Blueprint for Business Success: Interview by Pest Control Millionaire

Today we have a super special guest. He is an absolute stud in the industry. For all of you pest control guys that don't know the lawn care world, you're about to get your mind blown. He's the founder of Augusta Lawn Care, which I say Augusta Nation, they have 150 plus locations. He's the CEO of his author and he's got a massive YouTube channel. Lots of cool things going on. Welcome our guest, Mike Andes. Thanks for being here, dude.

Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.

Yeah, I think we've been trying to set this up for close to a year.

Yeah. What's funny is because I said spring, I have to follow up and do it. But like, right now, most of the time I'm like in monk mode, trying to get this book done and then getting ready for conference. I appreciate you having me on, man.

Yeah. So first question that I always ask because I just want to know the high level people that that are on here is like, who was Mike Andes as a sophomore, junior in high school? If you and I were friends in school, who were you?

When I was 13, I started college when I was 15, 16. I was basically in the transition of going from playing golf every single day to starting to buckle down on my last part of my pre med. So lots of biochem, kinesiology, biomechanics. That was my jam. So at that period of time when I was 14, 15, 16, all I could think about was medicine. All I could think about was health and nutrition, physiology, anatomy, shadowed doctors all the time, different surgery, stuff like that. That was my jam. So that would have been literally all I wanted to talk about.

That's wild, because you. I think I know the story, but why don't you just walk us through it? Like how you made the transition from healthcare. You want to be a doctor, and then I think you went over somewhere you realized that you couldn't make as big of an impact as you wanted to. So walk us through that.

Yeah. So I went over to Africa when I was 17, turning 18, right. When I finished my pre med and I was already starting to apply to uw, lsu, a couple other medical schools and going through the mcat. So I went over there for six weeks, went to Kenya, a couple different, smaller cities outside of Kenya, Kalangwari to Goni, to a couple different orphanages and then clinics. And so as a volunteer there, we did everything. Like I did everything from surgery, birthing. I spent a lot of time in the burn unit for the pediatrics. It was crazy cool. Did all sorts of procedures and all the rest of it coming back to the U.S. it's a lot letdown when all of a sudden you're like, okay, now I'm going to lock in for another eight or 10 years, go into a bunch of debt for one specialty, and I'm going to probably spend 80 to 90% of my day doing the same three or four tasks. And even though I wasn't a business owner at the time, besides what I did on the side to pay my way through college, I didn't have like, employees or anything like that. I was still entrepreneurial to the fact of I know that I'm not going to want to do this for the next 40 years. And when I came to the US it was like, not necessarily that there was less impact as much as, like most of your day was spent doing paperwork, figuring out how you were getting paid in terms of through insurance providers. I was like, look, if I'm going to go into the business, I'm not going to do it in medicine. Because I felt like it was just very difficult for me to be like, yeah, how are we going to get money from this person? Instead of just being like, I just want to help people all day long. And in Africa, it was like the door opened. You helped the person with, regardless of an injection, a surgery, whatever it was, and it was just like one right after the other. And we would literally visit three to four times many patients in a day there compared to the US and that was what I missed. And I didn't want to be doing this the next 40 years, especially in an industry that is a lot around legislation, a lot around politics, as well as it's completely governed by technology. So, like a lot of things I was passionate about in terms of surgery, I knew was mostly become laparoscopic over the next 20 years, whether it be the brain surgeries I loved or heart surgery or spinal. And so I was like, look, I just can't commit the rest of my twenties to doing something that for the rest of my career I'm locked in on that I might not love in 20 years. And so that's when I like, hey, the only thing I know how to do is mow grass and start Augusta Lawn Care.

Crazy. What did your parents think when you wanted to just give up? I'm done with all this. I'm going to go start a business, spend all that money all that time. What did your parents say then?

They really didn't have an opinion, to be perfectly honest, because when I was 12 and I was about to go into college. They were like. They sat me, and I'm like, hey, just foi, you don't have to do this for us, and you don't need to do it at all. Like, you can take time off, you can work part time, you can do whatever you want. And so they never pushed me at all. So to their credit, they weren't even part of the decision making. A lot of professors and people I had gone to school with, they had their opinions, and they said I was wasting talent. That was not a chip on my shoulder or something I was trying to prove. And then you move past that and realize, like, hey, I have to do this for my. My own satisfaction and own internal drive. But that was definitely a conversation. If you would have talked to me at, you know, 22, when I wasn't making any money and almost had killed myself working out in the field, I would have probably not thought that was the best decision. Potentially.

Yeah. So at 12, how does one go to college at 12, were your parents a big impact on that, or were you just that guy from day one?

