This $750K Landscape Business STALLED OUT... (Turnaround)

I chose to do this because I listened to you.

I know how you're feeling. I feel the same way.

It's hard not to be disappointed.

My name is Mike Andy. I travel around the country turning around small businesses that are struggling.

If I'm in a bean business, I want to be in a business that actually does well and makes money.

The business will eventually either collapse, fail, be bought out.

He brought that up in there, and I was like, I almost wanted to smack him in the side of the head.

They have over $90,000 worth of debt.

They have very little cash in the bank, and they can't keep employees.

And they're all leaving.

I have a strangely talented team.

This is actually kind of meaningless work to.

Talent is being underutilized and it's my fault.

And as a leader, I think that is your responsibility.

And I'm just like, I don't want to deal with this person right now. It's like, this is terrible.

You're on your own, so don't ask us for anything.

That was kind of like burning me out.

Fred can't get out of his own.

Way, and it's keeping him from building a million dollar business. This is not your passion. You do not enjoy this.

Try not to get emotional now.

If the business made a bunch of money, does that change this whole dynamic?

I don't think so, because it's not just about money for me. I'm like, so against that. Maybe that means I'm not gonna successful.

Let's see if we can turn this thing around.

How's it going, Mr. Mike Anders?

This is a cool spot. How you doing, Fred?

My name is Fred Sutherland. I own Sutherland Landscaping, and I wear many hats in the business, from being the owner and CEO to being the guy who has to sharpen lawnmower blades and janitor, you know, that's part of owning a business.

And what was your name?

Nicole.

Nicole. Good to meet you.

Yeah, my name's Nicole and I mostly do some office admin. And bookkeeping.

I brought you that. I wrote a note for you inside too.

Hey, sweet, man. Very nice. Appreciate that.

So, like, this spot? Do you know the owner of the farm or anything like that?

Well, through mutual friends, I think. I made two phone calls. And then the second phone call, the guy's like, actually, I might know.

Great spot.

So I just drove out here to take a look at it, and the farmer was actually here. It was like total disaster. I was like, hey, man, could I come here and clean it up for you and pay you money to have Operate my business. And he's like, yes, please. When can you start?

This is what you want. You want away from people that report you. Like, that's what we've always got in trouble is like, if it's too close to our target market, it's like, yeah, it's nice from a driving perspective, but then you get neighbors and they report you for the couplings and all that sort of thing.

So I only pay a thousand bucks a month to be here.

Yeah, keep that arrangement.

This was kind of like. It was in rough shape. So we, you know, did the electrical work and got it set up for us. People thought I was crazy for doing this thing. Like this turnaround thing. They're like, how's that going to help your business? Going to make you look bad and all this stuff? I think that vulnerability, actually, and admitting your weaknesses and being authentic with what's going on in your inner narrative is a strength, actually. So we have, like, two primary divisions. So like, one, you would. Guys would call them HOAs, strata. Strata maintenance up here, and then some commercial, and then we have a residential renovation side of the business.

And that's where, I guess this comes. Involved the tractor a lot.

The tractor, yeah.

Cool.

And you get this quite a bit then.

Not as much as I should. When I'm working on construction projects and this piece of equipment is operating, we're doing pretty well. But as soon as I stop doing that, for whatever reason, like if I have to give more energy to pruning on our stratas, it's that classic. Like, stuck at manager, not quite at architect. I've listened to a lot of your stuff. You're actually one of the reasons why I started my business to kind of get confidence. I get the blame, but it's like, so a lot of the. We're just classic in so many ways.

What Fred is referring to here is the roles that a business owner plays depending on the size of their business. For example, if a business owner's between zero and $200,000 in annual revenue, the main focus should be out in the field servicing the customers and doing the actual work. Between 200,000 and $800,000 in annual revenue. The role of the owner is that of a manager because you're hiring employees and you have to learn how to lead. As the business grows past $800,000 in annual revenue, the main role and responsibility of the owner is that of an architect. Because you step away from the business you have other people managing and really focus on acquisitions, systems and strategy. That's the classic business.

So 2021 was the first year, and that was 250,300. Oh, 300. So right off the rip, 300,000 year two. So 2022, that was around 500,000 then. Okay. And then last year, 2023, around 700,000. And this year kind of on track for about the same, maybe 750. Is that what we're shooting for?

This isn't quite working the way I wanted it to. Let's reevaluate. Let's make some adjustments.

So what aspects of that in your mind, like when you say it isn't working? Because, like three years in 700,000 plus business, most people would be like, I'll take it. So what aspects is the letdown?

Things kind of the first two years went according to plan, and then the third year, my dad passed away. The death of my father really, it really. It hurt, man. He passed away in a prison by himself. So in many ways, my worst fears for his life were.

It happened.

That's where the revenue stopped. You just look at P and L and you know, and I know there's a visionary, and I see grow, grow, grow and plateau. Whatever would happen right there, I can just draw it right to there.

Yep, you're right. Yeah. Because you lose. It robs energy. Right. And there's a grieving process. And there was a lot of existential things I was kind of wrestling through. In the end, there's more important things in life than a business. And I think people are more important than business. But it does take energy. And it did shift my focus. And like, he said he could see it on the profit and loss statement when it shifted. But it was. It was kind of funny because 2022, I guess the third year, I was locked in, man. Like, I had all the strategic plan.

Like, it was when you drew above 500,000.

