We Fixed It, You're Welcome - How Much Are Our Fixes Worth? Let's Find Out Together!

Episode Date: September 29, 2025

In this special episode of We Fixed It, You’re Welcome, the team welcomes back financial expert Lukas Sundahl to put real numbers behind our hypothetical business fixes. What’s the actual value of “fixing” a struggling company? Lukas analyzes three big names—Southwest Airlines, Party City, and Jaguar—and shows how our proposed strategies could have meant millions in revenue, survival, and long-term brand strength. Expect insights on: Why Southwest’s baggage fees could still work without killing loyalty? How Party City could have survived with community-driven retail? What Jaguar missed in its EV pivot and how to reclaim brand trust? This episode blends strategy + financial modeling, proving that fixing companies isn’t just theory—it’s measurable impact. Listen, learn, and maybe rethink how YOU approach business pivots. We dive deep into the real numbers behind our “fixes.” With returning guest Lukas Sundahl (CFO, financial strategist, LinkedIn thought leader), we analyze three case studies: Southwest Airlines: Would baggage fees really alienate customers? Or could they generate $350M–$450M while keeping loyalty intact? Party City: How localized inventory and community tie-ins might have saved them from bankruptcy—potentially adding $43M–$130M in value. Jaguar: The pitfalls of abandoning brand heritage in the EV race—and how aligning EVs with Jaguar’s legacy could mean $35M–$179M in gains. Chapters 0:00 – Welcome to We Fixed It, You’re Welcome 1:20 – Meet our guest: Lukas Sundahl 2:40 – How we quantify “fixes” 4:20 – Case Study 1: Southwest Airlines 8:00 – Case Study 2: Party City 14:40 – Case Study 3: Jaguar 18:20 – The power of the pivot 23:00 – Why grounding fixes in real companies works 25:45 – Closing thoughts & where to find Lukas Key Themes: The financial impact of strategic pivots Brand loyalty vs revenue growth The “power of the pivot” in corporate turnarounds Why storytelling + numbers matter in fixing companies Key Pull Quote “The numbers—whether worst or best case—prove the power of the pivot. Even small strategic shifts could have meant hundreds of millions in value.” – Lukas Sundahl Subscribe for more deep dives where we fix big business problems with fresh perspectives. Links: • Website - www.wefixeditpod.com • Follow us on: Instagram: @wefixeditpod LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wefixeditpod YouTube: @wefixeditpod If you liked this episode, don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with your friends! Keep listening to find out how we fix companies and put them back better than we found them. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to We Fixed It. You're welcome. The show where we take over companies, you come along for the ride, and we try to put them back better than we found them. This is a special episode of We Fix It, you're welcome. And that means we have a special guest who will get to in a moment. Now you probably know how our show works. Every episode, we take on a company in the public eye that's facing some challenges, and we fix it. We can't help ourselves. It's what we do for a living. under the pressure of a ticking clock, we apply our thinking, professional expertise, and the insights of our guests, and we work our way into a solution. And you're with us every step of the way. At the end, we tell the company to their face how we'd fix the situation. Then we hand the company right back, give ourselves high-fives all around, and job well done. Now the fixes we propose on this show are all in good fun, but we try to do some real good too. We've explored how leaders can show up better, how professionals can navigate tricky business situations,

how companies falling out of relevance can evolve, even how we could all be better as a society. That's got to be worth something, right? Well, out of all of us, only our guests is qualified to put a number on that value. If you caught our Bowflex episode, you've heard them before. If you've ever typed the word accounting into LinkedIn, you've definitely seen them.

Please welcome Lucas Sundahl. Hey, Lucas. Hey, how you doing? Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks for coming back with us. So, Lucas, you've done a lot of things that are financial, related. Why don't you share a little bit about yourself for everybody?

Yes, so I've been in the accounting space for about 15 years. It's funny because you talked about Billaflex earlier. I was the personal trainer before changing my careers. But in that time, the last five or six years, I've been more heavily involved in leadership roles from the finance and accounting

perspective, CFO controller, all this type of things to really not only deliver the financial results, but talk through and help companies and the leaders plan out, their strategy to grow, continue to operate efficiently and make sure they're managing costs and how to grow revenues. I have a lot of different financial metrics and tying those back into the operations. Very cool. Thanks, Lucas. I can't wait to quantify some things with you. So let's

