Becoming Mike Andes | Full Interview

So your list of accomplishments. I have probably not an entire list here, but what I do know of my research of you is that you've developed an app for Apple, you have a workout series called 30X, you've invented a protein machine. You have at least two podcasts. Owner of Augusta Lawn Care Services. Owner of Anytime Fitness Franchise. Built a recording studio, assisted in an orphanage. Founder of Ketosis cup, written two books with one in the making. Founder of Landscape business Force. And the next big push is franchise. Unless. Did I obviously miss something that comes to mind?

Sounds good.

In the lawn care and small business space, you're already well known for your YouTube channel and podcast. I'd like to share with our listeners and viewers your timeline till now and delve into some of your past, where you are today, and your entrepreneurial journey. At a very young age, you almost didn't have a life. Can you tell us about the pool episode when you were young?

So we used to live. Our family used to live in Arizona. So my father is a minister and we lived in Arizona for three years. He was assistant pastor at a church. And in Arizona, obviously it's super hot. And so we had a backyard pool. So there was one day that my mom and I were in the pool, she was talking to my brother who was out in the lawn area of the backyard, and she was directing him to put away the different pool toys and things that were laying out on the lawn. And I was sitting up on one of these like floaty, floatable mats of the pool. And so she turned around to talk to him and next thing she did was look down and saw me at the bottom of the pool and not breathing, unconscious. And so she basically pulled me out of the pool and began screaming and getting my brother to go call the ambulance. And so long story short, I was able to. I was unconscious, I was all purple and not breathing. And by God's grace, I was able to come through that. Not too many went to the hospital and things, but nothing too major. Probably some brain damage, I'm sure.

But you mentioned that was in Arizona. Have you lived in Washington whole life or when did you come here?

Yeah, we moved here when I was 4 years old in year 2000 and lived in Washington state ever since then.

You see me on for having accomplished so much. How old are you?

I'm 23 years old, almost 24. I'll be 24 in September.

And when did your entrepreneurial journey begin?

I don't know if there's necessarily a beginning part to an entrepreneur. I believe it is something that someone's born into. However, when I was 11 years old, we started Andy's Lawn Care in order to fund our way through college, my brother and I. And so that was I guess when we first started making money. But even throughout that time before then, I would, you know, put wax snowboards for the local market. I would sell snacks and sandwiches to golf course people because we lived on a golf course, the golfers. So always just trying to make a buck and kind of that was in my blood DNA from the beginning.

Did you come from an entrepreneurial or privileged family that gave you connections and opportunities that maybe others wouldn't have had?

Not necessarily entrepreneurial. I would say that my family though, and my parents, the way that they were, whether it be the way they dealt with finances or just raising me in general, probably made me into who I am today. And so I take, try to take all, all the good things from that and learn from their mistakes and then just try to become better.

I heard you were a golfer. That's a costly sport. How did you get into that and fund it?

So I got into golf because we live next to a golf course, a little nine. It was a nine hole golf course, par three in Birch Bay. And I started playing every single day. And I started doing that when I was homeschooled for one year. And so during that year of being homeschooled I trained for a half marathon and, and I played golf every single day. I got into that when I was 11, 12 years old and started playing a lot and it was super cheap because it was like $5 to play. And then we have two really, really nice golf courses locally that had a membership for juniors that was only 50 bucks a month unlimited golf. So I would play every single day. And we never lived more than a couple miles from the golf course. So I would always go there and play usually four to eight hours a day. When I was younger, did you play.

Competitively or go to state or just locally?

I played high school golf for three or four years and then when I went to college I was basically had to decide between playing golf and getting a scholarship for that or doing pre med. And so that's when I proverbial hung up my snow my golfing cleats and put my clubs away and really haven't played much since then.

I understand you what to call College at 13 years of age. What does your educational path reflect to even make that possible? Did you fund your own schooling and how was it being in school with fellow students and Adults as well in your class when you're practically in puberty, learning about puberty and the human body in your medical school.

Yeah. So I was three years old when my brother was five. And at that time we were still in Arizona. And so he was basically kindergarten doing homeschool. And so because he was my older brother and we did everything together, I basically just sat there and listened while he learned his ABCs, began to read, learned how to write in cursive and things like that. And my mom was a great teacher. And so I would just sit there while he was learning and by osmosis, kind of get a lot of the information. And so then we moved up to Washington state when I was four years old and my brother went to grade one and. And of course I had done everything with my brother and was not about to stay home by myself, so I asked if I could go to school with my brother. And so they allowed me at four years old to go to kindergarten, to be in the same class with my brother because we went to a private school, K and 1 was together. And so I did kindergarten once and then I was 4 years old and I was really short, really small guy, so I finished kindergarten. And then my mom was like, you know what? You're a year ahead. We're gonna keep you back one year so that you're with your actual age group. And so we were up in Canada at this private school where they start kindergarten at age 5. And so my mom held me back one year in order for me to be with my age group and not be a year ahead. And so I did kindergarten again. So kind of almost like a third time, I did kindergarten and then I skipped grade 7, I did grade 9 and 10 in one year and. And I did grade 11 and 12 while I finished my first and second year of college at a community college locally. And in terms of being at college as a young person, it never really entered my mind a whole lot. I didn't think about it a whole lot. My parents definitely get credit for not making a big deal of it at all. It was never weird. We didn't talk about the weirdness of me being 13 and going to college with 20 and 30 year olds. It wasn't something we talked about. So to their credit, it was. It never was super awkward. Looking back at it, definitely there was instances that were pretty strange and funny stories, but in the moment during that time, I didn't feel weird, awkward, different really. And obviously people at school always were amazed. Professors were amazed. Some of them discouraged me from doing what I was doing. Some people really supported it. I still remember my first teacher at Western Washington University pulling me aside and telling me that I should not be doing it because it was going to rob me of my childhood or whatever. And there was never any point in my education that my parents pushed me or I felt pushed to do it by someone else or some external force. It was always something inside of me. I knew I wanted to go become a medical physician, and so it was going to take a long time, a lot of school, and I wanted to get that part of my. My journey done as soon as possible. So going to college at 13 would have set me up to be a doctor by about now. And obviously that didn't materialize, but my goals were set on making that possible as soon as possible.

