Adventures with Lyrical: Buying a Business (REPOST)

How scary we live in a day and time where I can now advertise online to my repeat customers without their consent. I can give the targeting company a customer address, and they can bombard the homeowner. If I want to target certain companies or high net worth individuals, I can target anyone entering the building, and serve them ads when they go home. Things are changing so quickly.

Let a guy go this week, even in the face of this labor market. He got into two car accidents, almost let a log roll onto himself (breaking both legs), and almost had a few near death accidents. You can't stand underneath a tree and let a log come near your head. He's standing underneath trees with no safety gear on his head, and letting limbs come near his head. That's how you die. Before I bought the company, there was a guy that died maybe 20 years ago, much in the same fashion. I had more than one Crew Leader report it, and when I ask him about it, he doesn't deny it. He then tells his Supervisors to STFU. And then I catch him away from the job, screwing off.

This job market is so tight that some Employees think they can do anything they want. Someone gets killed on the job and the family will try to sue for millions. No thanks. So I'm losing 800 a day until I replace him. A few years back, a guy broke all of the safety protocols, broke his back, and my share of his negligence was 80k in increased premiums over three years (insurance paid 800k).

Understand, when I say losing 800 per day, I charge 800 per man, and I had eight workers (now seven) and one Manager.

Me to job applicant: "Do you miss much work?"

response: "No, I never miss work, ever in my life."

And then doesn't show up the first day of work.

So, youtube spots are actually starting to deliver customers to me. Done them off and on for years, but google finally seems to have figured out how to be somewhat relevant for small business advertising.

"During a survey of small business in the U.S. who were utilizing social media for advertising purposes, 66 percent of respondents said they used Facebook, while 42 percent indicated using YouTube."

OU Ariakas said:

Do you get to choose what type of channels on YouTube show your commercials or is it just pay money and their algorithm throws your ad on local IPs watching whatever?

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I geofence, and pick by age, and demographic. I further target based off of key words. And yeah, they are absolutely creepy, listening to everybody. Just had a customer today say he was talking about getting tree work done, and lo and behold, we are playing on his youtube feed.

This is why, over the years, I've cut my TV in half. TV brings me everybody, even people that can't afford me. My sweet spot is age 34+ with an HHI over 90k. In general, since we have lots of expensive equipment, wealthy landowners are the best for us. Right now, I'm only advertising to the top 40% of wage earners. Google doesn't get it right, we ran a test and found that they don't get HHI right, you have to give them some leeway.

When you run your own business, goal setting is important. You have to have the goal be realistic, and keep it in front of everybody. We post in a thread when we make a sale, and track it. You have to keep people focused, or they don't know what to do. Everybody has a goal, everybody is held accountable, and if you can't hit your goal, then I have to give you the tools and training to succeed. With the size company I own, I expect to sell 30k in service fees every week. The little things add up to big things, never had to layoff anyone in the last 8 or 9 years, even during covid.

OU Ariakas said:

Psssst, they beat the daily quota by lunchtime!

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I am on them right now to make a sale. They've been with me a long time. I reminded them what it was like 10 years ago coming into the Winter. December and January are the slowest months of the year.

I reminded them of the pain of taking Christmas vacation, and celebrating Christmas and not having any work when we came back. I remember being mad at God the first few years, sitting there scowling at the Christmas tree.

Ever since then, I started planning more seriously. I know my seasons, I adjust everything accordingly, from ad mix (some seasons get more TV, some get more social media) to ad weight to seasonal messages to sales presentations.

I think I may have gone 10 years now without laying off or running out of work. I see my competitors hurting right now. According to google, impressions for the entire area are down by 70% from last month. My estimate are down only 20% maybe, compared to the rest of the industry.

I have padded the goal somewhat. If we sell 14k, we are booked until the end of the year. I pad it on purpose, so we are constantly building a backlog. If we get rained out and can't work, the goal doesn't go down.

Hateyou said:

Honeybunch is slacking hard.

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I've been telling her she gets no dick until she sells something. Maybe that's why she isn't selling.

She kind of sells in clumps. She'll have days where she'll sell the entire week's quota. The reality is the Estimators are closing at a higher rate right now, so that cuts into her ratio. The other people, they want to take their time and think about it, and get other bids. If the Estimators are closing at 50% (which they have been), the Office closes at a lower rate.

I believe we bid on probably 4 or 5M in work a year. She'll always sell more, because even if the calls slow, she can just sit there all day and make hundreds of calls.

My God, CDL drivers are getting expensive. And they talk shit and push boundaries, because they know they can get a job in five minutes. It is very hard for a small business to compete when Coca Cola or Pepsi is offering them $28 an hour.

We are very close to being booked until January of next year. I purposefully spend a ton of money advertising, because December can be super slow. Not bad for it being our offseason.

You have to know your seasonality, so you can adjust.

So the trick is, keeping people on schedule when I'm booked out six to seven weeks. That's Honeybunch's job. A long time ago, we'd lose 5-7k a week in cancellations this time of year. But if you call people, give them a date, or at least tell them you are thinking about them, you can cut that by half.

In our industry, customer disappear until 1-15, and even then, they don't come back in full until March.

So, we are having a record December, and will be the same for January. It's odd. This is our slowest time of the year. I ran a ton of advertising in prep for business falling off the face of the Earth (you can't fight Santa, they say). Spent 12k on TV, 5k on google and youtube ads, and 8k on Facebook. Looking back at previous Decembers, we usually lose 20k average, but we are actually turning a slight profit. January is pretty much booked. Over the years, I've found if I drop 20k in advertising in the slower times, I make a slight profit (and keep everyone employed). But I try to spend what the previous owner did (2k a month), I lose 20k a month every month from December to April. So, I can lose 100k in the Winter with little to no ad spend, or I can spend 15-20k, and make 30k in the Winter.

Staffing is good, but I have a CDL driver with PTSD and Autism. Yesterday, he tried to put a truck out of service that had a slight oil leak. He's not real safe, he gets too excited and does stupid stuff while driving. I hate to let him go, but he just told me he's flipped two trucks (not showing on his record). He's going to need to convince me he can be safe. He's a catch 22. He shows up to work an hour early and never misses. But then he tells me he flipped a log truck at a company. The truck was 180k, insurance paid only 45k. Everyone likes the guy, but he's making me nervous. He comes to work in the AM and he's bouncing off the walls.

So the guy with PTSD and Autism is a little bit more "off" than I first thought. He's talking to my landlord to help him to pay for his mail order bride (who just so happens to live in Africa). The mail order bride is worth 34M. When the mail order bride gets here, he's going to pay me 34M for my company, buy new equipment and be the boss. I'm going to move to the beach. He's conducting interviews with the Employees to see who he's going to keep (or let go).

Sad thing is, with the job market the way it it, I have to put up with it for awhile longer.

Tmac said:

That’s wild, haha.

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I'm not wanting to let him go, he's a good guy, but he's off. He's not stupid. He managed to do something I never finished (getting my CDL, I stopped at my permit). But he has zero interpersonal skills. If I tell him to go do something, he takes it so literal, there is no room for interpretation. I told him to drive one truck, they need him to switch later in the day, he won't switch because he's married to what I told him.

He just told me that a decade ago, he flipped a 180k logging truck, and it cost the owner 145k. He faded the brakes on one of my trucks going downhill last week. And yesterday, he started talking to himself.

He's like a high functioning retard. Can you say that word any more?