UNDERCOVER BOSS ► Spying on Employees

This is Dominic. We're gonna follow him.

I'm not sure that he's so much of a team player.

We like to see what's in the closet. Skeletons in the closet. They're overworked because we're so far behind. We're trying to lose 20 to 30 customers. That's like literally our goal. Okay, that's one of those guys. He saw us letting all your customers down. You're working your finger to the bone.

I can work a lot, but I can't work that much.

It's crazy. You're worn out. No one's showing up. In terms of employees, the team wants Tim fired.

We just got the best of them.

You know, I don't want anyone of you still know grass in 10 years. Everything's going wrong. It's not a great day, honestly. Massive fail on my part. I'm not usually late. We struck out on that one.

He was going to get fired eventually.

If we can't get some money hired.

We'Re going to lose all those people.

I know exactly what it feels like and it's horrible.

What are we going to do?

Oh, man, my candy's here.

So be on your best behavior.

Today. We are in Madison, Alabama and 12 hours ago, the franchisee in this location declared a state of emergency and said they need a turnaround. So we hopped on a plane last night. Not very much sleep and we're gonna be turning this location around in the next two days.

Alright, we are in Madison, Alabama. We are pulling in right now to this storage facility and we are trying to turn around this location that's been struggling. They're way behind on work and I need to get to this gate right now. Good morning. Hey, Kyle, how's it going?

It's day by day.

What's the gate code to your front gate?

Oh, you're good? Yeah, dude, I'm pulling up right now and I'll get you in.

All right, I'll see ya. Here comes Kyle.

Just wanted to come shake your hand before I went off.

So this year I was like, okay, I'm gonna get out of the field. I'm finally to a point where we've got enough work. It lasted. I was out of the field for three days. We were doing 55 to 58,000amonth just in milling revenue. And then all of a sudden I'm like, man, we got three people and we got like 170 budget hours a week. I'm like, what are we going to. What are we going to do? I'm like, I Can work a lot, but I can't work that much.

So Kyle's business is doing great. He's bringing in 50 to 60 thousand dollars per month in revenue, most of which is coming from recurring mowing. And he's growing at a really fast pace. But he's at the point now where he cannot find enough employees to cover and complete budget hours that are on the schedule.

So I ran my own business in Mississippi for six years solo. I had 100 customers seven days a week. And it was just. It was a lot. But, you know, I just. I'm used to. I'm used to the grind.

So the thing is that this size, you actually have enough work to basically almost be out of the field. It's really about getting the customers.

Yeah.

And the enough employees, but then also the prices to substantiate that. Right. Just a couple weeks ago, Kyle had all the help he needed, and he was actually able to work outside of the field doing estimates for the majority of the day. However, sometimes employees can be unreliable, reliable, and unpredictable.

So I hired two guys. Both of them told me they had a week vacation in July. And I knew this hiring them, but I didn't know it was back to back. So it was. They were gone a week. They come back, the next guy's gone a week, and then during that week, the other guy quits. The other guy comes back, and that's when he quits. And then, you know, and then I'm. I'm on the fence about firing this other guy.

Honestly, a lot of the companies down here, they run with two men or more in the truck, sometimes even four if you're running the commercial route. I think just them riding by themselves just was too much work on them. You know what I mean? And it's just something that they weren't used to, I guess. I don't think it was the people like the employees or Kyle or the property owners themselves. I just think that they just got the best of them, you know?

So I had a guy. I was gonna fire him. I'm giving him one last chance. Okay.

What's his name?

His name is Tim.

Tim.

We've had with him. He's always got to go to the doctor this and that. He can't work Saturdays because of his religious stuff. Yeah. We don't work because on Sunday. So right when he misses work, everybody else has to step up. And the guys are getting burned out trying to, you know, step up. And he's late. Like, this morning, he's five minutes late. And I told him last night I said, man, I need you here 40 hours a week and I need you here. Be on time. And he's late the next day. I'll be fancy.

Ridiculous.

Yeah.

So he quit. So he was at the gas station and didn't see it and didn't see the pole and then, then hit it, which he called me right away. But he was one of our lowest performers. So we've got everybody on 40p4p right now just because of the heat. And he still gets it to the Bucks an hour by itself. So he was, he was going to get fired eventually, but he just, he quit on his own.

So now down three team members, Kyle has way too much work for his current crew. He started to raise his prices in hopes that he'd actually lose some customers. And that would alleviate some of the pressure on his team, but also it would raise his profit margins. So. So right now, have you already raised the prices on everybody?