Did you have an opportunity to work in our structured medical system locally? Did you get to shadow any doctors?

Yeah. So I went to Africa for six weeks and volunteered there, and that was really awesome. However, when I came back to the US medical system, it was lot different. Over in Africa, they study for six years, they become a physician, and then they really can do so many different avenues and different specialties, everything from surgery to birthing to burn unit. Like, there's so many different opportunities from general physicians, and you're just dealing with so many different cases. Whereas over in the US you choose your specialty. It takes quite a bit longer to become educated in that specialty after residency and fellowships, etc. And once you're in that specialty, you're kind of dedicated the rest of your life to that specialty. And so it's not like you can jump from spinal surgery and the next thing you're doing foot surgery and then you want to work on the heart. Like, you can't do that. And so that entrepreneurial thing inside of me was like, I couldn't be stuck in this forever. And secondarily, being in the US medical system and seeing the paperwork, the insurance, and the bureaucracy and politics around medicine really turned me off from wanting to dedicate the rest of my life to it.

Obviously your focus has moved to business and not the medical profession. Was the Africa trip the circumstances or event that caused the dynamic switch?

No, like after the Africa trip, I'd say that was the height of me wanting to become a medical physician in Africa. I was able to do so much from. From surgery to we worked in the burn unit with the kids quite a bit in the birthing room. Just so many different things we were able to do. So I came back from Africa absolutely geared up to become a physician and just more passionate than ever about the human body and helping other people in there. From a health standpoint, however, coming back to the medical system here, seeing the amount of years of education that it would require, and then the years of dedicating my life and my career to that thing, and as well as just the politics, the paperwork, and I really had a hard time mixing business with the health side of things. And whether it be from the pharmaceutical companies to the insurance bureaucracy, like, I just couldn't handle it. And so, yeah, seeing the hardship there.

That you experienced and all the surgeries, and I know there was a lot of details to that. Have there been moments in the day to day when people around you complain about things that don't matter in the grand scheme of things? Something that changed you there that you have a hard time dealing with that kind of thing here in America?

Yeah, like, definitely going there as an 18 year old changed my life. And it's easy. Even almost six years ago that I went there for six weeks and volunteered in the orphanages and the hospitals and the clinics and stuff. And so it changed my life to see two things. Number one, it really set a framework for what happiness really is all about. To see orphans that were abandoned or tried, were basically their parents tried to kill them and now were orphans, had nothing going for them in life, but yet could live a very happy, content, fulfilled life without material goods. Really set a framework for my ideology of what it means to be happy, what it means to be fulfilled, what it means to be successful. And so it really adjusted that and kind of said, okay, like, you do not need things to make you happy, yet you can live a fulfilled life with people and the things that you build and things that you create. And so that was probably something I took away from it. And in terms of dealing with other individuals, there's times that perhaps I see other individuals who are, quote, unquote soft because of our American society. And they don't wake up wondering where their next meal is coming from or how they're gonna get to work, or they don't know. They know their parents. And it just everything's been given to them. We've never really seen war in the past while here on American soil. And so to see. To go from that African where I was at just outside Nairobi in Kalangbari to Goni and some of these villages where it was just lots of crime and things like that, and see these kids, see these people that are happy and don't have Anything and struggling in life. And then to come back to the United States and see people that have plenty of food, plenty of clothes, a great family structure, they have a job, and yet they cry over, you know, their latte being too hot or something so insignificant to their life is mind boggling sometimes. But yeah, I don't, I don't judge them because they've never seen that other side. I feel like it. They've never seen what it's like. And I can see where they come from and I see what our society and culture is starting to breed in. Young people. Even of my age, you have not.

Publicly shared much about the orphanage you visited, the operator and children there, as much as you're comfortable or willing to share. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Yeah. So there was a couple orphanages that I visited in Africa around the Nairobi area. The one that I got closest to there was a lady by the name of Margaret. And she had 73 children ranging from ages 6 months to, to 18 years of age. And they lived in a three bedroom house. And so we were able to improve their living conditions and get them a better place to expand because basically every square foot of that facility at night was sleeping quarters. And then when meals came, every single square foot of that facility was eating quarters. And then when school time came around, she didn't just feed them and clothe them, she also taught them all from kindergarten all the way through high school and then would set them up to become in the trades. So while I was there, we were able to set up a program for them to, for the guys to learn welding skills. And so we got them some welding equipment so that they could learn that while they were from ages 14 to 18 and so they could come out of the, out of high school with a really good trade that they could at least move to the city and begin to make a living. And then we also got them set up with chicken coop with about 400 chickens so that they could consistently at least have eggs to sell at the market and thereby have a fairly dependable source of income for buying food. Because when we came into the situation there, literally every single day they prayed in the morning that lunch would come and they didn't know if it was coming from a volunteer or someone was going to drop something off or there was going to be a cross car breakdown with mangoes out on the road. And so giving them a supply of revenue was really important to me. And so we set up a chicken coop and we're trying to try to make it more sustainable for them.

And then when you built the orphanage for them, did that give them bathrooms and just more space and for a healthier lifestyle for them?

It was more about the space, the more space. Where they originally had the orphanage, it wasn't a safe situation. With Margaret's ex husband close by had been pretty bad. He had.

Had domestic violence issues with the girls that were friends there and things, and it was too close to where he lived. And so it was important for us to get them away from there as well as give them more space. She couldn't handle more than 75 kids. However, for there not to be health issues. They really need more space in terms of living quarters and in terms of bathrooms and things. No, it was more about just creating more space for them. They still have a well, and it's still very archaic, the amenities there.

Have you kept in contact with Margaret or any of the children since then and followed their path?

Yeah, I try to stay in contact with them at least every few months. They send me pictures occasionally, but it's pretty bad Internet where they're at. So now the picture is usually just text. So we just stay in touch and make sure they're doing well. And I haven't gone back since that original visit.

You've done quite a bit of traveling. Do you have relatives that you visit abroad or travel for business or do you receive invites for speaking engagements? What would be the reason for traveling?

