Business Education

You Own a Small Business and Just Hit the Jackpot—Now What?

Practically everyone dreams about winning the lottery. And this includes small business owners too. But, what if you owned a small business and hit a life-changing jackpot? It’s an interesting thought experiment and gets even more profound when trying to apply it to practical circumstances.

In other words, what would be the logistics of such an unimaginable situation? How would you deal with collecting a larger-than-life windfall when owning a small business?

One thing is for sure—it’s not an easy question to answer. There are just too many moving parts and contingencies to come up with a simple, on-the-fly, satisfactory plan of action.

How Small Business Should React When Winning the Lottery

Winning the lottery is a life-changing event, but for small business owners, it introduces unique challenges and opportunities. The sudden influx of wealth can spark a whirlwind of emotions and decisions. So, this thought experiment explores what happens next and how to navigate such a weird and sudden reality.

Step 1: Pause and Reflect

Before making any drastic decisions, take time to process your win. Winning the lottery can be overwhelming, and rushing into choices might lead to regret later. Consult a financial advisor, CPA, and lawyer to help you understand the implications of your newfound wealth.

Step 2: Assess Your Business

Now that you’re financially secure, ask yourself: “What role does my business play in my life?”

Passion vs. obligation. Do you run your business because you love it or because you need the income? If it’s a passion project, the lottery win might allow you to expand or innovate without financial constraints. If it’s purely for income, consider whether it’s time to step away.
Business viability. Is your business thriving or struggling? The lottery win could provide an opportunity to invest in growth or pivot toward new ventures.

Step 3: Explore Your Options

Winning the lottery opens doors to possibilities that were previously out of reach. Here are some paths to consider:

Option 1: Stay Involved

You may choose to continue running your business but with less financial pressure. Use your winnings to:

Expand operations.
Invest in new technology or marketing.
Hire additional staff to reduce your workload.

Option 2: Step Back

If running the business feels like a burden, you could:

Delegate responsibilities by hiring a manager.
Transition into a silent partner role.
Scale down operations for a more manageable workload.

Option 3: Exit

Sometimes, winning the lottery provides an opportunity to walk away entirely:

Sell the business and use the proceeds alongside your winnings to pursue other interests.
Close the business if it’s no longer viable or fulfilling.

Step 4: Consider Your Legacy

With newfound wealth, think about how you want to leave an impact:

Philanthropy. Use your winnings to support causes aligned with your business values.
Community support. Invest in local initiatives or mentor other small business owners.
Family wealth. Create generational wealth through smart investments.

Step 5: Avoid Common Pitfalls

Lottery winners often face challenges such as overspending or strained relationships. To safeguard your finances and peace of mind:

Develop a clear financial plan.
Avoid making impulsive decisions based on emotions.
Be cautious about sharing details of your win publicly.

Wrapping It All Up

Winning the lottery doesn’t mean abandoning everything you’ve built—it means you have choices. Whether you decide to grow your business, step back, or exit entirely, focus on aligning your decisions with your values and long-term goals. This windfall is an opportunity to redefine success on your terms.

Want to Accomplish More?

Do you want your company to grow faster and earn more while you spend more time with your family doing all the things you started your business to do?

We can make that dream a reality. Give us 30 minutes and we will show you how to get your life back. Skeptical? Good! Put us to the test.

You can call us for your free appointment at 480-636-1720, or, if you prefer, Waters Business Consulting Group to learn more about us and the services we offer.

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3 Effective Ways to Beat Zoom Fatigue

