TOXIC culture KILLED this $1.7M Landscaping Business

All of it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what I've been doing. None of it matters. None of it's making a difference. None of it's moving the needle. It's just getting worse.

Today we're in Ohio visiting Luke with J and L Landscape.

I've described what I've been through the last three years as trying to change the tires on a car while it's driving down the road. Everyone who works here is either going to get fired or quit. This is where all landscapers come to die.

Luke made $1.7 million in revenue last year.

These guys have a clue what I'm dealing with. No matter how much effort or time and money I throw at it, I'm still running into the same brick walls constantly.

But right now has more credit card debt than he has money in the bank. I get the impression that you almost want to quit.

Oh, yeah. Y. Yeah. Just completely burned out. My wife wants me to quit. My brother who used to work with me tells me I should quit.

And employees are leaving.

I don't enjoy managing people.

Employees are stealing from him.

I'm just not sure if it's worth it anymore. We had a zero turn stolen yesterday.

Honestly, he wants to give up and his wife is kind of losing faith in him.

This is hard to watch. Luke, can you do something? Like, is this even worth it?

It's really started to feel like it's never gonna turn around.

We don't make money. I don't trust them. I hate my job. I don't wanna come up to work and they don't wanna show up either.

It's never fun being told you're the problem. I know I'm the problem.

This is the Business Turnaround show. My name is the founder of Augusta Lawn Care, where we have over 175 locations around the world. And I travel the country fixing struggling businesses. Let's assume for a moment that you don't have bad intentions and you want what's best for them. Why would we not tell the truth?

I have told him this. This has been a ongoing conversation. You're the reason I got high blood pressure.

We need to stop the poison in its tracks.

I mean, what if I am the poison?

Our goal is to give Luke a strategy to turn around the business in the next six weeks. Okay.

What you just said is why they don't trust you.

I want to see the team rolling out because I need to see their dynamic with him for a second to validate what I think is happening. But I Want to. I need to see it. All right, we're here, we're here. There's the Civic that we owe money on. Oh, oh, oh, oh. We got employees sitting in cars beforehand. That's what I was looking for.

Hey, Luke.

What's up, brother? How you doing, man? Good to see you. This is a great shop.

Thank you. Work right next to where I live.

Yeah, yeah. There you go. Well, that's good. There's good and bad, right?

Yeah, but I like it. It works out good for me. My kids get to come over and bring me l good stuff.

And you have nine kids, right?

Nine kids, yeah. 10 next month.

Oh, my goodness.

Hi, my name is Luke Dickerson. I'm from Dayton, Ohio. I run J and L Lawn and Landscape. We currently have changes all the time, but I think we currently have about 12 employees in the field. I have an office manager and I have a part time shop guy. But our annual revenue is hovering right around 1.7 million.

The issue that he's actually facing right now is the reason why I tell most business owners to grow a 800 maybe to a million dollar business, because you can run or one general manager with one person in the office say.

We have a lot of AR right now, it's over 100 grand. So if we can start collecting on some of that, which is like, that's why I hired an office manager to.

Do stuff like that.

That was her job and she just wasn't doing a very good job of it.

And right now at 1.7, he's requiring a mechanic, an operations manager, him as a salesperson, an office manager, et cetera. And it's just a harder entity structure to sustain.

We're in a huge transition right now. So there's only two people here currently who were here last year. Really at the beginning of the year?

Yeah, really. Okay. So most of them are this as.

Of this year, yes.

I'm not against it. He's obviously been successful, but it's a fact of he's being burnt out because the size of business he has built demands that he work 14 hours a day.

I don't enjoy my business anymore. I used to love what I do. I still love the idea of what I'm trying to do, but I kind of just wake up every morning and I just hate my job.

I always think about from the owner's perspective when we show up. It's like, okay, he was very humble to allow us to come and that's pretty amazing. I really respect that and I'll probably establish that Right off the rip. I'm amazed that someone would be grown this size, very established and well known and connected, and be willing to publicly talk about, like, their lowest moment like this.

What we have right now, we could make something good out of what we got. We have a serious people problem and we're trying to turn that around. It's just right now I'm paying our landscape operation to exist. It's not making me any money, so I don't know how to turn it around.

We're trying to then somehow think that I'm going to come help them in, like a couple hours. Like, I don't take that lightly. First off, egotistical to think I can change 25 years worth of pain and, like, just flip it around. Secondly, is there has to be something dramatic change. Is there a lot of customers unhappy just because of customer communication drops?

It's getting worse. Yeah, a lot of unhappy customers. And that's some of my angst, is like, my business was built on good customer service. And I'm really getting discouraged with the emails saying your prices are going up, your quality's getting worse. But I just, I hate that there's unhappy customers. It's just the worst thing ever.

I was thinking about this morning is like, this is not just like, oh, we need to do a couple little things, little tweaks to the business. Something is dramatically wrong. For 25 years, you've been growing a business and you cannot step away from it for a day. There's something really wrong with the company. How long you been here at this place?

We've been on this lot for two years. We've been in that office since last May.

Okay. Oh, wow. So this is actually pretty recent.

It's actually pretty recent, yes. For a while. That's my shop next door.

Okay, so you were up top there.

Yes. And we were on my driveway for years playing Tetris with trucks. I don't enjoy managing people. I don't enjoy dealing with issues constantly. We're not meeting our goals that I'm setting for the company. No matter how hard I work at it or how hard I try, we're just not able to meet our goals. Just not sure if it's worth it anymore. I'm kind of looking for someone to tell me that it is and how to fix these issues.

I get the impression that you almost want to quit.

Oh, yeah, I know.

It feels like I'm not judging. Last year was total burnout for me. And I made the decision last year that I was not going to have another 20, 24. I promised myself, if I had to go through that again, I'm definitely done. My wife and my kids are my number one. And if the business is taking from that, then something's got to give. I had tried to hire four different production managers, and I made off. I interviewed dozens of people. I was spending so much, I was running hundreds of dollars worth of ads to try to attract the right guy. And I made offers to all of them.

Those two guys went and then bet back to the other company.

Yeah. And they were just taking my offers. Yeah, they were just taking my offers and going back to other companies to get a raise. I was just. I was done. I was so over it. I was like, I am buried under the load over here and balls are being dropped everywhere. And I hate my life. I just hate where I'm at right now. I hate it. I went out so bad, but I can't quit. I come into work and I hate it. I'm just putting out fires all the time. This isn't what I want. This isn't what I imagined myself doing.

And I don't want to be the downer, always be like, okay, just get out of it. But he's always complaining, and I'm like, okay, why are you doing this? Why do you want to do this? You said you want to run a business, but this is what it is. It's all this stress, all this frustration.

Right.

Really?

Do you really want to keep doing this?

And I've been telling myself for years, it's going to change. You know, I'm going to get better people. We're going to get better staff, we're going to be more efficient, we're going to be more profitable. And I mean, no matter how much effort or time and money I throw at it, I'm still running into the same brick walls constantly.

We got a Ventrac loan, we got a US bank loan, we got truck loan, We've got another truck loan. We got two more other truck loans. We got a min. The excavator. We got a Honda Civic loan, We got a cash flow manager US bank loan, whopping $332,758,000. With $52,000 worth of credit card debt in the bank right now, cash total, including savings and checking, $50,000, one credit card, $52,000.

And I think our numbers are okay. We actually are turning a decent amount of profit. Last year especially, we had a 19% EBITDA. But I guess. I guess the biggest personal issue that I'm dealing with is just. I've got complete.

But realistically, even though on his P and L there's a whole bunch of profit, you look at his balance sheet and we're in a bad spot. We have hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. We have credit card. More credit card debt than we do have cash in the bank, and we have substantial amounts of loans.

We just got the mulch mule last year. This is our first spring with it.

Okay, nice.

That's a frustrating story in and of itself.

Really.

Yeah. Just how long it took to get it. And it was supposed to increase our productivity by 30%, but we're slower this year than we were last year without it.

Really?

Yeah. We gotta fix that.

Why do you think that is?

Personnel and I seem to constantly attracting people who don't care. They don't care that, you know, they left something out in the rain and it got soaked. They don't care that they didn't lock up their truck at the end of the night and things can get stolen. I don't understand that. It's just I don't relate to these guys at all. And the lack of being able to relate is. Yeah, I don't know how to solve that.

Like, there's always a hundred different things inside of a business that are going wrong. Things that could be improved. It doesn't take a rocket genius to point out areas that could be improved or changed inside of a business. Anyone can do that. It's identifying what's the one thing that if fixed, would solve the other 80 problems inside the business or a big portion of them. You know, we usually talk about the 4L framework and it's like, hey, liquidity. And then if we get money, we turn into leads and we go advertise and get a bunch of leads. We need more labors and we get more employees. And then we talk about leadership. Once you get enough employees, you need leadership. And once you get leadership and overhead and an admin person, then you need more liquidity. And we talk about the cycle and that's the 4L framework. But identifying where's the current constraint in the business and deploying all energy towards is the only way to fix it. So the mechanic gentleman, you have to let him go last year or last month.

Yeah.

And then.

And then we just let our office manager go Friday.

Really? So who's in the office now? Is there a production manager?

Me and Brian. That's it.

So emails, phone calls, he's just handling that.

Mostly me.

Okay. Okay.

That's insane. Brian, where you going? And actually, he worked here when he was younger.

Oh, really?

Six years ago, for a short while.

Brian, how's it going?

How's it going?

I'm Mike.

Brian.

Nice to meet you.