Oh, yeah, we were gonna go for it, like. And it just like, bam. We can make all the strategic plans in the world, but sometimes life happens. You gotta just deal with it when it's there. But I thought I kind of this year, I was like, okay, this year it's gonna happen. We're going for it again. And it just didn't. Grief has, It's. It's hard to prepare for that, what it does to you emotionally and physically. And like, there's all sorts of stuff that I. I just was. I didn't really know how to deal with. So, like, we kind of hit a. It just. Emotionally you just. You get rocked by that. And it, it lingered For a while. It's. It's good to. It's good to have.

Drive and capacity and vision and.

But have.

A heart too, if that makes sense. It's gotta take a second.

Ah, you think you moved past this stuff, but you just don't.

Yeah.

You don't really move through grief. I think grief changes you forever. But that's not always in a bad way. I think I will forever be broken in a good way. And it wasn't until the fall that I was, like, back into the business again. We were going to push again, but then I was trying to grow by bidding jobs profitably, and I wasn't landing any of them. So we tried to double our maintenance division this year and failed.

Me. When I think of the crew that we had, like, last year, we should have just been, like, killing it, you know? Like, I've been in a lot of, like, different industries, like, seen a lot of, like, different companies, and just like. Yeah, not that it's all about profits. I think profit is, like the reflection of you doing the right things. It just seems like there's almost like a disconnect there, you know? Or like, it seems like something's missing or something's not quite getting correctly applied. How efficient we were and like, the workers we had, there's no reason why it shouldn't have been through the roof.

And then that kind of discouraged me. Cause I was like, can I get anybody to join me in this thing? Like, what is with this stupid industry? Like, you can't keep people around. And I'm like, I kind of. And you just kind of get into this negative cycle.

How many Google reviews do you have right now?

Only, like, 26.

Or if you had to guess, is it like five leads a month from the website? Just in general.

Oh, in general, yeah. They come in gradually.

So I'm terrible at marketing in the sense that people say, oh, you need to get more Google reviews, or you need to do this. And I'm like, why? I always have more work than I can handle. Always. So I'm like, what's the point of doing all this stuff?

Well, it's also a matter of if you have so many leads coming in, you know what you do, you raise your prices.

And that's. I didn't do that. I realized I was like, okay, I should be doing that.

I think you do a big trade off of, like, profit for guaranteed work. Work, let's say. But I just think the margins are, like, tighter. Especially if you are doing that quality work and kind of going that extra mile, I think it's just going to be like tighter margins. So when we just keep doing this stuff, I think it's just kind of like keeping us alive. But it's hard to move forward.

I'm still doing jobs now that I sold in the spring.

You're saying you're booking out six months? Sometimes, yeah.

Almost a year sometimes.

Yeah. So then you have to get lazy, like focused on scheduling. You should be able to book down to the day in six months when I'm going on the schedule. And how you do that is using budgeted hours. So you could just know, okay, If I have five full time guys and they're working 40 hours a week, I'm not going to assume that you're going to get 40 budget hours done. There's me waste, there's going to be job overages, the weather's going to get bad. I'm going to assume 30 budgeted hours or a 75% efficiency score. Three out of every four hours they work will actually be getting work done. Now I have a baseline 150 budget hours, 5 people times 30 per week is what I can accomplish. And now when I get an accepted job, I'm simply going to look at my spreadsheet like, okay, 150 this week, next week. Hey, we're booked. We're working this week. 120. That's when we'll start. We'll start you on this week.

Just so you got it all memorized.

I got it all memorized, yeah.

Is this in your book? You got like a.

It is. It is. It is.

It is in there.

Yes, it is in there.

Total business turnaround, page 108. Once you hit the budget hour capacity for labor and assets, you will set the backlog threshold. Then you can start to raise prices. Once you reach that threshold, maximize your profit without losing out on potential jobs. By raising prices. By raising prices, our hope is that some estimates get declined due to price. This will keep the backlog in check and prevent it from growing too far.

Out into the future. It's more being directionally correct. Like there's gonna be changes that happen on projects. But we account for it. We account that 25% of someone's day is either wasted or gonna be work order changes again. You operationalize this so it's like, okay, when we are booked out more than a month, we go to this price. When we're at two months, we booked out at this rate, we hit three months, we go out to this. So all of a sudden, yeah, you're still in March and you're booking out six months. But that work is now being done at a 20, 30 doll rate because.

You'Re booked out so far.

Yeah. And we have not done that.

Think about that.

That's. We have to do that. We've never had a problem finding work, but we were, we were not that. The idea that he had of like having us. Okay, at one month booked out, we're going to move our pricing to this. And after three months booked out, we're going to move our pricing to this. We never thought of that. That's a fantastic idea that I'm like, that's going to solve a lot of problems, help us be more, more profitable.

And then if someone comes like, well, no, I can't wait. I need to get in two months. Like, I can't wait six months. Fantastic. Our like emergency work. It's going to cost. You can fit you in and that margin is literally going right into your pocket.

Yeah. No, you're. That's a really smart way of doing it. Definitely was discouraged. Yeah. I just needed some perspective changes and I really appreciated talking with Mike. Like there were some, some things he said that were like gold. And I was like, man, we hadn't thought about that. The other piece that's a distraction is I like got involved in this non track club. Oh, you need a coach. Okay. Okay, coach. Oh, you need something on the board. Okay, well now I'm the president of the board. Now I'm like leading you through a strategic planning and it becomes this huge thing that just stole so much of my time in the past year. The last two years. Yeah.

So this is why I would say that happened.

It's because you lost vision of where.