Yeah, so right now, most of my traveling is around Zero Turn, which is the series we're creating. It's the same name as the book that I wrote for landscapers. But Zero Turn, the video series, is basically, I come in and for a couple days try to help a landscaping company turn their business around, become more profitable, get them to the next level, have a more scalable system in place. And so we started that last year. We did two companies, one in Mississippi, one in Texas. And we're looking to do seven companies this year going forward each season. We'll just continue with that. And then I'm speaking at gie, so again, mostly around the landscaping industry. Currently, in terms of speaking and traveling.

Augusta Lawn Care Services, that is your company. Tell us about Augusta, how it began, evolved, and brought us to where you are today.

Yeah, so five years ago, I finished college and I finished my bachelor's degree and I made the decision not to continue in medical school. So I had my applications ready for medical school and everything. At the same time I came back from Africa. I decided to cancel those and go into business and So I had been mowing lawn since I was 11 years old, and that's kind of how I paid my way through college. And so from 11 years old till 18, I was still mowing lawns with my brother on the weekends, evenings, holidays, things like that. And so when I decided not to go to medical school, I was like, you know what? I'm going to go for this lawn care thing and make it bigger. And so I decided to branch off from my brother, and I started Augusta Lawn Care Services. And at that same time, I also started Business Bootcamp Podcast to kind of document the journey. And. And then at that same time, I also started my MBA classes in the evening as I was starting Augusta Lawn Care.

And did you finish the MBA program, or was it something that you felt like was a worthless endeavor?

So for the first year, I did really well in the program. I learned a lot, got to know the people really well. The second year started off well, but it was also really tough for me to get to class on time. So it would start at 6pm and then go till 10pm So a lot of my learning in business came from those times in business school, but not so much from the classes, as much as every minute of my day was centered around business. So I would. At that time, I was just starting Augusta Long Hair, so I was still out in the field working most of the time. And so what would happen is I would wake up early and I would go work for 10, 12 hours. And during that whole time, I'm listening to audio, audio audiobooks about business and marketing and sales and branding and all those things. And then I would switch right out, go drive down to Bellingham. I'd go to classes from 6pm Till 10pm Learning again. Business, marketing, sales, management, people, blah, blah, blah. And then after that, I'd stay there for a couple more hours doing homework and projects with my classmates, and I get home at 1 or 2 and do the whole thing over. So I did that for almost two years.

Towards the end of the second year in the MBA program, and it was the spring of our second year in business. And so that's when I started to get. Employees started to grow, and it started becoming really difficult for me to get to class. And I started skipping classes and I'd be at class and I just was completely checked out because I was trying to catch up on estimating and billing and things like that. So I stopped about two classes short of finishing my mba. I do not have an mba. I can't put it behind my name. But I wasn't about to finish the third level of accounting that I started to feel was not significant to my business and that I was never going to be employed in a position where someone was like, do you have an mba? And so I figured it was better for me to go and spend that time building the business and not spend another $30,000 on my degree.

Was it valuable to you to develop a brick and mortar model and be in the constant minutia of the day to day so you could build systems and processes to start a landscape business course that would eventually lead to franchising or was none of that in the radar and the vision just has evolved over time?

Yeah, I never, never like had a grand plan from the time of 18, like when I, when I decided not to go to medical school, there was no plan of franchising Augusta or building a course or having podcasts. I knew that I love business, that making money was something that was super interesting to me. And so starting Augusta was just very organic, small as it began to go year two, year three and business Bootcamp podcast began to grow and I started to have a voice and an audience there. I started doing consulting for other businesses and I began to realize that I had this knack for kind of identifying some major flaws in a business pretty quickly based upon their P and L and then just talking about to the owner. And so that's when I decided to start landscape business course. And that was really propelled by when I got hurt in August of 2016 and really decided and it came to my aware, I was aware that a business needs systems and procedures to run so that if something does happen to the owner, like they get hit by a bus or whatever happens, they get sick or they have to go away for some emergency and the business continues to run with or without the owner. And and so that's when I decided to start landscaping business course and focus more on the landscaping industry and narrow in on that and that since then we've created the course, had the conference, the video series, books, etc. That we've created for landscapers that are starting their business. And now Augusta is actually developing the franchise.

So you must have documented everything. You did really well during those first several years to give you the basis of your material to create the correct content.

Yeah. So at the beginning of year two, year three, I wouldn't say it was the, you know, a well oiled machine Augusta. It still is a learning process. However, it's an industry that's very, very lots of moving pieces, lots of very, very dynamic. There's, there was, it's very, lots of fluid. You deal with people, whether it be the customers, what and with their expectations that are fluid, the employees and their levels, that of work ethic and things that are fluid as well. And, and so there's lots of different variables and it makes it very difficult to create systems and procedures. And so getting Anytime Fitness as a franchise was a good wake up call also to see systems and procedures that made things very, very step by step or very categorical and this is what you should be doing. And creating systems around everything that's done was something that I had never seen before. And a lot of that I was able to implement with Augusta Lawn Care. And that's what we're using for the frame franchise.

Tell me about Landscape Business course. When did that begin and why?

Yeah, so I started Landscape Business course in October of 2018 as just a podcast. And that was a few months after I got hurt and got injured and was basically two weeks out of the business. And so making a business where if something like that happens to a business owner and the business can still continue to thrive, grow and succeed is really important. And, and so otherwise you just own a job. And so coming to that realization, I started the podcast. That podcast began to pick up steam and then By January of 2017, we had the course online that people could basically see the systematic way over the course of the first three years of Augusta, how I built the business, exactly what I did. And I never said it was the right way to do things, but it was what I did step by step. Everything from the type of truck that I use, the type of software that I use, the type, the type of uniforms, the type of business cards, the type of marketing and the steps and how much I used and spent on each of those things. And so it was kind of like a step by step guide, if you will, for someone that wanted to start a business and go from zero to $100,000 in revenue in each month in just three years. And so that's what we had built done at Augusta. And so the framework of the course was basically this is how I did it step by step. This is not the right way to do it, or like the best way necessarily, every single point. But this is how it happened. This is exactly what I spent and did along the way.

This is July 2019. So what has the landscape business course morphed into today? Do you have subscribers and students that stay in constant contact with you that you need to interact with on a Day to day basis.

Yeah. So I get a lot of emails and contacts from landscapers around the country and around the world really. And so I try to help as many as I possibly can. And landscape business course really came about to it in that people started asking questions that were really personal that I couldn't share publicly on the podcast and videos. So I needed to have some way of a gatekeeper and that was basically a payment gateway for me to know their information, know who was coming in. So that was also a piece of why I started the course.

