comes in, works part-time with me and does projects on Friday. Now I'm in a better spot so that when I do get a second truck, I immediately know I have plenty of mowing. Plenty of recurring jobs, and if there's more jobs on the schedule and I'm booked out 4 or 5 weeks for projects, let's go. By the way, for those of you calling in, when I drop your call, don't take it personally or bad. It just, I wanna be able to move to the next call nice and quickly without a back and forth and just the niceties of like, great, awesome, great, have a great day. Like, nothing against you, I just drop the call and move on to the next person. All right, next caller coming into the confession booth. Welcome and thank you for coming on.

Hey Mike, I appreciate you taking the time to do this. It's always fun when I open up YouTube and you're doing this, so I appreciate it. Um, my question is, I'm a little bit sort of in the same boat. Last year we did about $125,000. It was me and a bunch of part-time guys last year. Um, so I switched to doing full-time only. I tried to do me and 4 full-time guys, so I tried to like step completely out of the field just focus on sales and also do all the admin, um, and then just manage the operations. And we did a lot of— not necessarily like big projects, but we did a lot of cleanups during spring, um, just like one-time revenue that now that spring rush is kind of over, we're kind of dead. And we also raised prices, um, in the last couple of weeks, and so the, the workload has dropped dramatically. And so I jumped back into the field, but I'm I'd be curious to hear your opinion. Is it, is it a good idea to like focus on trying to do a lot of sales and like build our recurring mowing up as high as possible, or like just kind of go on defense mode? How would you approach that, and what else should I be thinking about here?

Yeah, so if you have seasonal revenue, you'll have to have seasonal labor, meaning if there's going to be big swings in that demand and leads that are coming in, then you're gonna have to set the expectation when you hire people, hey, this is a 5 or 6 month full-time gig, and then it goes part-time or unguaranteed hours after that. And the alternative is you fix your lead flow by either adding other services, upselling customers, or focusing on recurring revenue that can get you through these drier times, times when there's not as much leads coming in. And so right now, I think this is, this can take a couple years to fix, by the way, And that is I'm shifting away from, hey, how can I get these one-time cleanups into like a quarterly or monthly package? And then also I am setting the expectation with my crew so you don't go out and do unprofitable work simply because you're trying to keep your crew busy.

Okay, okay. Um, as for jumping back into the field, is that what you would recommend? Our run rate right now is probably about $300,000. So we— I guess we grew a lot, it's just not what I wanted. But jumping back into the field seems like I'm moving backwards, um, but at our, our size, it seems to be the only way to have any profit whatsoever. So am I right in jumping back in, at least for the short term?

Yeah, if you have cash constraints, you'll have to, because otherwise all your profit is going to get sucked out if you're out being overhead as an estimator but there's no estimates to do. Right. And so I would also say, yes, it might seem like a step backward, but I would look at it much more as a monthly perspective because if I had to guess, you probably did $40,000, $50,000 a month in revenue early this spring. Is that correct?

Say the number one more time. I just didn't catch the number.

Did you do about $40,000 to $50,000 per month in revenue this past spring? Like your best month?

Yeah, it was probably close to $40,000.

Cool. So your best month is $40,000. Great. I give you license to be able to, quote, work on the business and be an estimator during that season. Now, you might feel like it's a backwards step with you going out in the field, but if we're only going to do $10,000 to $15,000, there's no way in the world you're going to be out doing full-time estimates or admin. And so I would look— instead of like, hey, it's a step backwards, I would say, hey, I got to figure out how to make my $10,000, $15,000 months into $40,000 and $50,000 months. Then I don't have to step back in the field. But in the short term, from a monthly perspective, you can't afford it. And that's okay. You will have this in-between time until you pass $500,000 in revenue where there will be months where you'll have to step back in the field.

Okay. And I don't want to waste a whole bunch of time. I know there's a bunch of people calling, so I'll make this last one quick. Next year, Would you suggest instead of like trying to jump out of the field and do admin, would you suggest I maybe start working on my admin system so I can delegate that instead and maybe even stay in the field next year? It's just like I have to delegate something, but it seems like this year completely kind of stepping away from operations. I was still leading it, but I wasn't really involved in it because I was doing a terrible job because I was doing sales and admin at the same time. So like, yeah, would you recommend maybe delegating admin instead or how would you do that?

