Mike L.
@signthefronts
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3,452
Following
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1,922
Rolling up landscape companies in CA🌿
Orange County, CA
Joined November 2021
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Pinned Tweet
Hot take: most people shouldn’t quit their jobs and take out a monster SBA loan.
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My uncles house is insane. The serenity and quiet here is unreal.
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Bought a commercial landscaping maintenance business two years ago for $300k. We just got awarded a $1.2 million landscaping renovation at one of the larger properties that we maintain(a Fortune 50 company) Project profit will pay for the business twice over. LFG!
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Loaned an employee a few thousand dollars for an eye surgery a few months ago, decided to quit this morning because we cutting back everyone’s overtime. Also called me a greedy white boy. Lesson learned.
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Fired a decent sized client today. My staff is entirely Hispanic and calling one of my guys a racial epithet is completely unacceptable and infuriates me to no end. The worst part was my employee(who is an all star) didnt want us to fire them bc he didn’t want to hurt the company
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No matter how big my landscape co. Gets I will never wear sandals and drive a Range Rover around a group of men busting their ass digging holes and mowing lawns. It sends the wrong message and makes you look like an asshole.
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I’ve built a 4M a year landscape company without any investors or SBA money. My autonomy was important to me. Don’t believe that the only option is SBA or handing a chunk of your equity away. Begin with an end in mind. *Nothing wrong with those routes, just were not for me*
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Hack: put a wet paper towel under your red onion when you cut it up and you won’t cry. Also don’t buy a construction company at 4X in a recession. The more you know….
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Did I wake up at 4:30 AM to drive 4 hours to see a possible bolt on acquisition for my landscaping company? Absolutely. Seller is 70 and a 30 minute in person meeting where you shake his hand and look him in the eye makes all the difference.
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Started my own small nursery a few years ago. Buy 1 gal plants for $3. Buckets I get for free, fill dirt also free. Change 1 gal plants into 5 gal. Wait and water for 6 months. Charge $45 installed for customers.(yes this is market rate in SoCal)
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Thinking about buying a small business? Here are some things to consider.
A 🧵. ⬇️
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It’s all fun and games til it’s your name on the personal guarantee and they want an insurance policy on your life just in case you die before you’re done paying them back.
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Closed on my 4th landscape acquisition today.
Here are my takeaways ⬇️
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Met with a seller in San Diego this morning and when asking about the financials he goes “well you know there’s a lot of funny money in there, you know how it is” Actually no I don’t practice tax evasion and then call it “funny money” can’t make this stuff up 🚩
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Lost my deal today. Hard truth is it was 100% on me. Not having my accounting done correctly in the beginning of my business has officially bitten me in the ass. I hate to lose more than I like to win.
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Bought a 250k Rev landscape route on Craigslist last month.
25k down
25k paid over 9 months
Included one truck and all equipment
Margin: ~$60k
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Learning a TON about my own company trying to get an SBA loan for my 4th & 5th acquisitions. Having a shitty book keeper a few years ago is really biting me in the ass. Go get a great book keeper bc it’s the best money you can spend.
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In SMB you are competing with two different people. First is someone who put their whole life savings and house on the line when they sign a PG to buy a SMB. The second is someone who started the business from thin air and scraped their way to where they are. Both are formidable.
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Nothing can prepare you for what it feels like to have an employee you really trust steal from you then lie right to your face.
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Quick shout out to every SMB owner making that payroll week in and week out. Early on I pawned the pink slip to my truck to make payroll. Worth it 👊🏻
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Every time I am going through my mail and I see an IRS letter I feel like I got punched in the gut.
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Just signed my letter from the bank for my 4th landscape acquisition. Time to get to work!! 🌱🇺🇸
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The urge to browse bizbuysell and make up a way to roll up random businesses is my Sunday morning rabbit hole
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Best way to quickly de-escalate a situation in SMB:
*customer/employee explains problem*
Calmly respond(especially if the person is heated): “What do you think is fair?”
This has never failed me.
