This Owner Chose Business Over His Wife (He's Losing Both)

As we kept growing, like when we hit the $500K, hit $1 million, it was just more work.

Your wife isn't any more proud of you at a $500,000 revenue business compared to $1 million, compared to $5 million. She just wants you to be at home. Now, here's the thing. How are we going to afford that? You're going to raise prices by 15%. And if you raise prices by 15% on $850,000, you will pay for this operations manager.

We're about $20,000 a month. It's about what we're profiting after making our payroll and making our payments where we've got about $20,000 left over. But it's just, I mean, it's all accounts receivable.

It is so powerful when your spouse is telling you, get out there and go and pushing you onto the field versus trying to pull you off. And so get off of it by raising prices. Maybe an $800,000-$900,000 annual revenue business is actually what you need to serve you and your family the most. Not a $5 million business.

We run a lawn care business and I don't know, like we scaled up to So like just over a million the year before.

Is that 2025?

Yeah.

Yeah. And this year, like, we're shooting below that. I don't think we'll make it back up to a million this year. Probably only going to hit like $800,000, maybe $850,000. Even though we've—

we've—

we've— we're expecting less revenue this year. Like, it's just been so hard personally with how it's scaled up. I don't know. There's just been a lot of, like, drama. With like me and my family. We're trying to balance like the business and then home. Like, do you have any advice on that?

So what specifically? Like when you say there's drama at home, is it— is your spouse, is it kids? Like what's going on? Like this is kind of why we have the show.

So, oh, I mean, I would say it's between me and my wife. Like I'm just— I'm working so much on the business because it's just, you know, it takes up a lot of my time. And like, there's just been a lot between— like, she worked in the office with me for a while, but then like, she had to step out. We had to get a part-time person in here just because it was too much for both of us to be in this all the time.

And how long ago did she step out?

She stepped out like 2 years ago.

And so this year, the revenue dropping from $1 million to $850,000, do you think that's a result of you being distracted with everything going on at home? Or is that some other force that we're not talking about, like marketing or crew members or some other issue?

No, I do think that's on me. I think that I'm a little distracted. I'm trying to get home and be there for dinner. Then we have kids, so trying to make it to their games. But yeah, it's hard to do both. And even though we've tried to scale back a little, It's just, I don't know if we've gotten any less busy. Does that make sense?

So when she stepped out of the office, was it just 'cause of friction because the two of you, or was it because of financial issues?

I mean, there was, I would say we just didn't work good together. I would, yeah, I would just say that we didn't work good together and it just, you know, you like, it was just work at home and work in the office. We just like just couldn't get away, you know?

So I, I, yeah.

So is, is like, are, how, how many years have you been married, by the way?

Yeah, we're going on 6 years now. Okay. So it's about 6 or 7.

What is she expecting to change? Like, I'm assuming the business has grown a lot and a lot of your time and attention is on that. Now she's wanting you to focus back on the family, spending time with them. Has it been like a matter of as you've grown, it's always been like the carrot is like just a little further and you've been growing, growing, growing. And now this year kind of hit like, is she threatening to leave, or—

No, it's just so— it's— yeah, I guess like as it's been growing, like we just expected this thing, you know, we could grow it up. We were trying to get to a million in revenue, we hit that, and then we were expecting to be less involved in, you know, the day-to-day, have a few team members that could like step in and take things on. But it just seems that like as we've kept growing, like when we hit the 500, hit a million, it was just more work. It was just, you know, like it never got to where we could like step away from the business. We couldn't go on vacation.

Okay. So I agree with you that right now the stuff at home is probably the thing distracting you from the business, but I think we need to solve the business problem so that you can have more bandwidth at home. And so I'm going to work backwards because I'm sure there's a lot of other things with the personal relationship and the marriage that we haven't talked about that would probably be better with, you know, some sort of counselor or therapist or something like that. But like, let's start with the business. The reason you're spending so much time working inside the business and feel like you can't get home and can't get time off after so many years of building this thing is— I'm going to go out on a limb and say you're working crazy hours right now, like sunup to sundown, 7 days a week.

Yeah.

And is that— is that the thing that gets her mad? Is that the thing that makes her frustrated?

I mean, definitely. Like, there's weeks that are slower, but I mean, especially now with it being Spring Rush, we've gotten so busy, and it's just hard to find enough people that are trained up to fill the schedule, so I end up having to jump in here and there, and then estimate it afterwards, so yeah.