Yeah, so when I'm moving, I'm moving the business forward and growing, I'm first going to delegate admin. Then I'm gonna delegate operations. And then I will delegate sales. And so in my opinion, you started delegating operations, but you were doing a lower leverage task, which is admin. And so right now I want you to actually focus on being in operations. This is what we talk about in the Copy and Paste Millionaire. At your size, which you now moved into a working GM-size business, um, where you're kind of like doing GM stuff, but you also have to be out in the field working. Like, at this size, you still got to be out in operations. The profitability of a $300,000 business hinges almost exclusively on how much the owner is out in the field performing work versus quote-unquote doing sales and admin, i.e., working on the business. And so as you grow past $300,000, I give you license to delegate admin. Because that's probably a task you can delegate out for $20 to $30 an hour. I don't want you delegating operations where you're probably billing $80 to $100 an hour. And so instead of delegating operations right now, I want you to focus on delegating admin because it's a lower leverage task and it's cheaper to replace you.

And do I do that now, or do I just go like super defense and just stress myself out for a few months? We'll do like We'll do like $25,000 to $30,000 for the next few months, most likely. $25,000 to $30,000. It's not a complete flop, but it's down.

Yeah, most of that comes down to your cash position and your personal life and how much money you need to take out of the business. So, if there's low cash or there's stress financially in the family, then I would probably be like, "Hey, you're back in the field. You're gonna manage some of the admin tasks." It's not a lot. Like, we're talking about a couple calls a day. It shouldn't be a big deal. Yes, it'll be short-term. Pain. And then in the off-season, you're going to have the time to figure out some of these systems so you can hand admin off next spring and not have the calls and the texts and the emails. And so if your short-term pain is around cash, I'd probably just— you're handling everything at $15,000, $20,000 a month in revenue, you can do that. Um, I think the next thing you know you need to delegate when you have time. The first thing we're doing is starting to systematize, record, document what we're doing on admin, because I want that fully handed off before you think about delegating operations. Does it make sense?

It does, it does. Awesome. Thank you so much, Mike. You're the best.

You got it. Thanks for calling in. Next caller is coming in. Welcome to the confession booth. Thank you for coming on.

Hey Mike, thank you very much. Uh, appreciate you doing all this. Um, I just have a question Um, I have two full-time, uh, soft-skilled guys and they do 3 days of mowing and then they do 2 days of landscaping. So we're like fully booked out for about a month of projects and then, you know, 3 days of mowing. But I'm wondering right now, I struggle a lot with finding like landscaping workers, but if it's just purely mowing, it seems like it's be easier to hire out. I'm just wondering, like, if you have any tips on that at all.

Did you start off with mowing in your business and then add landscaping?

Yeah.

So I'm going to go out on a limb and, like, how many years have you been in business?

Uh, about 3 now.

So if you concluded every employee you've ever hired for mowing, do you think it's what, like 10 or 10 or 12 people?

Probably more like 6. 6? Yeah.

Cool, and so 2 of them are still with you, right?

Yeah.

Got it. And the landscaping, how many people have you hired for landscaping? Or are they kind of doing both services right now?

They're kind of doing both, but I've noticed it's more efficient just to have them do mowing because they're not like as experienced with landscaping. So I've been hiring other people, um, I guess you could say for cash, just to help out with the landscaping jobs. Um, I guess people that are more experienced. The only thing is that doesn't seem like it's more of a long-term fix, you know what I'm saying?

Right, yeah, like systems are going to be either simplifying or standardizing what what you're doing. And if we're— if we cannot find a good labor source, yes, we might need to increase our skill as an employer and a recruiter and where we run ads and how we run the job description. The other way is being like, oh, this other thing is working. Instead of me trying to recreate the wheel, why not just double down on the part that is— I am good at doing, which is finding good laborers for, for mowing. Yeah, like, do you have the skill to do the landscaping yourself?

Yeah, I mean, I do. Um, I'm not like personally in the field anymore like I used to be. Last year I was like pretty much every day. Um, but I found two really good guys with mowing. Um, and I'm starting to find a couple more people for landscaping, but it's just harder for me to hire out for that. Um, but yeah, at the same time, we do make more money from those projects. It's just more of a headache.