So we had roughly 120Bi weekly yards and we were showing up and they were like that tall. And we're like a 30 minute, 38 minute yard was taking us an hour to get it done because it's too tall. So I, I'm like, okay, let's switch everybody to weekly and maybe we'll lose some. Hopefully we will. We lost like three people. So now all of a sudden we've got like 90 new customers every two weeks. So at that time we still had the other two guys. I'm like, okay, we can, we can manage it. We're gonna have to drop some customers, but we can manage most of it. And then we went up roughly 20% on maybe 60 customers, 70 customers, and we lost one. So I haven't went up on the rest of them yet.

Did you have a five dollar across the board increase?

So if it, if they were at $40 or now at 50 and then.

Like only lost one, how'd you select those 60 versus everyone else?

They were ones that I know like, because I'm out in the field, so I'm doing some of these yards and I, and I feel like if I'm barely hitting P4P, it's going to be harder for them. And I know it's, it needs to go up, right? Yeah. So that was like the most inefficient ones need to go up and then we got some yards. You know, we're getting done 20 minutes ahead of time. And I'm like, man, I hate to, I hate to go up on those like and lose those because they're They're. They're good customers. They. They pay on time. And, you know, the ones that left are the ones that, you know, we've had issues with. And, you know, I think that's pretty typical. It's like that you weed the worst ones out when you do anything different.

So are you opposed to raising all the rest of them?

No. No, I don't think so. I mean, I was, you know, and then now this has happened. I'm like, we gotta do something.

So typically, raising prices results in losing customers. However, Kyle's raised his prices, but he continues to get more clients on the books. Would you want me to take care of raising on all the rest of them? Yeah, I mean, I can get that done. Yeah, Yeah, I get that done. I have interviews set up today already.

Oh, okay.

So I have, like, four set up for this afternoon. Nice. Well, we'll see how they do. Yeah, you just never know. Right. I need to try and get Kyle some more help, but it can't just be anybody. Alabama summers are very, very hot. 100 plus degr, high humidity. And he's also wanting them to have experience.

Well, so we've been getting a lot of. A lot of people applying, but when I look at their. Their history and everything, and it says they've been working inside for the last year, I'm like, yeah. I'm like, even if they're okay. If they've worked in lawn care five years ago. That was five years ago. If they've been working inside and they come out in this heat right now, they're going to either croak or they're just going to quit.

Exactly.

So I need somebody that's going to be.

They know what they're going to do. Yeah. Okay. Like, my. My plan right now is to try to hire up a couple more. Okay. And just basically overload on the. The labor side, I just don't want to leave you with some people that.

Are, like, are lousy.

I'd rather get you some good guys. So I want to try to train them up too.

Right.

The last thing I want to do is show up, hire a couple people, and then once I leave, they all quit within a week or two because they can't handle the heat. Now, Kyle does know that this type of work in this type of weather is extremely difficult and compensates his team accordingly. Like, even if everyone stays and we raise, it's really the objective is to see, like, can we even raise base pay even?

Right.

Like, are all the guys at 24, 25, 26.

Yeah, yeah. On the 40% now we drop it to 33. Of course it's going to drop, you know, so. So that's something new. I didn't do it last year. I just, I was like trying to.

Help the guys out.

I'm like, it's going to be hot.

Let's.

You know, I want, I want them to feel like I'm taken care of them. You know, it's. So I told them July, August is 40%. That's not proudest month.

So if you give me the list of all the people that we have not raised on. Okay, let me handle that. Command center level. Okay. We might lose a couple. I might raise a little higher. Like more like $7. 5. Okay. And I'm really, really. I'm just doing that to give us financial flexibility. Right. Like in if, you know, if you're so profitable in the work, it makes it a little bit easier even if you're drowning. Yeah, right.

Yeah.

And even if it's like incentives for the guys that work longer or whatever we got to do.

Yeah, yeah.

But ultimately we need more employees. Over the next two days, we need to raise the prices on the remaining 200 to 250 mowing customers. And we need to get Kyle some more employees to handle this increasing workload.

My goal was to have everybody a route and then I'm the fill in guy if somebody's out. That's.

Dude, at this size, you should be that you can be doing 50 to 60k. Like it's totally possible.

Yeah. Even.

Even with the extra payments of the shop, the trucks, et cetera, let's say three grand a month. We can cover that immediately if the price increases.

Yeah.

Like there's no reason why you can't be doing that.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay. You got a lot of work to do.

Oh yeah, I got a lot.

I'll let you go. I got. I'll go touch things with. Okay. I'll try working with him for a second. Does he know who I am or no? No idea. Oh, no. Okay, cool.

That's totally fine.