Okay, so I think the first thing I would wanna establish with her is what does success look like for her? Because otherwise, I feel somewhat nebulous in terms of what we're chasing. Like, is it the fact that she wants you off by 5? Is it the fact she doesn't want you working on the weekends? We need rules of engagement. And so like for my wife and I, we created what we called the Constitution. That's when we first got married after it was like, hey, we had our vows, but like, here's the things that we expect from each other. And I would recommend getting really clear on this. So then you actually have a goal to push towards instead of just being like, I need to work less because it's a slippery slope into you resenting her and her resenting the business. And so I would first have a conversation with her. So I'm going to put wife convo. And it's a matter of what does success look like? And that is, do I need to be at home for dinner? And what time is that? Do I need to be off on Saturdays and Sundays? What is the, the thing that she's trying to solve for? Like right now I've heard like she wants more time with you, she wants you home, more present, et cetera. But try to get definition around that because then what we're going to do is we're going to go raise prices and stop chasing growth. And correct me if I'm wrong, but like, I'm going to assume the year before a million, like 2022, 2023, 2024, I'm going to guess you were like growing very quickly. Like, what were the years of revenue from like 2022 to 2024?

I guess, yeah, we were, we were, we, it was, it was a big year. We picked up a few trucks and we probably went from like $500,000, maybe, maybe $600,000 up to that kind of million-dollar mark.

Yeah. So like you've been in growth mode and growth mode puts strain on every system of the business. It sucks cash and it also puts a lot of demands on you as the owner to be there at this size of business. And so I would highly recommend getting off that treadmill. And the reason that you feel like this is a down year is because you've gone down 15% in revenue, but that's because of distraction of what's at home. And to solve what's at home, we need to be able to have more bandwidth. And in order to have more bandwidth, you likely need an operations manager. You need someone like the unlock from you going from, let's just call it from a growth perspective, $1 million to $3 million is finding someone that's good at operations so that you're not fighting fires with your crew and with bad, new customers and jobs that go south. Right now, how much—

And would you just bring someone up?

How much would you have to pay, do you think, for an operations manager? Like, in your market, would you have to pay $80,000, $90,000? What do you think you have to pay?

I mean, at least $80,000.

Okay.

At least.

Let's just call it, let's call it $80,000, okay? So we're gonna go and we're gonna get an ops manager, and we're going to assume they're gonna cost $80,000. Now, here's the thing. How are we going to afford that? You're going to raise prices by 15%. And if you raise prices on— by 15% on $850,000, you will pay for this operations manager. First, we have to get clarity around what is the goal. Is it time off at a certain time of day? Is it getting home and having supper? Is it getting to the kids' events? Is it having the weekend off? We have to establish that so that when you create the job description for your operations manager, you actually incentivize you not being called after a certain time, you not being drawn into a project on the weekend. That is in the job description. It's tied likely to their incentives. So their base pay might be $80, but they can earn $90 if your phone is not ringing after a certain time, for example. All of this is going to be paid because you're gonna raise your prices. Now, the reason that you haven't raised prices is 'cause you've been chasing growth. And you've been in growth mode for so long that you can't even fathom the thought of raising prices and potentially hurting top-line revenue. but ultimately this whole business, 100% of it, is in jeopardy if this goes wrong. This is why the confession booth is like, literally, this is why it exists. The fact of the matter is, if you, if you, if this issue that's currently happening at home spirals into more than what it currently is, which is a little bit of friction, and like, but her having to leave the business, and then if she ever left you, you have 50% of the business walking out the door, and it's likely going to tear this whole thing down in a court and in a legal dispute, and I'm protecting against that. So we are prioritizing the personal relationship. It's already hurt the business by 15%. And so if you're afraid of raising your prices and losing 10 or 15% of your customers, news alert, you've already lost 15% of your revenue because of the issues at home. And so I would highly recommend having the conversation with your wife, determining what success looks like, asking for 4 to 6 weeks of grace and then giving her the plan of, I'm going to go hire an operations manager and raise my prices and you will lose some customers. But I promise you, the current trajectory of losing 15% year over year because you are personally tapped out and you don't have the support of your spouse, which is probably going to lead to even a lower year in 2027 if this continues, it's going to get worse, let alone putting the risk of losing all of it. If this really spirals out of control, we have to prioritize that first. So I appreciate you calling in. I think for anyone listening, now being married for just about like a year and a half, it's— it is incredible the delta of discretionary effort that I can put towards work when what's going on at home, we're good. And so even though the business is the beneficiary of the stress, it is the beneficiary of all of this downstream distraction. It is just showing what's at home. And so we have to get the support of your spouse. I can't stress this enough. I know most of my audience is young guys. Having the support of your significant other, whether it be girlfriend, wife, etc., is everything. And so if you optimize for that, a lot of times the business will take care of itself because now there's— it is so powerful when your spouse is telling you, get out there and go and pushing you onto the field versus trying to pull you off. And a lot of times that is because you have not aligned the incentives of the business growing with what they want. And for a lot of us guys, I'm talking to you for a second, myself specifically, my goals are to grow the business. My goals are to build the company, grow top line revenue, make more money. She could care less. And so whoever this was just called me, I'm going to go on a limb and say your wife doesn't, isn't any more proud of you at a $500,000 revenue business compared to $1 million compared to $5 million. She just wants you to be at home. And so we have to make the business growing align with I will be at home. And for a lot of us, it's this constant carrot of like, well, if we just grow one more year, if we can just get one more truck, if I can just get, if I can just add this new service, if I can go into this new area, if I can just figure out this marketing channel. And so your spouse gets worn out year after year after year of constantly being told it's about to come. And the reason it's about to come always is 'cause you're on the growth treadmill. And so get off of it by raising prices. And being like, maybe an $800,000-$900,000 annual revenue business is actually what you need to serve you and your family the most. Not a $5 million business. That's fine. If you could take $850,000, raise your prices, and I happen to believe you probably won't lose as many customers as you think. You're going to raise it on existing customers. You're going to raise it on recurring customers. You're going to raise it on existing prices for projects upcoming. If you do that, you can afford a very qualified operations manager. "$80,000 base, I would put that ramped up to $100,000 and those incentives would be tied around profitability and then them not calling you." Like, I can't afford that. You're going to raise prices. And if you raise prices by 15% on a million-dollar business, that's $150,000. You will afford the operations manager and have extra profit left over. All right.

