From Mike Botkin after acquiring an SMB
Day 1 scaries.
When I bought our first landscaping business (45yr history), the seller seemed really involved. But, he assured me his "#2" was amazing, knew the business inside/out, ran the crews, knew all the customers, etc etc etc. "Biz is fine without me, biz can't run without him."
I show up day 1 at 5:30am.
Seller gathers the employees, gives them a 45 second speech. I get about halfway through my speech.... #2 walks up, in front of everyone, shakes my hand and says "I quit."
Speech halted. All jaws are on floor.
Uhhhh? 'looking scared/anger at seller.'..."wtf?"
Seller runs after #2, staff starts talking to themselves, etc. I let seller deal with #2. I finish speech. Place is in shambles / disrupted entire plan/flow of their day.
I finally catch seller/#2. Ask what happened. #2 says "Nothing against you, X told me I'd take over when he retired. I'm not working for anyone else. I'm outta here".
Seller "That's okay, he will come back around. Johnny can take over his crew. You'll be fine"
Suffice to say #2 never came back.
Week 1 was cool.
- All routes were wrong
- Employee info was wrong / missing
- Customer info was wrong / missing
- Seller repaired something and tried charging me for it. (lulz)
- Discovered seller was receiving cash payments (kinda cool surprise)
- 3 trucks broke down
- Best truck got side swiped on hwy (everyone okay)
- 3 employees were friends of owner son who were just 'helping out' and had no intention of staying longer than 30 days.
- I realized what NWC was
- I realized I was an idiot
- I almost jumped off a bridge about 10x
- My wife had a celebratory dinner planned that Friday and I felt like I made the biggest mistake of my life
Week 2
- Stop being scared. Time to get to work.
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From Nolan Gore, Marine Veteran turned SMB Operator
We bought a company on Monday and added them to our landscaping company.
Their team was completely surprised.
Let's just say - it got spicy.
The morning started by telling their office team. They were shocked and then very emotional. It was definitely not a rah-rah moment.
Then we went to tell the crew...
This is where it got spicy.
One of the guys cut me off in my first minute of talking to them...
"I don't like this. I quit." Then he stood up and left.
By the end of the day, 3 guys quit and I fired 1.
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SARAH - Shock. Anger. Resentment. Acceptance. Hope.
We are going through the cycle of emotions.
A lot of folks are already at hope. Several are still cycling back to anger or resentment.
We are now on day 4. Things are stabilizing. We are feeling good.
Every day there is a new surprise. Every day I am excited and anxious.
I have been told by @MikeBotkin_ to use 2 paychecks as the benchmark. 2 paychecks and the team will feel mostly settled.
We are focused on little wins. New sweatshirts. New rakes. Tacos...
I will keep you posted.
Cheers.
