Juan Carlos Vargas had already bought a body shop with 55 years of history behind it and started restoring its reputation alongside his son. But the recession hit hard, and for a while he couldn’t…

A 30-Year-Old Business Facing New Pressure Founded in 1991, Sun Country Landscape had spent three decades building a loyal commercial client base across Arizona. But after a change in ownership, the new owner faced a familiar small-business trap: strong reputation, thin margins. Rising labor costs, inconsistent client retention, and underperforming account managers were quietly eating into what should have been a profitable operation — and the numbers showed it. Overhead was outpacing revenue, and the company was operating at negative profitability despite steady top-line sales. Referral Leads to a Turnaround Plan In early 2021, the owner was referred to Waters Business Consulting Group by another commercial landscape client who had been through a similar transformation. The mandate was ambitious: turn Sun Country into a scalable, financially stable, and genuinely profitable company — not just a busy one. Getting there meant confronting some uncomfortable truths. Average monthly maintenance accounts were priced well under $1,000 per property, nowhere near enough to sustain healthy margins. Client and employee turnover were both high, and there was little accountability tying account managers to actual performance. Several key roles were underperforming, and nobody was tracking labor hours against budget closely enough to catch the leaks before they became a crisis. Rebuilding the Business From the Numbers Up WBCG started with the financial model — not marketing, not sales, the numbers. Together they built a pricing strategy that mapped a clear path to profitability, then layered in weekly labor-hour tracking against budgeted hours so cost overruns could be caught in real time instead of at year-end. Accountability systems tied compensation and expectations directly to labor efficiency, account retention, and enhancement sales, giving managers a reason to perform and a way to measure it. Where personnel weren’t delivering, WBCG helped the owner make the hard calls: replacing underperforming account managers with people who could execute. On the client side, the focus shifted to strengthening communication and property manager relationships to reduce the churn that had been quietly draining recurring revenue. And behind the scenes, the team worked to strengthen banking relationships, giving the business more financial flexibility and access to capital as it grew. From Negative Margins to a Multi-Million-Dollar Valuation The turnaround shows up clearly in the numbers. Revenue climbed from approximately $3.48 million in 2021 to $4.15 million in 2022, $5.06 million in 2023, and $6.44 million in 2024 — reaching $6.73 million in 2025, with $7.6 million projected for 2026. Gross profit margins improved from below 30% to a consistent 37–38%, and net operating income moved from below negative -2% to 12% or better. Just as significant: Sun Country eliminated its outstanding credit line balances and now maintains access to more than $200,000 in available credit. The company’s estimated valuation grew from under $1 million to somewhere in the $6–7 million range, with continued growth expected. And for the owner personally, the operational discipline translated into something harder to put a number on — reduced stress, more time flexibility, and real financial freedom and more fun! Is Your Growth Outpacing Your Profitability? Plenty of businesses generate strong revenue while quietly losing money on overhead, labor, and account churn. If that sounds familiar, a structured financial and operational reset — not just more sales — may be exactly what your business needs. Contact Waters Business Consulting Group to schedule a free consultation.