You were going and so you just like, okay, maybe I'll do this, maybe I'll do this. And then all of a sudden you start going. You don't know where you're going. Like to use a biblical wandering in the wilderness is happening because it's not like we're going over here.

Yeah, you're 100% right.

Oh, even Fred might go through seasons of like where he kind of gets maybe burned out, things kind of slide and then he comes back for a hard push and like I feel like he's. Yeah, maybe there's a realization that like that's not quite sustainable.

That first year.

The reason you were so gung ho is cause you had that vision. Oh, track and field president didn't like align with that.

No, it didn't.

Right.

But you have a Benchmark to determine whether or not it does or not, versus being like, well, maybe that will kind of fulfill me a little bit. Maybe I'll do this. And, like, you're just looking for grasping at straws. And then the thing just starts to just deteriorate.

It got 100% gotten neglected. I was feeling pretty discouraged and, like, not really interested. And I'm like, do I want to do this anymore? I'm almost 42. So you're asking all these existential questions like, what are you doing with your life?

And all this stuff.

Do you have kids?

Yes, three kids. Yeah. For me, I'm actually also trying to build something that my sons could be potentially involved in. So I'd rather have, like, a really strong financial base. So that when. If one of my sons decides to kind of come into the company and help for a season, then they have something that's, you know, healthy. My work in the past, you could call it personal development, it was helping people, structuring programs and environments where people are intentionally growing. And what I found, people actually don't care about this. Most people who are in landscaping, they don't. They're not into personal development. They're not into, like, growth. I don't know. I was naive, is what I would say.

And specifically in, like, the labor industries, in part because, like, our best workers are usually the type that, like, they don't read books. They just want to work hard, make money, and then they have their personal goals that are outside of business. Right. Otherwise, if they liked reading the books and they were all go home, they'd probably be, you know, starting the business. Right.

I think whenever you have a motive that is beyond just utilizing people for growing your own personal business and you're actually interested in them as a person, in them growing, that environment of growth just gets created organically. Well, then there's the other piece. Well, like, I think when I started the business, I wasn't. I didn't know anything really about business. And so I kind of got into it, and I'm realizing, okay, I like business, but I'm like, I don't know if landscaping is actually the best business. For some reason, I just was interested in starting a business and. But I kind of just. I didn't have that as a vision for my life until later on, until I saw, with the work I was doing with the missions agency, how you could integrate business and some of the, like, the relational pieces that I also value, like, with people and helping them grow. To me, they were two different things. But I was like, actually, they're not. That was kind of the motivation that gave me, like, that. That desire to start something that had that vision of integrating personal development, professional landscape services. So part of me is like, well, if I'm going to be in business, I want to be in a business that actually does well and makes money. Right. Because I have these things that I want to work for my, like, my kids and their kids. Maybe I'm being, like, too philosophical here, but that's how my mind works.

I always say, Fred's a macro thinker and I'm. I'm the. Okay, well, how do we practically accomplish this? Or how do we make this? How do we get there? Or how do we figure out how we can do this while raising kids and treating our employees well?

And, yeah, I also don't live like we're here right now, but my mind is always in the future.

So is really the hiccup in the fact that the past year you didn't hit your metric because everything on your goals was good until last year, you're not far behind. Literally this year you're only supposed to do a million.

Yeah. Yeah.

And you're gonna do 750.

I think it's. It's more because of listening to my guys.

My name's Sam. I first started off as a landscape apprentice, but now I'm a lead hand.

My name is Cameron Gunther. I have been working Sutherland Landscaping for just. Just under two years.

My name is Tim Vandenberg. For the last year, I've been managing the maintenance division.

I think there's a few obstacles that I'm coming up against. One of them is I want to have a team of people that when they work for our company, they actually be like, I could work here for 10 years. I value that. I don't want a bunch of turnover.

Another focus of mine was sops, Standard Operating Procedures. What we should be doing, especially with such high turnover rate, it's good to have a reference for the new employees.

And I have not been able to retain key staff. Disappointment is connected to expectations, and when expectations aren't being met, it's hard not to be disappointed. The isolation of leadership can get to your head and you can get discouraged.

I would say he has a big heart for people as much as he's an entrepreneur. I would say his focus on treating employees well is. Is at the top.

In reality, I think maybe there's like, a struggle to find what's a sustainable business that captures these values but can be done in a sustainable way. Because I feel like there's a cycle of burnout. Push, push, push to make it happen. But then it just seems like that push is never allowed to let up. Otherwise, things start to kind of slide within the company.

But I think I'm actually pretty good at certain things that create a good environment for people to work.

Working.

It's the work we're doing. Because these guys, like, we work hard in our company. Like, if you don't work hard, you're not gonna. You're not gonna last. I'm really into hard work, forming people's character. I believe in it, actually. I think that we in the landscape industry, in the trades industry, we have opportunity to actually shape people as we actually celebrate doing hard things. I had a guy that I tried to hire that was. Would have been perfect. He lasted a week and quit because he realized that we actually work hard. And he was like, I don't know if I'm into that.

There's one guy that stayed on for quite a bit longer. He was just super consistent and put the work in, and, yeah, I think his body just kind of got burned out, and that's why he ended up quitting.

The first two people I hired, the one quit after a day, and then the other one quit after a week. So that was a little bit disheartening.

Now, if the business made a bunch of money, like, if tomorrow is like, oh, now your margins are really good, and you have $300,000 in profit next year, does that change this whole dynamic?