Really? There's several factors. If you look at the book outliers, Malcolm Gladwell, he literally breaks down. A lot of it is there's. It's not really an outlier. Like, there's so many factors that fall into it. For example, my brother's two years older than me, so he did kindergarten at home. I was three. So I just sat there because all I did was wanted to play with my brother. So when he was learning the Alphabet, I'm learning the Alphabet. I'm three. When we move and he's in grade one, I'm not gonna stay at home by myself. I want to go with my brother. I started. I'm doing kindergarten again. I'm four. Then at five, my mom's, you're tiny, dude. You're staying again. So I actually kindergarten three times, technically. So when you start with that foundation, you're already so used to being ahead of your grade that you end up starting to teach them a lot of the topics. That was all throughout grade school. I skipped several grades. Then I did two grades at one at home and then went to community college to get my associate's degree really fast. But really, the point was, like, I knew I was. I thought at time I was gonna have a doctor. So I'm like, look, I'm gonna be in school forever. Let's get this over with. Because, like, my objective is not to be in school. I hate school. I would rather just go Help people, like actually doing surgeries. And so I was like, let's get through this as fast as possible. At 11, we started Andy's Lawn Care, my brother and I, so we could pay our way through college. Cause my parents didn't really have.

They.

They never gone to college. We never really had money. So it was like we saw college as our way out, getting out of what our family had been in for a lot of time. Seeing that pain, you're like, I'm just going to run as hard as I possibly can away from it. And so that's when we started Andy's Lawn Care in preparation to save up for college.

Gotcha. You started Andy's Lawn Care, and then when you come back into the industry, you're like, hey, this is what I know how to do. This is what I'm going to do. Side note, real quick, if you Google your name, Mike Andes, one of the first questions that comes up is, how tall is Mike?

Yeah, dude, let's go. The Internet wants to know.

Crazy. I was like, of all the questions that pop up on your Wikipedia, it's how tall is Mike Andes?

Smaller than you think.

Yeah. But anyways, okay, so you leave med school, you come joint do the start lawn care. First five years. Did you almost killed yourself? I think I saw a video. Whether you're underneath the truck and you hood get caught in the axle or pto. Am I right?

Yep, exactly.

And first five years for any business is typically brutal. Like, it's just. It's a rough spot to be. Take us through that time.

Yeah. So like, you're juggling everything. There was really no systems or procedures. It was a matter of there's no bunny being made. At the same time, you're working crazy amounts of hours. And what's hard is when you leave a job where the harder you work, the longer you work and the more hours you put in, the more money you make. Then you switch to entrepreneurship, where it's not directly linked or extricably linked to how many hours you put in. It's very hard because you have no sort of feedback loop of like, work harder, make more money. And so that's why so many people give up during that time. Because recently I've said it, it's like how I think about it is dig, build, bury. You're digging and you're literally going down. Like, you're making less money, working more hours, you're digging down. Then you build your concrete and you putting down rebar, and you're building the foundation, and then you bury it. Like, you don't even want to think about those first four or five years, because at that time was so painful and you had no recognition because everyone looked down on you. Like, you're literally digging down into the ground. And then when you are successful, then you're 10, 15, whatever. No one actually looks down at the foundation. They look up at the building and they admire all the success you've had that's visible. But those moments, those first three to five years are imperative to build the foundation that the rest of your success is built on. And yeah, that's what those first three, five years are. It's just brutal, Just snakes.

And then for me, did you have, like, mentors or coaches in that time period? How did you figure it out?

Not really. Now I have and I have a coach. But like, back then, when you don't have any money, any coach you're going to get is going to be pretty lousy. What you want to do is look for. What are the mentors I can get for free? Books, podcast, audio books, podcasts. Like this. If you're in this industry, this is like the jam, right?

Absolutely.

And even 10 years ago when I started, I still remember going into my room for, like, landscape business course because I was like, trying to figure it out and there was nothing for business. Now there is. There's plenty of people that are putting stuff out there, whether it be you're just getting started and like, what kind of mower should I buy or what kind of sprayer should I buy? There's plenty. There's people that are doing like, grade 2.0, like, level of, of marketing and advertising, how to do tracking. It's all there now. And so there's even less of an excuse that I, oh, I need a mentor. I don't have someone, I don't know, someone like the Internet broke that excuse for us all. And so really, like my first five years, probably Gary Vee, it was probably Grant Cardone. And I don't even follow those guys anymore. They annoy me, honestly. But, like, they got me started. And a lot of times those first three to five years, the thing that you need to be hearing is sales, because the momentum and the revenue to actually then focus on operations and admin down the road. And those are like the revolve. The people I revolve around. Like, I knew I needed to sell a lot.

Yeah, it's smart. And then at the end of five years, okay, did you hire a systems person, a process person? And how did you evolve into Then saying, hey, I want to franchise this.

So, yeah, link question. Because around year two or three is when Liz came on board and was just my office.

She's, she's been there since almost day one.

Then, yeah, she had been there for about a year or two when I got stuck underneath the dump truck. So she really saved the business because there was at least someone to keep the ship together while I was out. But really without systems and procedures that were built, something happens to an owner like that and most of the time we get wiped out. And as the business grew and then we came, we started to become pretty profitable once we institute pay for performance and systems, et cetera. And I had documented it on landscape business course and in the videos I make and stuff, but no one really listens. They look at you as like a consultant. And so I'm like, look, the only way if I actually want to change the level of professionalism in landscape industry to actually get buy into these systems, to actually have skin in the game with these owners, and that is through franchising. And that's where we share the same brand, we share the same systems, we talk all the time, we share part of something together. And I can enforce, I can actually enforce certain systems. And so that's when we started franchising also in part due to the fact that someone like Liz, like Lee, who are still with me today, back then I knew I wouldn't be able to keep them if I just stayed at one location. So we probably franchised a good solid year before I expected to, in part because I was like, there's just no way they're going to stick around with me if I don't.