But in terms of what's morphed into now, there's several hundred courses members and that grows on a daily basis. And then the franchising is really what I'm focused on now because I can have more control over the branding aspect. And our goal is to change the whole industry. And really I feel the best way to do that is have a company in a marketplace and really displace the other competitors that are low balling on their estimates, that aren't treating customers correctly, that don't treat their employees correctly, that don't worry about team culture. And really the best way I feel to change the whole industry is market by market, franchisee by franchisee, county by county, completely displacing the traditional stereotypical landscaper that is not professional, that doesn't make money and goes out of business in a few years.

Tell me about your podcast. How many do you have, how many episodes to date and what inspired you to start podcasting?

Yeah, there's about 500 podcasts, 500 episodes total. And business bootcamp podcast started five years ago. Landscape business course started two and a half years ago. Barbells in Business is a much smaller podcast that only has about 10 episodes. And it's around what I've learned at the gym, and it's for gym owners. And so what I've learned about podcasting is that something I was really passionate about because number one, I didn't have to set up a big studio, I didn't have to do a bunch of things in terms of production. And. And so it started off really easy. Cause I just had a USB microphone plugged in the computer and just talked. And so that was really nice. And then as it's grown and evolved, obviously we've created a recording studio and we have a lot more video content. But starting out is so easy because you don't need to dress up, you can be in your pajamas, still record a podcast and share your thoughts.

What is the genre, format and focus of your podcast? Is it mostly landscaping or does your other one focus on all the.

Yeah. Business Bootcamp Podcast focuses on all industries and business more in general. From a leadership standpoint. Marketing perspective. Small businesses is really what it's all about. So Business Bootcamp Podcast has really grown out of the idea that business owners write into the show, ask me questions, and then I address them on the podcast. And when I first started Business Bootcamp Podcast, I thought it'd be more of an interview show. So the first, like 30 or 40 episodes where I'm actually interviewing people. And then I realized that I didn't enjoy that as much. And at the time, I wasn't making money on Business Bootcamp Podcast. So I was like, you know, I'm just gonna change it. Cause I'm not passionate about interviewing people. I'd rather just use this as a way to talk about what I'm going through. Chronolog, like kind of document the journey and then also be able to research things I'm interested in and help other people. So I started just doing the show myself. I literally set up the microphone and just talk about what I'm going through, what I'm learning and things like that. And then as sponsors came on, I just told them, I'm gonna do whatever I wanna do. And if you wanna sponsor that, cool. But there was no format I really stuck to rigidly. And I'm sure it'll change in the future after 500 more episodes.

So you've done this for five years, and that's a lot of content and time that you put out free. How long did it take for sponsors to recognize you that you brought enough value to the public audience to start offering you sponsorships?

Yeah. So there's a couple ways you can monetize something like a podcast. At the end of the day, you're monetizing your audience. So whether that be a YouTube channel, a blog, whatever you're doing, you can monetize them in different ways. One way is to monetize the attention and have advertisers. And that's what started happening with the sponsorships. You can also, though, create products around your audience that they are going to buy into. So what originally happened is people from Business Bootcamp Podcast would write in, they'd have a question, I would answer and then say, look, we really, we implemented that, it worked great. But we'd like to buy and pay you to spend a couple hours with our management team or our sales team or with our crew or whatever, and do some live video and start doing a Lot of Skype and things like that to help them. So that's how it started and, and started making money and getting money from that. And it was always like, I never marketed those services. It was kind of like ad hoc. They would contact me and be like, hey, that really helped. Or this topic you're talking about, the podcast. And they'd offer me a couple thousand dollars or whatever it was for certain things they wanted. And so that became like a lot. Doing that at night, a lot of times recording it for them so they could. Or if they're on the east coast, I could do it in the morning. And so that's what it kind of started as. And then I had the first couple sponsors come to me and ask about getting a spot on the show in terms of me talking about their products or services. And I still don't make as much money from sponsorships as I did from doing more the consulting gig. But again, I just wasn't super passionate about doing one off consulting gigs and doing a few calls with them. I like really the ones that I built relationships with and was like long term. And so I decided I was not gonna focus and not take so much consulting. It wasn't as scalable, like focusing on that one company and that was great. I'd make money from them, but it was never scalable. So that's actually also what segued me into landscape business courses like, hey, there's a product now. So I went from doing kind of like doing a product of consulting to sponsorships, and then it switched to more of the product of landscape business course that they could buy. And that's sort of how it morphed.

Business Boot Camp podcast used to have live calls with business owners seeking to start, grow and save their businesses. What did you do when they called and asked live about topics you knew nothing about?

So first of all, like, I haven't done that for a while simply because of time restraints. I don't usually have time during the day to actually set up a call. It takes time to like set up the call when you're gonna call them, make sure they have good audio on their phone. Like there was a lot of setup. And then you actually. I have to be at a certain place at a certain time to record. And so it's something obviously I'd love to do in the future a lot more, especially for landscapers and with the franchisees, definitely. However, if they ever, if they ever asked me a question, I didn't know usually it was around. They're like industry Specific questions, like if they're in the restaurant business, there are just some things that unless you're a restaurateur, you're never going to know those things. And so I would just be honest and say, look, I don't know that. And I'm gonna give maybe my opinion based upon all these other industries. Cause so many applications of business are universal. However, I would usually give just like a phrase, the small print, saying, I've never actually done this.

So there's certain business principles that work all across the board that you can help all of those businesses in a simple generic way.

Yeah, I think for small businesses, especially the dynamics of a small organization and marketing on a small demographic locally, there's so many different things that a business owner is juggling, but many of them are universal in the struggles that they face from one industry to the other.

What has some of the feedback been from some of the podcast listeners? How you brought benefit or change to their lives?

Yeah, so it's been everything from farmers to naturopaths to chiropractors to dentists, just a massive variety of industries and people that have talked to me on the Business Bootcamp podcast, Landscape Business course podcast. It's been a wide variety of people just starting out, not knowing what type of truck to buy, not knowing how to name their business, not knowing the URL that they should be getting all the way to. Probably the biggest company I've worked with, the did about 80 million in revenue and they were struggling with sales. But that amount of information, it was huge for me too.

