From $0 to $16M: Nathan Helder on Scaling Without Losing Your Life

00:00
Robert
Hi everyone and welcome to the I Am Landscape Growth podcast where entrepreneurs help entrepreneurs grow faster, better and stronger in the green industry. From leadership to sales to recruiting and operational excellence, we cover the topics holding entrepreneurs back and share how to get past those bottlenecks with the best in the industry. I’m your host, Rob Murray, co founder and CEO of Intrigue, a digital marketing company focused on helping landscape companies grow. So sit back and enjoy the show. All right, welcome back to another episod of the I Am Landscape Growth podcast. One could say I have a prestigious guest on today. A lot of experience, really cool perspective of the industry.

00:41
Robert
Not only from scaling legitimately, not talking hundreds of thousands, talking millions and millions of dollars of landscape business, but also a coach to many entrepreneurs and has started other businesses and is an owner of several businesses in the green industry. So I, I’m just pumped to have you on. Nathan Helder, thank you so much for doing the show.

01:00
Nathan
Yeah, thanks Ro. It’s been a pleasure.

01:02
Robert
I look forward to this Go man. I bet you most of the people listening to this have probably heard you once or twice but for the ones that haven’t, would you be so kind to provide a little bit of context in terms of like the not everything that you’ve done over the last 25 years when it comes to the green industry, but just kind of give us a Cole’s notes of like what you’ve been up to and what you’re up today.

01:20
Nathan
Yeah, so my story is a little bit different. I did not grow up in the green industry. I joined the green industry about 20 years ago, bought a landscape business that was about 50 years old with no money down. So the whole vendor 100 vendor take back.

01:36
Robert
Nice person to do that.

01:38
Nathan
Yeah, it was my father in law who didn’t. Yeah, this all worked out very well. But no, because I did not have a landscape background. I’ve always approached business very differently. And so that was the Galderman landscape services business in 2006. Over the years I’ve started a consulting business. I have an irrigation business with a partner and then most recently started an accounting firm that we do bookkeeping, accounting and tax for landscape contractors. And then in 2024 I exited out of the landscape business. I realized I was not the right person to take the business to the next level. We had reached about 120 staff, about 16 million in sales and to get to 20 or 30 million would need me to recommit 15 more years of my life all in.

02:31
Nathan
But by that time I had started all these side hustles and I love entrepreneurship, I like startups and like to develop teams and stuff and it’s like I don’t think I’m the right guy. And there was a strategic buyer that was interested for the last few years and so we entered a conversation about a year ago.

02:48
Robert
Amazing. Well, congratulations.

02:50
Nathan
So yeah, it’s been fun, it’s been good.

02:54
Robert
Cool. And so main focus of your time these days.

03:00
Nathan
Right now we’re in a little bit transitional period. So I, I have an earn out, I have a responsibility, as I say with Gelderman to the end of 2025 and so I can’t take my eye off the ball completely. There’s a great team in place and. But yeah, between Galderman, my coaching business, the accounting firm, the irrigation business and I’m still looking for other opportunities. I lost my mojo for about six months. I got right back now. And yeah, I love business, I love helping people out and I don’t need to be the guy running the business. I’m more of an investor mindset strategist. I’m not the specialist at any business.

03:39
Nathan
But my experiences from dairy farming, from the way back to running landscape business to the accounting side of things has given me a full spectrum on how to scale business, how to grow teams, how to put process in place.

03:53
Robert
Before I ask the question, you mentioned something there just kind of the idea that you lost your mojo for six months and found it. This is not uncommon. Like we hear it with our clients and entrepreneurs all across the board about they hit like, I don’t know what it’s called but it’s. This mojo is gone. So like the drive isn’t quite what it used to be and there’s like an energy dip and it’s like, I don’t know if I really want to do this. I’m not sure if that’s exactly describing what you went through, but can you just shake like break that down a little bit and then what made it kick back?

04:25
Nathan
Yeah, good question. So you know, after I signed the loi and between the loi and closing was actually 60 days and I was a quarterback behind her. So I worked probably 20 hours a day for 60 days to make the deal happen. Right. So then afterwards it was just like a, like, you know, I was like, I was tired. I took a five week holiday which was fantastic. But I got back and the landscape business had sort of carried on without me and yet I was in this awkward transitional period. Right. So I, you know, first I thought I’d probably go buy another business. I was really excited about that. But then it’s like, no, I don’t feel like it. And it’s like, nope, I. I rather simplify my life. And so I did that over the fall into the winter.

05:08
Nathan
I also took my wife and I signed up for a course put on by our church and it was a, was called life renewal. And it was a 28 week course every Monday night for 28 weeks. And it was a awesome, A self discovery, faith based thing that really unpacked what was my motivator behind everything? You know what’s driven me to be just go, go all the time. And it’s really showed me. It’s like, okay, my motivations always hasn’t been the best, not the greatest source, but been blessed by God tremendously in the last 25 years of my career. But it also made me really look at my life. And yeah, I was before I was just go, go, Nathan. Just do anything, just put my mind to it and go. And I was like faced off for a second. I can’t do everything.