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You find out an employee stole $700 in gas over the last 3 weeks from you. Do you:
A) fire immediately
B) ask for explanation, listen to lie then fire
C) ask for your money back, watch the guy like a hawk going forward
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Interesting part of my roll up of small landscaping companies is that I usually buy at 2X and once that hits my books it’s worth 4X. The talk of “small companies are not a good idea” is true if you are not rolling up but if you have done a few of them and have a plan it’s not bad
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SMB deals are intimate. For a lot of sellers this is the first time letting a stranger look at his books and ask questions about the inter workings of a business they built for decades. Walk into those meetings with respect and you will be surprised how well the meeting goes.
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You can do due diligence & analysis til the end of time. At some point you have to just say f*** it, let’s go.
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Can someone please tell CPA’s to stop telling their clients what they think their business is worth?!
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Successfully having a SMB with a ton of employees is more about being a good human than being a cunning businessman.
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What debt service ratios for SBA loans do you guys think is reasonable? Also why am I thinking about debt service ratios when I wake up on Sunday?!
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Firing people makes me sick even when they deserve it. I’ve fired at least 15 people and it sucks every time. Anybody have a tactic they use for this?
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Hot take: take your time, buy 4 small same industry businesses at your pace, orient your business around your life not the other way around. Stay conscious of your time.
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The only residential landscape work we do are softscape renovations for $5-20k. We have seen a steep decline in leads and work awarded since July. time to pivot.
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Please do not DM me and ask: “Hey how do I buy a landscape company?” Do some research! listen to podcasts! read books!! then ask a specific well thought out question. Just don’t be lazy
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BREAKING NEWS: after 5 acquisitions I can can confirm that every single one is difficult for different reasons.
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What one liner lives rent free in your head? Mine is “hard choices-easy life; easy choices-hard life”
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Searchers: there is no perfect deal. If you think you found one I promise you you will find out after you buy it that isn’t perfect. Success in SMB is about grit, being a good human and most importantly never giving up.
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It takes a village to do even a small acquisition correctly. It’s taken me years to find the right attorney, CPA, bookkeeper, banker & office manager. This team is a huge part of taking the deal from signed APA to the finish line. Pay for professionals and don’t do it all.
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Selling your company and deciding to no longer have an email has to be one of the best things I’ve ever heard.
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@DumpsterDev
Easiest decision I’ve made in a long time. Also sends a strong message to my staff that I have their back
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Ever have a day you think about selling your company and becoming a nomad? Today is that day.
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Bonus: Your friends and family don’t want to hear about how well your company is doing. Best to stay vague.
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Constantly fighting the urge to raise money and buy two off market landscape companies I know about 👀
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Old growth model: hire sales guy, buy another truck, hire more crew. Repeat.
Current problems with it: good sales guys command 100k+. Truck prices are through the roof. Only 1/10 laborers are worth a damn.
Here’s my solution⤵️
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Been thinking about putting together a SoCal SMB weekend event in a few months. Putting some feelers out there to see if there would be any interest. DM’s open 💭
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Don’t bullshit around SMB sellers. They have spent a lifetime reading Their clients, their employees and everyone else they come across. They didn’t own a business for 30+ years on accident.
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Thinking about 8 years ago when I decided to go get my first set of landscaping equipment. Used my Amex(only company that would issue my new company a card) and held my breath that the $7k purchase would go through. Now we spend that every month for new equipment. Crazy feeling.
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The fact that another SMB guy in here DM’d me about selling a landscaping business in CA makes every second of this app worth it. (Thank you to
@SqueegeeGod
for making me get a Twitter)
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Daily reminder: Talk nice to yourself. This SMB shit is a journey and nobody is actually doing a “4 hour work week”
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Started this company with me and truck and close to zero landscape experience. Crazy what can happen in 9 years. Feliz Navidad! 🌲
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SMB owners do well only two ways: 1. shrewd, savage, frugal and ruthless. 2. Putting good people first and paying well
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PSA: Stop acting like Latino immigrants are invisible in daily interactions. Say “Como estamos?” And watch their whole face light up. I’m sick of seeing people walk right by people working like they don’t exist. I promise you they are some the best people you have never met.
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Best quality about my office manager: she has never given me an excuse in 3 years. She just gets shit done. Worth every cent “over paying”
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If you have a fleet of trucks or vans you can lease them through enterprise. I pay $1400 a month for a new F450 with a contractor bed($90k truck). Mileage isn’t added on and all maintenance on the vehicle is included. Yearly renewal increase restricted to 3%.