Good to meet you, man. Thanks for keeping everything afloat. Of course. I'm fine. Anyone could have showed up here today and like, yes, the business owner doesn't want to show up. Employees are leaving, he's firing everybody. No one wants to be here. There's so many areas of, like, where we could point out problems, like, what's the one thing. It's leadership that's the constraint to the business. Unless the leadership changes here, this business will not grow. The reason it has not grown for three years and it's stuck at 1.7 million, and the business owner doesn't want to show up every single day is because there is a lack of leadership.

But he's not here, really? Is he not here on purpose?

Well, let's put 2 and 2 of that.

We had a. We had a zero turn stolen yesterday, and he left it at a job site and somehow didn't realize it when.

All these ears running around. I'll tell you what I think.

Okay.

Okay.

It's been a very interesting couple of weeks.

Yeah, the situations on that. The guy, we weren't even gonna fire him. He's not here today. He sent us a picture of truck wires that are trailer wires and said they got cut. It's just stuff like that. We're not even. We weren't even gonna let him go.

He left it two days ago at the job site. Yesterday morning, came out here and told us that they had left it in the hoop because it wasn't working. Well, I checked all my security cameras. They never put it in the hoop. So then we have dash cams in the trucks. I checked his dash cam. So he left it at a large commercial property. So they went back to look for it yesterday, another crew did, and of course it was gone. I don't believe that someone snipped his wire story. I don't either. Those wires were trailer wires. I know wires when I see them. Those were not truck wires. Unless someone wired his truck with trailer wire. We called his bluff yesterday. Yeah, I mean, how do you leave them? He left one of those. The 36s. How do you leave one of those at a job site? Come all the way back to the shop, unload your stuff at the end of the day, and then the next morning, think you left it over there when you actually left it at the job site? That's either a serious, like, lack of intelligence or I don't know. I don't know what you call that.

But what I try to tell him is they don't think like we do. They don't care that it's a legal matter. They don't care.

It bothers me that they don't care.

They're not going to care. They're never going to these. No matter. I think they're great guys, but no matter what, they're not going to see things how me and him see them.

And we have another crew leader who didn't show up today because he's in court.

So his crew, they are good to go though, without him, still no.

And the thing is, he told me, said I take full responsibility for it and I'll. You help, you know, I'll help you replace it, whatever I have to do. He just had that conversation with me yesterday and then he doesn't show up today. He said they're in the middle of trying to figure all that out right now.

They're juggling.

Yeah. This is part of my frustrations. Like I'm trying to have a 15 minute from circle to roll out. And no matter how hard I try, it just never happens.

This is where I think when the 4L framework most. This is a leadership problem. There's labor problem and there's liquidity problem, but those are downstream effects of the leadership. And that's why as the company grows, the role of the leader is much less seen. In the finance, it's hard to see a good leader like, oh, I look at these financial statements, I see a good leader. It's hard to do that. But as a company scales, you have less and less leverage of doing more work. And so when I see someone working 17, 18 hours a day on manual tasks like answering the phone, doing emails, et cetera, and then they're at this size, they've forgotten the fact that they have a higher leverage use of their time, which is work through other people.

Like I said, we have two guys that are still here, were here at the beginning of last year and that's it. Yeah, everybody else is new. That's part of my stress is how do you train that many people that fast? I can't be watching bank accounts, running reports, managing dispatch, selling jobs, ordering product, looking at the numbers, like taking care of Mrs. Jones's gate that got left open and her dog got out, handling, you know, clients that are mad and upset and threatening to sue me and all kinds of stuff.

Are you doing sales and estimates at all.

Yeah, all of it. At the size we are, I find myself constantly jumping back into that role because someone has to do it. And I can't expect one person to do three things. Even. That's what I'm expecting of myself because that's what I've been doing. And that's why I'm so burned out. I'm just trying to do so much. I'm trying to be all things to all people and failing at all of it. I tried hiring a salesman, spent a lot of time with him, and he ended up taking an offer to another company that beat mine. And I was offering over 100 grand. So I just. Yeah, everyone's offering a ton of money. It's ridiculous.

Because if he can do a Good job, great, 100%. But if you can get everyone else to work from 80% to 90% and you have 12 people, that's 120% increase in output.

And in order for this group to. This business to grow, I have to grow. I've. We've reached the limit of what I can do where I'm at.

And so you have to start focusing and thinking about how do I work through other people instead of how do I just do the work myself? And that's a very. It's a different mode to operate in from when you're going from a labor and grind hustle mode to now. I need to be a leader. Very different. Like, your schedule should look different. The way that you approach people should look different in the business because you're thinking about how do I operate through the time of others.

So when he would address the Cruz, since I've known him, them, it's at this level. They don't comprehend this level. So when you go to the lower level of them, it's more like if he was to say it at a lower level, well, now he's calling them pretty much stupid.

I've been afraid to go to them and be like, hey, guys, here's the problem. Because I feel like they're not gonna understand the problem. It's. It's. It's above their pay grade, so to.

Speak, When I say it at a lower level. And this is why I've told him, luke, grow the business. I got this worry about that back there, because since I've been here and he's even said it and seen it, they take what I say a lot differently.

They respond to him way different than they do. I have to create a layer between me and the crew, because no matter what I do and what I say, there's a stigma that you're the boss. Like, even if I'm going to say something positive, just approaching them, you can tell they're like, oh, crap, it's the boss. You know, it's like, I mean, Brian can attest this. I don't yell, I don't scream, I don't chew people out.

Like, when you're smaller and you're a solo operator out in the field doing most of the work yourself, it's mostly physical stress. Then as you get employees, there's stress of being a manager. Now he's stepping into. As you grow a larger organization above a million, like, you're looking at the stress of the psychological 1.7. The exact size my first location was at when, like, I decided the franchise. No. Well, we decided the franchise, but that's when I decided, like, everything had to change. Oh, I remember. Like, it's a very critical point. Yeah, just like, same kind of breaking points in so many areas. Every single day there's something wrong happening. And so as you grow the business, the type of stress changes from physical stress to financial stress. Stress as you get employees and your margins get collapsed and then eventually become psychological. He's going through right now where you're working tons of hours every single day. There are employees walking on the job, unhappy customers. Things are breaking down, and that can just get wearing down, especially after 25 years. The fact, though, that people close to him are telling him he wants to quit makes it really hard.

Yeah. Just completely burned out. My wife wants me to quit. My brother who used to work with me tells me I should quit. I don't want to be a failure. I'm terrified of failure. I want this to work. I know that it can. I just don't know how to reach that.

Yeah, well, the thing is, look, if you as the leader broken and you don't want to be there every day, your team knows that. And so if we can't fix that, why, like, why. Why are we. Why are we surprised when there's churn and we can't get anyone to work here? That's really good to stay if the owner doesn't want to work there. Like, if the owner loses passion for the business, they should close up shop. I got. I. I kind of get a lay of where. Where everything's at. I understand it because I've had the mutiny. I've had the whole crew pull me into a meeting and say, we're going to here our list of demands. Otherwise we're Leaving, I' general manager. Go start another business. Pull the whole team with them. Like, I get it. So I get the problem. Now let's think, like, where are we going from here? If I was coming to you, Brian, I was like, what needs to change? Your current thought is he kind of needs to step back from the team. Let me cook for a second. You need to pull in an admin person and a salesperson, your operations, and then he steps back from the frontline team. Is that your current thought process?

Yes.

Your thought process is that way because you feel anything he says to them will be taken incorrectly and wrong right now?

Yes. Because it's been proven so far. Yes. But based off what. What I've been told and based off.

What I've seen and when did you move over here?

So I worked for him in like, 2018, 2019.

Got it.

I said, man, you're making a lot of money. So I opened my own company. I scaled it to about 700,000, and then the big dog around there that buys all the little guys gave me an offer I couldn't pass up on. He's just a legit guy, and that's why I'm willing to swing for him.

Yeah. And I can attest to when I let Jason go last year. When the crew got here, I updated them on what happened. I didn't divulge into the reasons why. I just said, Jason's no longer here. I don't need to get into details, but it doesn't matter what I'm saying. They're not hearing me.

And assuming. Let's assume for a moment that you don't have bad intentions and you want what's best for them. Why would we not tell the truth in order to keep the lies from spreading?

I guess it's because I feel like the truth is gonna be misconstrued anyway.

It will be misconstrued if they don't trust you. And right now they don't trust you.

No, they don't.

If you don't have trust of the team, no matter what you do, pay for performance will not open book management will not work. Hiring more people and a different office person, a different. Will not work if they don't trust you. Yeah, you don't trust them, by the way. That's why. That's why the cameras are in the trunks.

I have told you that, that I. That trust is a big issue. Even, like, with some of the guys. I don't trust them to do this, this, and this. And I say I have told him this, this has been a ongoing conversation. Yes, because I do, I will take. We have a guy that's been here three weeks. I promoted him today. He would not do that.

And we're. We have new working interviews coming in all the time. The guy who's being promoted to crew leader, who's driving this truck today, has only been with us for a week, and he's already being promoted crew lead, not because he's not good, but simply because we have no better option.

Somebody just called me, so I will call him.

Gio.

I don't need my phone.

No, come here. Where's landscapers? Gio is officially a foreman. Letting everybody know that Gio is a foreman. I will take a swing on these guys. I will show them things. Things. If they're showing me things, I will risk whatever. And until they prove me, like, wrong, like, hey, they're not to be trusted, I'm going to.