March 23, 2021 No Comments

Zoom fatigue?!?! Yes. If you haven’t yet heard, Zoom fatigue is a real thing. The origin of the phrase is obvious. Still, some people are just hearing about it for the first time. Perhaps, because they are experiencing its symptoms. Regardless, Zoom fatigue can be harmful in a number of ways. So, read on to learn how to best deal with Zoom fatigue and what you need to know. What is Zoom Fatigue? Simply put, Zoom fatigue is a phenomenon that causes tiredness, along with worry and burnout. These emotions are due to the overuse of video or virtual communication platforms, most commonly videoconferencing. The symptoms come from excessive amounts of highly intense eye strain. Experts also say people seeing themselves during video chats also causes unnecessary stress and fatigue because their every movement is captured. Do you audibly sigh every time you have to log on to what feels like your thousandth Zoom meeting of the day? You’re not alone. While we’re all more or less used to video calls and meetings being the norm now, the newly coined effect of Zoom fatigue hasn’t gone away. Since working from home is here to stay, video calls are here for the long run too. This makes it incredibly important to find a way to prevent Zoom fatigue from taking over your workday. —Forbes Then, there’s the immobility of videoconferencing. Unlike speaker phone conversations, which are pure audio, people can walk around and think on their feet. But, that’s not the case with video. Lastly, there’s cognition overload, since non-verbal communication interpretation is so much more difficult between parties. All of these can contribute to Zoom fatigue, which leads to negative emotions, as well as poor work production. 3 Effective Ways to Beat Zoom Fatigue Fortunately, there are ways to deal with the digital burnout. If you’re tired of videoconferencing, you are certainly not alone. But, there’s more good news. You can effectively combat the effects of Zoom fatigue by doing one or more of the following: Disable the self-view feature. When you get up in the morning, get ready as you normally do, dressing up as a professional. You’ve done this countless times before and probably continue the habit, even while working remotely. Since you’ve already dressed up and are presentable, there’s no sense in looking in the mirror (or seeing yourself on video). So, turn off the self-view feature, which is one of the single biggest causes of Zoom fatigue. Take regular breaks. Okay, there’s nothing magical about taking breaks. It’s obvious advice. But, it’s also something people forget to do when they’re working virtually because they aren’t in their normal workplace. However, breaks are necessary throughout the day. From time-to-time, take a few minutes to walk around, get outside for a little while, and take regular breaks. Switch communications. If you’re feeling stressed and/or resentful of videoconferencing, then just switch up the way you communicate. Instead of video, use voice conferencing so you have more freedom of movement and can enjoy the benefit of thinking on your feet. What other suggestions do you have to combat Zoom fatigue? Please take a moment to share your thoughts and experiences so others can benefit from your unique perspective. After all, you never know who you’ll help out! Interested in learning more about business? Then just visit Waters Business Consulting Group.

Why High-Performing Landscape Companies Grow with Waters

July 9, 2026 No Comments

A strategic framework for consistent turnarounds, stronger profitability, and lasting business value In commercial landscaping, ambition is rarely the thing missing. Most of the companies we meet have deep customer relationships, capable crews, and a real commitment to quality. They got to where they are through persistence and hard-earned expertise. But as these businesses grow, that same growth starts exposing cracks in how the business actually operates. Scale creates complexity. The processes that worked fine at $5 million in revenue start to buckle at $15 million. A leadership structure built for one branch gets stretched thin across three or four. Informal communication that used to be fine now causes real friction. Labor costs start outpacing revenue. Margins get harder to predict. And at some point, the owner realizes every new contract is adding more weight on their shoulders instead of more freedom. Chasing more volume at that stage doesn’t fix anything. What the business actually needs is better design. Waters Business Consulting Group partners with commercial landscape leaders to find what’s actually limiting their performance, then build the systems, leadership, and financial visibility it takes to turn a reactive company into one that can scale on purpose. We’re not just trying to make the company bigger. We’re trying to build something more resilient, more profitable, and valuable enough that it doesn’t fall apart the moment the owner steps away. That’s the kind of institutional strength that brings landscape companies to Waters in the first place. The WBCG framework: building stability from the inside out Real improvement never comes from one initiative bolted onto an otherwise unchanged business. An aggressive sales push can’t fix operations that are already broken. A beautiful financial report means nothing if no manager is actually held to it. Hiring more people just adds more complexity if nobody’s roles are clearly defined. Lasting change has to touch every part of the business at once. Our framework works across six areas that all reinforce each other: diagnosing the business honestly, building financial visibility, tightening operational discipline, creating real leadership accountability, aligning growth with profitability, and building lasting enterprise value. Strengthen these together, and you get a business that performs the same way twice, reliably, instead of getting lucky once. 1. Diagnose before you prescribe anything Every struggling business shows the same symptoms: margins eroding, turnover climbing, cash getting tight, an owner who can’t get out of daily emergencies long enough to lead. Treating any one of those symptoms on its own almost never fixes the underlying problem. A profit problem is often really a pricing problem, or a production-control problem, or the wrong mix of customers. What looks like a hiring crisis is often just unclear management roles wearing a different costume. We start by taking a genuinely close look at the economics and the org structure to find where performance is actually leaking out, across financial performance, gross margins by service and customer, how accurate the estimating really is, labor efficiency, leadership capacity, the sales pipeline, and how dependent the business is on the owner. The point isn’t to produce a thick report. It’s clarity, so leadership can stop reacting to whatever’s on fire today and start fixing what’s actually broken underneath. 2. Build financial visibility you can actually act on A financial report tells you where the business has been. It doesn’t tell you where it’s headed, and by the time it lands on your desk, the month it describes is already over. The companies that perform best treat their financials as a steering wheel, not a rearview mirror. They connect what happened at month-end back to the decisions made on a job site that week, which means they catch a bad trend while it’s still small instead of after it’s compounded for two quarters. We help teams build visibility into the numbers that actually move performance: gross margin by service line, crew productivity, equipment utilization, overhead trends, pipeline quality, and cash flow. Once an owner understands the true economics of the business, they stop managing crisis to crisis and start leading. 3. Build systems, not heroics Landscaping is genuinely complicated to run well. Labor, equipment, schedules, and materials all have to line up, usually while the weather refuses to cooperate and customers expect more every year. The companies that consistently perform don’t lean on a handful of superstar employees to hold the whole operation together. They build systems: disciplined pricing and estimating, real production planning, tight equipment and purchasing controls, consistent quality checks, and reporting that actually gets used. Strong systems cut down on the variation between one crew’s work and another’s, and they let a company grow its revenue without a matching spike in stress. 4. Invest in leadership and real accountability A business can’t outgrow the capacity of its leaders. A lot of owners hit a ceiling simply because they’re still the one making every operational, financial, and personnel decision, no matter how big the company gets. We help build real leadership depth by clarifying roles and actually handing off authority, not just responsibility. Every manager should know exactly which results are theirs, how success gets measured, when to escalate a problem, and how much authority they actually have to make a call. When managers are genuinely empowered and genuinely accountable, the owner finally gets time back for strategy instead of spending every day putting out fires that shouldn’t have reached their desk in the first place. 5. Chase profit, not just activity Growth only matters if it produces profit. Too many landscape companies chase revenue that ends up costing more in cash and leadership time than it’s worth. We help teams evaluate opportunities on strategic fit and long-term value, not just top-line size, which usually means putting resources behind the highest-margin customer segments, contracts that fit inside actual operational capacity, and markets that support healthy cash flow rather than draining it. Real business health takes the discipline to turn down the wrong work so there’s room to do the right work