Yeah, it depends on how you're trying to build the business. If you're going to be in daily operations for the foreseeable future, you can make a lot of money on projects. And if they're coming to you without any sort of advertising, it's not a bad thing, especially in the slow season, to use them as kind of money— big moneymakers. The thing is, if you cannot find the labor to do the work, you're in a bad spot. And if you aren't confident in doing the the labor, because you don't have as much skill in the landscaping side, it usually leads to like bad service, bad customer reviews, and all around very stressful experience. And so if you're trying to build a business to where it can run without you, it can run on systems, I would probably just lean into the thing which is easier for you to do right now, which is finding labor around mowing. Because that's going to be the ultimate constraint when you grow a business, is finding great laborers and home services. And if you've been able to crack the code on lawn, because there are just as many people would call in and say the exact opposite as you, which is, I can find guys to do landscaping all day long. They love doing work for 2, 3, 4 days. It crushes. We make good money, but I can't find anyone to do a recurring route for mowing. For any— like, so I have heard both sides of the story, and a lot of times it has to do with the owner. Their strength is in the part that is easy for them to find people because they're good at training them, they're good at retaining them, they know what to pay them. Their, their estimate, their budget hours on the jobs are more accurate because they have more skill in it. And so You might just be fighting an uphill battle. It's also a battle you can face if you want to fight it, and you can learn the skill of more accurate budgeting, better job descriptions, better interviewing for landscapers. And there very well might be different tiers of pay that you have to pay to get someone that's more experienced on the landscaping side. And then you have to ask yourself, is that the kind of business you want to run where you're going to have one crew for mowing, one crew for landscaping with different pay rates, different setups, etc.?

Yeah, because like I'm reading your book, uh, The Total Business Turnaround, and like you mainly focusing on like stuff under $5,000, which is kind of what we do, but occasionally we'll get bigger projects. Um, but like more stress comes with that. But it makes sense what you said. Um, I have one more question. Um, I was thinking about starting a business in California because Like right now we're in Minnesota and it's like, I, we hate doing snow removal, but we're trying to do like mowing every single day. So I want to hear just quick thoughts on that, I guess.

So I hear what you're saying. I don't think the solve is moving or is like starting a location in California. You don't need to do snow in order to fill your off season. There are other services you can offer. There's more creative ways to be able to do it. It's just not going to be as cookie cutter as, oh, like moving to a whole new climate because you're going to move to a new climate and you're going to lose the thing that you have right now, which is skill finding these laborers for mowing, the skill that you know how to do with landscaping. You're going to, you're going to be a completely different market. And so unless you have a very talented general manager that can do operations and train your team, you're now going to actually lose your competitive advantage. And I would rather just taking the thing that you're currently doing that's working decently and figure out how to keep them busy during the off-season, the winter, without snowplowing. Whether it be Christmas lights, whether it be a thousand other services you could offer during that period of time, winter services, like you will have to get creative, but I don't want you to give up your biggest market differentiator, which is that you know that market and you know to hire people in that market.

Yeah, no, that's cool. All right, well, that's, that's all I had. I really appreciate it though. Jesus is King, man.

Awesome. Thanks, brother. All right, take a couple more callers. Again, if you have a question, you can call this number right below: 361-733-3332. Also, we do have one more spot available for the Turnaround Show, so if you want me to fly out in person and help you through your business. It's completely free. So they're showing some of the clips of companies. We go out, we do the turnaround show. It's usually my wife, myself, and a videographer, and we just document everything for 4 or 5 hours with you and your team. And we do the 4L framework. We walk you through how to get— deconstrain the business and get to the next level. And if you're willing for us to come out and show it on YouTube and be able to be an example for other, other people that are also trying to work on their business, then I would love to have you on the turnaround show. You just go to MikeAndes.com/turnaround. The description— down the description, there's also a link. You can fill out a quick video. It just takes a few minutes. And we have one more spot available. So I know there's a lot of applications already there. I don't handle who gets in, who does not. That is the media team. But if you would like to apply for it, down in the description, MikeAndes.com/turnaround. Next caller coming in to the confession booth. Welcome to the show. Thank you for coming on. Hello? Hello, how can I help?