Almost golden handcuffs.

Yeah. In order for them to be able to continue growing themselves.

Right on. You brought a paper performance. When you first started paper performance, where were you at in revenue?

We were probably doing about 1.1 million.

And what made you like, where did you learn the paper performance model? Did you read a book? Did you hear from someone else?

There was a couple good books around, like Piecework Back. Jack Stack has a couple good books about these things. But there was no, here's the actual math, here's how you break down the job and here's what you do in all these scenarios that don't fall into the nice box. And so I had to create a simplified system for it. And hey, it you give a percentage of labor revenue, you can't give them a percentage of revenue because you got materials and everything else baked in there. And then what if they Go really fast and they have quality issues. Okay, well we have yellow slopes or callbacks. And what happens during that and what happens if you have non revenue producing tasks? There had to be an answer, an answer for all these things. P4P is not new. The automotive industry has used this for a long time. It was just like, let's create a system that kind of checks all the boxes to be able to use in any sort of like home service or labor industry. And there's people in pest control that like use P4P and they might only give 8 or 10% of labor revenue to the team because they have much higher margins, but they also have chemical costs. So these are the type of things that we really just try to hone in and focus on. I think I just saw the switch it made. In my business, we literally went from not making any money the first four years to then 280,000 in distributions to myself. I know the pain I went through and I knew I would have probably given up if I had a secondary option. And I would like to shorten my learning curve of five years. Hopefully not a two or three for some people. And having those systems would have been super helpful.

Yeah, I agree with you. Pay performance. And then you decided, hey, like so many people are using this, I'm gonna go make a software for this too.

It was really once we franchise and realizing a lot of their struggles around just adopting it, it was like, okay, we gotta build this for ourselves and then we sell it to the public to basically just pay the bills so we can keep developing on it. So we're in a huge transition now because we just integr integrated with Copilot and that's been helpful. My goal is to get people to use P4P and whether it be integrated with Copilot, that's cool because it makes it people who use Copilot it's easier to switch to P4PMore importantly, we're really trying to focus right now on time clocks and making it a really great time clocks. Having the ability to ask for time off, things like that. So that people, everyone needs a time clock. And then what I can do is once they're in a time clock, I like, hey, we know which people are most efficient by the way, you can use P4P Pay for performance to make your business more efficient. I don't want to coax them into using the full system of P4P where you do need to change certain elements of the business. It does take a whole mind shift when it comes to estimating and how you do your HR and everything. And my goal, though, is to give them what they want and then hopefully get them to what they need, which is, in my opinion, P4P.

Yeah, I agree. And then when did you decide to write the book? Right around the same time.

Yeah, right around the same time. When we launch the software. It was really just a way of, hey, here. If you don't use the software, here's just how to do it, here's why to do it, and here's what happened to me in the process of switching from no profit to being profitable because of this one thing. And then the software just grown since then.

Did you get a lot of pushback from your workers at the time when you switched to pay for performance?

If you do it correctly, when you roll it out, assuming that your crew is more efficient once they're incentivized, you'll be fine. Because we actually have a vote. And so, like, everyone but one person on the team voted to switch to PvP because they saw for two paychecks, they were making an extra 3, 4, $100 as a bonus. Like, no one's gonna say no to that. And in the book and in like the free training I have on mikeannies.com feverp, it's all free. Like, you don't even need the software. The software just makes it hopefully a little easier. But like, you could literally just, in Excel, especially if you're a smaller business, the software just hopefully makes a little bit faster.

Yeah, I agree. And then I know when the week that we switched again, something that I learned, had to learn the hard way is that there was a holiday in that week. So it made it look like they made less money. So right out of the gate, they're like pushing back, but we work through that. So if Rowan's listening, just make sure when you implement P4P that first week is not a holiday.

Yeah, I always recommend if you do a two week, two pay period trial period where they actually get a choose between P4P and hourly. And then what you do is you make sure, to your point that those are two pay periods that fall in kind of a generalized where they can make good money. It's not like in the middle of your spring rush or when things are collapsing and breaking apart like snow on the ground and stuff. Do it at a general time of the year where this is going to work. And then they literally, you sit down and say, hey, which paycheck would you like? They're going to take the Larger one, you do that twice and then at the end you take a vote. And if they've taken the P4 P1 the past two weeks and they made an extra thousand dollars this month, they're probably going to choose P2P.

And if they didn't, then I'm not sure what to say about that.

Well, if they didn't, they're going to leave and then you're cruising become 20 to 30% more efficient simply because now they're incentivized and you're going to make up for the fact that some people do leave. And that's what happened to us.

So you were forced, sounds like to start the franchise, almost like you needed a second location. That second location was the very first one a franchisee or was the first one a partner, a partnership?