I just want to pause the video here and drop this one thing in. One thing I've learned over the past 20 years or so in business is that the only way to really fail in business is to quit. And this is why I'm a huge proponent of community and building with other people, because entrepreneurship is so lonely that when you get in those low moments and times when you want to quit and it feels like your family wants you to quit, all the economics to kind of tell you that you should be quitting because you're not making a lot of money, you're pouring the money back into the business— during those low moments is when most people do give up. This is why I built Augusta franchise, and we have a franchise because I believe the biggest component of it is the community. Getting in different groups of people that are doing the same thing as you, using the same systems, using the same brand, wearing the same uniform as you, so you can trust what they're saying is in your best interest. So whether you join the franchise or whether you join a community, getting around other people that you can lean on when times are tough and you can pick them up when they're also struggling— I think this is one of the Achilles heel of home services, is that We are constantly stepping on each other and other competitors to try to win, when in reality, if we all just like linked arms together, we could grow so much faster. It's like last year, for example, at Augusta in Q4, year over year, we grew by 123% in revenue and same store sales almost doubled. Almost 100% increase in same store sales in one quarter because a community of people got together and said, we got to solve the offseason, we've got to fix making sure that during Q4 we have leads go up, revenue go up, And that's the power of a community. So I highly recommend if you're not gonna join Augusta to join a community, but joining Augusta allows you to have those conversations and the support and the systems and the infrastructure to be able to allow you to avoid these sort of burnout moments that are potentially the thing that causes you to quit. And that's the only way to fail in business. Back to the video.

Next caller.

Hey, so I operated a landscaping company for about 10 years.

2, 3 years.

I was just doing around $100,000 a year. And then in March, I purchased another one. And so the revenue of the last— the one I purchased is around $500,000. And, uh, so it's a big jump. The problem I'm running into is I had to use up basically the rest of my cash to put the down payment down. Um, we're owner financing half of it.

I purch—

I put up half of it. And, um, we bill out once a month for all of our services. And then it takes, I mean, another 6 weeks for us to get paid. We're about 2 months in and me and my brother purchased it with me. We haven't paid ourselves. We're just barely making payroll. But on paper, we're very profitable. So I'm wondering, my question to you is, would it make sense for me to try and go to like automatic payments, maybe weekly, and try and ask the clients if they want to do that? And if so, when's too early for me to do that? Because I'm worried about with the transition of purchasing this company, if I start changing so much up right away, they're just going to be scared and I'm going to lose a lot of clients.

