Traveling to FL and TX!
Mike Andes visits two struggling businesses: a lawn-care company in Tampa with $1.05M revenue and $400K debt, and a Texas contractor with $1.2M revenue needing recurring revenue streams. He prescribes website redesigns, price increases, software migrations, and labor restructuring for both.
Chapters
How do we.
Everything's in Spanish.
Oh my word. This is what we're looking at right now. We don't know Spanish.
I am in a Hyundai and I'm trying to change the English speaking on the control.
Can we turn the music off until then?
No, because it's gonna be on there. Tap menu and tap todos le manos then click configuration. Ah, that's where I was at. This is where I messed up though. It's like general.
We in English, baby. I can operate this machine. We just landed in Tampa, got to our car, time to head to the eastern time zone. And now we're gonna go get some food.
And it's a Super bowl.
And it's a Super bowl. So everyone is literally walking around the airport like this with their phones horizontal. So gotta check up on the game. I for one couldn't care less. Don't hate me.
I for two could not care less. How do you turn the music down?
That's s for two.
Look, look.
This is the volume. No it's not. This was the volume earlier. Okay, we're gonna go try to figure this car out.
Is this the chatgpt?
Which one are you looking at? If it's the business that snapshot, then yes.
Okay, cool. Labor is the largest expense, the biggest problem. They have hourly and sourly pay. No performance based pay. Long term employee with 20 plus years they've been in this business 29 years. They're halfway in co pil. What'd she say about that?
They're trying to merge in right now. So she's learning it all. And Warren I think is having a little bit of trouble accepting it. He's just used to doing stuff on paper because that's how they've always done it. Things to note, they are raising prices.
In February, but only 5%. Summer sucks. Their cash flow line of credit, they keep going from, they keep having to pay back. It's a vicious cycle of, you know, borrow payback.
Good morning you guys. It's almost 6:00am here in Tampa. Mike is still asleep. He has his noise machine on so hopefully he doesn't hear me. But this is my point of view right now. We've got a bag of hard boiled eggs, a microwaved cup of cream of rice, a scale, blueberries, sugar free pudding mix and stevia and can't forget the mustard salt. Is it extra that I've packed some of this stuff and bought the rest and I'm trying to stick to my meal plan. Maybe it's a little bit extra. But being that we're going to be doing the turnarounds, like, at least one trip a month, I can't just, like, use that as an excuse to get off track. So I'm going to try my best to do what I can. And we're probably still going to be able to work out every day. So that's a huge win. Last night, the clips you just saw were of Drill, one of the videographers on the Mike Andy's media team and also very, very talented editor. He flew in from Nashville, and we just met him here at the hotel. Ow. That is still so hot. Please excuse my method. Okay? I'm the only person eating this food. Probably the only person who'd want to eat this food. It is showtime today. We're going to be going to our first turnaround at the camp. They're in some deep water, and they've really been looking forward to night coming out. So excited to see how this plays out. This is peak life right here. This is our or at least my first time on a turnaround trip with just one videographer. So, I mean, I guess we've done it before. It's, like, fine, but, like, really curious to see how this trip will go because usually we would bring at least like, two to three other guys videographers. And so not this time. We'll see how it goes. But Terrell is, like, the OG Actually, fun fact. The first turnaround AM And Mike ever did, Terrell filmed it on an iPhone because they knew or they thought that, like, big cameras would intimidate the applicants too much. Let me go ahead and chow down on my prison food and check back whenever we are.
You're gonna be back here to see anything.
Okay.
There's nothing you're gonna be able out in the field while you're checking something they're quickly gonna see. Hey, are they paid up correctly? Oh, no, they're three months behind. Let me go talk to them. Right. And the sooner you get to this, the better. If you can get this to, like, within two weeks. Big Props gaming software doesn't make you money tomorrow, right? Right. This, you send one email and make 10 to 15 grand extra profit per month.
This is the business turnaround show.
This is the business turnaround show. My name is Mike Andes. I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn Care and Homework Software. I travel the country fixing struggling businesses. Third, we've got to make sure we have a sales process when the lead comes in. Stacy is going to create a visit inside of Homeworks for Warren.
It is Tuesday morning and we are leaving Tampa. Forgot to recap yesterday's turnaround. So do you have any thoughts you'd like to add?