05:56
Nathan
I need to respect that, understand myself. But in going through that process now, it’s like, okay, I’m focused. I got a great balance in life right now. I’m still busy, but I’m not. Like I can still visit my parents who are aging. I can still take my son out in the middle of the day because we homeschool. I can book all that. So I booked more personal time in my life which allowed me now to see opportunities again. It’s just awesome. Awakened almost a little bit. So it’s been a tough course to take, but it’s been a good thing for my relationship with my spouse and relationship with my faith and it’s been, I’ve been blessed tremendously from it.

06:35
Robert
So that’s cool, man. Well, 28 weeks working, you know, once a week on you.

06:39
Nathan
But I’ve never committed before. Like commitment’s a hard thing for me just to stay the stick to itness of something. This is 28. Every single Monday night. I missed one week of the 28. So I was like, oh wow, I can do this. So. But it was just a self discovery and really helped me understand who I am.

06:57
Robert
Beautiful man. That’s awesome. Well, thanks for sharing. So then to the question of the show. What is the primary growth constraint holding entrepreneurs back in the green industry as of today? Because I know that different times, there’s different constraints and maybe there’s always the same constraint, but you’ve got a really cool, you’ve got a cool perspective. So what do you see as the primary thing holding people back?

07:20
Nathan
Great question. And, you know, I worked on it for a little while and I tried to case it one thing or is it five things? It’s never one thing of anything. Right. So I would say the probably number one is the owner themselves. And when I think of, you know, John C. Maxwell’s a business guy at Reed, and one of his irrefutable laws is the law of the lid. The law of the lid is all about, you know, who’s the person owning the business and what’s the capacity of the owner. And when I look at, in my own, you know, the business I bought in 2006 and I know my own journey, I knew my lid was a certain level and I had to get out of the way so the business would carry on. That’s why I sold it.

08:02
Nathan
But when I look across the industry, the green industry, I think what’s holding most companies back is just the owner themselves, whether it’s a mindset thing, just they don’t see themselves as a little bit of imposter syndrome. They think, I can’t do this. Like, what am I doing? I never went to school for this. I’m not a business guy. I know how to build landscapes, so I always hear that. But if the owner doesn’t grow and doesn’t have a plan, you know, then that’s some of the other reasons why I think businesses struggle to scale up. But it comes back to the leadership skill of the owner.

08:35
Nathan
And how do owners, you know, when they’re the hub of everything, right when they’re starting your business, you’re doing sales, you’re doing the coding, you’re doing the field, you’re in the field and you’re trying to collect, you know, bad debt and then you’re trying to do this and you’re just going crazy in that rat race for the first, you know, until you have three crews or four crews and he’s okay. Now I can hire for, to hire somebody, but most people, most owners have a hard time getting off the tools, never mind, you know, become a manager and become a leader. Right?

09:04
Nathan
So when I look at my own story at GMAN and within some staff at Geldman and how they’ve grown, but also in the coaching side of things, like I really see, you know, if an owner has a desire to grow beyond, then they usually hire a coach. I’ve Had a coach for the last 10 years. I’ve been a tech member for 10 years because I know my, I have limiting beliefs as well, and I need to be pushed outside that comfort zone or challenge my assumptions. Right. So when, you know, when you think of the question that’s holding back the green industry, I don’t think it’s. I know it’s not slack of sales, not lack of opportunity. It’s not the competition, it’s the owner themselves.

09:44
Robert
Yeah, it’s all. It’s awesome. You say it though, because, like, and I’ve said that. I mean, this is whatever episode a lot. And that’s why I said it’s long time coming. You should have had John way sooner. But after doing so many, there’s really only three or four answers that really pop up. But the most successful people always say it’s the. It’s the leader or themselves, and then they’re working on it. So I wanted to just touch on that for a quick second. Hey, everybody, thanks for listening to the I Am Landscape Growth podcast. If you’re listening to this and you’re under a million dollars in revenue, we have a roadmap just for you. It’s all about going from zero to a million as a landscape business. It’s called the One Million Dollar Landscape Growth Strategy Roadmap.

10:26
Robert
You can get it for free, absolutely no strings attached. At intriguemedia.com roadmap, we work with hundreds of landscapers. We’ve interviewed thousands, and we’ve compiled all the foundational skills, required, tactics and strategies to go from zero to a million. It’s broken down into five simple principles that we’ve compiled from all the people that are the best in the industry, as well as sharing, you know, stories from our own journey. Getting to a million dollars at Intrigue. And so if you’re interested, you want to check it out. Intriguemedia.com roadmap and then you’ll get the zero to a million landscape growth strategy that will help get you over a million. At the end of the day, getting to a million is kind of on your shoulders.