I think that in the short term, you getting away from the crew would be a really easy way to make things go better. In the short term. Yeah, because Brian, they like Brian more. The reason is because they know he doesn't have equity in the business. In their mind, Brian will advocate for what's best for the employee. He's going to advocate what's best for the business. There's only way, one way, in my opinion, to break the. That that thought process, and that is to prove them wrong. Brian is certainly a great Ying to his yang. The challenging part is Brian has also been here for two weeks and he has more credibility baked in because he's not the owner. Any other employee, you are inherently on the same team. When you join an organization where there's an adversary relationship between owner and employee. And so when you have open book management, profit sharing, P4P. These are things that are meant to get the owner and the employee on the same page. You just, you create the notion that, like, oh, it is all about versus that guy in the back that doesn't know what he's talking about.

Yeah, 100% right.

That is one way to deal with it. And I, I think actually in the short term, if you disappeared for a second and let him just kind of cook, especially the next few weeks, it would be better. But eventually he's going to move on. He wants to move on. And then there's going to have to be a. There's going to be another leadership vacuum and we're going have more problems. And so, like, the leader has to be leading. And if there is no trust going to the Leader. No one will be led.

They have asked questions like, obviously, as you know, they've asked.

And I was. I was really hoping that the people I had here in the office or Brian. Brian or Brandon in the shop, I was really hoping that we were a team and that we were pulling for the same things, only to find out that in my absence, it was totally different.

Hey, everyone, I just want to interrupt. It's Mike Andes here. I'm in the studio, and I just want to say a quick thank you to Luke for even allowing us to show up. I know there's gonna be a lot of people in the comments that will bash him, but the ability for a business owner like himself to allow us to come be vulnerable and share so that everyone here can learn. I just want to say a big thank you to him and to his team. Also, the whole problem of having team members not show up every spring and having a new team constantly churning to the business is extremely hard to build any successful business. That's why actually I created this book called the Off Season. And if you don't want to buy on Amazon, which is totally fine, you can go to mikeandys.comworkshop and get it completely free in video training format. But one paragraph in here I want.

To read to you.

It's. He says off seasons will keep you poor. The goal must be to fix the off season, to get steady leads all winter long. By doing that, you'll keep your labors through the winter. When spring comes, they'll be ready, trained and experienced, not newbies. These employees have prepared to handle the busy season, and that's what J and L is struggling with. This constant turnover every single spring will kill your business.

We're still in the process of organizing this. My recent fleet manager who works up at the shop, he's not there anymore. We fired him last month. Yeah. I really want it to feel like a team, not like it's me doing all the work and I'm dragging them along, you know, and they don't want to feel that way either. Nobody wants to be in a company like that. You find out a lot about people after they leave. And I found out after he left that there was things he was saying to the crew and it just wasn't a good culture fit anymore. Unfortunately, that's been our story for three years.

Same thing with the office person last week.

Yeah. Joy, our office manager, we would talk about doing things like, we should probably get cameras in the trucks because we don't know what these guys are doing or we'll have clients that call up and say, my lawn network got cut. And yet it was recorded that it got cut. Did it or didn't it? How are we gonna know, you know? So if we have cameras in the trucks, well, we'll just go back to that day and see. Oh, there we are. We're parked right in front of Mrs. Jones house. We did, in fact, cut her grass. Here's the proof. I'm afraid of giving people information that could be not helpful. Like, sometimes giving people, arming people with information just allows them to wreak havoc, you know, so you have to be careful who you give information to, because they could use it their own way. And she was all about it to me. But when the guys would come in and they were talking to her about it and I wasn't here, she's like, yeah, Luke's putting cameras in the trucks because he wants spy on you. And it's like, no, I don't sit here in my office all day watching truck cams while drinking Kool Aid. You know, like, that's not what I'm doing. And yet that's the image they have, is that Luke sitting in here watching me all day to catch me doing something. I'm not trying to catch you doing something wrong. I just happen to notice someone's not wearing seat belts. You know, you kind of tend to not want to go back there. You know, you've been burned before, and it's painful. You don't want to go back to where it's painful. That's our natural reaction, right? We want to retreat from pain.

Everybody's valued in a company, but as an office person, office manager do office manager stuff. We found tons of stuff she was neglecting recently. The past 72 hours.

I needed to promote somebody, and I wanted to promote organically from within. So I felt like my office manager's husband was the best bet for production manager. So I promoted him, but I ended up having to let him go May of last year. And it's my office manager's husband, so you can imagine that was. That was rough.

But her priority was to be out there and turn everybody against being a.

Bug in your ear.

And I told him from the jump of being here when you fired her husband, that you should have never hired when you fired her husband, she should have walked with him. You should not ever hire entire family. It just doesn't work. That's why my family that owns companies, I don't work for them. I can't. It just doesn't mesh.

And I best employees from a work. From a work perspective though, have been family members. I'm one of 13 kids, so I have a ton of brothers.

Yes. And that's how he views things. And I tell him the same thing every day. They were good for certain parts. The guy that was in here, he's a culture destruction.

Is it just burnout?

Are there structural issues? The business, he's been doing it for 20 plus years. Like that's in and of itself is exhausting, especially when you can't keep people and if you've been burned a bunch by managers. So I know all the feelings I've built. Like the first location, it was at 1.7 the year I left. So I know exactly where he's at.

It feels like it's constantly a struggle between you either have guys who are excellent technicians but terrible for the culture or people who are great for the culture but terrible technicians. Can't find the unicorns that are both.

Here. I'll go prescriptive mode. I rarely do this in a turnaround. Usually most of the listing I try to guide you. So this is my prescription. Okay. You stand up in front of them and have extreme ownership and say the reason this business isn't doing good financially, here's the numbers. And people aren't staying is my fault.

Yes, it is.

And empty your chambers. If you allow them to do that on you, you now have down the road after time has gone on, the ability to hold them accountable to the standards that you, you anticipate for them to have. Like, the reason there's no extreme ownership of your team is because you're not taking extreme ownership of the business. Like that's just facts. Like extreme ownership of the leadership position is. Why did I have an admin person that allowed. I allowed them to be a cancer. Why didn't I fire them for sooner?

I should have.

These are the things we know as leaders. And the only reason they don't take extreme ownership of their. Their actions on the field is because we don't, as leaders, take actions at the top. They are simply a byproduct of the leadership they have. And the reason people leave businesses is because of bad managers. It's not because the pay, your pay is decent. It's good. Yeah, it's comparable.

Yeah, we're. We're very competitive.

Good trucks, good equipment, nice shop space, been around for a long time. There's. There's stability in the position. It is simply a function of. They do not want to work for Luke.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So then it just becomes, well, I've said.

I've said from the beginning, there's something about me that they're reacting to. And I know, right?

So we can fix it. Leadership is a skill. I keep going back to that, but, man, it's a tough one to learn. And it's an infinite game when it comes to leadership, because I stink at certain elements. I just not good at leadership. And that's the constraint to many of our growth. And that's why so often at times when you look at the 4L framework, we talk about liquidity, we talk about getting more leads, we talk about getting more employees. But, like, ultimately, if you fix leadership, it has a reverse effect. Like your labor get more efficient. All of a sudden you do better marketing because you have great leadership. And like, people want to work for you. There's lots of word of mouth. So leads come in fast. Liquidity, you get better margins because people are more efficient out in the field. So leadership is the stem of almost every single issue. Whether you're one employee, whether you have no employees and you have a family. Like, if he can just get his wife on board. I can't even imagine having someone that for 15 years doesn't really want you to be in the business. You're pouring yourself into it every single day, and the person that you love the most is actively wanting you to leave that place. And so I would say this is my $0.02, and you will have evidence to prove me wrong within a year. If you did this, I would take the cameras out of the trucks.

If I knew I could count on my team, yes, I would not do it right.

So we have to take the first step in building a trusting relationship because they do not trust you, and you don't trust them, and they have evidence.

So would you think I should just shut the whole camera thing down right now?

I would use that as a good faith measure to show that you trust them.

So how do we handle a situation when it arises? There's a traffic accident and we don't know what happened, and it's just their word versus the person who the other person was involved.

If you want them to trust you, you will have to trust them. And yes, there will be times there's an accident and you don't get it on camera. So my location has been in business for 11 years now. We had one accident, cost us $6,000. We don't have any dash cams on trucks. There's 15 trucks. And the reason for that is because they trust that I'm Going to back them up. And if they make. If they damage the something, they will tell me. And it's only. That's always been the way. That way it's been where there has been mutinies and in that culture environment, we don't make money. I don't trust them. I hate my job. I don't want to come to work. And they don't want to show up either. And if you don't want to show up to work, they don't want to either. Yeah, like if you don't love what you're doing. Yeah, I know. And you lost the passion for J and L, you've lost it. The number one thing for a founder and entrepreneur to do is stay in love with the business. Because if you're not in love with it, no one below you is going to to love it. No one else is gonna have the passion. And that purpose statement will not be fulfilled.

How do I stay in love with it when my wife hates it?

The same way that you get your employees to fall in love with it. And that is align the incentives of the business with theirs. It says 20% profit, but like, if you take out his wages, let's call it 12% profit margin business. When people start thinking about quitting, even when they're profitable like that, what they're comparing it against is, is this really worth working 70 hours a week for? You got a family of 10 people you're responsible for. You're not spending. You've been doing this for 25 years, so you feel very much like stuck. Like, if I haven't been able to figure out in 25 years, what's gonna change?

She has an idea in her mind about what an ideal life looks like.

Is it 9 to 5? Is it, hey, I just need to be able to text you and you respond.

She said before she's like, I just wish you could come home at a somewhat reasonable time. Whether it's 5, 30, whether it's 6. And when you're home, you're home. My problem is when I'm home, the wheels are still turning. That's, you know, every day. I'm a professional firefighter. It's like, how do I solve this problem? How do I solve that problem?