Good. Tim doesn't know who I am, so he won't see me coming. I want to follow him from a distance and just kind of see how he works when nobody is watching or he thinks no one's around. But first I need to contact command center at the Augusta Lawn Care headquarters to raise the prices on the remaining customers that Kyle has. What we're going to do is look at the weekly and the bi weekly and take out the people that on There on that sheet there's a tab that says price increase. Those are the 60 customers approximately. They've already raised price on out of 300. Basically our goal is to raise price under 240. $7 weekly, $12 BI weekly is the cross board price we want to increase. The reason I'm having Command center handle all of their emails during this price increase is that I need them to take out the emotion of all these customers. When you have customers and you're doing price increases, start tying in like, oh man, we just got them or they're near so and so. I've had them for so long. You got to remove the emotion and make the decision for the business. We're trying to lose 20 to 30 customers. That's like literally our goal. Email sent to the customer can basically be like, do the rising cost and what we need to pay our team in order to be able to keep your quality of service high. Your prices will be the following starting August 1st. When a business is struggling, a lot of times it's hard to dissociate yourself from the emotions. But all is required is looking at the numbers, the data and making solid business decisions. We go ahead and access their email because I don't want 30, 40 emails coming back in the day and I'm getting overwhelmed and stressed with cancellations, etc. I just want to manage it for them. We need 20 to 30 people to cancel. We got to raise the prices and then if we can, if we can manage their email for the next two to three days, that'd be excellent. So we got Command center rock and rolling. They're going to be going to 240 customers a day, raising all of their prices. Also going to see if we can't help them in their inbox. Typically a solo operator, we don't give full service, which is email management. But for today, I don't want them to be overwhelmed with 30, 40 replies and emails. So Command center will probably hop into their email inbox and just guard them for today. No time to do anything but do work. There's no time to hire in your head. There's no time to do estimates. There's no time to raise prices because they're so far behind. I know exactly what feels liking that it's horrible. Now the goal is to go meet up with Timothy. He's the employee that we really need to get back on track. He hasn't been showing up on time, works hard, super efficient, but he's only been two weeks where he's ever worked a full 40 hours. So we gotta get him back on track now. Spying on someone and micromanaging is not my style. I believe in trusting your employees fully until they give you a reason to doubt them. However, I only have two days, and this is gonna be the fastest way for me to know what kind of employee Tim really is. Kind of would like to watch from a distance if possible. He's efficient, though. Like, the efficiency here is not the problem. Can you zoom in on him? Can you see the yellow? So easy to find. And it's awesome right there. Honestly, what I'm seeing here so far of these team members, all very efficient. They're making probably seven, eight dollars an hour extra on paper performance. So they're efficient. They're not wasting time. I'm watching this guy get in the truck and everything. Like, they're moving. It's a matter of for Timothy being a little more dependable, just getting him to buy into the team culture, which I know he can't. He's. He's crushing it. Okay, so he's in the truck. He's probably getting his route to his next job. So one thing I noticed with Kyle is he's definitely a leader by example, and I was just working crazy hard. He also cares a lot of his guys. The fact that he took a truck in 100 degree weather, the one that didn't have the AC.

So I've got another truck. We're not using it right now. The AC is broke, so I don't want to pity anybody in it. I was actually using it just so the guys wouldn't have to use it.

Leading my example, taking you so far. But when you get so many team members, they don't see you all the time. They don't see you working hard. So it's sometimes tough to actually lead by example effectively. And you do have to actually lead by training people correctly, having systems in place, making sure you have team chats, things like that. All right, we're rolling.

All right, we are rolling up here on Timothy. See how he's doing. How you doing, brother? Good to see you, man. You're Tim. Yes, sir. Awesome. Good stuff. Great work. Sir, is it okay if I help you for a job or two?

Oh, sure.

Do you have the weed whacker in the back of the truck?

Yes, sir, I do.

Sweet.

I'm out of gas.

Okay.

For this thing, I got to push mow this whole entire yard.

So do we have the gas tank?

Yes, sir, we do.

Do you want me go fill it up?

Please, sir.

Okay. I'll go fill that up and then I'll bounce back and I'll do the edging for you. Okay. So cool. Did you see my text? You know who I am and everything. Cool, cool. Well, thanks. Thanks for all your help with Kyle. I appreciate it. Yes, sir.

No problem. Want to help them out as much as I could.

Leaving the shop in the morning without full gas tanks is a big strike in my books and it hurts your efficiency a lot. However, I want to talk to Tim a little more and see if he'll open up as to what's really going on and what is leading to this unreliable behavior that's affecting the business.