11:04
Robert
As an entrepreneur, we work with some people under a million, but for the most part, our clients are over a million dollars in revenue. So we’re trying to do whatever we can to help people get there. And then once you get there, if you’re looking for some more help, we want to get to five or 10, then that’s kind of where we come in. We can generate you a bunch of awesome leads. But until then, if you’re trying to get over that million dollar hump, check out int.com roadmap. You can grab it, download it right now. It’s completely free. Hope it helps. You skipped over the idea of tech that you’ve had a coach for 10 years. Can you just break down what that is so people understand it?

11:35
Nathan
Yeah. So tech is the executive. It’s an organization that, it’s called Vistage in the States, tech in Canada. I sit around the table with 16 or 17 peers, all business leaders, CEOs of presidents of companies. And it’s. Yeah, it’s a group together. But we as a group where we meet once a month, we have a session speaker, I have a coach that comes with the package as far as my membership in it. But it’s. You sit around the room with companies that are other industries that are running a, you know, 50 to 100 to $200 million companies and you actually break it right down. These are normal people and they have all the same problems that I have in my landscape business. And I’m like small little landscape company amongst everybody else, right.

12:19
Nathan
So even though I’ve sold, I’ve decided to stay on tech because I have an accounting firm now. I’m trying to grow and I can learn from them as well. Right. So yeah, it’s a. But with my coach inside of it, you know, he’s taught me, you know, he tests my assumptions, right. So I might come forward with a. Have idea. Rob, his name is Rob. This and that. He goes, tell me more about that. And I have to try explaining to him, right? So this is usually an idea that I’ve been thinking about for weeks or months. It’s like grandiose. I have it all figured out. And then he asked me these hard questions, like three questions. I was like, oh boy, maybe that idea is not so good after all. Or I think I need to change the.

12:57
Nathan
Like, how do I know there’s a market for this? Or how do you know the pricing is right? Or how do I know? Like you can scale that into real business. And so it’s been really great to have somebody who’s been in business a long time. He was a CFO of a business for a lot of years and since he retired out of that business, he runs the tech group. But it’s also the tech members, you know, they’re from, you know, raw dog food to used books to a winery to, you know, steel company, you name it, right? And it’s and we’re all, we all have the same issues. We all have customers, we all have financial constraints and we all have staff. And at the end of the day you just. What? You know, it’s how you do it.

13:36
Nathan
You can really share that. But what you do is specific, but it’s still common. Right.

13:40
Robert
So yeah, that’s really good. And they, and they call you out on your, and they shoot you straight. Right. Like that’s one of the things I found with tech was people don’t mess around and try to like make you feel better if you need.

13:50
Nathan
Oh no.

13:50
Robert
The honesty.

13:51
Nathan
If you’re, you have to be uncomfortable and uncomfortable or comfortable and you’re uncomfortable. Right. You have to be okay to be calling out, be called out because you can’t complain about something and do nothing about it.

14:02
Robert
Yeah.

14:03
Nathan
You’ll quit tech then.

14:04
Robert
Right. Especially if you come back month after month, complain about the same thing. Well, so that’s something that you just said there. That again goes back to this idea of, you know, if the owner themselves is the constraint based on the law of the lid. And the idea that my capacity as a leader is the ceiling of the organization and at some point I can move out of the way to let the organization keep growing, which is also a self aware leader. But if I’m listening to this and I’m thinking maybe I am, maybe it is me, what are some of the things that I can do? And the reason I asked that question is because you said you got to get comfortable in the uncomfortable and typically growth hurts a little.

14:44
Robert
So what does somebody do to start going down the path of growing their lid, as it were said yeah.

14:49
Nathan
So that, you know, one of the other constraints that I, you know, thought about too is, and I think it’s not one like stronger and higher than the other. It’s all multifaceted all at the same time. It’s also the strategic planning side, like why did you start the business? And most owners do not think about the exit. They think they’ll just do this until they’re whatever age and then they’re gonna sell everything and right off to the sunset with no plan in place. They just think that’s going to happen. And we all know that reality, that’s not what’s going to happen at all. Right. So as far as again your owner, it’s okay. Are you, have you desired to have your business and you’re going to stay in the business and be the. You Know the person doing the work.

15:31
Nathan
And if your capacity, if God’s gifted you with a capacity to have, be very creative and build stuff and love it and you don’t. You think more people have headaches, then stick to that, right? That’s your, that’s your lid. You stay to that. But that’s going to be a growth constraint because people are going to come and people are going to leave because there’s no opportunity to grow. But if that’s what you see yourself being, you’re not, you know, an entrepreneur, but you’d like to do the work, you’re a technician, then, you know, embrace it and that’s okay. On the other flip side, if you’re an entrepreneur, say, hey, I love business. I love to grow this business. I was to build a team. I just see other people do well. I like to, you know, get myself off the tools and grow something.