So we started with nine franchises at the very beginning and then as part of that I started my second location because mine was like the 10th one 1 to 9. Yep. And I would recommend if someone was wanting to franchise to do the three to four locations. Sometimes you just learn the hard way.

Because one of my questions on here is, okay, if you to go back and do something different, what would you have done?

Yeah, I would have started three or four and really hone those in. It probably would have saved me like the first year and a half of just like realizing that certain systems had to be tweaked or adjusted to accommodate multiple locations. But there's just so many things that in life in general, like if you just wait for it to be perfect, it'll never be ready. And so for me it came down into a matter of I knew I was doing it premature because we already were like, okay, maybe we just do multiple occasions and do this the slower way. But then I had to ask myself, ultimately the reason I did franchising is a change level professionalism in the industry. It wasn't to get more locations myself. And I don't think anyone should really franchise unless there, there's a different motive behind just money. Because most of the time if you have a good model, you just scale it yourself and you do it corporate. Or you can do licensing and make much more money faster with less legal tape and legal issues. It's actually very rare for me to ever recommend someone franchising because of just so many things that I had to figure out the first three years.

So going back, would you do franchising again or would you do corporate model like a licensee?

For me, I would say I would do franchising because it's going to achieve what I want, which is a thousand locations, and have more impact on the industry. But if it was to make more money, I knew if I would've started a second and third and fourth location, like one a year even, we would be doing more in revenue and in profit within a matter of 12 months. Even up until last year, when I had seven locations locations, I made more money on my seven locations than I did the franchise. And so it's just a matter of which. What do you want? If you're optimizing for revenue and profit, usually corporate expansion or licensing is the better route. To be perfectly honest. Franchising is just it. If you're really going to serve your owners well and actually produce the support that is required to make a successful brand, it is so expensive the first few years that you can't really make money until you're at 100 locations. And the only way to make Money less than 100 locations is to deliver a subpar support product to the owners, in which case you never get to 100 locations. And so, like, literally 98 of franchises never get past 100 locations. And the failure rate on them is so incredibly high is because most of the time, we can never get enough momentum to get past 100 locations. And yeah, I know you're at, like, the hardest level. Like, you're at 10 locations. I know exactly what. Like, I could talk to you for hours on all the stuff, like, from 10 to 100 that changes and 100 plus. It's fun.

Those are my questions. Next. Okay, I have a couple of things. So you. You brought up a couple topics since we're talking about it. Walk us through the first ten. Obviously that was like, year one for you. Different. Like, a lot of stuff probably blew up there. But then talk us through 10 to 25 or 50 and then 15 beyond.

Yeah. So 0 to 10 is simply a matter of hoping and praying. You just got to get 10. And so congrats to you. That's the hardest part. You need some sort of reputation. You need some sort of brand. Personal brand helps you a lot. Obviously, you create content, people create trust. They're really just trusting on you. They're betting on you 100%. For my first 10, you're usually waiving fees. You're usually giving a lot of, like, whatever. You just need 10. Like, you just got to get there because otherwise it's hard to sell people. Most people would want to join when there's 100 or 200. And the reason people want to join McDonald's because there's thousands and it's probably going to work. And if a thousand other people have done it and they're still franchisees, probably it means that they're making money. And so, like when you have a tracker, it's so much easier to sell a franchise. And so from 0 to 10, if you're trying to do franchising, which now I have just cut out like 99.99 of the audience. Just want to be clear because I don't believe most people should do franchising.

So we franchise, but all current 10 locations are corporately owned.

Oh, okay. Okay, got it.

All 10 have been corporate locations from within.

Okay, all right, I'm going to flip this real quick. So why don't you keep doing corporate expansion?

That's probably the way we're headed, but we have to go there if we ever choose. We went through franchising last year, got it all done.