I'm a veteran. I have, you know, certain war injuries and stuff that I'm dealing with.

Hey, I in the reserves now or.

Or I'm out.

Okay, nice. When. When did you get out?

2016.

Okay, awesome. Did you deploy? What branch were you in?

Afghanistan.

Oh, wow. Well. Well, man. Yeah, I know that's tough. I had one of my main guys when I first started, Augusta. He was in the reserves, but he had been deployed and stuff too. And like, I know it's tough.

Yes, sir, it is.

So.

You part of some of the groups around here? Like they have some good support?

Yes, sir. Really? Just American Legion? Yeah, I talk to them a lot, but other than that, you know, I'm just a little country boarding doing what I have to do to say on top of things.

Yeah. Is it still, like, tough, like, sometimes just operate though, just from coming back from all that?

Sometimes. Sometimes. But, you know, they. They give us good teams to help us out a lot of things.

Yeah.

You know, I have good days, bad days, just like anybody else.

Yeah.

Everybody has their story. However, I don't make excuses to try to look for solutions.

Yeah. After getting Tim to open up, I may have found the root of the issue. He's a hard working guy. I really like him. He's got a great head on his shoulders, but his past may be keeping him from being a top tier team member. Well, I appreciate you helping out Kyle.

Yes, sir.

He's been kind of going through it, so we figured we'd come down and try to help a little bit. Next couple days, I'll fill that up, I'll bring that back, and then I'll edge up or help out whoever I can. Next couple jobs here. Okay, cool. All right. Thanks, Tim. Appreciate it.

Well, I'm on gas duty. Unfortunately, we came to the nearest gas station and they're out of gas.

All right. So I'm definitely on Team Tim, great guy. Just so challenging when they come back from overseas and being deployed and then having to deal with the PTSD and all the other stuff. So my hope is that we can retain Tim, but I've got to really encourage him to be able to be more reliable and dependable. For Kyle and the team.

They didn't have any two cycle gas as well, so I'm gonna have to go pick up some oil for that.

The good employees are unhappy because he's been not dependable. He's doing good work and he's efficient. That's why Kyle still wants to keep him and let him come back because he's desperate for work. What we are hoping to do is inspire Timothy to actually do of his own will. He's making good money because of P4P. He's making good money. You're not making $25 an hour here around this area in Alabama. I can guarantee that on Moe. So it's not the money. It's a matter of how do we inspire someone to actually show up and be on time. And I don't know what that is. I don't think I can do that in a day or two, but I'm gonna give it my best shot.

It'd be really nice if we can just from a financial perspective, get them to the place where they can even afford double the stuff. Like right now, we only got one lead left or one blower. That tells me if one of those things goes down for whatever reason, the day is shot. But.

When you're starting to get jobs done, things are spread so thin, stuff like that kind of goes through the cracks. But we gotta get financially to the point where we're making extra five, six grand a month with the price increases so we can afford an extra blower, an extra weed whacker racks in the trailer, you know, enough time to be.

Able to paint the truck.

We're gonna find more employees and double up on these trucks with two people. You gotta have an extra blower because right now I'm sitting here when there's five more minutes of mowing left, so. Works fine for solar out, but you won't be able to make P for P if you don't have any extra blowers or trimmers for people to double up on a job like this.

See, the problem right now is that the team wants Tim fired because he's been unreliable. But I can guarantee they don't know what he's going through or has been through.

One thing, just like we're doing now. Sweating out here, working out, like you said, to keep the mind clear, keep the body clear. So you need to always.

Stay in shape.

Because losing your mobility with critical, especially if you're a family man and you're trying to provide, trying to do all these things. But if your health is not of par, you know, what good are you? You know, I'm. Like I said again, I suffer things in the military.

But even though they look at me as an asset, they compensate me for those things that I might have lost value in so that I can continue on doing what I need to do to survive and make it in this life.

One of the challenges that a lot of these gentlemen and ladies that come back from overseas in the military is they got ptsd, they got other things going on, and it's hard to ever find a group of people or a team that is as strongly knit as what they have been used of in the military. So my hope is that tomorrow I can get the team together. Like, hey, let's just be honest and open with each other. This is what Tim's going through. Let's all support him. There's gonna be days where he is good and bad, etc, and it's as much for Tim as it is for the team to be more understanding the team, but then for Tim to realize that there's people that got his back and there's, you know, men and women in uniform, not necessarily the military, but the Augusta Nation uniform that are willing to support him, and it's worth showing up for. I'll communicate with Tim tomorrow morning at the team meeting, but first, I want to go back to the shop and I want to figure out what's all the assets laying around the shop, the trucks, the equipment, and is a lot of the reason we need this price increase simply to cover the cost of all those assets sitting around? Honestly, they have pretty good route density. The fact that, like, literally all three or four of them are within, like five to eight minutes from their shop, it's awesome, man. Like, this is a really, really good area too.