16:09
Nathan
But then you have it, then you have to have a plan. It doesn’t just happen, right? Especially if there’s a black swan event.

16:15
Robert
I’ve met some people, I’ve met some people where it just happened. I’m like, how did this happen? But it’s rare.

16:20
Nathan
It can happen. But they’re actually, they’re doing a lot of things naturally that, you know, other people might need a coach for sure. There’s some people that are very smart and brilliant out there, right? So again, if you realize that you are the lid, you have a lot of self awareness, which is not very common, most people. And then it’s like, okay, if I don’t have a, if I can’t take the next level yet, I don’t want to sell, then. Then you have a people strategy. It’s okay. How do you then you realize that, hey, I have some limitations. I’m a good strategist, I’m not a good executor. I can’t implement anything. I need to hire somebody, right? So that’s where one of the constraints, it’s the owner person. But then there’s also.

16:59
Nathan
Is there a plan to just keep doing for nothing forever and not change? Or the plan is to grow something. So there’s that. As soon as it’s to grow, then you need people.

17:07
Robert
Yeah. Well, it’s interesting because whether you decide to be on the tools and you know, as a craftsperson, you know, for lack of a better term, or to try to scale something to a larger organizational size, it does seem like self awareness is like a first step here to figure out what you want and then you kind of Allude to the idea of like identify what you like, not only what you want, but what you’re good at and then start to figure out how you can fit pieces around that. So strategic planning is one thing which I’ll come back to in a minute because I know you’ve got some, a little bit of experience in this line of thinking and then.

17:47
Robert
But this idea of self awareness, like I’m trying to figure out how do we give people listening to this some tools and tips on like what to go do to start the journey to figure out what you want and what you’re good at and become a better leader.

18:03
Nathan
Yeah. So I, I recently had developed some questions and two main questions can start this conversation is what gives you energy? What takes away energy? It’s simple as that. So you think about your business. What, what gets you excited and gives you energy. Rah, rah. Just go forever. Write those things down. Flip side, what takes away energy? And you. It comes very quickly is. And, and some people are scared to do that because they’re like, well, I’m expected to be something like there’s this idea that is nor you need to be X. Like no, like that’s a, that’s a, it’s a head trash. It’s a mindset you have. Right. So for me in the operational logistics takes all the energy out of me. I can’t, I, I get so stressed out about that.

18:49
Nathan
But dealing with financials and HR and all the other stuff that gives me all kinds of energy. Right.

18:55
Robert
But the next other owners are listening to us being like, you’re crazy. I would never want to do any of that. Yeah, exactly.

19:00
Nathan
That’s. But that’s me, right? So when I do that then I knew no, I need to build a team that loves to do operations because I can’t handle it. And I can’t. I don’t even like sales. I don’t mind sales, but technical sales, I don’t know it because I’m not a landscape guy. I have to hire somebody for that. But deal with the bank and insurance all day long. Love dealing with the bank, no problem.

19:21
Robert
And people are just like claws on a chalkboard. They’re like, I don’t want to talk to a bank in my life. I think that’s really cool though the way you position that though.

19:29
Nathan
So it’s just a simple question. What gives you energy? Right. And then when you get your staff, like I had another question I had as well. It’s like when you give up control, what do you fear? Or. And when you delegate something to people, like, why do you not let go? A lot of times it’s fear of control, where there’s. It’s a control issue. Right. And there’s why there’s fair whether they’re afraid of and it’s used. It’s their fear, the fear of losing control. Right. Because they’re like, well, I gotta trust somebody. Right. And that’s also with the ownership part, is that when you start business, you’re doing it all and over time you gotta trust. Well, my real trust is earned. I don’t just give it. It’s hard for me to trust something. Right.

20:08
Nathan
But you have to be able to trust, put some parameters in place where you can give some delegate and power. Let it go. Right. But that’s also an awareness thing because if you give away things in your mind that you actually really enjoy, it’s hard to let go of that. Right. So that’s why the.

20:25
Robert
Especially. Especially if you’re really good at it. Like, I find people trying to delegate stuff that they’re really good at is really difficult because their standards are so high. So their expectations on the next person are almost unrealistic sometimes. But you did say something about delegate and empower. So when it comes to. Because like, we’ve seen this a lot and I know you’ve run through this or ran through this and seen others do this, they say, oh, I gave it away. You know, I delegated that. But really they just like, were like, okay, go do this. Yeah, exactly. So when you say delegated empower, what’s the kind of recipe to set somebody up for success when you give them something to take over?

