Systems often look organized from the outside.
And then you step inside and see…
Processes live in people’s heads. Small workarounds have gradually increased the complexity. And everything is held together by one person who “just knows how it works”.
When it’s time for someone new to take over, things can get even more chaotic.
That’s what the first 60 days felt like after I acquired UniHop.
When I’ve bought businesses in the past, the transition after closing was relatively straightforward.
Either the systems were documented, the model was simple, or the product lived cleanly in code.
With UniHop, the ‘product’ wasn’t just code; it was a living, breathing, 24/7 logistical puzzle.
Having the founder stay on for two months after closing wasn’t just helpful — it was critical.
The business was far more complex than I anticipated, and most of that complexity lived in his head.
What followed was two months of learning how the business actually worked.
Where the Chaos Lived
UniHop operates at the intersection of software and real-world logistics. Deliveries are urgent. Catering orders can’t wait. Drivers need answers immediately.
I understood that in theory.
I underestimated how many edge cases, exceptions, and manual processes were layered into daily operations.
- Some customers required invoice adjustments every month.
- Some required fully manual billing.
- Certain stores needed specific drivers with catering bags and local familiarity.
- Pricing often depended on variables we didn’t fully know until dispatch.
One of the biggest surprises was the volume of notifications.
Hundreds of Slack notifications per day drive dispatch decisions — each one telling someone to check a driver, confirm a delivery, or manually fix an edge case.
It was semi-automated — in the sense that the system told dispatchers what to do.
But it wasn’t scalable.
If we grew 10× using the same notification-driven workflow, it would make meaningful work impossible.
There was no clean historical tracking. No unified backend view. Just a constant stream of urgent pings that required human interpretation.
The founder called it “controlled chaos.”
It worked. He built something valuable.
But very little of it was formally documented, centralized, or systematized.
During those first two months, I asked enough questions to fill a fleet of box trucks. I recorded conversations with an AI notetaker. I built tracking sheets just to see what was actually happening across operations, billing, and communication.
Even now, we’re still uncovering hidden processes.
But we began turning invisible knowledge into shared knowledge.
That’s when chaos starts becoming manageable.
Turning Chaos into Structure
One of the first changes I made was simple but important.
Dispatchers had been sharing a single Slack login.
We moved everyone to individual logins.
That created accountability and clarified communication.
It allowed us to tag the right person.
It gave us visibility into performance and support needs.
It cost more in software fees, but it was worth it.
Small structural clarity compounds.
When Fragility Shows Itself
One of the clearest lessons came during one of our busiest weeks.
Because this was an asset sale, we had to update ownership information across every system. When we changed ownership on our texting provider, our primary phone number was shut down pending regulatory approval.
Texting is mission-critical for us. It’s how we notify drivers and customers about order status.
Approval takes 7–14 business days.
Our first submission was denied due to a form error.
We scrambled.
After persistent escalation, we secured a temporary workaround while reapplying properly. That week required far more manual processing than usual.
It was stressful.
It was also clarifying — the systems were more fragile than I realized.
Now we’re building redundancy and migrating critical workflows into a more robust backend dispatch system, where automation and AI can eliminate many of the manual notification loops entirely.
Fragility is information — if you respond to it.
Scaling Requires Structure
In those first 60 days, I hired 12 new team members and promoted 4 internally.
That felt aggressive, but it was necessary.
Last-minute dispatch operations require constant attention. If I stayed involved in every urgent issue, I would never have time to improve the business itself.
So we built capacity.
We added leadership layers.
We implemented scorecards.
We established weekly leadership meetings.
We clarified ownership of projects and escalations.
One hire didn’t work out. That was a reminder not to shortcut vetting, even when urgency is high.
In the short term, margins tightened.
In the long term, we gained leverage.
Within three months of closing, I expect to take a 10-day vacation with my family and have the business run well without me. By the end of the year, my goal is to reduce my involvement significantly as operations stabilize, likely to under 10 hours per week as I’ve done with my other businesses.
That outcome required building the team early — even before everything felt fully understood.
Letting Go of Micro-Optimization
The founder was incredibly resourceful.