And I don't have bandwidth to be thinking about Michael's math problems. I need more bandwidth for that.

I'm usually against whoever says to quit. Cause especially someone like your spouse or your brother or someone close to you. Especially cause his brother worked with him in the past to tell you to Quit is like a gut punch. You've been doing this for 25 years. This is all he knows he's doing since he was 14. And you can tell them that. Hey, guys. The business struggling financially, like, just say these words. We have more credit card debt than we do have money in the bank.

Yeah. I guess I've always been afraid if I expose stuff like that, that's gonna make them feel like their job's at jeopardy.

It is. Cause if you quit, they are losing their job.

You like to be truthful. That's the truth.

That is the truth.

And you don't say it with spite. You don't say like, hey, guys, I'm proving you wrong. It's just a matter of, like, I.

Feel like if I tell them that, they're gonna feel like it's their. Like I'm telling them it's their fault. Cause they're not getting enough.

That's why you start off with, this is all my fault. I've messed up. I've allowed things in my past, my family, past employees that burnt me to affect the way I lead. And I'm sorry. I don't think they've ever heard those words come out of your mouth.

No.

And this is. The next part is like, once you've done that, then you go to your wife. You're not giving her what she wants, which is not the business. It is your time. And the reason you can't give her that time is because you don't trust anyone here to run it the way you would if you were here.

That's because I had office managers literally stealing money.

Right. But if we take ownership of his, like, we allowed that to happen.

Happen.

We created an environment where, no, it was happening.

But, yes, I allowed it to happen unintentionally.

We created an environment that it was in their best interest to do those things instead of support the business.

Yeah. Yeah. I really don't want them to feel like this meeting's about, hey, guys, we're going under. Just wanted to give you a heads up. Like, it's. That's not what it is at all. It's a. I have a. I have a clear path in my head about how we can go up, but I'm the bottleneck and I need help. And I'm asking for your help.

Every single negative thing that comes out.

Of, whether it's direct or not doesn't matter.

You want to thank them. Everyone should be there. There should be no lines. There should be no walls. We're going to open up the organization, or if communication flows freely. And we don't have silos of poison happening where we don't trust. And when they're out there, stuff's not going on. We don't know if they're answering the phone because they're on lunch break. If they're at a job, we don't trust, there's no trust. And so the only way to fix that is do something radical, and you will get one or two people that will need to leave. I think you've actually gotten most of the cancers out. But the problem is, even once a cancer is cut out, it can still spread throughout the body if it's got the bloodstream. And right now it's in the bloodstream. So you're just going to create other cancers that are pop up in the business because no one trusts you.

I'm so afraid that no matter what I say, it's gonna be taken wrong. And so then I'm afraid to say anything. And then my silence is taken as he doesn't care about me, he doesn't notice my work. It doesn't matter if I do a good job, he doesn't care. It's like, it's literally because I'm afraid to say anything. Because I'm afraid, however I say it, it's gonna be taken wrong. And I don't know how to fix that.

I think most of the problem is between his ears.

Honestly. Honestly.

So this one's going be fun. You know, Francis, this is. This is. This is what I'm good at. You know, there's some people, it's like, they're really good at sports. I'm not great, you know, I'm small, not going to work. Some people are good at music.

I can't.

I'm not really that good. Can't really sing. I. I think I can help him. And so, like, this is. This is one of those cool things. Like, I woke up this morning all jazzed up and ready to go, because it's like, this is what I was. I'm made for.

And.

And like, you know, maybe in 15 years that'll be different in my life. But, like, currently, like, everything is optimized for helping people like lick. And, like, I'm glad we have the money and the infrastructure to be able to make it happen. I'm glad we have the team to be able to, like, capture it, to help other people. But, like, this is why I exist currently. And the radical thing that, in my opinion, needs to happen is you humble yourself. You take extreme ownership of the problems inside the business. And you don't address them as the problem. They are not the problem. And the way that you phrase that meeting is extremely important. It's not like, hey, I want to fix the business. I think I'm the problem. Guys unload it on me, like, tell me what's up. It's not the way to do it.

That'll be an act.

They'll see the hard act from a mile away.

Yeah.

Yes.

We're going to be humble about it. We're going to thank them for their feedback. We're going to ask them that over the next week that you're going to create a plan based upon their feedback to make changes in the business. And the reason, because we're going to align incentives the reason we're doing this, I want a place where you guys want to come and work, that people don't come here and then leave after a couple weeks. I don't want you guys have to deal with drama when you show up. I want you guys to trust me. I, I don't blame you guys for not trusting me because I've been putting cameras in your trucks. I've been up down your throat about a bunch of stuff. I'm gonna take the, I'm gonna take the cameras out. I trust you guys to do what's right. And that's just the first step is the meeting. Then it's a week of you actually going through the feedback. I just can't stress this enough. If that meeting goes poorly, you lose your whole team. This is why no one does. It's a very high risk move.

Yes.

Very high risk.

Yes.

And so the, the, the way that meeting goes hinges on how you react to the feedback, how this meeting goes. It's going to go horrible. Like literally the entire elite team leaves. Like, it's such a high risk move. When you take off your, take off any facade that you've built up for years and you let your team say whatever they want, you are massively vulnerable. And this whole team could be gone in one week. It could also in one week be 50% more efficient. And a place where an admin person comes in and thrives. Any poison that's being interjected from past employees completely gets repelled. Everyone wanting the entrepreneur and the business owner to win. Everyone wanting the entrepreneur to get home, be with his family and support his, his wife. That's what you need in a team. The same way that he cares about making them win, he needs them to want him to win. And right now, that's not happening.

That is a big factor in all of this because of what his beliefs are. Everybody here knows Luke's beliefs within him.

Touch on that. Personal beliefs. What are you referring to?

So, okay, the thing is that we know with Luke is it has been a Persona that he brings them over here as far as who he hires, how they look, how their hair is.

So let's just say it the way it is because I've been accused of the same thing you. They think he discriminates 1000%.

I feel like I've already been so, like, cautious about what I say and do because I'm afraid I'm going to be misinterpreted or misunderstood or. Or accused whether it's true or not. And maybe that's some of my building the shell, building the defense.

Example. Give me example. Like, is it X, Y and Z or what?

No. So I'll give you you a straight up example. When I hired Geo. Geo is African American. There was a huge spiel by guys that if this was, if this was in Luke's control, he would have never hired him. That it was based off his color. Even the guys, when I got here, like day two or three, they're like, luke put you in a position of power with those tattoos. And I was like, I mean, see.

To me that's proving to them that it's like I have a preference about tattoos. You know, just like I have a preference that you, you don't let your hair, you know, look all bed hair every morning. You know, I have a preference, but I'm not gonna micromanage that.

Yes, I grew up in the same way, in the same style, in the same places as these guys. He did not.

I've had to compromise a lot on what I think is. So I've been described as an obsessive idealist. I know I can't, I can't force people into my mold. I feel like there's constant battle lines being drawn where they just. But it goes back to the whole. They don't care about this company. They don't care about the image. So why would they care. Care what they wear? You know, we wear uniform pants because guys were coming in with holes and they'd wear the same pair of pants for a week. They're stained and I mean, I had one guy who was zip tying his pants together with zip ties and holding them up with a trimmer line belt. Like, it just. We looked like homeless guys.

Mo.

I mean, but from my point of view is at least the Guy still should. My point of view on a personal level, I'm never. We haven't discussed this part because I'm not going to bring my personal beliefs here because mine are not in line with his. And that's okay. He can believe what he wants. I'm gonna believe what I want.

Some.

Some of the guys, they can't afford the same things that I can. I'm not going to knock them. Some of these guys, I do. I'm again, smell like marijuana when you show up. I'm against smoking on job sites. I'm against smoking in trucks that are $100,000 at you. I mean, technically they're paying for. Because they're doing the work, but you get the gist of it.

But I'm.

They are never going to know in a negative notation that I think these things. I'm just going to say, hey, it's company policy to not do these things.

But no matter how much I stress that, it's not moving the needle. They don't care. And it's easy for me to have the offensive. Like, that's the problem. They don't care. So my mode of operation has been to then put the pressure back on the guys. Because in my mind, I know if we were hitting these times, I know we'd be profitable. And I know the profit that we're bringing in would more than offset the debts that we have from just finding ourselves in a spot where it's like, oh, it's payroll week and we don't have the money. So now we're going to have to dip into the line of credit just to make payroll. Which is fine because we'll make it up next week. Well, next week we find ourselves back in the same boat again and again and again.

I need them to trust you and to love this brand. Everything we're talking about is a downstream effect of that. Cause it's the only root problem right now. We have a lot of gap. We're behind on work. How high are these people? If you get a team that's pulling in the same direction, you will double productivity. Double. Yeah, especially because they're not on P4P now. Like, you could double efficiency. Lunch breaks get cut, they immediately get on time. Like, there's so much juice to squeeze from just them trusting you. So I did this originally. My business was like 1.4, 1.6 at the time. We were still going up and we weren't making money. And so I had anonymous peer reviews. They all did peer reviews on each other. And I was included on it.

Who said to do that?

We took all the reviews. I had a whole page of all the negative stuff and I spent three hours with my operations person going through every single one. And that was painful. I was crying. It was emotional. I knew there was a lot of things in my past I was allowing to surface up from family, religion, etc. And ultimately, if that purpose statement doesn't require someone to look a certain way, act a certain way, be a certain way, I don't care. It will take a level of humility that is currently not in the organization and that starts at the top.