21:04
Nathan
Yeah. I think the first thing that I learned this way later on in my career, it was something called success profiles or success outcomes with Jeff Smart, the book who really encapsulated, say if you’re going to hire somebody to do the job, we come up with a job description. These are all the things the person’s going to do. But it does not state in that job description what does success look like? What is actually like, have they been successful Role. Well, they did the role. Like, I know that’s not success. Not the same thing. So when people have a hard time articulating what they actually want as the outcome of the role, like in sales. Yeah. Make cold calls. Okay. He’s making cold calls. 50 a day. Okay. But what the success looks like, well, signed business at the right margin.

21:45
Nathan
How much business Be very. And so people are usually not giving enough clarity to when they delegate they say do this when they just intuitively just do it because they’ve always done it but they have not written down exactly in five points what does success look like. And then because then you then the person knows, you know and that’s where you can empower say hey, I don’t care how you get to the end of the game, this is what success looks like. Get, do it your way and do it and make it your own. But this at the end of the day, you know, like I think in bookkeeping, right A month end. At the end of the month we have to make sure it’s accurate and it’s done by a certain date or payroll. Who’s doing payroll? It can’t be late.

22:24
Nathan
It has to be on time. What’s on time? Well, enough time so that the bank can pay people. Friday is not on time. That’s too late. Right. So, so when it comes to you know, task related things like when you say well it has to be, you know from a field operations we tend to say yeah, it has to be at the right quality but we don’t tell what quality level we’re looking for.

22:45
Robert
Well, it’s so clear. Quality is quality. Come on.

22:47
Nathan
Right. Everybody says that. So I don’t know what that means anymore.

22:50
Robert
Yeah, right.

22:51
Nathan
Or I can do it the right quality but it’s going to take me two more weeks extra. It’s like what is a skill set problem or is it just a directional problem? They didn’t show them what level actually means level. So it’s just again it goes back to owners intuitively know exactly what to do. They have a very hard time putting on paper creating a system not too complicated at one pager because if you think well if my staff are smart enough they understand but they work for you. They have chosen not to start their own business. They want to do and they want to be successful. So help them be successful.

23:30
Robert
Well and it seems like the common that the clarity. That’s exactly the clarity is the so important and it’s interesting too because like in you know, my journey to date Andy Stanley, you’ve probably seen him speak or heard of him a couple of times. I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to see him but. Oh but definitely worthwhile. Check out. He used to be like one of the keynotes at leadercast which was put on by John C. Maxwell back in the day and I think it’s been taken over now, but doesn’t matter anyway. He talks about high level clarity, so vision. So, like, one of the biggest tasks of a leader is to create the vision, the direction of the company. But then clarity throughout the entire organization was like the. So, so important.

24:07
Robert
He gives all these examples, but I never really understood what it meant in its entirety until I was getting upset with people for doing things that I thought was like, against the whole point of what we’re doing as an organization. And then finally I sat down with this one person and I said, what do you think winning looks like here in your role? And I took over this person and was now coaching them. And they answered with a bit of question marks and a bunch of wrong stuff. And I was like, oh, you don’t know. And that’s not your fault. That’s my fault.

24:42
Nathan
So every time I have a new coaching client, I, I typically try to meet with their staff. And my last question is, what does a win look like? And almost 100% just happy clients. It’s a happy client. No margin. No, no, like, just happy clients because they haven’t been told anything else. And then I’ll ask them, how do you know if you’re successful? Oh, I still have a job, so.

25:07
Robert
I haven’t been fired. The clients are filing, we’re winning.

25:10
Nathan
So baseline is very low here. Right. And then the owner is saying, I can’t make money. I’m struggling with my team. I’m doing this. It’s like, maybe you’re the problem. And I’m glad that you’ve called me in. And some, A lot of times people say, oh, I should have called you two, three years ago. Yeah. Now it’s. We’re that far down the road, you guys revert backwards. It’s going to be hard work. Right.

25:32
Robert
So if somebody did want to coach with you, like, are you open right now or are you full?

25:36
Nathan
I, I do take on some clients. It’s. They have to be willing and ready to go down a hard game, hard path.

25:45
Robert
Yeah. Okay. And then if someone wanted to reach out to you, how would they do that?

25:48
Nathan
LinkedIn’s probably the best. Or.

25:50
Robert
Yeah, okay, we’ll make sure. We’ll put it, we’ll put it in the podcast summary.

25:56
Nathan
Yeah, okay. Just DM me. It’d be the best on LinkedIn.

26:01
Robert
Yeah, that’s cool. And if you don’t have sponsored InMail, you can just request to connect with Nathan and then he’ll accept it and then you can DM him After that.

26:08
Nathan
That’s right. Yeah. Or they can just call you perfect.

26:13
Robert
Yeah, that’s. That’s it. I’ll qualify them for you.

26:16
Nathan
It’s just that, you know, I’m not a. A life coach. I am not a motivator. If you’re not motivated to make things better, then I can’t really help that. Right. So I’m not, you know, there’s people for that. That’s not me. If you want to make change, you want to build a team, you want to help delegate yourself out of a job, not in a bad way, but to.