3 Unconscious Mental Blocks Your Routine Creates that Hold Your Business Back

September 24, 2021 No Comments

Your routine is your frenemy. Let’s repeat this paradoxical reality again. Your daily routine is your frenemy. It’s an often unspoken, difficult truth. Something most of us either ignore or just never think about. Regardless, it is inescapable, because there are two sides to everything. And your daily routine is certainly no exception. What is supposed to be highly advantageous, can also unleash equal disadvantages. So, it’s time to look at this with a curious, open mind. Biggest Daily Routine Benefits Routines obviously have their benefits. Otherwise, we would not institute and follow them at all. For example, keeping you on time and task certainly is a huge advantage. By following a routine, you are much less likely to get distracted and you’ll complete priorities in order of importance. Additionally, a routine helps with the ebb and flow of life. Which is to say, uncomfortable or emergency situations. It’s a fundamental truth that sometimes the greatest barrier to your success is yourself. Not that you don’t try, aren’t talented, or don’t have the resources to succeed–you do. It’s just that a self-limiting mindset can creep into your worldview without you realizing it, keeping the achievement of your goals forever on an unreachable horizon. —Inc.com It’s common advice that when you’re in unfamiliar territory and feel overwhelmed, settle back into your routine. This helps you to relax and look at the bigger picture. Ultimately, it gives you the calming effect of being in control. Moreover, a routine lets you to chart your progress throughout the day. You feel a sense of accomplishment with each line item you cross off your list. 3 Ways Your Routine Sabotages Your Business Although routines are beneficial on one hand, on the other, they can be downright detrimental. We usually don’t see these disadvantages because routines offer a sense of continuity and comfort — to mindsets that can be counterproductive. Here are three unconscious mental blocks that your routines create and hold back your business: You feel satisfied. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of satisfaction. It puts your mind at ease and lets you put your brain on idle. And, that’s the very problem with the mind being satisfied — the satiation is an impediment to wanting and doing more. When you are satisfied, you stop and disengage. Done too often, this is a recipe for stagnation. You’re not as creative. Have you ever noticed those “eureka” moments are now few and far between, or worse yet, absent entirely? When you started your business, you did so with enthusiasm, drive, and purpose. But, you’ve come to a point where you’re not nearly creative as you were in the past. That’s because you’re just following a routine, which means your no longer freeing yourself to think outside of the box. You can’t envision a different future Sure, the future is always uncertain. However, there’s a difference between not knowing and not dreaming. If you hit enough of your goals, you’ll probably stop thinking about reaching new achievements and that is tantamount to not reimagining your possible future. After all, as time goes by, changes occur and the future might actually look completely different than it did before. What other ways do routines undermine your success? Please take a moment to share your thoughts and experiences. Your unique perspective just might help one or several people out! Interested in learning more about business? Then just visit Waters Business Consulting Group.