Adventures with Lyrical: Buying a Business (REPOST)

Shonuff said:

Wow, I haven't been on here in years. Business is debtless except one piece of equipment, and that's nice. Hard to expand because I have high standards, have won the Best Of category in my town consecutive years.

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Shonuff said:

I don't do forums or social media anymore. When I joined FOH in 2005 I was 34 years old. I'm old now, and I realize I don't value anyone's opinion about anything any more. Just mine.

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Shonuff said:

Cool, Tmac. That helps. I try to help people, but usually that's on my Facebook now. Is there a thread for you?

Not much has changed…

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OU Ariakas said:

You should check out the investing threads in the Adult sub-forum. Blazin and Sanrith Descartes have transformed it into a gold mine of information. It has really changed in the last 18 months.

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Shonuff said:

Cool, Tmac. That helps. I try to help people, but usually that's on my Facebook now. Is there a thread for you?

Not much has changed.

- Business is almost completely free and clear of debt, and I pay very little rent ($400). So with the debt reduction, its added roughly 3k a week discretionary income, on top of my regular business income.

- We've gone eight years without running out of work. They say the thing that keeps business owners up all night is not being able to pay the bills. Incorrect. The thing that keeps us up all night is demand. I constantly tweak the ad mix to make sure we are good. I have spent 31K in a month on advertising, but that was in an abnormally slow month. I have laid off one guy in those eight years (although I've fired hundreds not up to my standards). I hate laying off hard workers, I lost sleep until I hired him back three years later.

- IRS showed up at the door a few years ago, demanding every penny in the bank account. They claimed I didn't file my W2's (even though I had a receipt from my CPA showing I did and people did their W2's. Took me almost 2.5 years to make this go away and fix my credit. They placed a lien on everything. 2.5 years later, they finally admitted the computer told them the wrong thing. Fuck the IRS. Spent many a sleepless night, as they were trying to pierce the veil and go after our home. In the end, they got a few k.

- Got a chance to take a selfie while being served with a 10M lawsuit. I sued a landlord that contracted with me to sell what I was renting and he backed out. He sued me and said I ruined his five acres that were worth maybe 100k, and said I did 10M of damage. I think I paid him 5k and then I bought the land (after a couple of years). Straight hands with me put into the wall. IRS or real estate moguls be damned.

- Finally got out of our last yellow pages. Our cost of acquisition per customer went past $200, and we got out. We milked those books until there were no customers left. Three years ago, we were still spending about $2,600 a month on yellow pages. We moved all of that into online advertising.

- Moved hardcore into online advertising. Got a consulting company named wordstream to help me. Just ended my contract with them, after having spent 24k in consulting fees over four years. Well worth it, half of our business comes from social media. Social media helps me target high net worth individuals that need my services. I own a tree care, and having full insurance helps with these people. They don't want sued if someone gets hurt. Billboard and TV we still use, but we do not spend anymore 15k monthly budgets on TV. I don't like TV as much as social media. They hold me to contracts. With social media, I can pause anytime. My 15 year old helps with the ads, and people tell me they look professional (unsolicited to do so).

- Last few years, we've exceeded one million in sales, which I think only 2% of businesses ever do. We are kind of flat, because I don't like customer complaints. Tree care is rife with druggies and alcoholics. I'm not having customers complain because I hired a meth head. Business is a cash cow for me to do other things. I work in in it 3-5 hours a day max.

- Covid had virtually no effect on us. I think we dropped 10% in sales. We spent more in advertising to get people's attention. We did take the PPP. We are considered essential, and while the Economy sucked, people worked on their home projects more. So we benefitted from that.

- This year, we are fighting the labor shortage like everyone else. State has forced us to use CDL drivers, and that's been tough, since there is a shortage nationwide. CDL drivers tend to think they are above work, and everyone works here.

- I'm at 2.75 crews right now, because of the CDL driver issue. It's rained so much we've been behind. But last month, we got very little rain, and it was a record month. Between my draw, 401K, IRA, cars, meals and entertainment, net income of the corporation, and the expenses I cut, we made roughly $40k profit on 110k in sales. It was the best regular (as in non emergency month) in the 14 years we've owned the company.

- Current advertising mix is 5k on google (I cover 91% of my geography), 2k on billboard, 2-4k on TV, 3k on Facebook/Insta and I just started with 2k on youtube ads. Last month was so good because I wasn't on TV or youtube at all. I increased it because I don't think I can continue to do 100k+ monthly sales on just google, billboard and TV. This is different for me, because I've spent 15k in a month on TV. TV is going down 10% a year, but social media goes up and up. Impact to the bottom line is that it goes up. ROI is higher on social media. TV brings me leads, but a lot of them are broke. I like wealthy individuals, as I'm billing sometimes almost 6k in a day in service fees for my crews.

- Considering advertising on LinkedIn and Twitter to further go after wealthier individuals. Still trying to figure that out.

- I spent more time trading and investing stocks in the last year than I do on my business. That intrigues me. Trading takes an entirely different mindset. In business you need to be an alpha, but when you trade you better be a good beta. I am my own worst enemy at trading, because there's something in my head that tells me to never give up, even though the formula tells me I need to bail on the trade. Some days I make more trading than I do in my tree care business. Other days, not so much, because I'm not following my trading plans.

Sorry for typos and grammar, but I'm busy.

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Shonuff said:

But I ignore the fucking signals when they go south and yell, "THIS STOCK OWES ME MONEY!".

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BrutulTM said:

Because of that casinos can offer games with almost no house advantage and still rest easy that they are going to make money.

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