I don't think so, because this is where I'm a weird guy, man. Cause I'm like, it's not just about money for me. I have empathy for people, and I know what they do when they up and what the work they have to do. And if I have the power to do something where I can improve that in some way, a simple thing like in landscape construction, you can get in an excavator for four hours and sit there, and then you can get out and shovel. There's opportunity to care for your body more. Hey, I want to grow a business. I want to be. I want to build generational wealth for my family. 100%. There's. There's competitiveness in me. There's drivenness in me, but there's also a deep love for a moment and.

Like my kids and people in my community.

That I will not allow that part to overshadow that part, if that makes sense. Try not to get emotional. Damn it, buddy.

I feel like this is more a matter of finding Purpose, actually wanting to stay in the game.

Yeah.

Because ultimately if you lose that, the business will eventually either collapse, fail, be bought out. Some things. I think though, a lot of your fulfillment will come, come from taking your current crew that you feel very confident in and giving them the opportunity to move and like flex their skill into this other role. They're not gonna listen to books right now. They're not gonna care why. They don't see any reason as to why they should.

There's other companies, other models in the green industry where they are able to retain staff, like more construction type environments. And so I'm like, should I do that more? I've already like, I let go of a hundred thousand dollar contract that we had. I'm trying to head in that direction now.

When you head in that direction, is it because you like the work more or is it in order to grow, you feel like that's the way you need to move?

I actually hate that work. I think it's an opportunity for people to have a career, support their families, where I can pay them 40 bucks an hour, give them a company truck, all that stuff that I value. And I'm like, I think that's what I have to do.

Fred has a case of what I call the shiny service syndrome. And this disease is where we as home service business owners think that some other service or some other industry inside of home services is going to be the unlock for massive profits and just be so much easier than our current industry. When reality, all of them are hard, it's just a different type of hard. Every home service business is difficult.

It's hard to find laborers, it's hard.

To find customers, especially when the housing market goes down and a lot of our work is dependent on the weather. All of them are difficult.

It does not matter the service. And this is like what I've learned. Like, I have a software company, I have lawn care, I have media. All three of those, from my perspective, look exactly the same. Same. It's leadership, it's recruiting, it's leading team meetings, it's looking at some reports and talking to people. You're stuck in the phase though. Like getting to the part you don't enjoy and you're not good at. This is required to get to the size where you will actually probably see your most potential realized.

Yeah, I agree.

And I don't believe you need to change the service.

It's so tempting to think that starting a different business is going to alleviate the stress and pressure you're currently experiencing. And in the short Term it does because right now you're hitting up against a wall and you can't figure out a certain problem or obstacle in the business. So what a lot of times we do is instead of staying focused on that goal, we just shift to a different industry or a different business. And for a few years we are learning new things and we feel like we're making all this progress until we come right up against the same problem or issue inside the business that we can't figure out. That's why I believe regardless of what business you choose, you'll simply rise the level of skill that you have and then you won't be able to move forward unless you figure out that problem.

The $40 an hour to a person and them having a company truck happens when you have a 10 million dollar company regardless of what services you're buying.

Yeah, I understand what you're saying that.

Running a business can be pretty. It's scary and you, not a lot of people understand understand you. So when you, when you're standing and Mike's listening and you, you're sharing all of these things that are hard for you to share. Someone who can actually hear you and understand what you're going through and then give you advice and just perspective on what they, they're seeing.

I think I made some mistakes in like who I brought in. I have a guy right now who's working for me who's phenomenal.

For the last year I've been managing the maintenance division, all the commercial properties. I've also been helping Fred with the arborist work.

When I first we started talking to him, he was like interested in being part of the business for a while.

So started off as a subcontractor, kind of more sporadic, then kind of signed on full term.

But by the time he started started got around to hiring him, he realized he wanted to be a firefighter. That's what he wanted to do with his life. He's like, hey man, I don't want to keep doing this work. I'd want to do something different maybe that has more of a future.

This is actually kind of meaningless work to me. And I'm doing what I. I don't believe in this. You know, like there's aspects I still like. I don't really believe in this system and I don't find meaning in this work. And then I feel like that was kind of like burning me out.

And I'm like, I hear you actually. And I actually, I have a strangely talented team. I have a guy working for me that is a phenomenal excavator. Like, and that guy, I got that guy out there pushing mowers around and I'm like, your talent is being underutilized. And it's my fault because I chose to do this.

And then burnout always kind of comes in like waves. It'll kind of come and then, okay, it goes away. Okay, I'll keep working and then it'll come bigger and bigger and it's like, okay, now I have to kind of.

Like make a change.

Landscape maintenance, it's a young person's game. Like, you gotta hustle. Especially how we work. Like we, we work hard, we work fast. You got to be efficient. And I'm like, you age out of that. And so it was just like, I'll work here for a year. I was like, okay, I could still do that. Because he's phenomenal. Like, I don't know if it was a mistake to hire him, but I think if I would have hired somebody different, I probably wouldn't be where I am right now. I probably would be like, we probably would have doubled that maintenance division. It's like I need those. That core person that I can. That wants to stick around and actually believes in what I'm trying to do and sees the future. And I just, I think I haven't found that person yet.

The thing that happened with him in my very small, like, you know, fragment of what I've got of that situation is you hired him but without the, without the knowledge of what that role was really going to look like.

100%. Yeah, I was winging it.

Don't you. I'm going to hire an all star and then they're going to hop in and they're going to gonna expect this and you're gonna be like, well, no, no, no.