Hey Mike, it's Mike with US Plumbing. We spoke, um, we did a virtual call like a year or two ago. I got a virtual assistant, but my problem right now is, um, I'm a plumber on 29th based off San Diego. So from January to March, my average ticket was $4,184, and then since the war started My last 2 months, my average ticket is $1,854. So I dropped 56%, you know, from my last average ticket. I do 12 to 13 clients. I get around 4 to 5 leads a day. So it's— the work is coming. It just sounds just like the average consumer just doesn't have enough money to pay me right now. So my thing— I know Alex from Moldy says raise my prices, but it seems like, should I lower my prices now? Because also gas went up, material went up. So even if I kept my prices the same from 3, 4 months ago, I'm kind of in the negative. So what do you think?

What service are you providing usually with the ticket that's $4,100? What's the average service that you're doing?

So we're doing mostly remodels, undergrounds, ADUs, and/or big repair jobs that are usually 2 to 5 days. Okay, or repipes.

And so that was for $4,000. What's now happening for, let's call it, $2,000? What is now— what are the services you're now doing?

A small little repairs like, uh, water heaters. Maybe they don't want to go ahead. Instead of before, I could upsell them and be like, hey, let's re-pipe your whole house, that way you don't have the same issue. And sometimes customers are like, well, we don't have the funds right now, we'll just Just, um, repair it for right now.

Yeah, it's like anytime there's economic contraction, we are going to typically see people that you typically upgrade, remodel, make big renovations are going to switch to maintenance or repair. And the best businesses that can accommodate this make it through economic hard times. So instead of someone, for example, installing a, let's just call it $4,100 new kitchen or new bathroom, they're gonna be like, "Hey, why don't we just switch out the toilet and the sink?" And that's gonna be my $2,000 ticket because I'm just going to maintain what I currently have. I will also say I 100% believe that this is a limiting belief because anyone that has $2,000 to spend on these small, seemingly small, like, you can get a plumber to come fix something for $400 or $500. If they're spending $2,000 to $4,000, I do not believe that the war in Iran is causing this at all. I will also say, if you think this is actually happening, that there's a 56% drop in your average ticket because of a war in Iran, one of two things is true. Either A, we are listening to the news too much because I have seen other plumbers doing just fine. So like, I do believe this is mostly limiting belief. The second thing is there will always be a calamity and a reason and excuse as to why people are not buying. And one day it's a war, the next day it's because the midterm elections, the day after that because it's holiday season, the next day after that's because it's summer break, the next reason after that is because gas prices are high, the next reason after that is because, you know, now, now it's presidential elections. And then it's like, "Oh, it's New Year's." Like, there will always be a reason as to why we can sell ourselves on why customers are not buying. That is the market. And the market will require us to get creative with how to pitch into this. For example, can I actually lean to the fact that people are a little more price sensitive right now and say, "Hey, on average, we've been saving customers $2,000 and here's what we can do." We can make a business of things like, there are plenty of, multimillion-dollar plumbing companies that just do water heaters, that just do fixes. So, can I start a business or can I adjust the model of business to actually make this make sense? And then when times are good and people are doing remodels, great, I'm gonna make my $4,100. But there is absolutely a world that exists where an average ticket of $2,000 for fixes, a new water heater, and those things can also be turned into a great business, assuming that this is true. That no one's spending money because of the war and gas prices going up. There will always be a reason for fear. I don't care, like, whether it be elections or politics or economics or gas prices, there will always be a reason that someone will be afraid. There is always also someone out there willing to spend money. And so until all plumbing goes away, which is people don't need water heaters, there's no fixes required, there's no remodels, until all of that is true, you still have a business. You'll just have to pivot. You'll have to adjust to the fact that, okay, maybe the market is a little more price conscious. I'm going to have to adjust my marketing, my website, my social media. I'm gonna focus on these things that might be more top of mind to them that they can afford. And adjusting and pivoting is the name of the game when it comes to business. And adjusting the market, you cannot control the market. You're not gonna control no war in Iran or the cost of gas prices. Those things will fluctuate. The fear index, when it comes to the stock market, it'll go up and down. You can't adjust that. What you can do is take that bit of information and then say, what do I do to pivot my business strategy to ensure that I win? And in a world that there are other plumbers, let's just assume this is true, that no one's spending money on remodels. Assume that's true for a minute. You're in California, I think there's plenty of people with money. Let's assume for a moment that's not the case though. I do believe there's a world that they will go out of business, but you will pivot to being able to make sense of spending $2,000 on an average ticket and being able to crush it. Back in 2007, 2008, when the recession happened, new car sales went down by over 40%. Maintenance and repairs went down by 1%. Why? People didn't go out and spend more money on buying a new car because there was hard economic times. But the exact same time, if you were in the repair business, if you had an automotive shop, you didn't really see any decline. And so, this is why the ability to pivot, if you're selling new cars, to also have a little bit of fixing of cars. This is why a lot of times money at the dealership is made not on the lot, it's made inside the shop. Because they've realized that the more consistent revenue of maintenance and repairs is actually more lucrative and more stable than the ups and downs of the car market. 'Cause it is very much governed by how's everyone doing in the economy, interest rates, gas prices, et cetera. And so, I wanna pivot my business to be able to operate inside of the economic climate. Or the political climate, or the rules of the game, and not allow those rules to dictate whether or not I'm in business. All right, next caller. Welcome to the show, thank you for coming into the confession booth.