Yeah, it sounds so good. Like when people are like, oh, you mean like you're going to. For 100 grand or whatever, you can throw the legal docs together and then you can just sell these licensing and people just give you money for your brands. Oh, it's so easy. It's. No, there's so much more and it's so hard. Yeah. Like, the big shift in general going from corporate to franchising is you switch from. You are no longer selling whatever products and services. You are selling a business model and you're selling the fact that you have dedicated yourself to making that system better and better over time and honing it. And the systems that do well. Franchising systems that do well are the ones that are constantly investing in technology, constantly changing their systems and making them better. The ones that die. 98% of franchisors will not get past 100 locations and will fail. The reason for that is because most of the time they think they can just put together fdd, they can sell and actually usually pretty decent at selling. Or they get inside of a brokerage that sells them for them and it sells hopes and promises to franchisees that actually don't take come to fruition. There's no improvement in support, there's no investment in technology, and within five years they go out of business. And unfortunately, the carnage that this leaves is two things. One, owners that have nothing to show for their investment, and then two behind one, broken relationships, families, employees that have been let down, a whole lot of issues. Secondly is it gives franchising a really bad name. And in my opinion, franchising is the way for people to be able to start entrepreneurship. And it's like it's having some training wheels on. They're a little bit restrictive, but they absolutely have a higher success rate. And so I'm a huge proponent of franchising for entrepreneurship and predictability of profits and earnings. However, there are so many bad actors that until you get past 100 locations, people just don't even trust you. And it's very difficult. It's like selling online courses. There are just so many bad actors. As soon as you say, are you selling an online course? You must be a scam artist. And so the only way to get through that noise is to simply just keep making the product better. And if you have sales projections or you have private equity behind you pushing you a whole bunch on selling, the problem is you usually spend so much of your time and energy on selling new locations. You don't actually hone the product in this command center. That's the hardest part about building the franchise. It does all the admin and it has an option for the owner to be able to tap into everything from doing their profit loss statements and payroll to running P4P, like email, everything. Right? That's the hardest thing to scale. Having 70 people be on the same page and have systems. And every single time you go from 10 to 50 to 100 locations, you have to reinvent that entire system from top to bottom. New software, new infrastructure, new systems, new teams, new people, new talent. And so that's very difficult. And that investment is the moat that makes the franchise worth something. And so most are not willing to invest in that because a lot of times we as operators, I'm not going to you just now join us. Like, we know what it's like to build a location and make it profitable within two to three years and what those distributions look like. And franchising just doesn't look like that because you just keep plowing money into making the product better if you're going to be successful. And if you're like, I can just go sell 25 locations tomorrow and I'm not going to improve the product, yeah, you'll be profitable. You're not going to maintain, retain or get any new franchisees in. And that's why people will stall out at 20, 30, 40 locations is because no one wants to keep joining. No one's to start multiple locations. They don't see the franchisor investing back into the product. And so I'm a huge proponent of franchising. I think it'd be, I Would love to be able to make it a much more popular thing in the service industry. Unfortunately, private equity and venture capital, do you get involved a lot of times and push people on sales and hitting certain numbers and because of that, the franchisees are left the secondary thought and unfortunately.

So how did you stay away from pe, Dude?

Yeah. So the first couple years I kept entertaining it because we were so cash strapped. Even up until like last year, it's still really tough because like we plowed hundreds of thousand dollars into stuff like Max AI and we didn't collect a single penny from the owners on doing that. It was like, look, there's a value add and we're going to keep investing in this. On the long term, it's very tempting to take private equity. Someone offered when they offer you millions of dollars to just sign a document, you could take all this pain away. Just sign right here. Right. It's tempting. The thing that kept me away just seeing over and over again and even mutual friends of ours that have said, hey, once there's private equity involved, like it changes the game. As tempting as is, I was able to get enough evidence of other people saying, if you actually have this mission, like that mission will become secondary to making money and growing top line revenue and cutting out expenses and really changing the royalty structure of how we do things. I would hate work every single day.

I agree. So I just wrote a super cool book and it's called the the Private Equity Playbook.

Oh, okay, okay. I was like, dude, you wrote a book on private equity?

No, I read a book yesterday. It was fantastic.

What was it again?

The Private Equity Playbook.

Got it.

It's by Adam Coffey. Fantastic read. I think it's four or five hours long and audible. Listen to one day. It was just very interesting just to know what they're thinking, what their playbook is. It's really cool. But you talked about Max and that was one of my questions that I wanted to hit on. We talked about it before the show. Obviously you spent a lot of money on it. Why don't you tell the listeners what Max is and what it does? And I've seen the videos. It's super cool. But walk us through that.