26:37
Robert
No, that’s the best. Yeah. And build more systems so that things are autonomous without you. Like with a.

26:41
Nathan
You want to get that financial clarity. So that’s the other thing. Hold people back, companies back. Rob. It’s, It’s. That’s why I started South Brook Accounting Services, because financial literacy is just still in this toilet. It’s just. It’s unfortunate, but, you know, the visibility of their business and the literacy, understanding what the numbers actually mean.

27:02
Robert
Yeah. What story is it telling? Right.

27:04
Nathan
Oh, it says. It’s. It hurts. It hurts me. That’s why I get so passionate about things, because they do such great work. They’re building great brands, but they never are able to donate money from the business because there’s no money to give. And they’re. Yeah.

27:17
Robert
So then when you take somebody on South Brick or coaching, regardless, what do you see as, like, the common major financial gap that needs to be addressed? That’s like a pattern among a lot of people.

27:31
Nathan
Yeah. So I would say that two. Two things come to mind. The first thing is that the structure of how their QuickBooks file is set up doesn’t lend it to a landscape or a contracting type business.

27:43
Robert
It’s like, so just the charter of accounts legitimate.

27:46
Nathan
It could be that simple. Yeah.

27:48
Robert
Yeah.

27:48
Nathan
But so they don’t have the proper cost goods sold, even though they’re using LMN or something else that has a proper setup, but it doesn’t match a QuickBooks file. And then the other big thing is that the person directing their bookkeeper is not the accountant or technician. So they don’t know, you know, how to address their bookkeeper, accountant. And so everybody’s doing the best they can. Everybody. Nobody’s trying to be mean and dispirited and do the wrong thing, but there’s nobody to look at and say, you know, how often are you actually looking at this? And they say, never, because I can’t trust the numbers. It’s like, no, I See that it’s not set up right. It’s not accurate. They’re not measuring, you know, they’re not expensing depreciation, amortization till the end of the year.

28:30
Nathan
Their accountant talks accounting lingo that they have no clue what they’re actually saying. And they’re just. I just keep going padme down, my head down, keep going until CRA steps in. And that’s a lot of times when we get called is that they ohst. They incorporated their business but didn’t transfer the assets properly. Now they got a problem on the older, you know, sole prop to you were growing our business. Every time I hire more people, I lose more money because they don’t have visibility and they’re not priced right because they don’t know that their price is too low. So it’s just multifaceted. But we do assessments where we can go into the general ledger, take a look at everything and say, okay, here’s. Here’s where we’re doing very well, and here’s where you need some help.

29:13
Nathan
But it’s getting everything cleaned up from invisibility. But then it’s like, okay, now what do the numbers tell? What story do you tell? Right.

29:19
Robert
I think it’s a big deal, though, for the people listening to this. Like, you know, for the most part, probably 99 times out of 100, these folks are building businesses for the first time. It’s the only business they have. And they’re trying to figure out best practices when it comes to finance, accounting and bookkeeping. Whereas you’ve got how many customers in Southbrook? Yeah. Landscape.

29:40
Nathan
Yeah.

29:41
Robert
For the vast majority.

29:42
Nathan
Oh, yeah.

29:43
Robert
And so being able to see the common issues and then build out common solutions is a big advantage. Like, we just took on a guy to help us with our, I guess a fractional cfo, and he specializes in helping marketing agencies and software. And we’re kind of a hybrid of both. And within a session we’re just like. He’s like, you guys are doing a great job. It’s just all wrong. He’s like, your numbers are tight. You just got everything in a weird spot. It makes it difficult to tell a good story, like, properly.

30:14
Nathan
And that’s exactly because I bought a landscape company with no money down.

30:20
Robert
That’s the best way to buy a company.

30:21
Nathan
Yeah. And the business had to pay for all the debt, and it did. Right. So I, I know there’s. I know what they’re going through. Right. Because I’ve been through it myself. So you Know, I have an accounting partner who’s a ca, and together we. We bring a whole nother level to the table. Because I know the industry, I know how to, you know, whether the issues are holding them back. We’re putting, you know, great work out as far as compliance and everything else. Right. But we add that extra strategy. We’re a strategic department to them.

30:53
Robert
Yeah.

30:53
Nathan
So we do offer CFO advisory, fractional services. We, you know, everything from. And then tax. We do all. All that all encompassed together. Right. So.

31:02
Robert
Yeah. Okay. Keep going. Finish up. Sorry.

31:05
Nathan
Well, I just said it’s just, It’s. It hurts me to see people struggle, so I want to help and because I see too many people’s grow revenue but not grow profit. Right. Covid was those years where everybody was going nuts. They. We didn’t even need marketing anymore. Right. Like, we didn’t need you. Intrigue just carried on those same. Most of those same companies saw a huge growth rate in revenue, but profitability did not grow because they were just going faster. They weren’t. Had no visibility, so they didn’t realize they’re giving stuff away. Their cost overruns were huge. Yeah. Right. Supply chain was broken. Well, when the supply chain is broken, doesn’t mean we’re making money. That’s hard to make money. Then you gotta be very efficient. We gotta know it.

