Mike AndesFounder, Augusta Lawn Care and Homeworks · Founder of Homeworks and Augusta Lawn Care

90 Day Secret to Keep Customers for YEARS!

30 Jul 2026 · 1 min

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In this segment of his YouTube talk, Mike Andes explains that the biggest retention challenge for recurring‑revenue businesses is early churn. He notes that about 10% of customers leave each month during the first 90 days, which compounds to roughly 29% loss in that period. After the 90‑day mark, churn drops dramatically to 1‑2% per month, indicating that the long‑term retention problem is often minimal. Andes advises entrepreneurs to treat churn in two distinct buckets—early (first 90 days) and post‑90‑day (annual or monthly) churn—because keeping a customer past the 90‑day threshold is a strong predictor of multi‑year loyalty across gyms, franchises, software, and other subscription models.

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That's about 10% churn each month. What happened after the first 90 days? Well, our churn went to about 1 to 2% per month. Meaning, in the first 90 days, we would lose 29%, almost a third of customers left. But then after that, hardly anyone left. So it wasn't really necessarily a long-term retention problem. It was the fact that in just the first 90 days, something bad was happening. And I encourage you, if you have a recurring revenue model, to think about your churn separately in terms of annually and then your first 90 days. A lot of us know our annual churn or even monthly churn, but your first 90 days, in almost every business I've ever started that has recurring revenue at all, it's just almost always been that if I can keep them 90 days, I will keep them for years. A gym, a franchise, software, anything that I've owned, if I am able to keep them past 90 days, they stay a long time.