So I did one on one meetings with everybody here. When I got here, I put everyone one on one and I gave them a few questions. I said, I want to know what you're liking, what you're not liking, and what your problems are and how can I fix them. Every, pretty much every one of them said 1. 1. Luke is not a man of his word.

And it's like, I hope I can fix it, you know, because I still kind of feel like, can I fix this? Like, is this something I can fix? You know, for my company, for my wife, people I work with, for my own sake? I do want to fix this bad in a big way.

And they're also saying he micromanages. He tries to father. Not like, hey, you know, you need to make better choices outside of work. To a sense he does, but he tries to micromanage.

So as we're going to discover today as we talk. So people. People skills are not my strong point. I'm not a people person, apparently. So I've been told you.

Told you that pretty much everybody. Okay. Okay.

I've been described as the nicest boss they've ever worked for. So this the current crew we have now. I mean, most of them, I don't even really know that. Well, they're new. We have just. Since Brian's been here, we've let four people go.

What we've noticed, even in the morning meetings, if you saw the morning meeting with just me today and not him, it's a totally different mentality. The guys are more into it. The couple that I've done where he's in here, totally, totally different mentality.

Just their body language. They were just like, this is a complete waste of time. Why are we doing this? This is stupid. And I had to call those guys out separately. I brought them in the office and I'm just like, you know, we're trying to make a team here, you know, and you're you're totally communicating that this is a complete waste of time. It's like, do you not want to be on the team? Because if so, just, you know, there's the door. I'm not making you be here.

You know, even today, I had to tell them. I don't know if you heard it, but as they were talking, I said, shut up. Like you guys are. And it's only when it's him, if I'm talking, they're like, okay. Like, they'll listen.

Yeah, they relate to him because he's not the boss. I guess Jonathan's not here today either, is he? Yeah, yeah. He's normally exercised guy. All right, guys, let's get on the circle.

All right, Chris, let's take it out. Say something you love about landscaping.

You can make a lot of money.

Stripes is nice.

Pretty much have to. If he is speaking, I have to go back through every person and say, hey, he meant it this way. Or they're automatically like, if we sent him out today, tomorrow, and I didn't go out and he just talked. You can even probably tell their efficiency in the morning is going to be different because they're sitting there talking about what happened. They're contemplating choices and things of that nature.

I've been a believer in building trust over time. I give you this task. You succeed, I trust you with more. You succeed at that, I trust you with more. And then you take on more and more. And the more you're able to take on, the more I will trust you. And the longer we're at this, the more you've shown a pattern of faithfulness, then I'm going to continue to trust you. I don't know why they're so intimidated by me. I guess it's just because I'm the boss. It doesn't matter what I say. I can't approach them and them take it well. I've even done. I've done infield training, training with guys where I go with them, and it's. From my perspective, it goes great. Like, we had fun. We joked, you know, I pointed out a couple things that could be better on the job sites. And at the end of the day, high five. You're doing great. Keep up the good work. Two weeks later, they quit. What did I do? What did I say? You know, like, I don't.

I do believe that the leadership is the constraint of the company. We've identified that. Now we're going to fix it, and we're to do that, we need to be humble. Listen to the Team, we're going to have have to actually apologize for cutting people off. Actually apologize for coming across condescending because you do like a lot. I'll be honest.

Wow.

The way you talk to the guys comes across very condescending. Just when you're giving basic instructions.

Wow.

And it is in part just like you give your opinion before asking a question. You cut them off, you roll your eyes back a little bit like this and they just feel like less than.

Wow.

These are little things. Yeah.

I mean I'm genuinely shocked.

What I tell you what you do when you get to a job site, you never say anything anything positive. It is always what is going wrong. Well, they do something good after you do that thumbs up.

But they don't hear the good. All the.

Hang on after you do that thumbs up, we 10 minutes later it's something that's going wrong. Hey, how fast did you. Oh, that's not fast enough. And into a sense. Some of the things that he says not out of being malicious who he is, they do come across wrong now. And that's why I wanted and we agree that there should be the gate because everything he says I get what he's saying and I do not think he's being malicious at all. I do not think he's doing it to be a bad person.

Like there's so many little aspects that can make you feel to your team that you are disconnected from them. And whether it be saying a compliment and then putting but after it. Like if I say, hey, you did a really great job on the edging. But as soon as they said but I just disqualified everything that was said before that I could just replace the word but with and and we'd be okay. Or just don't say the negative part.

Yeah, I know a big problem. And you. I don't know. Tell me, tell me straight if you feel this way. But I know a big going back to how was raised. My dad was way quicker to jump on what we did wrong than what we did right. I didn't get the atta boys growing up. It was a you have to perform or else. And I know, I know that because my dad's this way. When you say something condescending, that's not what you meant. I didn't mean it in the condescending way, but it's how I came across anyway. And I have to own that. And that's not fun because of my intentions where were right. My actions were communicating something else. And that's frustrating.

I feel like if he did Leave, he'd feel like forever. I'm just a failure, and I didn't make it work. And his dad was very entrepreneurial, but he didn't. He's never complimented Luke on anything. He says his business has got his heart and it's bad.

Is that, like, from a religious side of things, too? Yeah.

Being poor is like, somehow you're closer to God.

Yeah.

And I think a lot of it.

Stems back from his past and his dad and just thoughts, mindsets.

Two days ago on Monday, I told a guy, you're doing an awesome job. He said, I've been here two months, and you're the first person I say that.

I've said it a lot like that. Number one there to enrich lives or continuous improvement. Whether you're doing that here, doing somewhere else, I don't care. I just want everyone who comes here to be better off because they were here. Like, maybe your. Maybe your life's dream is to party in your basement playing video games the rest of your life. I don't care. Whatever you want to do is fine. I just want you to be successful here.

Yeah.

So that's what you say in that meeting. What you just said there is what you say. I don't say the I don't care part, because to them, that's their life. That is important. Important to them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I say I don't care because I don't want them to think, like, I'm trying to make them live a certain way outside of work.

So instead of saying, I don't care, I support that.

Well, there's certain lifestyles I don't support, and I'm not going to lie about that.

So that's where you cross personal business.

Yes, but I would never tell them that. But I do believe that.

Here's my question. Do you want them to hit their goals?

Yes.

Okay, well, what if their goals is that they play more video games?

Then that's. That's their personal life choice.

Support them. Like, there's. There's people that. Like, they like music. I don't care about music, dude. I don't know a single artist. I'm. Movies. Like, I don't care. I want you to hit your goals. And I'd love to know what those goals are.

But if them trusting me is me caring about what they have going on in their personal life, their personal goals. I'm sorry, I may have forgotten what your personal goals are.

It's not about knowing what they are. It's about them knowing that if they shared those with you that I would care. You would care. And they can trust you enough to even tell you.

I struggle to communicate that to them, obviously, because they feel like I'm the guy who just shows up and wants get to criticize. And it's like deep down, I do believe my heart's motive is. My criticism is coming from a place of. I sincerely want you to grow in your skills. I want you. I want you to be good at this. I want that client to come out and tell you what a great job you're doing.

I think you're miss like understanding what is trying to be said. Can I say something that will help with this and help you understand? Peter has been here five years, right? I told him more about Peter after being here two weeks than I knew about Peter, than he knew about Peter in five years. Peter's been working here since the first time I was here, before I even over my company. I told him more about Peter with knowing Peter for a few hours compared to five years.

And I've asked these guys this question, but they don't give me a response.

Because they don't trust you.

They don't trust me.

It all reverts back to one thing.

All we're talking about, every single thing. There's no trust in the organization.

And I guess it's because I hold myself to such a high standard that when someone does something right, I almost don't notice it. Because it's expected of you. Like. Like, I expect guys to show up on time, but if they're late, it's like, this is becoming a problem. We need to address this. But I tend to not address them being on time because, like, well, that's what's expected of you. And I don't even know how to address that without sounding cheesy or weird, like, hey, you're here today, man. You know, and because I feel like what they're gonna hear when I say that is I'm always here, you know, why are you praising me for being here? I'm always here. You know, I'm so afraid that no matter what I say, it's gonna be taken wrong.

You're right. When you to win, she just doesn't. She just has no evidence for the past several years.

Right.

Why are.

She wants you to win, but she. She sees that the bottleneck is the way you were stuff that they get cut. Like your dad and the way he ra. Like, obviously there's been the way that he raised you caused some trouble. Trouble? Yeah. Like, my grandpa is probably very Much like your dad. And it has trickled down through our family like crazy. And there's a very hardcore religious and bringing up ideologies. There's no way he could ever have a woman with wear pants in front of him without calling her out and saying horrible things about her.

I have a feeling I know what that's. Yeah, I grew up in that world.

And so, like, we can't allow that to impact the way we're leading.

Sounds good, man. Thank you.

I try not to. Like, obviously you can't. You can't deny your personal moral standings, you know, but you can't impose those upon other people either. It's. It's been a fine line to have to walk running a business, pulling people into the business who don't share your morals, don't share your beliefs, and yet all still have a cohesive team where everyone's pulling together for the same thing.

But when I look at the purpose state, none of those. None of that statement aligns with personal values or morals. All of those things be accomplished with people that look very different than you believe, very differently than you. Like the way that you were managed as a kid, you're reflecting on them. The ability for someone to say, good job, you crushed it. And that trust factor and be proud of what you built here, that stings. And who it's coming over in the team. In my opinion, you are Santa Claus to this business. You only talk positive things. You should be the one handing out bonuses at team meetings. You should be the one giving promotions. He's the one that takes escape. He's the one that tells the crew, this is not right. This is wrong. This is wrong. They're all looking to use the negative because you keep dishing it out.