I was able to learn so much about so many different industries I would never known without the podcast. Never had contact with these people, never had the interaction, never been able to really do the franchise because I wouldn't have been able to get information from hundreds of landscapers around the entire country and know what city certain demographics need, what certain demographics don't need, and then try to create a model that's going to work for the whole country. When there's so many different climates and demographics and economies within the nation, the size of the US So it was really important for me to do what I've done for the past five years just to get information and data.

For small business owners, it can be a real stressful time to start growing, build their businesses directly, impacting them emotionally and their families. Are there any stories you can share about how you personally impacted someone on that side as you were trying to help them with their business?

I think a small business owner is a very special person. It Takes a lot of fortitude, takes a lot of grit and things like that. And the thing about me having a small business is there is no second option. Like if that business fails, usually it means that you're going to bankruptcy and usually it means that your kids aren't their college funds going away, usually it means you're not going to have retirement. So like all chips are on the table when it comes to a small business many times. And so because of that, the emotions and everything, every fiber of that individual's being and their livelihood is tied to that business. And so when that business is struggling or there's issues happening within that business, it's affecting their entire life. I don't care if you talk about work life balance, like separating the two and all that stuff. If you're a small business owner and your livelihood is tied to that business and you're there 12 hours a day, six days a week, your entire emotional, physical, financial, spiritual connection to this business is completely different than an employee. And so when you're able to help someone's business, you're really changing their life. And when you change the business owner's life in a small business, they have a really deep connection with their employees and you begin to have a trickle down effect where it affects the employees and their families and you can really begin to do a lot of good. And so I feel like the core and the roots of our country and definitely our economy is small business. And that's really why I'm so passionate about the small business, owner, group and community and trying to help them.

You're very busy with lot going on. Why in the world would you move into a completely different style of business and buy an Anytime fitness franchise?

Yeah, so in last year there was a Anytime Fitness franchise that I had worked for as a part time trainer back when I was like 16, 17, 18, I worked there part time as a trainer. And basically last year, 2018, the business came up for sale. And so I thought for the past couple years I've known that we're going to franchise Augusta. And I knew that in order for me to do that really effectively and start off on a really strong foot, I wanted to get some more experience being a franchisee of a franchisor that was super successful. So in 2016, Anytime Fitness was ranked the number one franchise in America by Entrepreneur Magazine. And so they have over 4,500 locations worldwide. They've just done really, really well. And so I figured, hey, if I can buy into this system, make money from the gym, but Also more importantly, learn how a franchisor interacts with their franchisees, what the franchisees expect from the franchisor, the clashes between the two, and then try to try to fix those things and address those things. See how they trained me as a franchisee, what support I should expect as a franchisee, and so many different things. That's what I was really buying the gym for, was to learn those things and then implement them. And when we franchise Augusta here next.

Month, are the two businesses in the same county or city or in the same vicinity so that you can have employees, the resource of employees, to cross over and help between the two business, or do you not mix them at all?

From a financial standpoint, we don't mix anything. But Anytime fitness is about 20 minute drive from Augusta's main shop office. And so sometimes the office staff, I will move back and forth if needs be.

So as part of your purchasing decision. Also with the added benefit that when the club is busy in the winter, does that balance out funds for your lawn care portion of the business when it's slower?

Yeah. So in the gym world, their busiest season is the winter, especially around January after New Year's resolutions and everything. Whereas with lawn care in our area, it slows down during December, January and February. And. And so it was a nice way to be able to keep revenue and cash flow more even by having the gym doing really well during those winter months versus the summer months when the landscaping business does a lot better.

Your next big push and adventure is franchising. But first, when you think, most of us think of a franchise, we think of McDonald's, Dairy Queen, Jiffy Lube. What was your vision for the landscape industry across the board as a whole, that you felt like they needed something like this?

The main reason was I felt like a franchise in this industry was needed. There was several different competitors, including the grounds guys, us Lawns and some others. However, they charged a royalty, a percentage per month, that of revenue that went to the franchisor. And so the big difference with Augusta was, was that it was a set fee per month. Just like Anytime Fitness, Jimmy John's becoming more and more popular with new franchises to charge a set fee, thereby not penalizing the franchisee to grow. So instead of charging a 10% royalty with a marketing fee and all this other stuff on gross revenue, we charge a flat fee. So if someone's doing $100,000 a month, or if they're doing $10,000 a month, they're gonna get the same, same dollar fee per month every Month and there's no added fees.

So what would your franchise model look like?

Yeah, so the franchise model can be really dictated by the financial investment up front by the franchisee. So if someone's wanting to just get started, they need, you know, $40,000 and get started. But that's going to get them one truck, one set up for mowing. Whereas if they're wanting to start with employees, right off the bat, they're going to invest more. They, they're going to get several trucks there might get an office person and be able to kind of hit the ground running, spend more on marketing to get those initial customers right off the bat.

How do you systematize something as fluid as lawn care and landscaping?

Yeah, so trying to cut down on overhead is really important.

And usually in the landscaping industry we really fall. Most landscapers fall in love with equipment and trucks and kind of the glitz and the glam around the industry. And so they'll buy too much equipment, they'll buy too big of trucks, they'll buy too many trailers, they'll get too big of a shop. And so we really scale back and look at what's actually needed to get started. And it's literally a truck, a mower, a blower, a weed eater. And you don't even need a trailer. We can get racks to where you can put your trimmers and everything on the sides. The mower goes on the back tailgate and make it a really, really efficient operation for small residential customers. And as the baby boomers age and they're still congregating more and more towards cities over the next 10, 15 years, it's gonna become a really great market to get into is residential, small, small properties. And for that affluent customer that is willing to pay more for a really professional service. And so the model really is cutting away all the fluff, focusing on the few things I.e. lawn care and mowing, property cleanups and then small landscaping jobs. In order to create a model that is based on pay by performance for the employees instead of by hourly wage, thereby creating a very consistent profit margin for the business and make it very scalable. And plug and play in terms of trucks and number of trucks and when to buy the trucks, we can, we create a system for all of those things.

So if I was a person who knew myself to be a hard working, disciplined, all in type of individual, how would I know if a franchise would be right for me?