Yeah, it was Great. Stacy Warren, 29 years in business, $1.05 million in reven, $7,000 in the bank, almost $400,000 of debt. About 130 of that is their property, but still a lot of debt. A lot of monthly payments on the debt. And so basically they don't have any really. Their website's not good. They have no Google reviews or Google business listing. So we stripped in and we're gonna do six months for free on their website because I think we get like 5 to 10x the amount of leads they're getting just by having a decent website. So we're gonna do that and then they're gonna raise their prices. They just raised them, but I let them raise again because they're so low. They have most their customers been with them for like 10, 15 years. All their employees have been with them for a long, long time. So it was really just a leads constraint and raising the prices. Pretty standard textbook situation. Also, they've been trying to do everything in Quickbooks and then like paper. So getting them into homeworks and fully utilizing the systems will be helpful.
It's amazing how you're able to remember all those numbers even the day after. I really, really liked them. Stacy was awesome. Warren was awesome. Now we're trekking to the airport and we're a little bit stuck in traffic because Tampa traffic is stinks. It stinks. The podcast with Jonathan Patosnik. Our flight boards in an hour and a half. We get to the airport in 30 minutes.
That's fine. We'll be fine. My trip corner adds so much time to my schedule.
I'm actually more like nervous about Trill, our videographer, because he's like a little ways behind us. We'll check in when we're on the plane on time. Fingers crossed. We have kind of been on the go for the past couple days, so I haven't had time to really give you guys like a verbal update on. But yesterday was a more chill day in the sense that we didn't actually have a turnaround, but we did a podcast with Jonathan Pitochnik.
It's fun. It's fun for me to get back into the business for a while. Not forever and then two. It allows me to help my partner and my team have an even more successful outcome. So that feels like it's not about me completely. It accomplishes the fun Thing, so that's cool.
It was really cool. Cool because I kind of felt like you lit up whenever you talk to somebody that's like in a similar industry or like essentially in the same industry as you.
Ben gave me a great compliment.
What compliment?
Oh, you said that you thought it was like I was. You were talking to the older version of me.
And a lot of like, personality wise, definitely, because he's like very man. I don't even know how to describe it. He is exactly how I thought he would be just because of what you said, like how you described him. But like the most humble, down to earth guy you will ever meet. And when he talks, you just want to listen. He has a very drawing personality.
Good pod. And then tonight we go for dinner with him and his wife, Tiffany.
Yeah. I'm so excited. I'm really excited. I don't even know what she looks like. I've never met her before.
I don't even. I haven't either.
It's crazy, especially hearing him talk. Talk about her in the podcast and talk about like their journey throughout his business. I'm really curious to talk to her and like, I have a couple questions.
Yeah. Oh, you do have questions in the chamber.
Like not formed properly, but I know what I want to know from them. I know what I want to like.
I. I have. I have a topic too. Yeah, we should both have a few topics in the. In our chamber.
Okay. Today we have our second and final turnaround at the trip with Will Fletcher outdoors. This one, I have a feeling it'll be a little interesting.
1.2 million revenue. Has a few hundred thousand or a couple hundred thousand dollars in debt. But his dad's gonna wipe it out basically and convert it to equity. But it's all subcontracted labor and it's all big projects.
All 1099 employees, which is very interesting.
That might need to change. And then overall, I think there's some other structural issues also trying to figure out recurring, more recurring revenue. Because he literally has 10 products a year that can disappear overnight. This area is booming. So you can ride the wave.
We're in McKinney, Texas right now, which is a little bit further, like north east of Dallas. Such a cool city. I'm such a big fan. Everything is bigger in Texas. Just like they standing. It is like such a sprawling city. It's pretty far spread out. But there's so much around here, so many businesses. I mean restaurants, cafes, whatever. I told Mike that I absolutely love it here. But I'm only saying that because we're here in the middle of February, in the middle of winter. Otherwise, for the other nine months of the year, that's not technically winter, it's miserable. I feel like you'd move here for the community. Like you'd move here for the people. Cuz besides that there's not a huge draw, like business owners or whatever. Probably move here for the talent or at least come here looking for talent.
Cheap real estate.
Oh, my goodness, yes. There's gorgeous homes here. Gorgeous. We're not believers in second homes really, but if we were, I'd probably be.
Like, hey, but see here, live here.
In the winter here.