get into those dollar signs. So our show is fixed a few dozen companies by now. And they should be thanking us. It's in the name of the show. But the question that we got to talking about is what exactly should these companies be thanking us for? What is the real, quote-unquote, hypothetical value of our fixes? So you're going to walk us through some examples, right? Yes. Yeah, I picked three examples from the episodes through this point in the show, and I'll talk through those next year. Okay. Let's do it. All right. The floor is yours. All right. So the ones I've picked, the viewers that are just listening to this, or the people listening to this, they won't have the visuals, but. Anyway, I'll talk through it. So the companies I picked for this example in these financial scenarios with Southwest Airlines, Party City, and Jaguar. So as we know, Party City does not exist anymore,

but I still wanted to quantify what could have been had they maintained being in business and what that could have been like for not only the company itself, but also for consumers to still, if the company is still in existence. All right. So the first one is Southwest Airlines, a company that's well known for people like traveling, well known, well, especially with their customers and their company, how it was run with the founder. Very customer focused and the experience trying to differentiate themselves from other airlines. And one of the things recently, as Todd talked about in the show as well, was what happened with their morning, like the charge fees for bags and kind of like moving. way and shifting from their thing that differentiated them from the other airlines.

And so one of the things I did was taking notes from the show. I also brought in some financial analysis. So what do we do a lot of times when we're building out projections for companies for the forward-looking, let's say, 12, 18 months is we build a base case. That's like the middle kind of at the road where we expect things to be like a worst case scenario. Let's say sales tank, they go down like 10% and then the best case. And so what this allows us to do is kind of really make a plan for things with sales revenue.

If it goes up 10%, what are some things we can do operationally? Maybe you have more capital for capital expenditures, buying more equipment. And so that's what I kind of applied with the Southwest Airlines company first. It's just seeing what it would have been how to do with some of these bag fees, implementing them and avoiding company and it's a churn. if you will. So things they could do to make sure that customers stay loyal to the brand while still bringing it in the fees for the said airline. So what I have on the visual here is talking about so the bag fee, if they did the bag fees, it could bring in additional $350 million

of revenue or EBIT. So for a quick aside, EBIT is earnings before interest and tax. It's a common that trick for not only financial professionals, but business peers. They look at EBIT and EBITDA numbers that kind of help them quantify how they're performing against other companies in the industry. And in talking through and listening to the show notes, I can't have a conclusion that in the worst case scenario, having the bag fee uplift, so bringing in the bag fees,

but still doing things that were mentioned on the show to preserve the culture, preserve the customer experience. Right. and avoid customers churning and going to other airlines. The worst case scenario, it still brings in $354 million. So there's a way to still charge the bag fees without capability alienating your customers. A lot of times companies understand that costs go up, fuel costs, operational, but it's how you communicate it to your stakeholders, your customers.

I mean, I understand as a consumer, that costs are going up. We've seen that. So it's all about how you deliver the message. it's not just day one like, oh, by the way, you have to pay these fees now and we're taken away your preferred seating arrangements. So with this, I have the worst case. Especially because that's what their brand was built on, right? Exactly. So two bags, I breathe.

Right. That was always part of their deal. So thank you for sharing this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And to offset it, we were talking about if the bag fees were a revenue driver or a necessary evil or a pass through to the customer. Lucas, you're right.

We did find ways to offset that, at least from a messaging standpoint and a value standpoint, and say, well, here's all the reasons and rationale behind it. So you're saying if consumers said yes to that and got on board, which we're seeing play out. Yes. This is, we're looking at numbers of what the implications could be. Yeah. So this is kind of assuming that customers were on board with the change. But still staying, like basically, my assumption was always bringing in the bag fees,

but keeping everything else operationally the same, that's been like the Southwest standard the Southwest way. So what I have found is like it leads to additional either worst case scenario of a $354 million uptick for the company. Face case is $38 million. And then the best case scenario is $458 million. So again, all that's say like, there's ways to kind of still keep the Southwest methodology without alienating their customers and avoiding them like jumping to like Delta, America and

some of the other competitors out there. 354 million worst case is not a bad place to be. Exactly. So, yeah, some of these companies are so large that even their worst case scenarios are a dream for a lot of other corporations out there. All right. So party city, this one that hits for me because I have young kids. And now would we have like birthday parties or other things trying to find out like a local store that has the things you need for party supplies. Costumes are pretty easy.