Yeah, you give up certain freedoms or rights when you become a franchisee. You're not gonna create your own logo. We give the whole back end support for your website for lead generation. We tell you exactly what to do there. There's some things you're giving up in terms of entrepreneurial freedom by becoming a franchisee. The upside of becoming a franchisee is that you cut out, you know, years of experience that it takes to make a really efficient model. And right from the get go, you can be charging more per hour because you have a great website and you have your professional and you have a great logo and branding and you have all the marketing material and you have the uniforms and you know how to train your people. And so by doing that and being able to charge, you know, $60 to $80 per hour instead of 30 to 50, you're able to make more money and that offsets the extra cost of becoming a franchisee.

So then right from the beginning, if I implemented all your systems, I would be making money right off the bat.

Yep. Pretty much.

How far reaching is your vision for the franchise? Just for the U.S. or would it.

Be for the entire U.S. yeah. So for now, the United States is our primary focus. We've already had people asking from Canada. That's the next logical step to move up north of the border. I don't see myself doing a global expansion. My goal is really to get over 500 franchisees and then pass it along to another company that's going to have the resources, the people to scale it across the world and really make it a lot larger. But I feel like if I can get to 500, it'll make a big enough impact on the industry to change the level of professionalism. And that's really my goal. So once that's accomplished, I'll probably move on to something else in the, the home services industry that's a little bit more wider encompassing than just landscaping.

If I wanted to buy a franchise from you, how would I vet you as the owner of the franchise? To have confidence in you to know that you'd stick with me through the full startup process and beyond.

Yeah. So I feel like a lot of our, probably our first 100, 200 franchisees will be people that have listed a landscape business course, that have, that are in the course that have come to the conference. They got to know me really well and so they get to know my values and what my vision is for Augusta as well as just my outlook on life in general. And so that creates a lot of trust and I feel like as a franchisee you want to have that with whoever you're going to business with. But if you're actually going to buy into a brand, you better know that the person running that brand or the company running that brand, the driving force behind that brand, is for good and, and is for the good of the franchisee as well as for the general public and for the world. And so by having the podcast and the course and the conferences and the videos and the books, it's created that trust, I believe. And I just hope that I never violate that trust to where the franchisees would be like, hey, this goes against what you've always said. And so creating that consistent message is really important. And I've seen that in Anytime Fitness. I've seen that with other franchisees that they're now disgruntled because there has been a change in values, and it's changed from about changing an industry to about making money, or it's gone from creating great small businesses to generating profit for the shareholders of a multinational business. And so staying focused on that goal singularly is really important to me as we move forward.

Entrepreneurs are movers, shakers and inventors, a different breed and are typically very intense. Those of us in relationships with them can experience frustration about the many hours they work, their endless new ideas and inability to stop. They're not understood by normies and don't seem to fit in some settings because they're constantly in driven, visionary, accomplishment mode, which is all the time. I would like to understand you as an entrepreneur on a broader spectrum. What would you say is the difference between an entrepreneur and a business owner? And are they born or made?

Yeah, so business owners, I generally find from my limited experience, just from the podcast and things like that, if you're actually gonna make a distinguish between a business owner and an entrepreneur, which a lot of times they are the self same thing. But in general, if you're actually gonna make a distinction between the two, I would say a small business owner is someone that runs the business. They've been there for 30 years, their family works in that business. They'll always be that one location, that one shop, that one website. They're never like trying to change the industry. They're not trying to grow, they're not trying to expand, they're not having multiple ventures. They're not trying to break things within the business in order to fix it. And they don't have a kind of grand scheme or a vision of what the industry, what their business could be. They're just more or less complacent or not complacent. They're satisfied and they're content with making that one shop or that one store or that one business work really well and then give it to their family and pass that along to generations. Whereas I feel an entrepreneur, they can't really stick around doing the same thing for five or 10 years. They do get itchy feet. They do want to do other things. They do want to. They're constantly trying to figure out where the business is breaking down and make it better. They're looking for the issues. They're not trying to run away from them. They're trying to figure things out. They're always trying to come up with solutions. And usually that will discourage and frustrate a lot of people around them because most people aren't built that way. And it can be lonely when you want to fix things. And yet everyone is very happy with the established way of doing things.

Do entrepreneurs have the ability to be an employee or to work for someone else?

I generally believe that a real entrepreneur can't. Like there's no option of being an employee. Like you could not go out and be an employee. Just drive you too crazy. But I feel like a lot of times what people do is someone who's not an entrepreneur. They want to become an entrepreneur because it's the cool thing to do. So what they do is they go to business school to learn how to become a business owner, how to become an entrepreneur. And it's not actually in their DNA, it's not in their blood. And so when they go out and they try to start their own business, they do fail, or it does take years for them to figure things out out. Or they have to hire on, which is not a negative thing to hire on. Entrepreneurs, they're actually be the visionaries, be the leaders, be the ones that push the limits. And so I don't know if they're. I wouldn't say entrepreneurs are necessarily born, but I do feel it is something that is innate just the same way as someone that is, you know, there's certain aspects like I'm never going to be able to become.

A professional golfer. I just can't hit the ball far enough because I'm only 5 4. And so there's physical restraints to me becoming a professional golfer the same way I feel like for some people in entrepreneurship, it is a skill and there's certain limitations that people have that will keep them from becoming the next Steve Jobs, the next Fortune 500 CEO. And that's not a bad thing. It's not to say that they're less. They probably have a skill in Some other area that they're gonna do really well at.

How do you harness that intensity or turn it off, if you will, in necessary situations, or are you just unapologetically yourself all the time?

I try to be more the second way. There's certain times in social settings, you have to turn things off, you have to focus. You have to not be trying to fix everything that's broken. That's probably my biggest fault, is trying to fix everything around me that is going wrong whenever I see it. And that is the entrepreneur inside of me. But it can drive people nuts, it can ruin relationships. And so I'm still learning how to do that. And yet at the same time, I'm becoming more and more less apologetic for the way that I am realizing that I'm going to have faults, I'm going to have things that I don't do very well at. I don't do well in certain scenarios or situations, but that I would rather focus on my strengths. And from a financial standpoint, that'll, like, win big time. But there are times you're going to have to reign that in. And I'm still learning how to do that from a social setting or from a leadership standpoint, that not all your employees or not all your friends or your family are gonna be built that way. And they're gonna hate if you are a certain way and you try to fix them and you try to look for their issues or you're trying to change them all the time. And that can frustrate people a lot.