I've been the only one to dish it out. There is no one else.

I didn't do it. So in my opinion, having him be the bad guy and you the good guy is very good.

Well, Brian's been so good for me in that way because he. Because he is super blunt. And that's what I'm used to, is blunt. So when he's blunt with me, he helps me to see he's willing to say things to me that other people would never say. And when he says it, then I get it. Whereas someone might hear something, be offended at how I said it, and then walk out because I was offensive. He's just going to look at me and be like. Like, dude, did you hear what you just said? You know, and then I'm gonna be like, oh, did I say that? Yeah. And I think a lot of it.

Comes back from his past and his dad and just thoughts, mindsets that. And we're so, I don't know, we're so assuming good of people in general. Like, people come in like, you know, like with a hangover. You know, they're throwing up on the Monday morning and we're just like, huh, I wonder what's going on. They're like, guys, he's having a hangover. We're not used to, like, we grew up conservative Christian. We're not to used thinking of people doing that kind of stuff, you know, so it's been a lot of people pulling things because they can. Yeah, because they know we're not going to catch it. So it's kind of good to have someone like Brian here to catch what these guys are doing. We're not catching it.

From your perspective. You like Brian. He's more skeptical. He's been here a little bit in the past.

He seems like he's a good opposite.

Of what Luke is. Okay.

He does seem like he's a good complimentary like counterpart, which is good.

And I don't want people to come in here and walk on eggshells like, who's next? No, it's like, no, no, no, no, no, it's not who's next. Just, you know, don't do anything worse. And I think there's a stigma and I don't know how to fix this, but I've even heard people say that. Relay back to me what an employee said in a situation like, oh, Luke is so gonna fire me. You obviously don't know me that well. You know, I don't just jump on you the minute you make a mistake and fire you. Even though that's maybe that's what I've communicated. We talked till 9 o' clock last night about this, about the guy who lost the mower. It's like, I'm not gonna just fucking hire him.

He naturally quit on his own. I just gave him the opportunity two hours ago for me to pick him up. He was supposed to send me his address.

Right.

When he got off the phone, he blocked my number because my messages are no longer going through. So there's your answer on that one.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's, you know, it's that times a hundred and I, I don't, I don't know, it's really started to feel like it's, it's never going to turn around and I'm not going to not trust you the moment you make a mistake, even though somehow that's what, what I've communicated. As soon as they screw up like, like this issue with this, the stolen mower. This isn't the first mistake he's made. But it's like I wasn't ready to ax him over it. I wanted to work through it with him. I wanted this to be a growing process for him. How are we were going to approach it, you know? But instead he chose to quit, which is really discouraging. What do you think, Brian? Why? Why do you think he quit?

Why do I think he quit? Because he doesn't want to be accountable for a $5,000 bill. First off, we'll start with that.

And then.

But we never even told him that he was going to be responsible for it.

But these guys know you and they, they know what's going to come out of that. He already knows. I don't even have to be in my position.

That's literally never happened in the history of this company. Why do they feel that way? Because I've never made anybody pay for a wrecked truck. I've never made anybody pay for a stolen blower. I've never done that. And the only time I have is when they voluntarily came to me and said I dumped two brand new wheelbars.

What you just said is why they don't trust you. He brought up a point and you immediately defended it.

What did I just tell you the past week? Stop explaining yourself to me. Stop trying to defend. I've told him this all. Haven't I said it the past two weeks?

I guess I'm just trying to understand. I tell him I'm trying to understand why they feel that way when it's where. Where's that, where's that coming from?

So say that instead of defending. So instead of you're saying that's never happened before, but say, hey, okay. Why do you feel like that? Like, I'm curious as to why you feel like that.

We had a guy wreck a truck this past winter. He drove it. We think he fell asleep at the wheel. We don't know. I never even had a chance to address it with the employee before I could even walk through how we're going to bring this up or talk to him about it or anything.

He quit.

I wasn't prepared to fire him. I wanted to work with him.

But the inclination is anything negative is brought up to you. You defend and you go against. That's why they don't feel like you're in the same Team because you go against immediately instead of being curious, listening, wondering, okay, how do you see it that way? And if it's from him who's on your. Your team and is fully supportive of you when he gives feedback. I'm not. I don't need to defend. I'm curious as to why they feel that way. And I need to make changes.

Well, it's like I'm confused because my mo. My MO in the past is I haven't fired people fast enough.

So if you're confused, the only way to understand that is to ask.

That's what I was just doing.

No, no, you were defending. You're saying this has never happened before in the history of the company.

We were defending everything. You do it. You do that all the time. Me and you've talked about this, and without this around, we have had the same conversation that every time I say something, something, you, Lazarus, whatever. You defend what was done at that time, or the guys do this, you defend about some like, well, for the past seven years, I've done this, this, this, and it's been correct or whatever. It's always like a boy.

It's always, Luke's right. They're both.

You're having two guns shoot at the same time and smack in the middle. I know that he wants to help, but some of the stuff that you've said, I know that he's been told for 10, 15 years.

Right.

And maybe just hearing it from somebody that's a different caliber, you know.

Opens the.

Yeah.

Opens the eyeballs and things of that nature. And I just hope he follows along. Well, he's gonna have to.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because everybody's been trying to tell him that.

Right.

You know, there's no reason that me and him are here till 10 o' clock every single night talking about the same stuff.

Yeah.

Like you gotta do something.

Yeah. Yeah.

You can't just run in circles every day.

I would say this. First off, it feels like I'm like, we're both, like, shooting at you. That's not the objective. We want to win, and we are Team Luke. So one thing I would recommend is when someone even has a problem, instead of giving them a solution, ask a question. Instead of telling him what to do at the job, say, what do you think's next to happen at the job?

How would he even know?

So then he would ask you, he'd say, so what should I do next? What should be the tell him? Right. Instead of you just jumping in and immediately saying your thoughts and opinions and coming across as Someone who just breathes down their neck and tells them what to do versus I asked my boss what his opinion is and he gave it to me. Now, you're a resource, not a dictator. I would say, like, you want people to come to their own conclusions. You don't want to have to tell them what to do. So when he says, hey, X, Y and Z. And the immediate, well, this has not happened in the past. We've never done that before. Like, you're defending instead of question, why do you feel that way? Oh, they feel that way because of X, Y and Z. Then we get to the X, Y and Z that we can solve this.

Is like so much like rethinking through how I say everything.

They're capable, they can do their job. Let's assume for a moment suspend reality and think that they actually know what they're doing out there. And they know how to do landscaping, know how to do lawn care. I want them to come to the conclusion that I already know in my head is correct. So I'm just going to guide them to that conclusion. I'm going to ask certain questions to get them to exactly say the exact same thing I want them to say. Then at five o', clock when the job's going over, they know what to do because you reinforce the fact that they think what their thought, they have original thought, they run it by you. Or they ask for feedback, like, yes, that's good. And they say eventually they'll be like, well, how you can be better and then you can give your opinion. But until then, like, you have not been asked. Like, it's very difficult and it is a tough pill to swallow. When you realize the lack that you have has caused problems for the business, for your family, for your employees, that is humbling. But then it's a matter of what do you do about it? Like, are we going to keep staying at the size of business? Are we keep beating our head against the wall? Are we going to keep working 80 hours a week like it's not sustainable. You're going to lose your marriage, you're going to lose your family, you're going to lose team members, you're going to, you're gonna lose a lot. And.

Recognizing the issue is only the first step. Then it's like, what actions are you going to take? Are you gonna be humble enough? Are you going to listen? Are you gonna change your behavior? And that is not easy after you've done something for 25 years. The same way you come across fabricated. And that's why like when you take. When you get the bullet, you take the vest off and you let the bullets hit. And like, it's not a bad thing to cry in front of your team. It's not like it's okay that the fact that you have all these stresses and it's overloading you because guess what? They feel the same way in their own life. And maybe they don't have the magnitude of all the stresses and people that they have to, but to them, they also feel overwhelmed and they have to show up because they're also flawed human beings. And so this is the time, the way you talk to a team member to gain their trust. It's not the fact that, like, I think everyone here wants to get better. I think everyone here wants to get to the next level in their career. Like, that's not. Doesn't matter. Like, everyone has stuff in your life. And I want. When you show up to this one workplace, then you feel supported. And when you show up here, there's not more drama to add to your day. And when you leave here, you don't have to hear a bunch of drama and gossip, but you actually care about the business. I care about you. You care about your team members. That's what I want. And it's not happening right now. And so what like, to fix that, it's going to start with me. And I've made a bunch of mistakes, and it's because of the way I was raised. It's because all these stresses in my life, and I'm sorry I messed up and I need to hear from you all what I can do better to be a better leader. I generally believe you have so many good intentions and like, passion for the business, passion for your family, passion for the team. I believe all of that. There's just characteristics you've picked up as a leader that are pushing and repelling your team away.

Oh, yeah.

And the reason that you look to family as people that trust you and that you can. Are great workers is because they know what those look like and they've seen them and they can whitewash them. They can put away with it.

Yeah.

Because they know where it comes from.

Exactly.

Yeah. And it's the reason I tolerate my brother's shortcomings too, is because I know where they come from.

Exactly. I'll give them a few some more grace. So what we're gonna ask from the team is a little bit of grace while we figure this out. Because we're a flawed human being that's trying to figure out life.

I see it in my brothers. So if I see it in them, for sure it's in me too. We're all cut from the same cloth, all fell from the same tree. So if I see it in them, I know I got it in myself. I would have liked to think that I've taken steps to mitigate those negative character traits of self defense and putting up the wall and interrupting.