All right, we're back at the shop. This is the F350 parked here. It's not being used because they haven't been taking projects for the past couple months. It's been super busy with just 300 mowing customers. They got dump trailer sitting here as well as their backup. Tundra. I think it was just really meant for just a backup kind of an estimate truck or something like that, as well as another trailer. So a lot of assets just sitting here. Why because their asset capacity, they can literally double the. The amount of revenue if they just had the employees and the laborers, and they did. Just a few weeks ago, they had six employees. Now they're down to three, plus Kyle. So those four trucks are gone, but these ones are sitting here. So they could probably do 75 to $80,000 a month without having to buy a. Another piece of equipment in terms of trucks and trailers. And so now it's a matter like, find the employees, train them up, create the cohesion of the team, and, man, this is a lot of opportunity here. Kyle's asset utilization is really low right now. It's a fancy word. It just means how often you're using your equipment. But the reason he has this low asset utilization is because he hasn't had enough team members to be operating the trucks and equipment throughout the day. I need to find him more employees so he can fill those trucks up and go knock out more jobs. I have a few interviews scheduled, and a couple of them actually sound pretty qualified. So I'm really hoping I can find a couple winners. We can raise these prices and get timothy back on board with the team and being more dependable, and then go get two or three new guys to.

Fill up their trucks.

They got two more trucks that are sitting there. He's got a ton of asset capacity. He probably has enough trucks to honestly do 70 to $80,000 a month in revenue. Right now, they're hitting 50. So we just got to make it more profitable and get more team members. And honestly, he's just like, these type of locations. You can turn these around in 48, like, two to three days. You just got to be super decisive, and it's hard to do that when you're the thick of things. Everything's breaking down. Employees are leaving. You're way behind on customers and their. Their, Their yards. You know, he can't get his trucks painted because the shop's a month behind. It's tough.

All right, we're at a smoothie place here.

Let's go.

We got a whole bunch of applicants in the past 10 or 11 hours since we post the ad on. Indeed. I've got about four or five interviews set up for today. I want to get a couple more. A couple of them have experience, and it sounds like Kyle really wants them to be able to, like, hit the ground running and not be completely green. No pun intended. So we're going to go ahead and do a bunch of interviews and hopefully get a couple people ready for tomorrow.

Honestly, massive fail on my Part, this place has absolutely no cell service, so I can't contact any of these candidates. So I just realized I gave the address to this plaza without the suite number. For all I know, someone showed up. The last two people that I thought had just, like, no showed they could have showed up. And I just don't even get a text message or a phone call. I have no cell service. It stinks. As I've set up all my interviews at this location.

We struck out on that one. Two interviews. I would call them no shows. But look, I still can't even get any service. It's ridiculous. Full lte can't get anything. We've got a couple hours here, so we're gonna go back to the shop when no one's there and see what's going on there because, you know, you like to see what's in the closet. Skeletons in the closet. And then we're gonna come back here, unfortunately, because that's the address I gave all the applicants and get three or four more interviews, hopefully. Time to go now. Get into service and confirm them. Since I could not do it there.

I had five interviews that day.

Two of them didn't show up.

One of them was lady.

One of them didn't have enough experience, and the other one with benefits. Do you guys offer any sort of benefits with them being a company right now, we don't have any benefits in terms of medical. Part of it is we're just trying to. We just. It's a year and a half, so it's kind of newish. Usually like our second or third years when we start offering benefits. Yeah. So I'm gonna try again tomorrow, though.

Yeah, yeah. It's tough, man. It's tough here. It really, really.

This.

I've done the same thing. So I had an interview. It's been. It's been a while back, and the guy was like, five minutes late. And I just. I left, and he's like, hey, I'm here. And I'm like, sorry. I mean, you know, you. You were late. I mean, he would have let me know, you know, but he didn't let me know anything. He just was late. I'm like.

It is what it is, so. And I'm. I'm the same way about him coming in the mornings when they come in.

Late, the three guys. Tim seems good as long as you show up.

Like, yeah, yeah.

We can't talk about. Because he came back from Afghanistan. Has good days, bad days.

Kyle seems to have a pretty good core group of guys on the current team. And if we can build around them and add more team members, this could be a super profitable location and we could get Kyle back out of the field doing estimates and continuing to grow the business. But we might need to increase the base pay if we're going to attract the right type of talent that can handle working in these type of brutal weather conditions.