At what age did you realize there was something different about you?

I would say probably when I was.

7 or 8, I would say I knew something was different. I never knew what it was like. My parents never, like, made me feel weird or strange or they never told me I was different or special or anything like that. But by 8 or 9, I knew that I was different. And usually it came down to school. Obviously, school is a breeding ground of the hierarchy of the social norms within a classroom. And so among your peers. And so I was always teaching my peers because I was usually ahead academically. So I was always teaching them. And so I was always in kind of growing up, Even in grade 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7, I was always teaching my peers. And so I was always leading them, trying to figure out how to make them successful in their academic, you know, world, making a test, whatever it is. And so I like that aspect of. I knew I was different. I knew I wasn't learning when I was going to school. I knew I was there to teach people and that's not usually the common denominator of a student when they're going to primary school. So I knew I was different, but I never focused on it. And still to this day, I don't say that like I'm different or anything like that. There's just certain strengths that make me in this world of business, maybe a little bit better. The same way that being 7 foot tall is going to set you up better to play in the mba. And so the skill set that I have sets me up better to be a better business owner, make more money, blah, blah, blah. But it's not necessarily making me more successful.

Is it a lonely place being an entrepreneur?

It can be, especially when things are not going well. And for an employee that gets paid the same amount, whether things are going good or bad, it's tough as an entrepreneur or business owner even to look at that and realize that you work on 100% commission. Like at the end of the day, if there's no money left over, you don't make any money. That can be hard when you have put 80 hours in and you've worked your tail off and you're actually, you're grinding, it's really hard. And you're sacrificing things from a family standpoint, you're sacrificing for an economic standpoint from your employees, and yet they don't really value that and they don't see the pain that you have to go through. And it does seem like you're very much alone, especially if you don't have a partner in the business. And it feels like all the weight of the problems and the issues and the financial problems and the supplier issues and the customer complaints and the employee internal issues, like all of that just comes down on you. And at the end of the day, that's true. And so I don't necessarily think someone should run from it. I don't necessarily think that anyone should feel bad for an entrepreneur. Like, you have the choice of going out and working at McDonald's and being an employee, or going to Bain & McKinsey or working at Banner bank or bank of America. You have options. And. And so if you're going to become an entrepreneur, you got to deal with the things, the negative, the drawbacks of becoming an entrepreneur. And many times in the growth and the beginning journey of an entrepreneur, there are those moments where everything's falling apart for you and is a lonely place because everything is your fault. As Gary Vaynerchuk would say, everything's your fault at the end of the day as a business owner, and there's just no running away from it or diverting any sort of boom lame to any other individual than.

Yourself. You are a great salesman and you connect incredibly with people in business, in your personal life, and with your family. Are you more reserved and quiet, or is that a place you can let down and have a fun, crazy.

Time? I don't know if there's necessarily one answer this, probably both. Sometimes when I'm with my family, it is me going back to when I'm 15 years old and I'm after an absolute goon and just laughing and just a kid. But then there's most of the time when I'm thinking. That's usually when I'm pretty quiet. And I'm either quiet because I'm mad or I'm thinking really deeply. And so it can be. I can be in a group of people and friends and family, but be thinking about something completely different. And I don't push against that. Like, if I wanted to be present and I wanted to be speaking and talking, engaging, I could do that. But if there's something that's more pressing that I am trying to figure out or that I'm trying to work through in my head or figure out an idea, like I might be thinking about something totally different or even thinking about an employee or what they're going through, like something else. And so sometimes when I'm around family or friends, it is like, okay, I'm here with my family. I need to disengage from that and focus on them and be more present in the moment for them. Even if I would be just okay to sit there and do absolutely no words and no interaction and just be stuck in my own head. But yeah, it can vary between the.

Two. Are there opportunities to speak that you've been offered that you turned down because you felt maybe the timing was off, or you felt your life experience did not lend itself enough experience for you to give advice. For example, to speak about an established brick and mortar business with staff, equipment, a large customer database when you hadn't had years to test your model.

Yet. Yeah, so there's been speaking gigs or things I've turned down. And mostly it's not because of inexperience. As much as I don't want my career to be built around just information, I'd rather build a really cool business that people admire and because of that, they come and ask me for information. I don't want to become the guy that writes 20 or 30 books, theorize about it, talks at school schools about business, schools about marketing and sales, or theorizes about the economy or the state of entrepreneurship. I'd much rather go build a real thing, a real business that people are like, wow, that was amazing. And they then come to me for advice or then they want to hear about what I have to say instead of just me having theories and ideas that I make up or like cliche seven steps of the four Ps, or like making these cliche things. And. And because of that, from a theoretical standpoint, I don't really want to be a student of business. I'd much rather be a practitioner of what I.

Do. You've been asked to speak at events for youth in an education and business venue, as well as settings of a religious nature. How do you separate the two as you prepare to lead and inspire other millennials in those two different.

Avenues? I don't think about it a whole lot when I'm speaking. I don't think a whole lot. Honestly, it's pretty raw, and I guess I haven't done enough in terms of years or like hundreds and hundreds of times to develop a really good cadence or expectation of what I'm going to do. But when I get on stage, it's pretty raw and.

Probably very raw, like in terms of communication style, in terms of speed of my delivery. Things like that are probably very unfinished and unrefined, which I'll probably improve on as I do it more. However, my goal is to convey passion and I'm willing to give up some refining points of my speaking or points in way I do things in order to convey passion. I truly believe that someone would rather listen to someone that is passionate than someone that is refined, has it all together, knows exactly what they're going to say. It's very bullet point kind of speaking or, or PowerPoint kind of speaking. And it's all put together, really a nice package, but there's just no passion. And I feel like someone that has 90% passion but 10% material does usually better than someone that has 90% material but just no passion whatsoever to deliver that material way that people are engaged and want to know.

More. There are others who have seen something unique about you and have offered you job and travel, offer opportunities. You've turned them all down. Why is.

That?