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Trying to explain inflation to 50 employees without more than a 7th grade education really makes you boil it down. “Shit is costing more, I’m going to start charging more so I can give you guys raises.”
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Went to a jiffy lube to get an oil change for my Tacoma and they didn’t have oil… if I owned this franchise I’d lose my mind
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Reminder to my SMB fam: don’t feel guilty for taking a day off for no reason at all. Your biz won’t burn down if you take the day off.
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Made an offer on a second business while under contract to buy the first. Why am I like this
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Happy Monday to everyone except the crackhead who took 4 catalytic converters out of my trucks over the weekend. 5th time I’ve been stolen from since January. Amazing how the crime increases when there is little to no punishment for being caught.
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Residential landscape irrigation in CA only accounts for 3% of the usage. The state wants you to focus on that as a big contributor in a drought. Interesting how Optics and narratives shape how a problem is presented to the public.
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Seeing a business get re-listed with a lower price, new broker & they are sponsoring the ad on bizbuysell? Smells like blood in the water…
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People getting a little too comfortable out here talking about “growth plans” & still don’t know how to fire someone without shitting a brick.
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Save the money you would have paid the sales guy, cost of new trucks, ads for new business/new employees and buy a 30 year old business with existing customers, tenured employees and solid trucks. What am I missing?
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Buying a business and pulling a PG for a few million in an industry you have zero experience in some real cowboy shit. I love it and think it’s absolutely insane at the same time.
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Brokers selling a $1M business who want to see proof of funds before you even see the CIM or any financials 🚩🙄🚩
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When you buy a company with 10 tenured employees you can expect that the seller went through 100 hires to get the right 10 people. Huge upside inherent in the purchase that the P&L can’t capture.
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Driving around SoCal I can’t help but wonder how many businesses would shutter if they had to pay market rent. Only thing saving them is owning their building.
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In the middle of a deal that will take my landscape SMB to 100 employees. Involves cash, claw backs(shout out to
@thegeneralmills
for giving me the idea), a seller trying to separate books of two businesses he ran as one…will share more later… 🌿👀🌿
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1. Owning/ operating small business is lonely. It will test you constantly. After the shine of buying the business goes away you will feel this.
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3 biggest lessons I’ve learned buying 3 landscaping companies ⬇️
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Watching men that work for you come back drenched in sweat from being outside busting their ass all day keeps your feet firmly in the ground. I’m very blessed to have the staff that I have and my SMB would really just be a bunch of trucks without their relentless daily efforts
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Alright guys: where did you all meet your wives? When did you know she was capable of dealing with this crazy SMB rollercoaster?
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Customer: “so how long has your dad owned this landscaping business?”
Still don’t know if I should take this as a compliment or not.
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@realest49919420
There’s pain in ass and then there are people that cross the line. Big difference
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Hot take: most successful people I know are hyper obsessed rather than “passionate”
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Employee(not supposed to be driving) backs up one of my box trucks into a basketball hoop at a commercial building we maintain. It cost $2,900 to replace. SMB = CHAOS
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Yesterdays price is not todays price. We had price, terms and seller note agreed on and seller decides to walk after 3 months of work. I even let him speak with the three previous sellers I bought out. 6 months later they call me. Offer is 100k less now👊🏻
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IRS is going to have a tough time getting 87,000 people with a pulse to fill out a an application let alone be qualified.
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3. Be careful about who you borrow money from. Don’t trade one master for another.
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The hardest part about growing a company from nothing is constantly having to reinvent yourself and your role in it. Learning how to delegate after pouring your soul into something for years sounds great in a book but is the single biggest reason why most companies stop growing.
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Buying multiple businesses and looking closely at tons more really is the best preparation to sell your own business eventually. I’ve learned invaluable lessons from one on ones with sellers. I’m also probably full of shit and won’t sell til I’m 92
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Sellers bragging about working 12 hours a day in the business they are selling 🚩🚩🚩🚩
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For as backwards as southern California is viewed across the country there is still unlimited opportunity here. Very few places in the country can say that to this degree especially in a recession.
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Update: all I needed was 20 min with seller to decide I won’t be putting an offer on it. Funny how much a seller will divulge in a short amount of time unwittingly.
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