Crash and Burn

I wasn’t always “the Coyote Guy”.

Actually, the most frequent second question I get is: What do you do outside of the Pack?

Let me try to answer that question with a story of one of my most recent failures.

It was August ‘24 and I had just privately crashed and burned with a business for the second time in two years. How’s my confidence, you ask? Well... the Pack helps.

But as one does in this position—[insert phoenix analogy here]—we don't just quit and get a corporate job. We douse the embers and begin again. I just like building things way too much.

Let’s rewind a bit.

It was mid-2023 and I had just hatched an idea and we were in the process of rolling it out to customers. The concept was simple: fractional facilities management, which is what we named the business.

Basically, we would act as a part-time building manager and schedule all preventive maintenance for business owners so they could focus on growth. Think breweries, warehouses, places with physical space. Tenants are responsible for nearly everything and issues can have a major impact.

What did I even know about facilities? A fair question.

In 2019, I was managing a Lime Scooter warehouse with over 100 staff and ~4500 deployed scooters in the city. We had a large space, and thousands of scooters to charge and repair.

One day, a man named Lou walked in. The only people who walk in were looking to interview for a mechanic position. He handed me his card, which said CalOSHA. He instructed me to stay put while he inspected the building and talked to our employees. I looked around at all the charging cables and power strips, some zip-tied to the ceiling. There was a faint smell of overused charging cable in the air. Damn.

I was handed his assessment, effectively the most expensive homework assignment of my life. My bosses said to pay the fines and move on. The cost? Potentially tens of thousands of dollars. But this had the potential to close the facility.

Time to learn about buildings.

I compiled all the research, identified the issues, cleaned up the facility as best I could, and turned in my homework. I had effectively reduced the fine to a mere $1,500. That experience alone added gray to my lush black hair. But we survived.

Realization

It made me realize how little I knew about buildings, codes, and regulations until I began the research required for this audit. I was no longer at level zero.

Another thing I knew nothing about was routine maintenance, and we were responsible for all of it. With that many scooters, you focus on one thing only: maximizing repair and maximizing scooters out of the warehouse being ridden. It was (scooter) war and new competitors were coming out of the woodwork.

Later, we would get a full-time Facilities Manager. He would spend most of his time in meetings getting briefed on new safety protocols and recycling strategies, then once a month he would walk the building to ensure we were compliant. This is a critical role, and his high salary was justified by his industry experience, understanding of preventative maintenance, and knowledge of regulations.

I spent years after Lime thinking about this. He was effectively there just in case. His one employee executed everything. What do smaller businesses do? A small business couldn’t afford him.

I left Lime in 2019 to pursue other ventures but I continued thinking about this idea.

Lightbulb!

I started seeing fractional services popping up everywhere. Every C-level role, and actually, you can order a fractional best friend now. Literally just heard this on a podcast.

Could this be the business model? What if a small business got a piece of a Facilities Manager without the six-figure salary? Would this free up time and eliminate stress for their building? We could even set up preventative maintenance for them.

I could figure out the sales and ops side, but I needed to bring in someone who was an expert in facilities management. One OSHA audit does not make an expert—not even enough to be dangerous.

I connected with a pro I knew from Lime who was working as a full-time Facilities Manager overseeing 10-20 buildings—a huge job. They were ready to leave if we could gain some traction. He also had a very robust network of pre-vetted contractors who he used on his buildings. Was this too good to be true?

Game on: I started hustling. We had a concept, a site, a simple model, and I started to talk to customers. We were able to land a few pilots rather quickly! Whoa, that was unexpected. I hadn’t experienced this before.

It was go-time now. Let's test this thing, get some recurring revenue rolling in, and see if we can scale!

Then came the silence.

My co-founder disappeared. Silence. My heart sank; this was my full-time focus outside of howling. My opportunity. And it was working.

It takes years to build up a network of contractors. Could I do this on my own?

It also takes years to learn how to walk through a space and develop an eye for what to look for. I can spot a fire extinguisher—they're bright red, but that’s where I draw the line.

“Chat GPT, teach me to be a Facilities Manager.”

Then I got the call from my cofounder.

“Sorry, man, they’ve offered me a ton more money.”

It was over. Crash… Burn…

I got depressed. I had been building something, and it had been working. My previous startup had failed for a variety of other reasons, but this was working! I had staked my reputation on this…

Damn

Silver Linings Everywhere

The only thing to do was to act as the noble phoenix and rise again.

While I was building FFM, I had reconnected with a very good friend, an e-commerce expert whose business had a few hundred thousand square feet of space. We talked about my business, his, other interesting ideas.

He had supported me in ideation and strategy along the way.

As I relayed the death of my latest venture, we began to hatch something new. Something we had talked about doing if the timing was right.

A back burner business.

My schedule was effectively cleared with the exception of howling!

Operations 11 (Oh-11)

With my mind deep in fractional models, we realized that the advantage is you get all the power and value of expertise for a… fraction of the cost (that hurt me to say).

We could potentially fractionalize everything a business needs. Imagine operating like Brad Pitt’s character in Ocean's Eleven, where specific roles are essential to pull off a heist. He needs: a driver, safe cracker, gymnast, George Clooney.

There’s another advantage. A smaller brand doesn’t need a massive customer support team. But if we built a very effective one, they can be deployed on multiple brands. This can be potentially true of a site builder, marketer or ad designer.

Our business would need: a Shopify builder, operations, branding, finance and a product to sell.

We could potentially build brands this way and ramp them up to scale even more quickly. We could even share the treasure with them either by ownership or profit sharing!

We need something to test

The best way to test this concept is to start with a brand and pull in George Clooney. Is he available?

Even better. We had connections to a founder who built a sizable seasonal business in the past.

The advantage is that we have a definitive start and stop date. We can adjust and incorporate all of our learnings in the off-season. Then take what works and apply it to build our second, third, etc. We could even buy brands that had weaker pieces and once we get Clooney on the line see if he’s available for a project.

The best way to learn is to build something and why not build it in public.

And the product?

Beautiful Natural Wreaths!

Every Friday I’ll share updates on the week—what we’ve done so far, the problems we've encountered, and our progress.

This year will be a very important test for us and I will be sharing the journey along the way. We’ve started from almost nothing and the only thing we have is a strong mentor and a few advantageous connections.

Let’s baseline.

So far the company has:

❌ no name
❌ no brand
❌ no product
❌ no site

🎄Days until Christmas: 81
💰Sales: 0

Join us on the journey.

It’s time to name this thing, build our brand, launch a site and choose our products.

Happy Holidays,

Jonah