Hey Mike, my name's Patrick, how are you, buddy?

Good, how you doing?

Good, hey, I just started a landscaping business, probably, I think I'm on my fourth week. Um, kind of had a change in lifestyle and kind of decided I wanted to get out of the rat race. And so I did. We just, my wife and I, we just jumped into it and things have been great for us. Um, you know, I've been watching your videos for gosh, years. Um, my dream job as a child, and I told my wife when I first met her, was I want to be one of the guys that just mows the interstates. You know, city worker guys. Um, so it, it's kind of come true to, to a point. But, um, one thing I'm having, having a problem with is we're getting, we're getting jobs, we're, we're doing very well. I think on— I mean, this isn't private for me, at least I don't care. Um, so in— so we started through 3 weeks ago, let's say it was 3 weeks. So far in 3 to 4 weeks, we've made, or top line revenue is $18,800, so $18,800 bucks. And that's mainly mowing, recurring mowing. I'm in Northwest Arkansas, Fayetteville. But I have a part-time guy and I would like to step away from that labor side so I can go and fill a schedule for him. Um, but how do you do that? And like, how do you do that if you're working or you're doing the labor side of that? How do you build more, you know?

And so right now, do you have plenty of cash set aside to where you could kind of make a short-term hit on profitability and you stepping out of the field or not?

We, so yes, uh, not liquid-wise, but as far as like, you know, I've got our house paid off and we've got a credit line, right? Um, and that's like my, if everything goes bad or something happens, I, I go towards that credit line to say, hey, this is what'll help me survive for the next year, maybe longer. And that's what it's there for. I just, I want to scale fast, which I know you've talked about sometimes that's not a good thing to do is scale fast. But I'm trying to do it the correct way.

Yeah, so like the thing is, if you took your $18,000 in revenue, assuming you did all of the work, you're probably profiting between 60 to 70% profit, like take home in your pocket, which is great. As soon as you hire someone, immediately that's going to drop to probably 30 to 40% because you're not gonna have to pay them wages, right?

Right.

And there's gonna be more insurance, there's gonna be a second, etc.

Yeah.

And so he's at—

go ahead— no, $20 an hour. He's $20 an hour, and I think he's getting anywhere between 20 to 25 hours a week. Um, And that's gonna, that's gonna be more for us now because as of today we finally got 6 Dollar General contracts for the year and one HOA contract that was awarded to us. So yeah, it's just me and one guy doing all of that plus 30 recurring mowings weekly.

And did you get all these customers in the past 4 weeks?

Yes. Yeah, this is just my wife does like marketing on Facebook. And I mean, I was in the construction industry of renting and selling construction equipment for 9 years. So I had a ton of contacts within Northwest Arkansas, but also word of mouth helped me quite a bit as well.