I guess I still didn't realize how much I was doing that either. I don't even know I'm doing it. It's one of the biggest reasons, honestly, that I don't want to quit. Because I know if I quit, I'm giving up on the very opportunity for the very. The best thing to bring out my character deficiencies is my company.

Hey, entrepreneurship is the best self improvement plan you'll ever have.

And that's why I want to keep going with this. Because I want continuous improvement. I want to improve.

And the fact that you've hit 1.7, installed there for three years says there's a constraint. And I constraint is you. What's cool is you can fix it. So like I'm giving you literally two things to do. Meeting with the team.

Yep. Which I'm all about.

One week of listening, absorbing, thanking people for their criticisms and trying to take action on it.

So I have one maybe stupid question.

Yeah.

What if none of them say anything because it's already been driven enough.

Great.

So we have already some bullets in the chamber that we know exist.

So then he would address those publicly.

You unleash them. Okay. Say, well in the one on ones, here's a couple things that were brought up. And you, you, you do it as if you were one of them.

Yeah. Would it be helpful for me to present it as like a, hey guys.

I know things are said all the time.

No, no, no, no. That's a.

You just did what he said not to do.

I don't trust you. When you go out of these doors and it's like usually when we leave here, I'm like, hey, these dude things on your website, do these things inside of your team, your compensation model, do these things from a loan and debt perspective. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about like very nebulous, soft skills. It will take years to figure out. I think if you did that really purposely for a week and you asked people, hey, if I cut you off, I actually want you to tell me, shut up. So one of the guys in August Nation, he had this problem. He walked around $10, bills in his pocket. He said, every time I cut you off, I need you to tell him me, I'm gonna give you 10 bucks. Okay. The first day you lost $200. Wow. Yo, real quick.

Oh, yo, real quick.

Figured out you do that in your meeting. Hey, guys, one of the things I'm working on this week.

That's a great idea actually.

Remember that I'm gonna be rich.

I'm telling you. I'm telling you. So that's like one thing and then you ask for another. Like, hey, what did he notice this week? Like, is there something I can improve?

But I. I guess that.

Very good.

But like, those are the little things that, like, it's not easy. It's not tangible numbers and digits. You're not going to go to a training or a mastermind and learn this stuff. But your team will tell you if you listen.

I did the follow up call Luke, and things are the same, if not worse.

So I tried doing the meeting that Mike suggested. It went about like I expected it would. I got zero feedback. Feedback, like none. They were just. We're just running into the same old, same old nonsense. Guys are coming in every day asking for pay advances because they're broke and can't afford anything and they got bills to pay. And so I'm trying to handle these advances and trying to learn payroll. And I got behind on some truck payments. Some payment. It's like I'm trying to. I. I haven't touched my company's record, like financials in over a month because I just, I haven't had any bandwidth for inputting receipts or running P. Ls or anything. So I have no idea where we're at with like all that. Our company efficiency is pretty awful right now. And Brian just found out Sunday that he's got stage three cancer.

Really?

Yeah, he just starts chemo next week.

Man, I. I wish the best for him. That's horrible.

Yeah, yeah, it's rough. So he's out of the picture. So I am. I'm managing everything by myself right now. Brian was doing a really good job with like, rallying the crews and gaining their respect and.

You know, telling them what to do and where to go in terms of like, you know, have we turned things around? No, it's all the same stuff that I'm dealing with day after day. Burnout. I'm burned out. So I made sure that I was very open with them. I said, hey, you know, I'm human. I'm not perfect. I know there's things I do I know there's things I say that rub you guys the wrong way or you wish was different about me. I want you guys. I want your constructive feedback. I. I won't defend myself, but it was. It was just silence. Nobody said anything. It was kind of an awkward silence, honestly. And so I was like, really? Nobody has any way I can improve? Like, there's nothing I can do that's, you know, gonna, you know, not. No suggestions about how I can improve. And then one of the crew leads said, it'd be nice if you were more reachable when we need to get a hold of you. And I told him, I said, you know, as you know, it's spring and. And we just hired or we just let our office manager go. So there's, you know, I am on the phone a lot, and I apologize. I'll do what I can, though. You know, that afternoon, Brian had like, every single person texting him, saying, like, what the heck is going on? Is J and L going out of business? You know, like, they're not. They're not going to talk to me.

So most of them have the. Had their connection with Brian. So him leaving kind of probably. Did they leave or what?

Yeah, a lot.

A lot left.

So he lost an entire landscaping crew, multiple team members, like three to five people.

And sounds like a handful of, like, maintenance employees, like, also either left or were fired.

Yeah.

Okay, so what's he gonna do.

To work his way out of it? Slowly hire. Like, I. I asked him, like, what's the plan here? And his plan, I think, is just to work harder.

Yeah, I'm doing all the billing, all the email. I'm answering. I'm responding to three different company emails right now. Answering all the phone calls, doing all the sales, doing all the production management, daily dispatch. I'm working till 10, 11 o' clock every single night. I'm exhausted. It's not delivering measurable results. So it's like, what do I do now? Like, I'm just, like, something's got to give because I can't. I just had my. My. My tenth child was just born two weeks. Weeks ago. He's two weeks old today.

I, I, like, I was. I've been trying to take home, take time to be home because my wife is, you know, she's not sleeping well at night because the baby keeps getting up all night. And I'm trying to be a dad and be a business owner, but I'm literally, like, getting up in the morning, eating breakfast, going to work, working till 9, 10, 11 o' clock at night, going home. Like, I'm not even seeing my kids and my wife's just managing the home without me. And it sucks and I want to fix it, but it's like there's, like, there's. So there's a minimal amount of stuff that happens to happen at this company or it's not going to work. Money has to get in the bank, we have to make payroll, we have to get our jobs done.

Yeah. Yeah. Because it's like how, how do you convince somebody to join the team when it's. When it's this level of stress? You need someone that's like an. A player like Brian. Right. Who's like, willing to jump into the fire and like, put it out with you.

Yeah. And Brian's now out of the picture. And so back to the drawing board with that one. I'm supposed to have my brother, he's supposed to. Onboard next week.

He.

He was a. He was a. Two years ago, he was one of our landscape crew leads and he was supposed to train directly under Brian, but now Brian's out of the picture, so I don't know how comfortable he's gonna be working under me directly because he is my brother. And it gets funny with family.

Yeah.

But he's going to be well paid. He knows the, he knows the, the. He knows the quality expectations. He's a. He's an excellent landscape paper, so that'll help. But he had. He suffers with people skills, so I don't know how good he's going to be at gaining the respect of the cruise. We'll see. That was one area where Brian was doing really well. They respected him. And when he said jump, they jumped. So I don't know, I guess we'll just see what happens.

Man, that's brutal. That's brutal. Like, obviously, we just want the best for you. So.

I'm trying to. To think. Yeah, like, because, like, obviously it's like getting that company vision is like, important even in, in times like this. Right.

Because, like, I know, but like, I've. I'll just be straight up honest. I've abandoned the whole company vision, mission, all that stuff, because I. That's what. That's where I've been for the last three years. And pushing for that is not getting us anywhere because we're not achieving any of those goals. So.

Time for a new vision. What is the. That vision? My vision was create. Build a better team. Well, the building a better team thing is not gaining any traction either. I humbled myself before my crew. I Opened myself up for criticism and got none.

Why?

Yeah, and did Brian open it up with, like, some trauma?

Brian wasn't there. The. Brian was supposed to be there. But we kept. The only morning that week that Brian was even here for the morning meeting was a day that we already had a meeting set up with the Ohio Group workers comp. To do a. A safety intervention meeting or whatever. So we had no time that morning to get it. And then I was supposed to do it the next day with him, and he wasn't here because of his. His medical. Whatever, health issues. And so by Friday, last Friday, I just decided I'm doing this with or without him. Like, I. I can't just keep prolonging this meeting, waiting for him to be here for it. So I just went ahead and did it.

Yeah. Yeah. So we. We just didn't have anyone to, like, open the flood gates. It sounds like Brian wasn't there for the meeting and it fell flat. So, yeah, when I asked him, I was like, so did anyone, like, did anyone bring anything up? One thing was brought up and it was just like he. He did a great job taking it in and then just still provided a reason for why that wasn't being met. The expectation wasn't being met.

I did have one of my employees, who's my. He's my new fleet guy. I did have him in here yesterday, and I brought the thing up again about, like, last Friday's meeting, and I said, you know, now that it's just you, you're here, you were part of that meeting. He said, yeah. I said, is there not anything that you can give me, like something I can work on, something I can improve? He said, well, you were raised really different than the rest of us. You. Your upbringing was. Was so different than what most of these guys relate to, that you just don't relate to them and they don't relate to.

To you.

I said, okay. And he said, that makes it hard for them to. That makes it hard for them to respect you because they feel like you don't relate to them. How can I. How can I help that? What can I do to fix that? And he said, I don't know. I say, well, I appreciate the feedback, but what. How can I take action on that? He said, I don't know. Maybe, just. Maybe just try to be more understanding about what they're going through. Like, these guys are broke. Every single page, every single payday. They're flat, but it broke. They're. They're worried that their rents, their landlord's going to shut them out or that their electric is going to get turned off or that they won't be able to pay their bill or they won't have gas to put in their car to get into work or whatever. And, you know, I don't know. We did a drug test. We did a random drug test a little over a week ago, and only two. Two guys passed without some kind of drugs in their system. You know, what do you do? Fire everybody because they got THC in their system? You know, it's not illegal in Ohio anymore, but it's like. Like, I don't know. It just seems like these guys don't know how to not bring their problems to work. They're. They've got so many problems in their life, and it's like, I don't. I don't relate to that because I don't make those kind of choices, and I wish that they would make better choices for their life.