There's other costumes, stores that pop up. Spirit Halloween, if you will, probably was jumping into these empty Party City locations. For sure. But what I took the show notes again talking through, and similar to like what happened with other retailers in this same kind of space, Toys R Us, for instance, is they really kind of just can really focus on making the shopping like an experience. That's what could have been with Toys R Us, Party City, as talked to you with the show. is just having like the experience in the store and not just around Halloween time or Christmas time but all throughout the year different

festivities birthday parties are throughout the year but there's different ways that they could have more localized inventory some of the stores did an okay job with that but I feel like Moorum could have done better with keeping their inventory localized to sports teams the town

like what the city of the U.S. or wherever it is what it kind of represents, like geography, those type of things, and then having, like, community tie-ins. There's so many things for these chains that they could still offer things that were interesting to the people in the community. You could go with, like, this time of year, you've got Friday night football games for local high schools. So there's a way throughout the year, like coming up on things in autumn,

pumpkin patches, all the kind of stuff. So there's so much that they could have done, have they stuck with what you all talked about on this show. And so what I did in my analysis is I took their annual net sales and I did like a comparison with their EBITR. And so taking what everyone talked about on the show and applying it to the financial model, their worst case scenario is that they could have had like a $43 million savings and like still been in an operation. So they could have brought in, they could have like had a $43 million lift in their company still pay off all their debts. everything and still be in operation.

So in the base case was 86 million. And then the best case is $130 million. So had they done all these things that we talked about on the show, increased the foot traffic, localized inventory, all those community tie-ins, the company was still been in operation. And this has been their uptake and their sales and like the EBITDA to help continue to fund their operations. So even in the worst case, the $43 million,

You always have to think about the worst case scenario first, right? So even $43 million would have bought them some time, allowed them to go potentially into financial turnaround. And they could have done that potentially, hypothetically, by doing some community callouts. So a party city in Michigan is different from a party city in Austin, Texas, because you feel like the location where you are. There's an embracing of the local community.

We talked about maybe maximizing the footprint of the store in optimizing that. Maybe using it after hours for actual throwing parties at a party city. Who knew? So if they'd gone into those types of revenue models because they had a little bit of breathing room to carry those out.

So you're saying worst case, they'd be sitting at $43 million. Best case that fixes, again, on a hypothetical, $130 million. Exactly. That's the one thing two. Oh, go ahead. with the the the the how big an organization is versus the franchise right so like when you look at

something like party city like for the the ability for them to pivot to some more regionalized localized different seasonality based on where you're at so right now it's homecoming for most of the high schools and colleges that like that's a great opportunity for them to do you know the all the homecoming banners and things like that that. But it feels like party city, I hate to say this, but I feel like they were kind of not in a mind space of they were just drowning. So they weren't even really thinking about like what could we do to pivot to try it. And in like a corporate type of setting is regionalization and and looking at different types of things throughout the season. Just is that seem too minor.

Right. So it's interesting that they actually ended up failing, Lucas, right, based on what? what you're providing because I feel like it seemed like common sense when we talked about party city. And we also had one of our panelists who said like she exclusively would go to party city, like physically go. So there definitely had a loyal customer base and foot traffic. It was just that the inventory within a party city is so large, like every single color of paper plates. and every, you know what, you know, it's, it was a lot. So I appreciate seeing it with these hard numbers because it makes what we're doing seem

more real. I know that we're espousing our opinions on what we think they can do to fix, but this is, this has been really helpful to see it this way. Yeah, another thing, like, I just think of also with Party City is minelar balloons. Sometimes now, like, where do you go now to get your, like, balloons inflator that you buy for a birthday party or any other activity or event that you have. So there's so many things like you mentioned that they could have done to increase. And that's the thing too sometimes with these turnarounds is if you can like show like some changes

that you're making are making the improvements, then your creditors you can renegotiate terms, bringing some like other investment partners that maybe kind of give you a lift, at least to get you to that like turnaround point really make it successful. Yeah, that bridge loan. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and that's where you bring in the right investors, not just the ones that want to gut you for parts. Yeah, exactly. Ones that are, yeah, want you to be around in five to ten years and not just the quick cash out.

All right. So the other one that was very interesting was Jaguar talking about their electric vehicle and kind of talking through like with what was discussed on the show. And I think a lot of times, like, it's one thing to have electric vehicles. That's great. But you don't want to move away from the heritage of the brand. and also they kind of like they kind of lost the trust with their end consumer and customer. There's also like the creative misfire with marketing and whatnot. So I kind of took all that detail and I brought it into some of the sales analysis

and then also like doing like different margin projections. And so with Jaguar, these are the numbers that I came up with on like with marketing, sales, rebuilding the customer loyalty and branding is the worst case scenario. It still would have brought them $35 million. Best case, $91 million. Base case, I'm sorry, $91 million. And then the best case scenario, $179 million. So again, not pocket change at all. Jaguar, there's a different ways to go about like what you do electric vehicles, but you can still tie to that racing heritage, those kind of things that the customers, the company is known for. And you can do different marketing, but you also

can change marketing a little bit, but you don't want to alienate your base customers. So that's the thing that you can kind of experiment and see what works. But I found it interesting to their change with electric vehicles, inventory, pricing, everything. So I'm curious, like, what you all think about

these numbers from the Jaguar perspective. I mean, it's interesting. It's, and because it's interesting, they keep doubling down on their existing strategy, right? And the the CEO and the company from everything I've seen. Maybe they just, maybe they know something we don't. Maybe, you know, when, when EVs were new, they knew it was going to take a long time for consumers to come around and they just had to train consumers into a new, a new category and out of something that they already knew and, you know, now you've got to shift your mindset.