Corey is the one who's been with me since almost the beginning, really. I started in March and he's been here since July of last year.

I've been doing this for about seven plus years or so. And I'll start off by saying that Kyle, he's a great boss. I've been through a couple landscape companies, but there's never, never been a boss even in my entire life that's been as supportive and as reliable as Kyle has been. I've never even heard of Augusta. When I first started, dude, I seen.

I was like, augusta.

I've never even heard what is Augusta, you know what I mean? Because landscaping's big down here in Alabama, man. You know what I mean? You got probably over 100 plus different landscaping companies all over Alabama. And there's this one's the only one that stands out, man. For real.

Do you think it's worth raising base pay to 20 or you. It really is these couple months where it's so hot that no one wants to work.

Well, I mean that as far as like getting somebody new in.

Yeah.

The thing is, I mean, if they're doing 30 hours a week, they're still gonna make more than the 20 an hour anyway. So. Yeah, that was a question Corey asked me today. I told him, he says, man, I've.

Been here a year.

Is there any way I can up my base pay? And I'm like, you're making 25, like it don't matter if I pay you 22, you're already making more just to.

Make more money, man. Right now I'm not struggling though.

I'm.

Everything's paid for. All my bills are paid for and everything. I just don't have enough money to store away.

Tim is probably doing 22, 44. And Dominic's, he did 27 or 28 yesterday. So they're all making their way above that. They.

So really my real goal is just to be Kyle's right hand man, like his go to guy, his number two, you know what I mean? If anybody has any questions, he's always so overloaded with everything, you know what I mean? Because he's too busy. Whether he's out in the field, Working on schedules or talking to customers.

He's just always overloaded.

So my goal is to at least be his go to man to where he can have people call me and I can give them the advice that they want.

It's more of that, like just that security for them though, right. They feel, even though it has no real impact, it. It feels to them like it's an improvement. Right.

Yeah.

Because for someone like, like Corey, I. I think, you know, giving him 20 wouldn't be a bad idea just for.

The sake of just.

Just because, you know, it's not going to necessarily cost you anymore. It's just for the sake of security for him.

Except for, you know, like the winter time, obviously, or the fall when we get slow. I mean, it's gonna cost me a little bit more, but.

Yeah, I mean, even then, like, you only kind of keep someone like Cory during that time. You're not going to want to movies, right? Yeah, we lay them off during the winter anyways.

Yeah. Yeah.

Corey seems to be Kyle's most valuable asset right now. He's super efficient and super dependable. Even though raising his base pay to $20 per hour doesn't really affect his paycheck a whole lot because he's making 24 plus per hour on P4P. It will at least make him feel valued and give him a sense of security within the company. We need to build the team around employees like Corey so that Kyle can get out of the field and continue growing the business. But if we don't find any new hires soon, we are gonna start losing customers.

So right now, you know, if we can't get somebody hired, we're gonna lose all those. All those people because they're due this week.

Meant all the guys that come in Saturday, would I keep them?

Probably not. No. They're. We've been working a lot. Corey's worked a lot of weekends. He's not. He's worked a lot and you know, and then it sucks because they get overtime and it kind of. All their P for P is kind of all that extra work because it kind of counteracts that, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

So Saturday I could probably get some of them done.

It's like, is it worth Paying someone 20 an hour? Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, I think so. It's just like you, you know, trying to get people to show up. Which I guess is kind of the same across. Across the board maybe.

Okay, give me one more day. I'm gonna try to do a whole bunch tomorrow again, I'll put it to 20 and then. Then we got to determine, okay, if we're gonna give 20, who's. Who else do we get 20? I think it's just a matter of, like, either. Like, hey, once you work a year, then maybe you go up to 20.

Yeah. I mean, it'd be four because the other two guys have only been here a few months.

Right.

So, I mean, you know, poor guessing already for sure. So. Okay. Maybe that'll make him feel better.

Well, we'll see after the date how many of the customers are, you know, keep rolling with the price increase.

We're doing a 50 profit right now in the. In the.

In the.

You know, in the prime season. So now I don't know what it is overall average, but right now, if we're doing 40, we're saving about 20amonth. And so we got too many customers today, right? Yeah. Yeah, I know. I'm like, man, we just raised prices so high, and they're still really coming.

In your mat matrix in. Yeah.

In the last 10 days, I think we've gotten, like, six new clients from it, so. And, I mean, it's good. That's good that we're, you know, we're making some.

But that also gives you the freedom to cut people. Yeah. If they're far out or whatever.