The thing is, it's not like it's a beautiful place, honestly. Yeah, you're coming here because, like, there's so much to do. There is a lot of community, There's a lot of business community. There's a lot of things. Like, it was interesting to me how before the podcast, John was talking about his neighbors, how much that meant to him, and how he's like, I'm not moving because these neighbors are crazy.
That's really true.
That was crazy. I was like, whoa. We never talked to our neighbors ever on either.
Like, anyone in our building couldn't tell you that.
That being said, if they were all business owners and like people that are interesting, we probably would probably. If they weren't just like huddling in with our cat. That was really interesting to me. How would we? Yeah, because he's like, we can move. Like, we thought about moving. He's like, no, we don't. We love this place. It's shade in the back and we have great neighbors. I was like, wow, can you imagine where we lived around a whole bunch of people that were like minded, did what we did, love business. Oh, you wouldn't move either. Oh, should we have an exclusive announcement that no one knows besides Augusta? The reason we're selling so many new locations in Augusta is because the price for new people is going up March 1st to $35,000. And you heard it here first. Unless you're an owner of Augusta, no one else is knowing that. We're not telling anyone. We're just going through our pipeline of people that have been 612 months talking to Lee, even some more and being like, hey, if you don't join now, it's going to go up.
Public doesn't know.
No, no, no, no. Because we didn't want to make noise.
Like, hey, get in.
Like, advertise to people who not really have not been following the brand, engaged in the process. So we are getting a lot of people joining right now, but they've all been in the funnel for years. Like there have been people like the one who joined the other day. He. He's been in the funnel for three years, like talking, getting emails, doing market research. And so now it's like we're just like getting all of them to join.
Yeah.
And then after March, we know it's gonna die off in terms of number of new sales because all those people got in. But then we have this other plan that he's gonna do, and we're gonna put all the attention on the existing owners of Augusta. Shout out a destination. That's the plan. All right, that's a wrap.
That's a wrap. Let's go do this turnaround and then.
We'Ll move the people that are inside the database. They've asked for work we've never sold anything to when we did an operation in person. That's where we create their job description. What am I supposed to be doing here?
It is. Boom.
That's your job description? Yeah.
That was Will Fletcher and his dad and D. Fletcher. And that was like such a good turnaround. I feel like it was not like in the weeds, but definitely more. It was like very much coaching and less like helping with really bad pain points. I feel like cuz they have a good business, but it was amazing, honestly. Check out that office space. They're on the third floor. They're renting out a couple rooms for their office. That was the most bougie office space. When you think blue collar, you don't think of an office space in the building like that. So I absolutely love this area. Not gonna lie, McKenna is super duper sweet. It's like the whole Dallas area and the surrounding cities I feel like, are very sprawling, very new, they're growing. Wow. My hair looks so cute right now. So I like it. I like new cities. I like the cleanliness and everything. So yeah, it was just really, really good coaching. Overall, glad we can knock it out.
And how to customize it because then we don't have any more people asking for specific pictures and all those other stuff.
What were you just doing?
Several weeks ago, we got all owners inside of Augusta a Gemini Pro account. And so the challenge we've always had is since we're in U.S. canada and Australia, we have people that have snow, while at the same time we have palm trees, we have mountains, we have people on lakes and on the ocean. It was very difficult from a media perspective to get everyone's images on Their social media looking, like, accurate to their local area. But with Gemini, as of the last few weeks, their nano banana model of Gemini is super solid for images. And so we're gonna train them on how to make. Use Gemini to make personalized, localized images that doesn't skew the text, but also, like, removing mountains, adding palm trees. You know, make this look like I'm in Australia, like, all these little things. So that way, we're not chasing around the country, literally with the media team trying to capture images and video. That is an unending, you know, plethora of services and different environments that we'd.
Have to shoot in. How do you feel like today's coaching went?
It was really solid. They were very receptive, him and his dad, and so it was definitely fun for me because it's definitely a different type of business model typically. Also, because he's not skilled at operations, I was pretty blunt with him about that. He has, like, one or two years of experience, and operations are all over the place. That's why I subbed so much of it out. But if you could lock in one good project manager, he'd be able to focus on sales and scale the business really fast, in my opinion.
So we're waiting for our videographer to finish up the interviews, and we came to this part to film Pharrell and Mike minutes. So while we wait, we're gonna make the most of it, and we're playing on the playground.