And I don't know how to care for them more than I already do, but apparently they feel like I don't care, and I think it's because I don't relate to them. And I've got this new sales guy that we onboarded that I'm trying to train, and I. I've had no time to train him. He literally sits in the office on his phone half the day because I'm doing all kinds of stuff that have nothing to do with sales at all and have nothing to do with his role. And I. I feel bad because I want to keep him productive, but he has. He's never done landscaping in his life, and he doesn't know how our system works, so he's just, like, waiting to shadow me. And I've had no time to train him at all. And it's like, I don't even know how to handle that one honestly. And in the meantime, we're just hemorrhaging payroll, and we're. We're. We're. Yeah, we're not even breaking even as a company because, yeah, it's.

Yeah, it's trying to get. Trying back up on your feet, essentially.

I'm just trying to. Right now. I just feel like I'm plugging the holes in the ship, like. And there's no. There's no, like, company vision right now. There's no, like, everyone knows where we're going because I don't even know where we're going. I'm just trying to stay afloat.

And that's so intense. I'm sorry you're going through all that, like, obviously that's brutal.

I can't keep this up forever. I'm gonna crack. I think I actually have to a point. Like, I'm to the point where I just, I don't like my job. I don't. I. This, this business, I used to love it and now I just feel like it's a giant parasite.

Yeah. It almost sounds like you just gotta bring it back down to the, to the basics. Which is like what you're saying to me right now even. It's just like, get somebody, literally anybody, an admin. Get somebody literally like your brother will be great just to have a body in operations so that we way you can like take a step back and be like, okay, how do we, how do we fix this up? Yeah.

I've had, I've had zero bandwidth to even strategize or plan because every day it's just bust out tasks, bust out tasks, bust out tasks. And it's all stuff that's like, I can't just let fires burn because you can't. You just, you know, you're gonna have guys quit all over the place. You're gonna have clients dropping you or, you know, they'll have lawsuits or something. I don't know. It's just, you just can't let all the fire burn. And you can't just pull someone in the office, hand them list of, hey, get these things done. I have no clue where, where's the password, where's the login, where's the, you know, where's all that stuff? And it's just, it's not going to work.

Yeah. This is a question and not advice, but you'll understand why I preface it like that. But have you considered, you know, like doing another price raise? Like another 20 price raise and like selling off equipment. Equipment, like just to match whatever the loss of customers is, you know, because even if you lost half your customers, but you raised your prices by like 20 or so, you'd be making way more money on those guys doing less work.

There's no room in our market to raise prices 20%.

You think you just lose 100 of customers?

I think we would lose too many. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think we're, we're already at the max end of what we can be. I mean, there may be room for a marginal price increase, but we've already, we already sent out an email at the beginning of the year informing all of our clients that there would be no price increases here.

So would you tell them to do something different?

I mean like I told them you should scale down, but I was like, yeah, sell your equipment and like raise your prices. Try to get like more work, make more money, do less work, sell your trucks, like get some like liquidity so you have some breathing room.

What would you tell them? Well, as soon as you go over a million in revenue, like you need supporting management, you need admin sales or ops. Like you need those covered. And so.

You know, that's why they're at 1.7 last year or whatever. So like to maintain that business. So he's not working 15 hours a day because what he's essentially doing is he is working the equipment equivalent of an admin person and an ops person and hopefully a salesperson is doing something. But like that's why he's working 15 hours a day. In the perfect world, you'd have those roles filled.

He's been doing this for so long, like 25, 27 years, 23 years, 23 years. Like what I would like him to do versus what I think he should do is actually different. Like what I would like him to do is what we talked about and that is like change the way you lead.

What I think he should do to preserve his family is scale a business back.

Can he? Like he has so much overhead. Look at the whole shop space and stuff.

The shop space has paid off. It's all part of their land on their property. Like I would scale it back to the fact that if you as one person can manage maybe six to eight people solid, raise your prices, be super high end on the market, be able to pay people well, probably there's probably eight good team members there out of the 12 or 14 that he currently has working for him. He could probably keep six to eight of them, make them super profitable, whether it be on maintenance and recurring stuff. And then you don't need a salesperson like that immediately. Having a salesperson like that's a huge amount of overhead. Like I can almost guarantee you in three months that salesperson won't be there because he can't even train them correctly. He's trying to do admin and ops and there's an ops person jumping in is going to also need a huge amount of training. So like it'd be different if this was a five year old business and he's scaling very quickly. These are, these are skills that can be learned. But my question is, can Luke actually change?

I only ask because like, you know, having, having some cash less customers and like a smaller scale always helps. Like I'm Sure. Like, when you were starting the company, you felt like a lot of things were easier because there was less pieces, you know? So I just. I always ask because it's just like. Well, I mean, simplification in that. In that aspect could put more cash in your pocket. Less. Less daily headaches, less breathing room.

The money's not the problem. It's not that we're not charging enough. It's not that. Yeah, our financials last year were healthy. The problem is the staff, the team. The team is. The team is not where it needs to be at all. And. And I don't know how to get it there, there. And I'm so tired of hoping and trusting that people that I hire and put in the right place are going to stay there. And it really sucks when you have people sabotaging you behind your back, people that you cared about, people that you worked hard with and worked hard to make sure that they had a good job and, and were well set up for success, and then they turn on you.

It's just. That's. That hurts.

Makes it hard to trust anybody else to take on that position.

It really does. I mean, every time I hire somebody, I put them in a seat and it's like. Like this new sales guy I got now, it's like he's on a salary, and for the first, you know, two months, he's not going to be producing anything for this company. You know, in the meantime, I'm paying him every week, and it's like, that's, you know, and I just have to hope that he works out, you know?

Yeah. And.

And I won't know if he's going to work out until he has a chance to show me what he's made of. You know, I just. I just. I just feel like it's going to be the same thing with the next guy and the guy after that. That. And I'm. I'm just really afraid at this point. Like, if I am the problem, I'm going to ruin every single person I hire into this company. Like, if, if. If what's going on is a me problem, if I don't know how to fix me, then every single person I hire is at some point going to react to me and I'm going to ruin them. And I don't even. And I won't even know I'm doing it somehow, some way, I'm doing something wrong. I'm saying something wrong. We can't sustain where we're at forever.

We're.

We're in the hole this year so far. And we have to get out of the hole.

Yeah. Luke, it's gonna kick us off this call. It only has 40 minutes. I'm sorry. Okay, but it'll end here in a few seconds. But you know, thanks for jumping on the call. I'm sorry I don't have a silver bullet to help you out.

There never is one, you know, but we obviously wish the best for you and like you said, like you've been business for 23 years.

I'm sure, I'm sure you'll get this figured out and you know, I'll reach out to Mike and see if you know, there's any other advice that he has, especially after like, you know, these updates. If there's any, any direction or even priority they can help you with. I'll make sure that he gets that over to you.

Yeah, please, please, please update him on where I'm at because I'm open for any advice I can get right now.

Realistically, he should, he should be, he should be a general manager that does sales, operations, admin for six to eight employees, runs a 900 to a million dollar business, extremely profitable, but he goes home at 5 o'. Clock. I believe that is a shorter path to success and like work life balance compared to trying to find an admin person training them up, getting a salesperson training up, getting an operations person training them up. I don't see any.

Evidence that he has the skill to do that. And I would say that to his face. And it stinks because like there's a huge, like we're supposed to turn these businesses around. Like this is an L for us. I'd say like four out of five businesses when we leave and six weeks later, like they are on a trajectory of turning around the business. This is a big L and it stinks because like this is not why the turnaround show exists. But like I don't want to be like the turnaround show to be where it's like I go to business, like, yeah, everyone just scale back. But like in this case, are we trying to optimize even for growth and having high revenues or like it's kind of a problem when you have a new kid and you haven't spend any time with them.

And your wife wants you to quit. Like if these are elements that like will cause fatal error, like fatal issues in life, business, et cetera, like I would fix that. And I think the fast way to do that is raise prices by 30%, lose a bunch of your customers, cut out your crews and Services that don't make money. All the news, the new, he's a bunch of good guys, been with him for a long time. Go back to those, be profitable on them. Be a general manager that can manage six to eight people. But when you have 12, 14, 15 people out in the field, you need an infrastructure of management. He can't afford that right now. And so as much as he wants to think it's not about the money, it's a function of like, well, then why are you working 15 hours a day?

What's the first thing you ask to focus on? Like how?

Like, well, you're going to have to purge the customer, basically, because you have so many leads and new work.

So you just raise prices.

You raise prices and yes, he'll get a lot of people mad at him. 20 to 30% of people we need to leave. And to make that happen, you will probably have to raise prices by 20 or 30%. But if he did that, it'd be profitable enough for him to scale back, get through that pain, and then run a profitable business that he can manage himself. And like, that's not fun. And this is the funny thing, everyone, under the guise of, I don't want to have key man risk or I want to be able to. I want the business to be able to operate without me being there in daily, daily ops under that guise, they grow the business. And now we have, we have for 23 years been growing the business and we have not attained the goal. So something is fundamentally wrong with our strategy and there's something fundamentally wrong with the skill of the leader to be able to attract talent. And so do I try to change that or do I just go to the straight route of the problem can be fixed in three weeks and that is raise prices, get rid of customers, and then let the chips fall with the team to where you have six to eight people that you can manage every day and then spend time with your family and make more money.

If the goal of the business to make money and the goal of his life is to spend time with his family and support them, those both of those things can be achieved with radical violence.