Or they're like. They're like, you know, oh, I don't.

Want to go up. Well, okay.

You know, sorry.

Day one is in the books. I have one day left to turn things around for Kyle. When you raise prices, typically, you'd think you'd lose a handful of customers at least, but Kyle just keeps getting more and more customers. Tomorrow, we really need to focus on getting a couple quality employees to relieve some of the pressure that's currently on the team.

You must be Dominic. I'm Mike. Good to meet you. Nice to meet you. Absolutely. Oh, I just wanted to connect with you guys real quick. Obviously vintage last call days. We really had two objectives from coming in. Number one was to take a little bit of the pressure off in terms of just the amount of customers we currently have. This is the only chance I have to connect with Kyle's whole team while I'm here. Our goal is to keep these core group of guys and have them stick around. I need to sell them on the vision of Augusta and that we're here for more than just cutting grass. I know my first two of my first two numbers that I got are now running entire divisions for half the country in terms of regional managers, etc. And so the nice thing about Augusta is whether you want to be here.

For a long time or you're just.

Here for six months. The goal is that you leave and you go do something better. In six months. Maybe you're like, hey, I'm going to go do something else. I hope that working on P4P pay for performance, you start looking for inefficiencies. When you go to a man manufacturing job and like, oh, you could save time there. We could cut out waste here. That sort of mentality is what will get you a promotion. That's the type of thing that will get you be a manager. But then it also, like, the goal is if you stay here, if you want to stay here, that you're able to also grow. We're growing, invested quickly, mostly due to the fact that there's some really good people that I started the company with that I want them to be able to keep moving up. The advantage of having someone like Kyle who's growing so much is like, there should be opportunity. These come up as you continue to grow, whether that be a general manager in a different location. When you get to 8, 9T numbers, you almost need someone else doing estimates. So learning the estimating process, dealing with customers, the selling process. And then we have now six of our guys that have gone and started their own location for free. There's no initial fee. If you work for two years, you can go start your own. I don't want anyone of you still mowing grass in 10 years. It's not something you want to be doing. It's very hard on the body. So that's the whole reason, like, Augusta really exists and we don't. I'm not, like, oblivious to the fact that, like, you don't want to be mowing grass for 10 years. I don't. It's hard, hard work. I also need to fill the team in on exactly what my plan is. They're exhausted, and this type of work is very tough this time of year. I want them to know they are supported, valued, and that we are actively trying to make things easier on them by finding more team members. And we'll be trying. Today I have like eight or nine interviews, so I'm hoping to try to get one more team member. The challenge, as you guys know, is like, getting someone actually has done this before, knows what they're doing. And like, yes, I was shuffling paperwork, now I can go work in the garden. Like, well, it's not exactly like working in the garden. Yeah, it's hard work and I really want to commend you guys, like, it's tough, especially this time of year. Knowing there is a light at the end of the tunnel may just give them the drive they need to push through when they feel like quitting. And we'll try to do our best to try to take a little bit of that pressure off. We'll probably have to let some of the customers go. And which area was that?

So there's an area north of Lake Forest, and there's an area south Lake Forest that we're probably gonna have to let go. They are. They're overdue, and they're not gonna be able to get done.

It's a possibility.

If we get somebody pretty quick and we can get it next week, it's a possibility we could keep them.

But.

But, yeah, I mean, going to weekly, really, it's helped quite a bit, so I'm really surprised people have been okay with it. But, I mean, when you look outside, we're cutting free feet off your yard. I mean, it's kind of like maybe it does need to be cut every week, so. And a lot of these people, once we've started doing it weekly, I think they've. They're like. They realize that it looks better, so they're. They're okay with this.

You know, I appreciate all of you, really do. If there's anything I can do, let me know. You guys have my number now, so if you need anything, just reach out. But I just encourage, you know, just focus on improving yourself. Like, the mowing skills that we have are kind of. A lot of people can do mowing. Very few people can lead other people or talk to customers. And sometimes, like, talking to customers is a bit of a pain in the neck, but it's honestly a skill that most people don't have. And whether you're in Augusta and you become an estimator, own your own location or you go and do something else, like, those are the skills that actually matter.

I plan to be here for at least 10 years at this job. I think this is probably one of the best companies I've ever worked with, to be honest. A great partner to be with Augusta, you know what I mean?

As I encourage you, you know, if you can throw a podcast on for a couple ones, you can listen to an audio program about sales or, man.

You might go all over your head.