It's like I want all these other.

Ways that, you know, I want to systematize and I don't want to do custom. I want to follow these certain systems. So like create that now so that when you hire someone on, you can say, this is how it's going to be. And now they actually have a roadmap and a plan.

If you hire a great employee and you tell them make progress, just go, they're going to make progress and they're.

Going to move a lot.

But whether or not they're actually going the right direction is debatable. You, if, if you don't tell them where to go.

In part it is, when you're comparing it to a construction company, they are probably 10 times your size. They likely have multiple layers of management. They have middle managers, they have trainers, they have admin staff, et cetera. There are places to put people after entry level. At your current stage, it's octopus. It's you controlling a bunch of labors. Right. And you're juggling all the balls. I actually believe you're probably on the right path. It's a matter of size. And so like when I got to that stu that part, I thought I was going to start losing my best people. And that's when we franchise. I'm like, I need another vehicle to push them into and I'm going to start multiple locations. I'm going to have GMs. Like it became just simply a matter of scale.

Keep pushing, keep growing. And with that kind of comes redefining the vision.

If you think of it from the employees perspective, when they come in here, they're not going to see any opportunity. There's not they're going to see as a paycheck and they are probably only going to have a three to six month horizon. Thinking otherwise means they would need equity. Like if you want them to have an owner's mindset, either a, they need equity or B, they need a piece of the profits. Like they don't have any skin in the game.

And there was like, oh, do I actually want to like, can I actually provide for my family just doing this job as is? And it's like, maybe not. You know, I think we both would have, both me and my wife would have to keep working and there's a bunch of things that went into it. But for me, I just like made a switch.

We need to nail down the position that we need. Like the role description, the SOPs, the sales strategy for that division. So that rather than doing what I was doing, which was hiring somebody and being like, hey, we'll just figure it out together. It'll be great being like, hey, this is the job, this is what I want you to do and this is where you're gonna go with it in the future. I haven't done a lot of that work.

Have you ever surveyed your guys and asked them why they leave?

Yes. And most of the time they always say a lot of positive things about our culture.

Yeah. So we have the best culture in any landscape company.

And then also Fred tries to have an environment of growth. It's not just, oh, come in, do your work, go home. He's hoping that people can learn stuff within landscaping or beneficial for life.

Yeah, we focus a lot on culture and there's Reasons for that. Like, when I'm hiring somebody, is it somebody that I can spend 40 hours a week with and not strangle them? Because I've worked with people like that. They were very competent, but.

And it's not to say that, like, we're all perfect, but a willingness to learn and a willingness to serve, too.

I've heard multiple people say that this is the best place they've ever worked, but they don't want to do the work anymore. As soon as you got trimming hedges down and pushing lawnmowers and pulling weeds and, you know, like, I can train people to be pretty good at that within six months. Then you do it for another six months, and then you're like, this kind of sucks. I want to do something different. I don't blame you, man.

Go do the thing.

Not everyone is used to doing as much physical labor as it is because there's quite a bit of even just the walking around. You basically walk all day almost, you.

Know, so it's like you kind of have to keep up this high level to make maybe, like, the numbers add up and to, like, keep things going. I feel like it's not quite, like, sustainable.

And then also they might just get, like, upset about the weather instead of just being like, well, the weather is what it is, and this is my job, so I just gotta work through it.

And I think burnout can also be, like, caused by different things sometimes. I think burnout can be caused by just working too hard and too much for too long and you eventually hit a point.

Point.

I think other times it's like, comes from if you feel stuck.

Burnout is a common thing for many home service business employees. Look, we're out in the elements. We're doing a lot of physical labor, and it can absolutely SAP you of energy emotionally and physically. One thing that I think about when I think about burnout is actually like a car burning out. They're not making a lot of progress, but their wheels are spinning. It's making a bunch of noise, creates a bunch of smoke. And I think the same thing when it comes to burnout in your business, because we're all this energy and time. Everything's going in and we're working so hard, our body's exhausted. It's making a bunch of squealing and all this noise. But we're not. We don't feel like we're getting anywhere. And a lot of times employees out in the field, I find they feel burnt out because they don't see the goal or the objective and they don't feel like they're making progress in any direction.

Forget about the idea of keeping them for 10 years because they're just not going to be here. I would really say like, okay, until I can grow to the point where I can have general managers or divisional leaders or office admin staff or salespeople that I can move them into and actually show a career, career progression. Because we already know that's why they're here. We know they want a paycheck. And if I can show that paycheck can grow at this company, then I have unlocked the ability to retain them.

Having an ability for the employees to be able to move up inside the organization gives them a direction to channel all that energy towards actually making progress in their career.

If you can create a pipeline for getting new talent, but they, assuming they only stay here three months, you can make them profitable in two weeks. When the guys show up in my crew, I tell them the first day of my location, I'll show up one day, one time, the very first day for all 25 or so of them. And I'll just be like, hey guys, I don't want you to work here for the next five years. I have failed you as an employer. If in five years you're still mowing grass, I now have a pretty clear progression for them to move into. And that's going to usually take 10 years. Building the company the size where you can say, oh, we have multiple layers of management. And then he's like, that's all it is. Like on this ball, it's like, here's your career progression. You're like, well, I don't have the last three or four steps. Great, that's what we're building. By the time we build this thing, you'll be to. Able, able to get to there. You'll be a departmental lead or whatever you have is titled for them.