31:46
Robert
Yeah. You get a quote from November, and then you have to buy everything in May and everything’s gone up double.

31:51
Nathan
Right. And people are just throwing money at you to do the work, but yet you’re not making money. Money on the work. Right. So people would overspend to support, you know, bring in extra people, and then that sales drop down. Can they cut that back down? They don’t. Right. So, yeah, I. It hurts me. It pains me when I see people struggling, and so I want to help.

32:11
Robert
So that’s cool, man. So tell me a little bit about. Because this is something. Whether you’re deciding to stay on the tools and you’re going to keep your growth quote, unquote, moderate, or if you want to really go for it and scale a company to 20, 30, $50 million, whatever it might be in terms of generating cash as an entrepreneur. You shared a story with me a while ago around de risking your investment portfolio, thinking that. Okay, well, my main investment’s my company, which is true for most entrepreneurs. But what. What do you think about the idea of, you know, getting cash out of the business and putting into other investments and assets?

32:55
Nathan
Yeah. So a big believer of that is de risking from A cash standpoint. But the business has to make profit first before you can do that. Right. So this has.

33:03
Robert
Sure, but that’s my point though. It’s like it is the idea of like you have to get this thing profitable to enough to be able to skim cash out of it without hurting the operations. Right. I think a lot of people don’t think about the idea that there needs to be excess cash and then the idea of what owners pay was the next thing I wanted to get to. I just wanted you to share the idea of this so people can start to think about it maybe a little differently.

33:26
Nathan
So I, I learned from my father in law, that’s who I took the business over in 2006, back in those early days that at some point you want to be able to not have to rely on your business for your day to day sustenance or you know, you want to be able to have something outside the business, another nest egg in case that your main nest egg ever went through, something happened, you lost it, whatever for you so that your family is taken care of. Right. So it’s again a mindset. So when you’re just starting off, you’re just trying to make ends meet. You, you buy every job, you do every working and Right. But at the end of the days, and that’s where the strategy comes into is what’s your plan to get out of all this? Did you buy yourself a job?

34:05
Nathan
Maybe for the first couple years but after that you could just go over somebody else. Right. So I learned quite quickly that I’m gonna, the bank is my friend and I’m gonna have a large operating line because I’m going to try to take out 50 at that time. It’s $50,000 every year out of the business. Invest in real estate or somewhere else. And if I met that Galman, used the line of credit and paid interest like on the line of credit so I could pull money out, invest it. I still did that because my baby wasn’t my business. And some people say well I don’t want to use line of credit. It’s like why not? If I’m using a line of credit for 5%, I’m making a return of 10, I’m ahead 5%. That’s an investment that I’m going to do every day. Right.

34:49
Nathan
So I’m not, I was never scared of the operating company to go into debt because what the debt does it actually keeps everybody sharper you invoice faster, you collect your AR faster. You don’t give things away when you don’t have the money. But if you allow cash to grow in your business, you get locks, you get relaxed, and you start being less efficient and the money’s just sitting there. Getting how much interest in the bank account? Like zero. So I’m always about taking money out and invest in other things just because that’s just a good business thing. Now, at the same token, if you are reinvesting in your business, you’re not growing and your growth is good and you’re still making profit, then you return on your equity, it will be high, Right. So there’s a calculation.

35:37
Nathan
Take your net income for the year divided by equity in the business. And, you know, if that’s sitting at 25%, then you would say to me, nathan, I’m getting a 25% return on the income by growing my business. I’m thinking that’s good investment. 25% is pretty good, right?

35:52
Robert
Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard of, I’ve heard a couple opportunities that are close to that.

35:56
Nathan
Yeah. Not, not often. And so at the same token, if you do that calculation and you’re making 2%, then like, because you’ve left all this cash in the business, you’re not really doing anything with it, you’re not growing your business, then you’re at a risk standpoint. If you ever got sued, they take all that cash, right? That, that’s free to take, but it’s also not good stewardly because you can invest that money somewhere else or donate it, give it away, you know, and help somebody else, but don’t let it stay in your business. Yeah, that’s great. So when it comes to investing, I, you know, I, I enjoy making numbers work for themselves. You know, one becomes two. It’s a great return. So I’m always about investing in lots of different things and.

36:39
Nathan
Because who knows, one thing one investment does well, the next one is not well. That’s how life goes, right?

36:44
Robert
Yeah, exactly.

36:46
Nathan
But, yeah, always, I always kept my bank balance very low, but I always had a line of credit, right? Always. I would always get a bigger line of credit every year.