Got it. Okay. If you don't mind me asking, what's the monthly payment on the acquisition for the owner finance?

So with the company and the shop that we're in, the guy that we purchased from owns the shop and he's renting it to us. We're looking at around $18,000 to $22,000.

Got it. And when you pay that, because that's like a big chunk of your revenue, are you able to make like profit after that? Like you're saying you're profitable on paper. I'm assuming that's because we're looking at—

we're about $20,000, $20,000 a month is about what we're profiting after making our payroll and making our debt payments where we've got about $20,000 left over. But it's just, I mean, it's all Accounts receivable.

Okay.

Okay. So this is simply a cash flow problem. And right now, are you mostly doing residential or commercial?

It's all residential.

So, yeah, I would definitely switch to much faster than 6 weeks to pay because right now, if you're profitable after paying $18,000 a month in owner financing, you're running a really good operation. How much longer does this— like the payment's going to be like another couple of years?

Uh, we should be debt-free in about 3 years.

Okay. That's, that's quite a while. Okay. So, whoa. Okay. That's probably— you buy it for like $350,000?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay. So you might have overpaid a little bit, but the fact is—

it came with equipment. It came with equipment. It was about $90,000 worth of equipment.

Okay.

Okay.

So I was leaving that out. That's, that's why it was a good deal as far as the client base. The equipment came with it. That's why it was so much higher.

And so if you change today, the payment terms from, hey, we send you an invoice and you pay us over the next 4 to 6 weeks. If you send everyone an email today saying, hey, card is on file required, why do you think that would get everyone up in arms about that?

So our client base is a lot of older people. Most of them are retired and it's a lot of like retired communities. So, so many of them so far, we're about 2 months into this and just explaining that we bought the company to them has been confusing. And they've been struggling with the idea. We haven't lost any clients. Luckily, I had done subcontracting for this guy for about a year before, so they know my face. But they're just, they're still already just getting confused enough with us taking over. And so I'm worried that if I did start trying to change the billing process, we're just going to have people like, oh, it's too confusing for me. I'll find someone else.

Yeah. So I think the same way that you probably feared the confusion around changing the name of the business or did you even change the name or just like, hey, new ownership?

We did. Yep.

So the same way—

I mean, even just that was so much, right?

But ultimately, I agree, it is so much explaining to customers, 100%. You didn't lose anyone. So I think the same thing is going to happen when it comes to payment terms. It is going to confuse some people. I don't think you're going to lose anyone over it if you handle it correctly. And I think even though they were confusing, if you went and did this acquisition again, you probably would have handled it slightly differently, how you talk to customers about the acquisition. You're going to take everything you learned from that and now you're going to communicate to the customers about payment terms. And so you're not going to just be like, "It's required tomorrow." You're going to actually pitch this as a very positive thing for them. "Hey, we've had a lot of feedback from customers that it's tough to like get the check in the mail. They are living in a secondary house, they live out of town. We're making this easy. You can now go to this link, put your card information on file, and we'll charge you automatically." when we create the invoice, you'll just get a receipt. I think if you do that correctly, with a text and an email, you'll probably get 40 to 50% of people signing up. That will probably be enough to help solve the problem, but I would love to see it 100%. And if, to do this, like, if you do this with a lot of violence, like, how many customers do you have? Like, total recurring customers?

About 80.

Great. I think if you took 1 week and called all these clients or visited them in person, you could get this to 100% compliance without losing a single customer. And so if the entire weight of the business right now on your shoulders is accounts receivable, and that's the constraint to the business, get violent with it. And you just need to talk to, let's just call it, 15 customers a day. If you talk to 15 customers a day, and you're like, in person, hey, get the card now, I'll go ahead and put it on your file, we'll charge it automatically, no more do you have to write checks, don't worry about— we're gonna cover the processing fees, Go ahead and take that L for now, that's not a big deal, 'cause down the road we're gonna hit capacity and raise prices. I'm not worried about the 3%. Just get the card on file and now you're in person, so they're not worried about security and all this stuff. Just do it in person or over the phone. If you do 15 clients a day, you'll solve this problem in 24 hours, and I believe it'll be the same way that happened with the acquisition, which is you will lose zero clients. To some it might seem confusing, but for the vast majority of us, like Leila Hormozi says, Fear is a mile wide and an inch deep. And so it seems horrible and it seems difficult, but at the end of it, this is the unlock to solving the business. And by the way, if you can just hold on for 3 years, which you can do if you have good cash flow, but you can't if you have no money in the bank. You can run out of oxygen and go bankrupt with a profitable business that's growing fast. And so to prevent that, we've gotta fix this problem. It is the constraint to the business. And if you can survive for 3 years, which I don't know about this acquisition, $350,000 and a $500,000, annual revenue business, even with $90,000 equipment. $18,000 is a lot for most people. They would be suffocating 100% of the cash to the business. The fact that you're able to pay that and still be profitable on paper just means we got to fix the cash flow problem. And if we do that, we unlock a really solid business in 3 years that you own. So excellent job. Don't know how you are pulling that off. Fantastic work. Next caller.