Yeah.
Just did some slides. You know, I'm. This is hard. They expect kids to do. This is hard work.
This is hard work. This is gonna kill a child. Goodness gracious.
This is very Texas coded.
Here. I showed him here. Here. This is the slide.
Okay, here I go.
This is the slide. Here comes Banza way up here in the mountains. There she comes. Oh, we got school. Ground school over there in recess. Best class of the day. Okay. Yeah.
Go down.
Go down.
Ready, set. Is it really wet?
What?
I feel like you just feed myself. Oh, man. Should I not come down? Do it. Do it. If I look like I feed myself, you have to.
I'm gonna make a video, though. Is it a puddle? No.
Look. It looks.
So gross. Oh, man.
I don't think you look that bad.
Not that bad. I got my booty, you know.
Demonetized immediately. Happy day after Valentine's day. I don't think I vlogged anything yesterday, which is pretty unfortunate, but this is one of the gifts that Michael got me. It is so, so sweet. It is a puzzle with three of our photos on It. That's from our wedding. And those two or no engagement? No, those two are from family photos. That's wedding photo. And, you know, we're making good headway. Got the border in the middle done. So that was a fantastic gift. The other one he got me was he wrote me a song.
Yep. I did one for our engagement, and then now for our first year, fun.
Fact, that's how he proposed to me.
My hope is I can do one every year. And that kind of is the summary of each year, what stuff we learned or did.
I love that idea because it's very easy to memorize a song. So, like, you kind of commit the little nuggets in there to memory. Anyways, it was such a sweet, sweet song.
I'll give a tip for the guys. Okay, so this is how you do it. Okay. Oh, you want me to hold it? Okay, so this is how you do it. So you take a video or audio note of all the things that you've learned in the year. So we. Fortunately, a couple weeks ago, we're in Turks and Caicos, and we made a video of all the stuff we learned in a year. So I took the transcript and I made bullet points, and then I put it into AI and be like, hey, extract this. And, like, what are the five or six different verses I can make out of this? And then I made the lines, and then I sent it to someone on Song finish. That's the name of the company. And then they can put, like, the music to it. So AI doesn't do a great job, honestly, of doing lyrics. If you're trying to customize it so you can kind of take some inspiration. But you're gonna have to customize it. Otherwise it gets very vanilla.
Like, one of the first questions I asked him was like, how much do you use ChatGPT to write this?
Yeah, so because, like, weaving in the little nuggets, sometimes it's not great at it. But then the problem is when I start adjusting all the stuff I mess up sometimes what can actually be done with music. So when I give it to an artist, they can be like, hey, you gotta change this word. Hey, this. Like, there's too many words in this line. Whatever. So going back and forth, them Song Finches is the move. It's pretty cool. I did that for the engagement. What's it called? Song. And then also the one from the other day.
The thing about Song Finch is, like, they have their own artists, and, like, they. You basically just give them some of the verses, and then they string it to together with the beat you want.
Well, you can do as much as you want. So I've always given, given them the lyrics and they just have to come with the music. But you could, you could hire someone to get, get the music. They get the lyrics too. I just feel like if anyone besides me does, it's gonna get vanilla. It's just gonna get like, I don't know. Come on, guys. Anyways, then the other thing that's happening this week is Augusta Lawn Care's website is brand new. Launched it last night. Today we're rolling it across all the new locations. Like all the locations individual sites. So all the little widgets gotta be changed. But it looks so good. There's nice blacks. We basically mirrored the design of the trucks. Also, if you guys are watching this Tuesday, February 17th, we're switching to from copilot to homeworks. So the website team is also working on the new website for that and it looks so good. So I never thought that both of the big brands would be rebranding in the exact same weekend on Valentine's Day. So everyone's in crunch mode. Everyone's working on the weekend. So I made a video for the team this morning.
Probably a lot of apology flowers being bought this weekend.
Yeah, there's a lot of work extra hustle happening. So it'll be. It looks so good. The Augusta site looks so good. So good. The homework site, I've seen the test site and yesterday was editing in a bunch. In terms of words it looks super dope. So it's gonna be. Ah yer. So those are the updates.
Hope you all had a very happy Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine. Launch date of the websites to Mike and the team for both homeworks and Augusta and bye bye.