Creating a roadmap of success for your employees will absolutely get them through the hard times when they feel burnt out, especially physically out in the field. I've had multiple team members that joined as frontline team members mowing grass. But over the course of time they're able to become an estimator, become a general manager, be able to go own their own location at Augusta Lawn Care. And that kind of progression and them having a clear vision of what that like looks, looks like is what keeps their head in the game. Despite feeling burnt out at entry level positions.

Here's what you're making at 20 to $40 an hour. Then $40 to $60 an hour. And here's like the other option. This is your career progression. And so like I would, that's what you're passionate about. I'd be putting that on the wall. That's a good idea because now you have a clear vision and then like their vision fits inside of yours.

I forget that people are not motivated like me. And it's, it's classic.

Well, if they were, if they were.

They would own business.

They would own a business. Right. And so you have to think from the framework of how do I serve them? Like if your goal is for them to stay is like not a matter of like, how do I run the business? It's like, how do, how does this job serve them? And it's like stability. They want to have a roadmap, they want to have a plan, they want.

To have a vision.

And you provide those things for them. Here's how the jobs get done, here's how you do the pricing. These are the customers we're going after. I'm going to, as the architect now, focus on marketing to these customers, going on getting these leads and then you're going to do the jobs this way. In my opinion, if I go back three years ago when you were starting, like, you've actually executed very well on.

The plan and it's in now you're.

In it and you're falling a little.

Bit short of a goal.

And then that's when all these questions start arising. Will I stay at 750 forever?

Am I in the wrong industry?

Do I do the wrong services? And all these things start popping up.

And you lose like the next five years.

Because the reason you got started is the vision of the five year plan. Now we need to establish what is.

That next five years going to be. And now we know, because we have.

A base of revenue, we know what services we like, we know we want our guys to look like.

You didn't know that five years ago?

No, I didn't.

Yeah, like the five year plan needs.

To change every year failing. Like, hey, we're three years in this five year plan. Now I'm a little bit behind. Readjust the plan. We got the revenue or we got a decent business, we got a great shop space to operate out.

We got incorporated.

Now I have even more clarity in terms of what services I want, want to offer and who I'm going to serve.

Thinking about where we're wanting to go and how we're going to get there. Kind of laying out some of those strategic goals. Five Year plan. First of all, it's like a mindset shift. When you get tired, you. You feel and you think in a way that isn't. Isn't healthy and isn't always rooted in reality. And then the second thing I. Is connected to this, I think when you're vulnerable, when you're. When you're able to have people in your life that you can share with and you actually, you're real with where you're at and the problems you're facing, I think there's. That is a strength actually, and that can result in wisdom coming way quicker than you just trying to do it all on your own as you share with others. And so for me, this. This thing is very vulnerable, but it's been incredibly beneficial and I'm thankful I put myself out there to do it. I have no regrets. So be. Be a real man man and be vulnerable. That's what I would say. Would it be healthy for me to purchase another piece of equipment that would help me do some of this work more efficiently? Because right now I do a lot of excavator rentals, which is fine because I don't. I'm not using the equipment all the time, which. Which is what you're always looking for. But I'm like, it's part of that cart before horse stuff. Like if you have the equipment, you start doing more of that work.

Yeah. But it's a narrative people tell. And that's what I get a little concerned about. Because like, it's probably the thing that you told yourself when you bought the tractor.

Yes.

And now you've admitted that you don't use the tractor enough.

I hear what you're saying. Maybe you're saying it's probably not a good idea yet unless you have that work booked out.

It just depends how aggressive you want to be.

Right.

I think if you took out $50,000 loan, that would fund the marketing aspect. And then you take, you know, get a piece of equipment like an excavator, you can grow this thing to 1.2 pretty quickly. I also believe that just fixing several things on the sales side will probably get you to a million. Without any. Any more equipment like the website, getting more leads around the project side, getting a vision to where someone else that's inside the current team or starts off in the maintenance division wants to move into the landscaping side. And the reason now people actually care to read the books, et cetera, all these other aspects that you feel like are not sticking, they'll actually have some clarity as to why they should. My team for example, we've always hired the general manager from the current team every single time. And they know that. And I also am telling the general manager, hey, that general manager could probably move on to something, something else. I'm gonna be looking from all of you.

Yeah.

And here's the recipe. To be able to be the general manager, read these books, show up to these meetings and do these things. And right now we just don't have anything like that.

Yeah, there's no internal development.

Sometimes I can see him like taking on things that he doesn't need to take on or worry about. I think we were like on a site a month ago and he wanted to drop the site cause it wasn't up to his standard. And then he put a whole bunch of work into it to get it up to his standard. Oh like I think they were happy, you know, or like maybe like be over involved or over complicate when it doesn't have to be, you know, when you can like no, this we can actually just like let go for now.

I'm a leader with a limp, but I celebrate that limp actually I think makes me a better, better human.

Then the question is, why do we need the money with the $50,000? Let's just say we inject in terms of working capital, I would say, Gerald, during our spring rush, we're gonna hire someone for five hours a day and they're gonna be admin. It's gonna be $100 a day, you know, maybe a little more. So let's just call it 120 bucks a day. We know that's when all our leads come in. We book out way out into the future and that's when you can't handle it yourself.

That is so smart. I've never thought about like temporarily hiring someone.