Yeah, so basically if you were to step out of the field and focus on sales, there's going to be about 3 to 4 weeks where you will make less money. And the reason for that is because right now you're on this rocket ship. This is the number of customers you're getting. And right now you're servicing this, this much like you're like right here, you're servicing them or making it through. And in order to keep on this trajectory of getting more customers, you're like, my goodness, we're going to have to hire another employee. The problem is when you hire this other employee, what's going to happen momentarily is you're going to have all of this extra capacity. Which is you're still here, you're getting some customers. This happens slow. This could take 4 weeks, all right? And that is getting enough customers to fill the schedule with an additional employee. The challenging part is, can I sustain the next 3 to 4 weeks of lower profits? And this comes down to how much cash you have available, what's your burn rate, do you have the correct pricing to when you get more jobs, you actually make more money? Ultimately, if you're getting as many customers as you have in the past 4 weeks, it's likely that you'd be able to fill whoever you hire, your next crew, your next employee, within a matter of 3 to 4 weeks. And it's just going to be in that period of time when you step out of the field to focus on the sales aspect, you're going to have less, you're going to make less profit. And so you'll probably make about the same amount of profit once you get here, which is their schedule filled. You have both people out in the field working. Now you'll make about the same amount of profit as you do now. The reason for that is because right now you're producing revenue. This period of time, you are not producing revenue, you're overhead. Do you step outside of daily operations? And so this is the short-term holding of your breath that's required when you go out and start scaling the business. That's required to have either liquid cash available or really good pricing to be able to cash flow the business, which usually means daily or weekly billing, credit cards on file, and not having a huge amount of overdue invoices. And so assuming those things are true, I would give you the green light to go ahead and do it. If you've got like $18,000 a month in revenue, most of that being recurring, you'd probably have 50 to 100 recurring monthly customers. You— if you can do that in 3 or 4 weeks, my goodness, you're going to be just fine. I would probably take the bet that if you step out and focus on sales, you will probably double the size of the business, and that gets you to $40,000, $50,000 a month in revenue pretty quickly. And there'll be new problems when you get there in terms of hiring, training, and retention of our employees. All right. Last call here in the confession booth. Welcome to the show. Thank you for coming on. Hello?

Hello? Hey, Mike. How's it going?

Good. How can I help?

Hey, so this year we're on profit mode, and I know you say to stay in profit mode for the whole season. But we also run a Christmas light business for the off-season, which is going to be a problem because like last year we did pretty much 70,000 Christmas lights and this year we can do like 100 or 120. But I guess do we get the other crew going for that or what do you think?

So when you have another service, you actually have two different capacities. Right? And so you might be at capacity for your current crew for, I'm guessing, lawn care, landscaping. Is that right?

Mm-hmm.

And so you might be at capacity for that, but you might have excess— you might have plenty of capacity to literally increase revenue by 50% on Christmas lights without going over capacity. And you're still going to be in profit mode because you're not buying more trucks and hiring more people. So you might be at capacity for lawn care and landscaping, but having plenty of capacity for Christmas lights. Does that make sense?

Yeah, so the thing is, like, we have a 2-man crew, or like 3-man crew if I'm out there myself, but they're at max capacity. They do what they, you know, what they're scheduled to do. Now when it comes to, I mean, and then we're in Clarksville, Tennessee, so we can mow up until like after Thanksgiving. And Christmas light season can start as early as October, um, and there's other companies here that start like almost end of September. But we can't start Christmas light season because we're mowing pretty much and we're doing cleanups, aeration, seeding. So our plan was to stay in profit mode, but like I said, that's like, uh, an obstruction right now. So I don't know if we should just invest in like, um, either myself and getting another helper and just getting like another truck and starting aeration seeding early in September and then just jump into that Christmas life.

The question becomes, do you even need Christmas lights to solve your offseason? And in Tennessee, for a lot of people, they don't because you can do cleanups all the way through December.

Right. And so, but we're so busy, like we have many customers lined up and like You're busy with Christmas lights?

Christmas lights, or you're busy with—

Yeah, for Christmas lights.

Okay, but can you stay busy without Christmas lights?

Uh, yeah, yeah, we can stay busy without Christmas lights.

And so what, what is your total revenue? Like, what's your total revenue going to be this year for mowing?

So last year I was, I was just looking at our P&L, so From January 1st to May 31st, we were at $44,000, $45,000. And then this year we were at $71,000, and that's with our price increase.

Okay, for the whole year, so for all of 2026, do you think you're gonna do like— are you on pace for like $200,000 in revenue? Is that what you're thinking?

Yeah, easily. Okay. For mowing, that's just for mowing.