So first off, makes me very happy. Know who Max is. It's really more of a branding play because we renamed it really. It's just AI and technology and computers and servers and aws, but really it's called Max. And so our whole goal, even with recently changing a lot of the branding around being Mac. So Max the dog is the mascot. Our hope is that down the road we keep automating certain parts of technology where people call in, they talk to Mac, eventually shows up as a robot at their house and mow their lawn. That will eventually where we get to, they can talk down the road with technology to get a quote immediately from Max, accept the job, get pricing, etc. But Max AI is essentially something we've been working on for about a year and a half to two years now. We started rolling it out last year. I did a pretty pathetic job of rolling out, to be perfectly honest. But the hope, the thing that I focus on is like, how can we just get a wave behind us? Where can we look at the tides of technology and where it's going. And for example, if I look at labor, it's getting more and more costly, right? In the past five years, it's probably gone up like 40% in some markets of just the cost of labor. Rent also going up, especially in markets where there's enough people who hire significant chunks of talent. What else is going up in terms of cost? Computers, office equipment, all these things are going up more and more expensive, probably two to three times the rate of inflation. So 6, 7, 8, 9% per year, these things are going up in cost. Now the next question I have to ask is the efficiency and the quality of labor going up or down? I would argue it's going down. I would argue that because it's harder and harder to retain people and people are staying at entry level positions instead of three, five years, three to five months now, it's harder to actually retain. Keep the talent, pay the talent, train the talent. And a lot of people are going to tap out. They don't want to work 45 hours, they want to work 35, they want to work 30, they want part time, they want to work at home. And so all these inefficiencies start stacking up to the point where I can confidently say that cost of labor is going up, cost of anything to do with a human is going up, whereas the cost of technology is deflationary. It goes down over time. And my goal is to be able to adopt that strategy far before everyone else will become commonplace. I believe in 5 to 10 years it'll be very standard for any service business to have an AI agent that is going to take calls, take contact information and basically be like a voicemail, but get the information. So it's not one way. We know that people only 37% of the time leave a voice message. Whereas with max 70 over 70% of people will talk to him, leave all their information and be able to be a registered lead. And guess what happens after they do that? They stop contacting other providers. And that's what I want them to do. And the goal in building Max is number one, to take calls 24, 7. Because if you're open for say 40 hours out of the week in your office, that means that there's 128 hours in a week. Like more than 70% of the hours in a week. There's no one answering the phone. And during that 70/plus of the hours, only 37 of people that call in wanting estimates, never even get the phone answered and never leave a voicemail. And that's like low hanging fruit. We knew immediately just by tracking the numbers, we'd increase lead count by like almost 15 simply by doing that. And when I look at the industry right now, because we have long hair web design where I can track the number of leads coming in there year over year, about 15% down in terms of number of leads. However, Augusta's about one and a half to 2% increase. A lot of that has to do with the fact that Max is able to simply just take all calls outside of hours and convert them into leads. And over time, that technology will just get better and better. Max will be able to handle customer service. He'll be able to take credit cards over the phone. He'll sell jobs on the phone and not just collect their data. I believe that we can beat people by like three to four years in terms of where everyone will be at. And so I think in three, four, five years this will become commonplace. I believe in five years that I'll be able to cut out 60 to 70% of people answering the phones in terms of humans. It'll all be able to be handled, most of it by someone, by Max. But it'll only take like massive investments on the upfront. And then and everyone's, what are they going to do about those jobs? First off, we're still hiring all the time. Secondly, those jobs will be more specialized and I'll be able to pay them more because instead of answering a phone and collecting billing information or answering the phone and talking about like very basic thing like when's my next service that can be handled for a fraction of the cost with technology. And then I can give those same people jobs doing quickbooks, learn how to do accounting, learning how to run payroll, and those are the type of things I could still hire. And we will still continue to hire, you know, humans to do that.

What do you think the next five years outside of the office look like in the industry?

I think software will take more and more of a role. I think robotics is still 15 to 20 years away. In my opinion, whoever will win robotics will come down to who has the largest footprint in the industry and then who has the software to speak and collaborate with the hardware. And so hardware is very difficult from a technology standpoint. Software is much more agile. I think that over the next five to 10 years in home services, like, we're a good five years behind HubSpot and Salesforce in almost every software element and what we can do and, you know, that's why we started Copilot. Ultimately, I think that's where the benefits are going to be for the next 10 years. And then whoever has the best software will be able to speak with the hardware of robotics. The best, in my opinion.

Yeah, I'm right there with you. All right, because you brought it up again, the software that you built, Copilot, again, you already had the franchisees, but what made you decide, hey, I'm gonna go all in on this thing?

Yeah, Just first and foremost, my belief that software is where it's at. Then secondly, we've used multiple CRMs, and I like most of them, I'm happy to say, even I would recommend a lot of people, the CRMs we've been on, we've used Lawn Pro, we've used lmm, we've used Surface Autopilot, and I think they should be used. And I would actually say that even as I speak right now, at least I would recommend, based on the size of business, certain other industrial, other softwares I believe in general, if someone's not using any software, just choose anything, like just do anything, please. Then I would say that, like, when I look at where I know technology is going and then the rate of innovation I'm seeing at these other CRMs, that's why we jumped in. And I just genuinely believe that in five or 10 years we will either a be where we're at now, which is five to 10 years behind HubSpot and these other technologies, or we'll get on the cutting edge. And Most of these CRMs are owned by private equity and venture capital. They're being controlled by people aren't in the industry and don't actually care about these owners. I hope that my track record speaks for itself when it be Augusta or like what we try to do. And that's. I really just want these owners to succeed. I know what they're going through. And I feel like I have a unique advantage to be able to give the features they actually need, actually move the needle. And a lot of the softwares that we have used in the past, they just stall out, unfortunately. It just stalls innovation. Yeah.

Or not. Go public. Some of them count your chickens and put their roost. That's right. But you also had 50 people in beta too. Right. Like, you weren't starting a software that everyone could use right away. I'm sure you had a few of your bigger players, like, using as beta and testing them. So you had once got to a certain point. We were to switch everyone over to our software.

Yeah, dude, I made too many mistakes in this level. We are literally just coming out of five months of me making massive a mistake. And I was. But you.

But to your credit, you were out there telling everyone that you made a mistake. Hey, this is not perfect yet. Like, hold on. Like, you were putting yourself out there.

No one cares. I messed up. It was all my fault. I promised something that we were achieving and we were really executing well on in terms of the roadmap, in terms of what we were going to be able to get done and then just allowed way too many people in. And I should have stopped it. I should have cut off new signups. There's several things I could have done. And so unfortunately, I can't fix that. And I apologize that, like, we literally half lost half our users over it. And I deserve zero of the users to stay stuck with us. And so we're just coming out of that now. And I just hope that over the next six months we win back trust. And a lot of the things that we've been doing on the back end to fix the problems will now become more evident. But there's no excuse. It was a horrible mistake and we'll have to learn and grow from it.