Well, it's like if you have a seasonal demand, you should have seasonal work. And so we can do the same thing for admin that you do for your guys out in the field. And if you say hey look from. Cause I know your market. So March, April maybe and June, there's your four month spring rush. You're gonna work from 8 to 1pm that's gonna give you the flexibility to say, hey, we're open 8 to 5. You only have to answer the phone from 1 to 5, 8 to 1. You get all your operation stuff done, all your hiring, all your estimates. One to five is going to be. You're creating the estimates and you're ready for the phone and you will follow the same process as them. Because now you have that time blocked for them.

Okay? So I have to follow the process. Can't just wing it.

And you make the process for them. You can't change it.

It's probably only a one.

That's probably only one year before you.

Grow enough because you've been able to do that that you then hire someone full time.

The piece I do like, I'm like, maybe I should just put some money into this thing and push it. I'm not that patient to wait around for another whole stinking year. Like, I'm like, man, like, I wanna like, if that's where we're going, let's do it.

And then they just do other admin while they're.

You just have an order of operations number one and answer the phone number two, web chat number three, estimate request warrants number four, just go right down the list. You literally do screen recordings and it's like, okay, how to schedule job. So when they get a job accepted, like, oh, how do I do boom, boom, oh, okay. And I guess they follow one step at a time exactly as you've done it. You can operationalize it and make it like, you start with this. And here's the last thing you do. And you might not get to this if there's a lot of stuff happening. If you have all these calls coming in, you probably aren't going to get the email. And there's a ton of emails. You probably won't get to the expense category. Characterization.

Yeah, it's the details that I love doing.

Yeah, yeah, you're good. You're good at that.

You.

You, man, you're an sop. Like queen. No, that's. That's gold, man. That's. That's something I was. I would have never thought of. I don't know why. It's a simple solution. Just a temporary hire. I really appreciated talking with Mike.

Because in some senses he didn't say anything new, actually. Like, there were some. Some things he said that were like gold. That I was like, man, we hadn't thought about that. But a lot of it was stuff I've heard that people have said to me. Like, there seems to be a belief as I share what I'm trying to do and why I'm trying to do it and where I'm at that people are like, what are you doing, man? Keep going. Like, you can do this.

I do believe the lead bottleneck is what you'll hit right away. Right now the notion is I will dump money on marketing. We have done that. In the past and it has not worked. And so then it's a matter of how are you going to solve that problem. That will be the next constraint. If you put money in the business because you have like liquidity, if you inject a bunch of capital in this business, the next thing you will need is leads.

Yeah, I'm not worried about that and I'll tell you why. Because I just know too many people. As soon as I start making phone.

Calls and I say, then that's the strategy. Go do that. Go get an admin person, get someone to go run the landscape jobs. If you think you can, like, I can drive $2 million of landscape jobs if I just have a phone. Then we should be doing all of our time on that. If you're good at that, you enjoy it and everything else you despise, then delegate everything else.

I landscaped well to pay my way through school and I said I'd never do it again because I was like, I didn't want to be. There's a bit of a negative stigma connected to landscaping. You know, I wanted to have an office job and be leadership and such. But then I kind of missed physical work. Actually after a while, like sitting and doing emails, man. After a while, like, and that's kind of what my job became for after. For a long time when you're in a coordination work rule, I was like, oh man, it's like death by email.

I generally believe you could double the leads from the website with just a couple little changes and like you'll be fine with it. Now because someone else is taking the phone calls. Yeah, they have to request for form or coming to someone else. You don't feel like, oh, I've got to open up my email. Like that should never be in your stomach.

Oh, I have that all the time.

So like the first thing I would say is like no email on your phone.

Being that front facing person, like where this a customer is going to be emailing me directly, man, I would get rid of that as quick as I could. So like right now that's already happening where they go to her. My wife's emails. Well, they go to her right now.

But can you access them from your phone?

Oh, he looks at my. Oh my word.

See this is the thing.

Number one pet peeve, I what my strat. Because I have kids, so I get distracted. So I'll look at the email and then I'll read it and then no. And then I will mark it unread so I don't forget and Then he'll go into my email and read it and then leave it unread.

And then I'll.

I've gotten better. I've heard you.

This is why you're bottling up against 700,000. Because, like, as I say, like, after 800,000 is architect, you're failing to go from manager to architect. And you're the manager inside of you wants to go check the email, still wants to stay involved in all these little processes. The architect has to step away from the business.

My wife's email, but I check that, and I need to stop it because apparently it's a terrible thing to do as a leader and have people that you can trust to do that. But what I also like, you say, is there. What is your thing? You say, is there 100%? Is your 60% or 70%, 80%? So I'm like, yep, I'm gonna have to just let those things go wrong. And it's. It's okay. They're learning.

He does leave my bookkeeping alone, though, so I'm quite.

Because he doesn't like it.

You have your roles. We'll have, like, role setting discussions. And then it's like, you stay. I. I like when I have my lane and I have my role, I just will go and stay in it. But when someone tries to, like, come into my role and mess it up or put more on me, all of a sudden that wasn't in my role, then that will really frustrate me. And I feel like when you do run a business with a spouse, there's a little bit more of, like, can you do this quick or can you do this? Where when you have more of a office relationship, you're not just gonna dump something on somebody.

The ability to, like, step back is good. Like, I'm. I'm. Maybe I would say, like, yeah, maybe it seems like maybe his boundaries might be, like, unclear of, like, when he should get involved or when he should, like, let things go. I mean, I feel like he's done, like, a pretty good job with me of just, like, kind of, like letting me loose.

Right? So, like, you're literally looking at someone who's like, I would say, hey, keep small and telling you, like, get up as high as possible, because you have very different skill sets together. That's why you're probably like, it's so valuable.