Okay, that's just for mowing. If you just kept doing mowing, property cleanups, et cetera, instead of doing lights, do you think you would increase that by $100 grand? Um, because my question is like, why do we need to add lights? In my opinion, the only reason to add lights is to be able to sell a service at a time when I otherwise cannot get leads. But your market sounds to me like you could just keep selling property cleanups, and other jobs and stay busy all the way through December. Otherwise, you're going to buy a second truck for basically a month and a half of the year.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, the thing is, so when we first started, we started late in the season. It was like way after spring rush. This is our fourth year and we were like, okay, what are we going to do for the offseason? And we started Christmas light season like really, really late. But now they're both like —what is it? They separated them. So holiday lighting is like its own thing and then mowing, it's its own thing. So we haven't— they're not integrated. So they both have like their own two separate businesses pretty much. But we, me and my wife, we both run the business and same with our employees.

Do you make all of your profit from Christmas lights or is it about the same as if from the lawn care? Like if you were to just not do Christmas lights and you need $100,000 extra in cleanups and focusing on that, do you make money on lawn care or all your profit in Christmas lights?

The profit is in Christmas lights, to be honest with you. Like, it keeps us alive in the January, February time.

But you make the revenue in October, November? Yes. So how is it keeping you busy in January, February?

Um, because mowing, we don't do nothing for mowing, at least for the past few years. We don't, we don't work January and we don't work February because it's either— well, we're pretty much not getting any leads and we're not selling, so we just take off those two months and then we start back up in March. And then the money that we made for holiday lighting is what we use to pay like our overhead expenses and stuff like that and keep the business running. Yeah.

So you're just going to have to make the decision. Do I either A, buy a truck for 1 or 2 months a year when I have both services required because I have this inflated amount of demand for September, October, November where I have cleanups and I have lights at the same time. I'm usually not a fan of that, especially at $200,000 in annual revenue to increase my crew size, my truck count just for a couple of months. I'm usually not a fan of that, in which case I have to decide between one or the other. Like, am I gonna do lights because it's more profitable? Great. I'm just not gonna be able to do property cleanups, meaning I'm gonna message all of my customers towards the end of September and like, hey, we got 3 weeks. If you don't get your cleanup now, it's done. Like, you— we're booked out for the next 3 months because you know you're going into Christmas light season. And it sounds to me like if that's where all your money is at because your pricing is better, then I would probably go that route, which is pull demand for cleanups out of that time if you can. In Tennessee, there's parts of it you can't because the leaves are still falling in December. So then what I'm going to say, hey, look, you either get your cleanup in September and you do it early, or you wait till January because you know that you're going to focus all of your capacity, your trucks, your crew, etc., for October, November, December on Christmas lights. And so either A, I push demand out of that time, like the lawn care, the cleanups, etc., so I can focus on the lights, or I go and increase capacity for those Really, I only need the thing for 6 to 8 extra weeks, the extra truck and employee. And I'm usually not a fan of short-term increases to capacity, especially when you could flip a coin, do lawn care or cleanups during that period of time. I would be very interested when I hear someone say that they are running two different businesses in one. I'm very interested to ask, okay, what happens if we just split these two and we didn't offer the lights? Would you all of a sudden be able to upsell all your existing customers an extra cleanup? Would you get an extra $70,000, $80,000, $100,000 the last half of the year if you just focused on it? I'm not saying that's what you should do. I just wonder if the addition of the Christmas lights is cannibalizing the other business. And so a lot of times that's why we keep stepping from business to business is because like, ah, lawn care is this problem in the off-season. Great, I add Christmas lights. Oh my word, it's way more profitable. So now what happens is lawn care gets pushed to the curb. And then there's this other service like, oh my goodness, this one works in January and February. Oh, now all of a sudden I don't focus on the Christmas lights. And you just keep hopping from service to service in expectation of solving another problem, and in doing so, you cannibalize the service that is working to some degree. All right, everyone, that's it for the confession booth. Thank you for calling in. We have one more spot available, unless it's filled within the past hour, for the Turnaround Show. MikeAndes.com/Turnaround. You can apply there for free. I'll come out in person. We'll really try to diagnose your business and get to the next level in 6 weeks, give you a plan and a strategy to do that, we have one more spot available in the entire year 2026. So feel free, if you need help and would like me to come out for free, go ahead and apply. Otherwise, appreciate you all tremendously. I hope you