Adventures with Lyrical: Buying a Business (REPOST)

Lyrical is my favorite Batman apologist in the landscaping business segment OF ALL TIME.

It's funny to see your results though - bad employees in key positions just murder businesses left and right.

I think sometimes a good business process analyst is the best thing money can buy. Sometimes you don't even realize how minor variations or issues can cause catastrophic losses just because their visibility to the decision makers is different than down the road. I've worked for companies where minor, minor changes had massive increases in productivity or profit.

You're right that it's often unfair to lay blame on one person, no one is perfect BUT that's not excuse for the intended process not to be perfect. No plan survives battle of course, but sometimes putting procedures and numbers in black and white and holding people accountable to standards it's just staggering what gaps you find.

I don't relish your concern when you do eventually try and find another manager. It's extremely hard to find managers who have an eye for detail, people skills and the vision to see how their actions affect the big picture. Mostly because they don't need jobs, or want too much money, it seems.

To give an example: in one case a company was sending letters, editing files by hand to correct addresses. It just grew up out of small business (couple a day who cares). They saved probably 100K in payroll a year at least in admin staff by automating NCOA and buying some USPS address validation/correction service and reduced letter vender costs by almost half because they didn't realize the ETL for the excel sheets they sent over each day WAS READING THE ENTIRE FILE WITHOUT FILTERS EACH TIME, lol. They thought they were sending 3x 1/3 a file (as an example) with letters and it turned out it was 3 x 3 letters. For who knows how long. lol

Lyrical_sl said:

I'm conducting due diligence on a business. This will be the first time I've done so since I bought this one in 2008. This one just fell into my lap, from a networking group I'm in at the country club. The earnings look stable so far, it's netted 20k a month for the last three years (give or take 10-20%). It's for a handyman business with 18 contractors.

Why am I doing this? It's not for the money, it's about the challenge.

We'll see. I never get my hopes up in these things, I think I conducted due diligence on 38 businesses before I bought this one. Sellers usually hide something. Either it's not making the money they claim, or it's making to much money and they are hiding it from the IRS. Of those 38 businesses, 36 of them falsified higher revenues, one of them was "iced" by the landlord, and one of them I bought.

Click to expand...

The overhead and PITA dealing with 18 contractors does not seem even close to worth $240k when you already have a good thing going. How much of your current business would you lose if the new one took all your attention (and it will)

I dunno, I think you could do well with a 'serious' handyman business. One of the problems is interfacing with customers and getting the desired results. Quite frankly, most handyman types I've used (or been involved in a job with) over the years were at best as good as I was because they were JOAT and not a specialist in flooring/painting/framing/etc.

I didn't really appreciate it as much before, because I can actuallydopretty much everything, but as a homeowner now I would seriously consider a service that could A) send aqualifiedtechnician (not necessarily 'expert/master/etc.') and had reasonable rates for the time commitment of a job. To give you an example - I need to replace a bunch of door sweeps, gaskets and weather stripping on a couple exterior doors. I can (and likely will) do it, but I would seriously consider paying someone to do it - just not at the rates I'd get going to a door+window company. I just know I'll have to buy two sawhorses, some silicone, some liquid nails, etc. and by that point I'm down $50 anyway for crap I won't use frequently. I also need to replace one hose bib, but I really don't want to buy a torch, pint of flux and heavy gauge solder to do one job. I'm not going to pay a plumber more than the tool cost on that one either since I know how to solder. I'd consider paying someone else some money to take care of it quickly.

A good, service and community based company (IE, you can see jobs done for 'neighbors' on web portal, 'oh yea shit I need that done too and it was only $35 + materials!') with easy to use and schedule tools (web portal, upload/text portals to streamline pricing/bids) could probably do well in metro areas, I think.

If you go traditional handyman, though... I guess have rock solid insurance and PR/advertising. Besides the grannies, I don't see people using a handyman to do it right, they use them to do it cheap which means failure, complaints, lawsuits, issues. I can't tell you how many enraged homeowners would get an estimate on, say, flooring and go apeshit over install prices because the legit flooring installer would refuse to put down ceramic tile on top of lino glued to 5/8" hardwood nailed to luan nailed to 2x6 floor joists put in by some asshole during a cheap ass series of renos over 15 years. Some of that shit is legit scary, I would fear doing a lot of jobs as a 'cheap as we can go' style handyman.

Just my 2P.