750 - We Bought a “Boring” Business … Then Revenue Tanked

The Side Hustle Show is designed to help you make more money. But do you have a firm grasp on your overall financial picture? I was stuck in spreadsheets and logging into a dozen different accounts for far too long, which is why I'm excited to partner with Monarch for this episode. Monarch is the personal finance app that tracks everything, your accounts, your investments, your saving goals, and your spending, and does it all in one place. Plus, you can get your first year of Monarch Core for half off. That's just 50 bucks with promo code SideHustle. Now, I probably check the Monarch app more often than I should, but it's helped my wife and I celebrate certain net worth milestones. It's helped us visualize our spending and get honest about where it all goes. It's helped us reallocate funds in an intentional way and just be less stressed about little expenses when they pop up. Use promo code SideHustle at monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core for half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with code SideHustle. Buy a boring business, they said. It'll be easy, they said. It'll be fun. Well, it's time for a little bit of a reality check. Today's guest bought a South Florida landscaping business that checked all the boxes, but the road got pretty bumpy pretty fast. Stick around to learn what happened and how she and her husband ultimately added $300,000 in equity value to the business in just a couple years. From andreapalacio.ai, Andrea Palacio. Welcome to the Side Hustle Show.

Thank you, Nick. I'm so excited to be here.

Well, me as well. So we're gonna take a little bit, uh, of a trip back in the time machine. You're a month into owning this landscaping business, thinking it's gonna be relatively hands-off, because after all, it's got a good reputation, it's got, uh, a good track record. But then the manager leaves, and with him go, like, 80% of the employees, and now you're in a, in a tough spot. So what's going on then?

We had watched all the videos that you can think of on mergers and acquisitions. We had done the thing of learning everything there was on YouTube to try to get this right, and like you said, it checked all the boxes. The CPA said it was a good one. We thought it was a good one, and next thing we know, we are in a situation where the pressure ... I have a seven-month-old. I am pregnant with my second son. My husband is now doing the labor because we don't have any employees. The manager just leaves, and I am at home answering 50 calls a day, trying to do it all at once, the marketing, the admin work, the customer service. We have lost half of our revenue. We have gone from 12 employees down to maybe two employees. Our top clients have dropped. So we are in the most difficult situation that we've ever been, especially because we had purchased the business using an SBA loan. We put all of our personal assets as collateral, so quitting was never an option because we would lose our home. I can tell you that it was the hardest moment of our lives and that the pressure was ... I- it got a few tears, a lot of, a lot of tears out of us.

Yeah. This is not what you expected to happen. You put a down