What was harder to start, lawn care or software?

Okay, there's different layers here, right? So lawn care business, very easy to start because everyone needs lawn care. It's very easy to determine. Long, short, grass, let's go. For you, it's like weeds. No weeds. Let's go.

Right.

Franchising was still harder than the software. The thing about the software part is it was a very public failure. Whereas with franchising, like my first every. I make mistakes all the time. So every year, usually the poor franchisees, bless their heart, they. I usually drop the ball massively in one area because we're moving so quickly. I usually will forget to do, like, my due diligence on something or test it correctly or roll it and I get better each year, but like I still make mistakes. And so the biggest one we've ever made though is Copilot in terms of the way I roll it out and allowing a lot of the public users in at the same time. We've brought in 150 locations from Augusta and just caused all sorts of infrastructure issues.

It just, just broke. You couldn't handle it?

Oh, dude. Yeah, everything, everything was breaking, like every single part. It was really bad. And we're just coming out of that. Is it harder though than franchising? I would say no, because it's technical parts that like most of it is like zeros and ones. With franchising it's very. There's lots of gray areas like what's right and wrong decision you'll make. You'll never make everyone happy. And so in my opinion, the franchising is difficult because you have a legal connection with someone, like a marriage. And in a marriage the reason it's difficult sometimes because you have to stay with the person. There's an obligation on both parts and you have made promises to each other to stay with each other. That is a different level than just dating where it's like, ah, you mess them up, I'm out. Different level of pain that is required. But it's also, what's the long term benefit of a long term relationship? Well, you're going to have to get through those hard times. And so that's what in my opinion franchise is versus like licensing, which is very much like dating. Okay, as long as you like us, pay us this monthly fee and you get access and if you want to leave, who cares? And we don't care about you, we don't share brands. And franchising is difficult because you never ever will make a decision. Not a single time will you make a decision and get full support. That's very difficult. And you're leading entrepreneurs and people who like breaking the rules and they left their job because they wanted to make their own playbook and then you're telling them that you can't do that. That's not how it's going to happen. Even a great decision, one that I think is very positive for everyone, there'll still be some a portion of people that they see that as negative and that can be like very weird brain farts that happens versus like with software we fix bugs or there are bugs. Like it's binary, it's good or it's bad. Like more people made money or more people made less money. It's very easy to track Copilot disaster our churn. This is the first time I've ever said this publicly. Went up to as high as 12% every month, which means basically in eight months we would have lost all our users. And now we're finally down back to 2%. Like, we're coming out of it. And I'm thankful for every user, like, if they are watching, my goodness, I really appreciate them all sticking with us. And down the road, I'll make good on a lot of the things that we couldn't do for them during the past five months. But that's why we built Copilot. I think down the road, they all look like geniuses. I think the same thing about people like the first 10 franchisees when we go public down the road. Like, I want them with me at Wall street, not ringing the bell in and because they took a massive risk on me. And I won't forget that.

Yeah, I love that you said that, because one of my questions. But you already had what is the end game? And I just said, you're going to go public.

So I think in my opinion, we'll need a lot of money when robotics come around to still continue a moat. And I probably won't have enough money for that. Software's cheaper to develop. So even though we put millions into it, like, robotics will be a whole different level. And I believe I'm just guessing right now, it's a wild ankle. Guess at this point that within 10 to 15 years we'll go public, we'll wrap everything they're doing in terms of media copilot P4P and August into one thing and then we'll take it public. And so I can raise a bunch of money when going public and still maintain full control. It's like that's the big part is I want full control of this thing. But I can go public and have different types of class shares. So I can have class A versus class B. I can go in, have control the company, but be able to sell a big chunk of it off, raise money to then go do the robotics side of things. So I think that's what's going to happen. But eventually that's my end goal, to make the first 10 franchises like Filthy rich.

That's awesome. Good for you. Acquisitions. Have you ever done any acquisitions along.

The way on a smaller scale? So buying out several smaller lawn care businesses as we grew, all of them were less than 30, 40% of our revenue when we purchased them. So it was never like we were doubling or tripling revenue. I've bought out my partner in the past in terms of copilot. Originally started with the co founder, purchased, bought him out, 30 things like that, but nothing like. I wouldn't say I'm like a guru of acquisitions or anything like that.

Dealer. Your franchisees make acquisitions.

They can. Every day we have what we call Mike Mint's mastermind. So they all talk and a lot of times a lot of what they bring to the table is like, hey, someone in my market needs to sell. What do you think of this price and valuations and stuff like that?

Awesome. When did you see the YouTube thing kind of start taking off? I remember watching your first videos. But you saw the shift in YouTube. So what made you go all in in that strategy?