We're a one, two punch, right?

100%. And there's huge amounts of value there. So I would just, like, don't tell her to, like, she should grow and don't tell him that he should stay small. Right.

I'm sure we both said that.

Yeah.

Right. So it's just a matter of, like, you both have very different skill sets and at different sizes of businesses, those skills will be most utilized.

When we first started, you, you have this whole vision and you kind of, you get on board and we worked well together, which was really nice. And then, yeah, you just kind of, you keep going, you find your roles, you find what you enjoy doing, what you don't enjoy, what you're going to take on because somebody else doesn't want to do it. Yeah, we just worked really well as a team. And I would say, like Fred and I's gift sets, we don't have the same gift sets, so we complement each other very well.

What has gotten you here is how do I actually manage a project? How do I sell a job? That's the role of a manager. The role of an architect is step away from the business. Like, how do I optimize this website to get more leads? How do I create the sops for my admin person so they don't have to bother me? Like, they asked me the same thing three times yesterday. Oh, I need to make a loom. So they just understand it. Oh, they didn't watch the loom. Oh, I need to make part of the process before they contact me. They search the database and that's an architect. They step away from the business.

That's why someone like me will step.

In and like, see your numbers and it's really clear. I'm just, oh, I'm a third party. I'm out of the business. Yeah, that's what you have to become to take the business to the next level.

Yeah, I know, that makes sense. And then I have my dream fulfilled where I'll have a job where I can work out in the middle of the day.

But see, again, like, defining that, that's super important. It is, because, like, defining what that role is going to look like for you. And so like now it's like work backwards from the fact that you want to work out in the middle of the day. That's a great benchmark because there's so many other things will have to be fixed for that to be it.

Right.

You'll have to have an admin person, you have to have an operations person, you have to have a salesperson. You will not be able to have the email coming, you will not be able to have the phone coming onto your cell phone. And so then what you start doing is ask Yourself. Okay. Is that future self going to have the email coming to their cell phone? No.

Yeah.

Probably shouldn't be doing that now.

Yeah, you start working towards it. I feel confident that I can invite people into something that I'm actually trying to do because I lost that for a little bit. I lost the. The mountain that I was headed towards. So this is where you can do your sales thing. Okay, Mike.

I want to hear about how copilot.

Well, that's the thing I was going to ask because it's like that requires a lot of admin. So it's like at some point I can do so much admin and so much tracking and figuring that out. But it's like at what point do you actually get most of you?

You guys are doing 90% of it already. It's just a matter of tracking it. I don't think it's a problem priority. You have the budget looks solid. You guys are using budgeted hours. You're organized. It's not even come come close to the impacting the business as much as charging people more if you're booked out further like that alone will probably add 40 to $50,000. Those are like huge rocks. Changing copilot. Why add all that friction in the middle of this? Like we have more important things to focus on.

So what size do you need like a program like that then?

Well, what are you using now? Lmn. Any sort of dispatching or anything like that?

No, we. That we found, we created our own thing.

I've created a spreadsheet that links with our Google calendar. We can analyze our surfaces, our estimated hours and then the progress for the job for the specific contract.

He built our whole time tracking thing. Like he used chatgpt for all the code, but he's kind of wired that way. Like he's a super sharp guy. He's awesome. And I told him I was going to lay him off in the new year. He's more admin. I told him I was going to lay him off because I was looking, looking at the profitability of the business. And I'm like, you're a non revenue producing employee. You're sucking up $20,000 a year. Probably not a good long. Even though he's super awesome, Fred's just.

A little bit over admin right now. And so I'm actually leaving the company. If I'm doing a new project, I'll usually throw like a readme file in there. Just some notes and stuff for Nicole and Fred. Then they have like a starting point to kind of work for from and why I've done it.

Keep. That's what we're using for that. I usually mostly use LMN just for estimates and the budget. I love the budget.

But not like fuel routes. Nope.

Okay.

Automations.

Nope.

Okay, well then in that case I thought differently. In that case you might want to consider something copilot.

What is the purpose of automation? Just like when communication.

If you're admin person they're going to get an email every time this happens. When they finish this task it's going to notify. So for example accepted estimate you could be okay, I want it to go to this user. I want to go to this user. Yeah, like it saves you so much time in like texting them and then texting you and like all this sort of thing. It's a matter of I need. I do think you should have field management software. Like when the guys show up to jobs, they should have job notes. They should have when like when they see their list for the day, they click there and it's like directions. Right. That'll save you so much time in the morning of operations. Things happening throughout the day. Like I think it's probably low, lower priority than what we talked about but like I think that if you're like hey, we want. This is the vision from here to there, software's gonna get involved. It's just going to because right now a lot of it's being stored in both of your brains and you don't get to 10 million without losing your brain. If it's not in software, really consider it to mostly just de stress your life obviously.

I really appreciate kind of the clarity you're bringing around next steps. I think I just lost, lost.

I don't know, lost my heart there for a little bit. Like I know you preach that a lot like staying in the game, it's.

Just like what do you want the end result to be? And then realizing that you had clarity on that. A few years ago you just went three years in and now we need to readjust like okay, we're here now. I understand a lot more than I did three, four years ago. I have way more clarity actually. So it's okay to adjust the goal. The goal doesn't have to stay the same from the day one. In a few years I'll probably be talking to you again and be like, hey, time to recalibrate a little bit more.

Life is heavy and hard and it's beautiful too. It's, it's the both and man, it's a both and.