Now everyone's going to be buying EVs. Well, okay. All right. Well, tell me in 10 years, right? But now, yeah, EVs are a point of preference for a consumer. So maybe Jaguars on to something that we haven't seen play out yet. On the worst case, the $35 million, that could come and go and add dollars. You know, I hate to say it, but they could be spending that to get market adoption.

$179 million on the best case, that's pretty substantial. Like, they could make some serious company decisions and pivots and change the trajectory of where they're headed. That's, they could be putting that to work for them. So, yeah, what do you all think? Yeah. You know, go ahead, Capadur. Well, just very briefly, I was going to say, I mean, I, think the number is whether it's the worst case or the best case for any of these examples

is, you know, speaks to the power of the pivot and knowing, you know, like we've gotten a little bit too far down the pike and it's okay to turn. It's okay to go back. It's okay to take a couple of steps, you know, in the other direction. I mean, we know these are, again, based on kind of our assumptions and opinions and all these things, but wow, right? It's pretty amazing to see these numbers on screen based on our fixes. I also think, and I love what you said about the power of the pivot, Kadira. Kada is always bringing things up, the power of the playbook, power of the pivot. I love all those things.

I want T-shirts for all of them. But I guess I question to Aaron if it's doubling down because they made a decision and that was the campaign they were going with versus listening and a. and hearing and kind of being like, whoa, we're not getting the traction we thought we were going to get, or the excitement and enthusiasm around EV vehicles and Jaguar. It seems like a perfect fit. And it's not hitting, right? And sometimes I feel like the folks at the table, and I think this is sometimes we direct, you know, here on this podcast, we try to direct this to them is listening, right? And actually assessing. seeing what's really going on because to me, base case scenario that Lucas has shared here, $91 million, that's great. That's fantastic. And I don't think it would take that much because their brand is so strong, right?

And so like what they've done is kind of diluted something that is a strength of theirs. Their brand is their strength. And you could make the be sexy. You could make it powerful. You could make it all these things that they, kind of like said, oh, well, now we have an EV and it's not that different than, you know, Tesla, whatever, whatever. And you know all the issues they have with these. So I guess I really feel like I wonder too, Aaron, if it's not that they, you know, think that their campaign is going to be

great. But I think it's kind of just not having hubris, not understanding that like, goodness, you kind of need to take the power and the pivot. Right. Right. Absolutely. You need to like see what's going on and and seeing the campaigns that are successful, like of the brands. You know, like why is, you know, so and so, why is Alty's working? I'm not saying it is, but let's pretend or whoever else, you know, and do some like comparison assessment, right? And I mean, that's the, the customer's voice is very important. And so it feels very. very like they're being very deaf about it and they're not really taking advantage of what they should be. Yeah. Well, unlike so many others, that's what we called them out for. It's great, great brand, great company, heritage brand. They changed too much at once. They change their

product line. They changed their image. They changed their campaign to something that didn't have much of any substance to it. And consumers said, where's our jaguar? And they didn't have an answer for that and they haven't come up with an answer for that. Now, it's pretty simple. We've seen other companies where they say, we're sorry, we changed too fast. We did something you didn't like. We're back. And then they, the price, you know, surge, they get the audience back and their sales surge. They haven't done that. And all they'd really have to do on a, probably to get to the worst or maybe the base case is say, you know what, we're bringing back the Jaguar Classic. And you can have the classic, you can have the classic EV. And then we're going to do more experimental

ebs or modern futuristic EVs and those are going to be Jaguars too. They have a chance to, they still have a chance to do that. People are still watching what they're doing. But it's not and that's the baffling move about all this. I think it's a good point. And they basically said they can still make the change, make the turnaround

and like I said, come back to the customers and showcase like, hey, we've made it change too fast. I think a lot of these companies too that made a huge jump to EVs. Maybe it made a jump too fast, but also could bring in more of the hybrids and still like hey, like, still got that jaguar under the hood, but we also are like working on things to promote environmental consciousness

and kind of meld it together. So there's so many different options. But yeah, that's why I like, that's why I liked quantifying what you've all talked about because you all have some great ideas. And it was fun to really put numbers to it and kind of see like what they could like achieved like using some of your feedback input. This is great. Thank you.