36:55
Robert
Yeah, I had access to working capital if it was required. Yeah.

36:59
Nathan
I remember the best would say to me, nathan, why are you asking for more line of credit? We didn’t even use last year’s. I said, because I don’t know what’s going to happen next year.

37:05
Robert
Yeah, this is risk, mitigation.

37:07
Nathan
Now my numbers look good, so you’re going to give it to me because when I, I said my numbers don’t.

37:11
Robert
Look good, you’re not giving me shit.

37:13
Nathan
You won’t giving me anything. So I needed it in advance.

37:16
Robert
Now that’s a really important piece, though, to anybody listening. Like, getting a line of credit when things are going well is the best time to do it. Anytime. Anytime you want to increase your credit, you’re doing it. When everything, when you don’t need it is the best time. Okay, so before we let you go, a resource that you want to share with the audience that they should check out, author, speaker, whatever it might be.

37:36
Nathan
Yeah, so I’m a big podcast kind of guy, and one of the podcasts I’ve started listening to probably. Oh, during COVID was ITR Economics.

37:46
Robert
Oh, yeah.

37:47
Nathan
So they’re, they are us bound. You know, they have, you know.

37:51
Robert
Have you read their. Have you read the 2030 stuff yet?

37:55
Nathan
Did you not watch the 2030 webinar? They did back last winter?

37:58
Robert
Oh, I read the whole thing and I didn’t watch the webinar.

38:02
Nathan
Yeah, so I did a webinar on that, on the 2000 and 30s and how to prepare for that. So, yeah, no, I’ve been following them since COVID a friend of mine, probably in 2019, 2020 suggested to me, and I’ve been watching it ever since. So, you know, I, I would say from a resource standpoint, right. Is sometimes you can listen too many things and get confused because there’s all these different points of thoughts. It’s like, oh, how do I, I can’t keep up with all this. So, you know, find something that you resonate with, whether it’s a. Based on your morals, your values or your faith or, you know, whatever. But we, if you listen too much, you can get pretty confused because there’s so many different ways of doing things. Right.

38:41
Robert
Yeah. It’s not the truth. ITR Economics podcast, though. That’s cool. Itr. I mean, they’re awesome. As much as economics can be anyway, you know.

38:51
Nathan
Yeah, I like numbers. I like. You know.

38:53
Robert
No, it’s good. And they’re. And they’re amazing, like, legitimately. I gotta talk. I gotta, I gotta. Got introduced to seeing them present at a conference. They did a great job that I subscribed to them. Yeah, they’re wicked, man. And no one ever says that. So I appreciate you sharing. Thank you for doing this, man. I really appreciate it. If they Want to get a hold of you, Nathan Helter on LinkedIn. Request to connect and then send a DM.

39:12
Nathan
Yeah. Or you can email me at Nathan.

39:15
Robert
Southbrook mc.com Southbrook mc.com okay, we’ll put the email in the podcast summary too. So if anybody’s looking for it.

39:22
Nathan
But yeah, at the end of the day, right, when you ask the question, what’s holding companies back? It’s not the economy or competition. I, I don’t really think. I think it’s leadership maturity. As, as your business changes, you have to change as the leader. You just have to. And. And when that doesn’t happen, that holds back the constraints. Right? It holds. Get owners, I think, get in their own way. They don’t build the systems. They don’t have the discipline, vision. And not all businesses have to be big. That’s not the point. Right. But it’s just about. If you.

39:53
Nathan
But if you want the business to be something bigger, then you got to recognize as myself, like I did with the G business, I realized because we had flatlined, it’s like, okay, to go to the next level, we require a new version of Nathan that I wasn’t willing to do. I got out of the way because the business needs to carry on. When I look at it now, they’re up in sales like 15% and everything’s just rocking. It’s like, wow, that’s. That’s what it could be if I was the right guy, but I wasn’t the right guy, and I’m okay with that.

40:21
Robert
Well, I think it goes back to that whole point, what you were alluding to before is that self awareness, like, really getting clear on what you want. And I think the last thing just before we let the audience go is like, a lot of people don’t necessarily design companies to serve their lives. They end up serving the company. And so, like, taking that step back that you were talking about to really, like, decide, like, what do you actually want? And then how do we design a strategy to fulfill what we’re trying to do? But a lot of people, I ask them, like, what do you actually want? Like, they’ll come up and say, when, you know, when it comes to marketing and sales, what should I do next?

40:52
Robert
I’m like, well, I don’t know, like, where are you at and where do you want to get to? And they’re like, I’m not sure yet. Like, I think that’s more important than trying to figure out whether you should build a new website.

41:02
Nathan
Yeah, exactly.

41:04
Robert
Yeah. Anyway, I appreciate you doing this? Everybody listening to another episode of the I Am Landscape Growth podcast. Thanks.

41:16
Nathan
Sa.