And you're like, what business? Something will stick, and that those are really valuable. And I remember, like, kind of making the switch in my head, like, hey, like, okay, I'm just a lawn guy, but I. Throughout the day I have eight, 10 hours where I can plug in and learn from the best minds in the world. And that's like an opportunity most people don't have. And so I just encourage you to take that opportunity for sure. All of you, let's go. Kick it. The team meeting was great and I enjoyed meeting Kyle's team, but the clock is, is ticking and it's my final day to find some quality employees for this location. But first I wanted to pull one of the team members aside and discuss their future with the company. Yo, I appreciate all your work, man.

For almost a year now.

Yeah, man, I told Kyle, man, it don't matter if someone can offer me 30 an hour, man, I ain't gonna leave, you know what I mean? I came in here to be his right hand man, you know what I mean? Be his go to person and exactly where trying to kind of get myself some.

I appreciate it, man.

I know it's hard work.

Appreciate that. He had something he want to tell you.

Yeah. So we talked about, you know, going up on price and everything. So we're going to, starting today, we're going to change your base B to 20.

Yeah, that's awesome, man.

Oh, I've been waiting for this.

Yeah, I think this is probably one of the best companies I've ever worked with, to be honest with. Like, I honestly, like, it is exciting.

I think you've been, I think you've been here like right out of the year. I don't, I don't know the exact date, but I think it's pretty, it's pretty close to a year.

Was he your very first person ever hiring? Oh, yeah. You're like, oh man, this thing is easy.

It probably makes him happy, make him feel like he's, you know, earned something, which he has.

I was, I was nervous when I first got came in, you know, because I've never heard of Augusta. And then seeing that Facebook post, I was like, man, I. I've worked at a couple landscape companies, companies down here, man, and I've never seen Augusta before. And then once I talked to him, man, it sounded pretty legit. And then once I actually came in and started working, dude, it was the right fit for me just to watch, just to know how young Mike is, you know what I mean, and see how successful he can be. Just gives me more hope and more motivation, you know what I mean? To actually become more like him, you know?

Well, I appreciate, man. I know a year of all that, the churn of even the guys and like new people Come and go, but like to have someone that you can depend on. I really appreciate it.

No, of course, man.

Of course.

I hope in the future, you know, whether it be when you become a manager, whatever it is that you get.

No, trust me, I don't plan on leaving Augusta. To be honest, man, I think my future is set where it's at, you know?

All right, it's time for me now to hold up my part of the bargain, and that is go find some employees. So that's what I'm gonna go do is go try to land at least one, which would be a major help for Kyle and his guys even this weekend.

I'm just hanging out at this tropical cafe place. I'm by smoothie if you want to come on over and see if it might be a good fit for you. So that application came in literally right now. So jumped on it right away. Scheduled the interview or we're striking out today. If that's like a deal breaker, I get it. I don't totally understand. Appreciate your time, though. No, B, I appreciate you guys. I think my job came a bit of a late. No, you're good. You're good. I appreciate it, brother. Thanks for coming in. All right. So today was not a good day. We had like eight interviews. Not a single person did three things showed up, had experience doing lawn care or could start pretty quickly. So it obviously doesn't help though, in the middle of a drought and it's crazy hot and no one wants to work outside. But it's also tough because Kyle just does not have the time to train anyone right now. And ideally I'd be here for another day or two and I would train them up in the field, but we're going to the weekend and I gotta leave. I feel like we struck out. We got one more interview this evening, so we'll see. But was not a great day.

First time I've seen 100 degrees outside.

And it's pouring down rain all of a sudden. It's crazy. It obviously doesn't help that we're in the middle of a drought. All right, so we're wrapping up here in Alabama. It does not go as expected. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to find an employee. We've got to cut down our overhead expenses. But fortunately, only two or three customers out of all 200 have canceled. And we raised prices increasingly monthly revenue by almost $6,000. And it's like a straight profit for now. I'm just gonna get out of the rain. Alright, see ya.

I hope that these turnaround videos are super helpful and you're able to extract things from your own business. One of the things that cannot be replicated is in person connection and networking with other landscapers in this industry and that's why we have Landscape Summit coming up in just a few weeks in Louisville, Kentucky. For two days we're going to be having a host of different speakers that have all built very successful lawn care and landscaping businesses all the way from solo operators to multi tens of millions of dollars worth of revenue. It's gonna be extremely valuable for you as the owner, the manager, your style spouse to be there in attendance and learn from some of the best and while doing so meet other landscapers that are shoulder to shoulder with you trying to figure things out. I encourage you to go to mikeandys.comsummit and book your ticket because just in a couple weeks the early bird tickets will be sold out. I appreciate you and look forward to seeing it. Landscape Summit.

Done. Cool.