Yeah, they still might. We'll see. but those are three great examples. And you looked at all of ours, right? Yeah. So I went through all of the episodes. I try to pick ones that I feel like were well-known brands, but also very relevant.

And the current, like, I think Part City just recently went out of business. Jaguars are recently, like, it's a very hot topic right now. And then Southwest Airlines, that's so well-known. I mean, all the episodes are great, but I feel like these are three really well-known brands that have, I've been in the news and very relevant recently. Nice. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. No, really. If you're listening, so it's the Jaguar episode, the Party City episode, and the Southwest episode are three to revisit because you can put these back in context from what we talked about initially.

And I appreciate this because from a, you know, from a marketing perspective, of course you get into financial modeling and projections and balance sheets and all those things. And sometimes you want to be shielded from it. You want to have a creative process and you want to say, don't tell me the numbers. It's going to distract and it's going to pull us off course. And we're going to wind up watering down what we set out to do. So don't tell me what, you know, we'll celebrate someday, but don't tell me the implications right now.

So it really helps to bring this, you know, this side of the equation into the table. I like it a lot. I think, you know, of course I'm biased. I'm really, you know, I came in and for season two And I've just, I think the thing that separates us is exactly, Lucas, what you've been able to pull out, right? Is that we talk about the challenges. We talk about the issue, but our focus is on the solutions, right?

And they are real. They're tangible. And you just show they're quantifiable. Right. So, I mean, that is just so amazing to see, you know, definitely for our listeners, you know, if I was thinking about this the other day that, you know, sometimes when you're thinking about maybe you're, engaging, you know, and we all, of course, are out there working with clients and in different spaces. I would actually think about this podcast almost as like an intro session. You could pick up any one of our episodes and, you know, listen to our approach, listen to some of our recommendations.

And again, you can see that there's actually a real value here to what we're suggesting. So, you know, again, I've got a little bit of bias there because, you know, we're this panel of fixers, but, you know, Lucas, you really have helped to kind of bring this home and, like, put a rubber stamp on how I've been thinking about it in the short time that I've been here that, like, this is, this is real, right? Like, we're not just sitting around kind of dreaming about this. This is stuff that we do every day in their real world solution. So thank you again. This was, this was excellent to see. Yes, totally agree. And I also want to thank Aaron, because I think Aaron, one of the one of the hallmarks of this podcast has been really focusing on a company. or brand. Because there are times, there are lots of hot topics out there that we could, we could cover. But I don't think people are as interested in hearing just our opinions and hearing us just talk about something in general. And when you actually talk about a specific company, like a party city, like American ALE, like Starbucks, you know, that really kind of is much more specific in what the fixes could look like.

And I think it's really, to me, that's the feedback I've received from listeners and the audience has been they've really enjoyed it being something that's more tangible than just commentary, which all of us have a lot of that too. We could do that too if we want. Yeah. No, thanks, Melissa. Yeah, we all have opinions and strong ones sometimes, right? But grounding it around a company, at least as a jumping off point, gets us talking and thinking. about, you know, not we're, of course, going to fix the company we set out to fix or the situation, but we get into other, you know, pretty weighty topics along the way, too.

Yeah. Yep. Yep. Thank you. Yeah. No, thank you. All right. Well, that's going to do it for a very valuable episode of We Fix It. You're welcome. Lucas, great to see you again. And I always appreciate how generous you are in sharing your financial tips and insights online. And you actually make sense out of complicated principles, which is something we try to do here too. If our listeners want to keep up with you, how do they find you? So the best place to find me is active on LinkedIn, so you can search Lucas Sundell out on LinkedIn, posting content about accounting and finance articles, news updates, those type of things. So for me, this is a lot of fun. I geek out of numbers. So this is like fun diving into your episodes and really trying to extrapolate the potential savings

and whatnot. Fantastic. Thank you. much. Melissa, Kedera, it's good to know what our fixes could actually be worth. I'm going to go cash some hypothetical checks. How about you? To our listeners, our fixaholics, as always, thanks for listening. And we'll see you next time. We hope you enjoyed this episode of We Fixed It. You're welcome. We go into every episode somewhat cold, and nothing we say should be construed as legal advice, financial advice, or anything that would get us in trouble. All trademarks, IP, and brand elements remain property of their respective owners.