He made dozens of small, in-the-moment adjustments that increased profitability in specific situations. Because he held the entire system in his mind, he could optimize constantly.
I had to let go of trying to replicate that.
Instead of optimizing every edge case, we established policies.
Policies reduce cognitive load.
They create consistency.
They allow new team members to act confidently.
In some instances, that may mean slightly less profit on a single order.
At scale, it creates stability.
Perfection doesn’t scale. Structure does.
The Shift Into Leadership
For the first month or two, I was primarily learning.
I deferred to the founder’s judgment. I focused on understanding how things worked before deciding how they should work next.
As his transition period ended, that posture shifted.
I stopped asking, “How did you handle this?”
And started asking, “How should we handle this going forward?”
That’s when leadership began to feel real.
The work shifted from understanding the system to shaping it.
I also had to reset a subtle cultural pattern.
When documentation increases and new people join, hesitation can creep in. The natural instinct is to avoid mistakes.
But growth requires experimentation.
So I told the team — and meant it — mistakes are acceptable if we learn from them.
The goal isn’t flawless execution.
It’s steady improvement.
Leadership isn’t about absorbing every escalation.
It’s about building an environment where the right decisions happen without you.
Intensity Without Collapse
Those first two months, I averaged around 60 hours per week — the most I’ve worked on a single business since my twenties.
Surprisingly, I felt energized. I was in a creative flow, redesigning a system in real-time. But I also knew that intensity without presence can quickly lead to burnout. If my mind was thinking about business solutions while I was at the dinner table, the 60 hours would have felt like 100.
I didn’t do this perfectly. There were plenty of nights where UniHop problems followed me to bed, and moments where I had to consciously pull my attention back to the room. But I did my best to create intentional moments to keep my internal compass steady:
- I made sure I slept at least seven hours per night.
- I exercised daily to move the stress through my body.
- Jen made sure I ate real meals, and I did my best to be mentally present enough to taste them.
- We kept our weekly date nights as a (mostly) work-free zone.
- Evenings were spent together as a family, focusing on connection and play, even when my brain wanted to solve one more logistical puzzle.
- I played guitar or piano most days. Even 10 minutes of music helped me to engage a different part of myself.
There were signals to slow down. I experienced bouts of vertigo—a blunt physical reminder to practice a different kind of presence: moving more carefully and reintroducing afternoon resets instead of trying to power through.
Intensity is sustainable only when it’s purposeful, bounded, and supported. This was a defined season, and the structure I’m building now is the bridge back to the quiet, spacious life I value.
Where We Are Now
The systems are still evolving.
But they’re clearer.
Better documented.
Less dependent on any one person.
More measurable.
We now have leadership rhythms, defined KPIs, operational redundancy, and a roadmap to replace notification-driven workflows with cleaner infrastructure.
UniHop isn’t being “fixed.”
It’s being matured.
| The “Founder” Stage | The “Mature” Stage | |
| Knowledge | Tribal / “In the head” | Documented SOPs & Shared Knowledge |
| Communication | Reactionary Slack pings | Proactive alerts & Dashboards |
| Decision Making | Individual Micro-optimization | Clear Policies & Guidelines |
| Scalability | Dependent on the Founder | Driven by Systems & Teams |
| Mental Space | Constant “Noise” | Presence & Deep Work |
The Lesson
It’s possible to take a chaotic system and turn it into a structured, scalable one — with enough focus, attention, and process — while maintaining your sanity.
Buying a business is leverage.
Stabilizing it is leadership.
Scaling it requires structure.
And structure, done well, creates freedom.
Invitation
What recurring friction are you tolerating because ‘it works for now’? I’d love to hear from you: what is the one ‘manual workaround’ in your life or business that’s holding you back from the next level?
Pair This Post With…
Buy Back Your Time: Get Unstuck, Reclaim Your Freedom, and Build Your Empire by Dan Martell — While I’ve greatly benefitted from classics like The 4-Hour Workweek and The E-Myth Revisited, this book is more recent and offers practical frameworks for replacing yourself inside your business by building systems and teams early, so growth doesn’t depend on your constant involvement.