So I am—

I am 16 and my business is under my dad's name until I'm 18 and fully licensed and insured. I have 2 Skaggs stand-on mowers and I want to know, I have about 19 clients, 6 of those being biweekly. I want to know how can I scale my business more with, with, because I have no like driver's license because I'm behind schedule on that. Um, how can I scale my business more having no license? Like I have a 16-foot trailer, my dad drives me around, et cetera. What are some things I can do to have more revenue based off of just mowing and slightly landscaping?

Is there any reason you cannot get your license? You're in the confession booth, so you don't have to worry about people knowing you are.

In Indiana, you cannot get your license until you're like 16 and 90 days, and you have to— so you have to finish 30 hours, which I'm actually on my computer working on right now. So there's 30 hours of online training you have to finish. And then you have to do 6 drives with an instructor. I can't get my license until July, and the driving academy is about booked up until mid-June, and they're telling me I won't get it on time, so I might not get it until August.

Okay, why do you have to wait until July? Is it because you just turned 16?

I just turned 16 in April, yeah.

Got it. So 90 days past April is May, June, July. Okay, got it. So July is the earliest. Now, can you book your appointment for your license now, or do you have to wait the 90 days and then book?

So you have to finish the 30 hours of the online driving academy and then you can start booking your 6 drives. And then once you pass all those, that's when you can get your license.

Yeah, like I'm a big fan of being violent with this. Like, yes, we could do workarounds of how to grow this business, but ultimately you getting your license is the big unlock. And so 30 hours.

Yeah.

Yes, we can look at that as like, that's a long time. That's also, if you really got ruthless with this, 2 days. Right. And then booking the—

see, they limit you to 3 hours a day. Okay, so 10 days, like 10 days at 3 hours a day.

Cool. So that's the only thing we do from 6 AM to 9 AM every day is those 3 hours. So in 10 days, that would be completed. Now the 6 drives, are we— are those hard to get to? Like, or who— like, is there a backup of those, those 6 drives?

Yeah, so I just called them about an hour ago. They're booked out until late June. So they said that I won't get my July 1st, and they're not sure because school's getting out soon how, like, booked up they're going to be past that. So if I don't get it done now and start scheduling my drives, then it'll be like late August before I ever get it.

Got it. So we're going to do it in 10 days and we're going to be before this end of school. So 10 days, we finish the 30 hours, we immediately schedule the drives. So that we can get our license immediately. Like, again, like, we could talk about all ways of getting around this and like trying to get your dad to drive you around, or how do you get better route density and doing door hangers or customers of your existing customers, upselling your existing. We could talk about all that delivery of materials so you don't have to drive. Like, we could talk about that. I just want you to get your license as fast as possible. We start so we stop doing workarounds. Make sense?

Yeah, that's what I've been told by all of the local lawn care guys is once I get my license, that's going to be like the top, like the top thing for my business. And I have like, I have a pretty good reputation around my neighborhood. I've started to pick up a few commercial accounts outside, um, and it's— my dad drives me around. I just bought a brand new 16-foot trailer. Like, I'm, I'm really trying to do this after high school, but I, I agree with you there that my license is going to be the be the biggest part of it right there.

Yeah, absolutely. You know what to do. I would just be violent with getting the 30 hours done. That's 10 days. Everyone makes big things out of little things. It's 30 hours, 10 days. You only do 3 hours each. I wish really hard that this could be just done in 2 days, but sounds like you can't. 10 days, you're gonna schedule all of your drives, and in early June, let's hope we can get this business on track and ramp this bad boy. You already got 19 clients before you even got your driver's license, my friend. You are already winning.