I think as an entrepreneur, you have to be doing something yourself and you can never handle having someone else tell you what to do. And not necessarily in the way that like you're rebellious or you don't know how to take authority from other individuals. But you want to be the one that if you fail, you fail. And you want to be the one that when you succeed, you succeed. And as an employee, a business can be a failure. But you as an employee did everything you could, and you were actually a successful employee, and you did everything you could possibly in your division or in your. In your sector or your part of the business, you might have done really well, but because you were not the head, you were not the leader, the whole company could still fall apart. Whereas with an entrepreneur like, you're either going to win or lose based on your skills and your decisions. And you can, you, if you're gonna die, you're gonna die on your own sword versus someone else. A superior, a CEO, an executive, bad decision affecting you. And so I can never be in the position where I'm vulnerable to someone else's poor decision or poor leadership that somehow derails my goals and my ambitions. So I've created my own vehicle that gets me to the those.

Places. So then the opportunities to be on local boards and committees or for travel would be more that you would be taking time away from the business that you need to be focused.

On.

Yeah. A couple years ago, you were contacted by Shark Tank to audition for the show. You didn't know who even nominated you. How does that process work? How many times have you auditioned and what would your ask be if you made it to the.

Show? Yeah, so we've applied now three times. Every spring we try to get on. We've made to the final round two out of the three times, and we'll continue to keep applying. And really it's because of the exposure that it would give us for the franchising of Augusta. And so originally I always said that I wouldn't franchise Augusta until we got in the Shark Tank. However, because of the landscape business course popularity, this year, even though we didn't get on Shark Tank, I decided to go ahead and launch the franchise. And so my ask this year was gonna be, I think, $200,000 for 10%. And I was willing to do that because we had no franchisees. Next year, if we have 15 or 20, that valuation will probably triple. And so each year we go back, I'll be applying to do it for the exposure. And also it's just a great learning experience, but the exposure for the brand and then also to get, you know, obviously a partner that has done franchising would be really interesting to be able to know some of the roadblocks once you hit, you know, dozens, hundreds of franchisees and be able to know a lot more than.

Myself. So with or without them, you just keep moving forward towards your goals. So. So knowing them and working with them would just be for experience and then exposure for your. Your.

Brand.

Yeah. You have written two books, and there's one in the making. What was your ideas behind them? Can you tell us a little bit about them and where can we get.

Them? Yeah, so both of them you can get on Amazon, but Millennial Millionaire, the Young Entrepreneur's Guide to Breaking out of the Middle Class was really about the middle class, how it was formed, the ideologies that keep people in the middle class in terms of being average, sticking the status quo, going for the median instead of the exterior, going instead of going to the outside edges, and playing it safe. And so how millennials, in order to become wealthy or successful, and whether it be their career or in business or in money, in order to do that, they have to break out the mentality that got their parents to that middle class spot. And a lot of times it's more of an issue of their thought process and their mentality instead of, like, physically being in the middle class from an economic, socioeconomic status standpoint. And so that was really the basis of it breaking out of that. From talking about education, is it really worth going to college? Is the value of going to college diminishing? Is the value of buying a house diminishing? Is the value of owning a career and being in that career for 40 years diminishing? And so that was the first book, wrote that a few years ago. It was published the same day that I got injured underneath a dump truck. So August 4, 2016, is the same day the book got published. And then last year, I wrote Zero Turn how to Start a Successful Lawn Care Business. And that is basically a story of a fictional character. That's partly true. We used some characters from our local area of Larry's Lawn Care, who basically, he takes his business model, it feels it's failing. He's running it very much according to the stereotypical aspects of a lawn care business and unprofessional. No systems under the table, paying employees, things like that. And basically over the course of the book, he changes his business model. He becomes Augusta Lawn Care Services. He implements systems, he has procedures, he treats his people well, he holds people accountable and turns his life around. And so that's really the two.

Books. And there's a book that you're currently working on called Local Leaders. Can you Tell us a little bit about.

That. Yeah. So Local Leaders is really an effort to actually be more of a content platform for Augusta locally. So for the local shop that we have here, you know, obviously we could create, you know, ads and things like that and pay for them on Facebook or Google or print media. But what I've decided to do is create content that we can then share with our local market. So what we're doing is we're creating a book that basically is interviewing local entrepreneurs and leaders in our community, in our county. And then we're going to create a book and give it to as many entrepreneurs and small business owners in our local market, which will be great for the business leaders. It'll be great for small business owners to learn about the stories behind some of the iconic brands in our area. But it'll also be a great advertising marketing perspective for Augusta because a lot of those entrepreneurs, those thought leaders in our area, are also the prime candidates for customers for Augusta Lawn Care. And so my story will be in there and it'll be from my perspective that I'm interviewing people within the book. And so it'll be a great way to generate leads for the local Augusta Lawn.

Care. What does a typical day look like in the life of Mike.

Andy's? So it really varies. I don't have a super set schedule schedule besides getting to Augusta lawn care around 7:15 to 7:30. After that, it's always different in terms of if I'm able to do more studio time and record more more for the landscape Business course. Right now there's a lot of recording for the operations manual for Augusta Lawn Care. And Pro plus members within Landscape Business course, they pay a subscription every single month to get more access to me. So I'll do phone calls with them. And then obviously throughout the day I'm also doing local stuff for Augusta still. So I still am involved in the estimating sales side of Augusta hiring and things like that. But that's kind of. That's slowly kind of diminishing as I focus more and more on the franchising. And so a lot more time in studio, a lot more time recording, a lot more times on the phone with attorneys and accountants and trying to figure out the whole franchise process. But I usually don't wake up before 6 o' clock and I usually don't go to bed before 2am do.

You own and live in your own house? What's your living space.

Like? Yeah, so I try to keep my living expenses down as low as possible so I can get by with about $930 a month right now in terms of just my personal expenses. So that allows me a lot of freedom to spend the money that the companies make because I don't need it personally. And so I've always tried to keep my living quarter as small as possible. So I live in the studio and am able to just basically get by. And since I don't sleep a lot and I don't need a big, you know, house, I am able to get by with that. I have a company vehicle so I can ride it all off, and so I can get by with very little.

Personally. Do you have a.

Family? I do not. I'm not married and I do not have any kids.