What's funny is there really is no shift. If you look at like my analytics and everything, it's just been this slow, constant little grind. And I've always told media team, like, I think eventually it's going to hockey stick. But like it's always been the slow grind. We've never really had anything pop off massively. And so it's just a matter of. I believe that the entrepreneurs who win are the ones who have the longest horizon, like time horizon. And they think in terms of 10 and 20 year swings instead of 10 and 20 weeks to get rich. And the media, it has driven every single aspect of the businesses. Every single owner of Augusta has come through YouTube and the content, every single person from Co pilot. We don't run ads outside of my audience. So they all come from that. And I'm very grateful for the community and that's why I feel a lot of responsibility to make sure that how we run the businesses is serving them. Because like none of this is possible, none of it, without people from the community joining and supporting what we're trying to do. But yeah, there was never an inflection. It was just a matter of keep investing into it, keep plowing money into it. So from a content perspective, it was like, yes, we are creating content. We're trying to help the community in doing that. This is our marketing budget. So yes, right. Seven full time people that we just do video editing and doing all this other garbage. It's really. That's our marketing budget.

So you said majority of your franchisees come through your YouTube.

Every single one. When they come to training, that's like where they came from. Yeah, sometimes they'll come from like Facebook or Instagram or whatever, but they eventually usually land on YouTube because that's where the long term relationships are usually built there.

Yeah, that's really smart. And I think you're up to 167,000 subs right now.

Come on now. 176. You got this?

106. 176.

Yeah, something like that.

Yeah. But YouTube has made a lot more money than my YouTube for sure because we just have a ton of. When you open up a new location, like 0 to 250,000, what is your marketing strategy going in?

I was just going to drop one thing in terms of like general like media stuff is I always recommend to create one on one content, speak about what you have done. And so I'd say as we've grown the businesses, my, my audience has grown in part because I'm just talking about what I'm learning. And so for anyone out there, I want to create content. Just talk about what you've done and what you're learning and it'll be beneficial to some group of people. As you grow the business, you'll get more credibility and people will listen. And when 2020 is when we. I got my first media person because I told him I would hire him full time eventually as he'd been the lawn in doing mowing grass. Like, I'm like, hey, I know you love cameras. We'll go there. That is 2020. That's right when Covid happened. And you rode that wave since Basic almost past four years. In terms of local, like it is a matter of how much money do you have, right? Like you either have money or you have time. If you have money, you're going to invest in things like Facebook and Google that scale much easier and you get a lot of leads very quickly. But if you don't have money, you do have time.

Knock on doors, do door hangers, hold a sign next to the road the other day. So last year I went out for 30 days to your point and started one from scratch. And really just here's what you do. If you don't have money, you stand next. You look like an absolute idiot, but you get leads, like one or two an hour. Are you willing to do that? It's not fun. Trust me. You're breaking every single like social norm. When you hold a sign next to the road or walk through a mall with a sign or knock on someone's.

Door and they get kicked out of.

The mall, like, how bad do you want to actually succeed? And that's why so many times when people say, hey, we have nothing to lose, they win is because there is no secondary option. I think what's very scary, scary and the reason for a lot of quote unquote failures and quitting is the fact that we have three other options. Sometimes when you have your back install, it's the best thing because like the only way forward, the way through it is forward and you got to figure it out.

So yeah, that's how we built our business. Knocking on doors. It's super uncomfortable. Yeah. You'll put in the time I know you got. You showed us a quick picture of Command center. How is the new building coming along?

Yeah, so it's been like three years in permitting, so it's probably going to be, I'm hoping in a year it will start we'll actually break ground. But I've said that for like the past two years, so not really putting my money on that. But supposedly that's the case. We thought we were going to be in the building two years ago. If we moved in the day, we'd basically be at full capacity. So we are already planning like a second building on the the land because it's five acres. And so I'm hoping to like build a campus eventually of as we grow the companies on the same piece of land. But the objective is to get like everyone in the same place. Like Copa in the same place. Augusta in the same place. My local shop in the same place. Training for franchisees in the the same place. The media team in the same place instead of being spread out.

Yeah, that's awesome. A couple things I want to chat about before I let you go. Carnivore diet. I think you've been doing it for a few months. Like I started seeing you posting pictures like lift heavy things, eat meat. I've been doing this for 11 months. Like when did that.

I've seen several people in my family do it and it was like revolutionary for them in terms of mental health, weight loss, etc. Like I don't need to lose necessarily a lot of weight. So I was like, you know what, if them eating meat is good, I can at least add more meat. So I don't go strict carnivore. I probably am more keto by a lot of me. It definitely helps you definitely grow muscle a lot more when you're lifting heavy.

Yeah. Back in my early 30s, like I feel so good at 40 then I felt in my early 30s.

Yeah.

What's the new book and when's it coming out?

Yeah, so it's called Total Business Turnaround and essentially we've done about 30 or 40 public turnarounds for the videos. And so what I did is I take all 30 of those and try to put them in a rubric like what are the commonalities between every single one of these? The reason for that is because out of every day now we're getting applications to be on the turnaround show behind every one of those videos another hundred or 200 people. That would never apply because it's super embarrassing to have cameras stuck in your face when you're at your lowest point in your business. The hope is that they can use as a kind of like a roadmap of diagnosing and then prescribing what they need to do in their business if they are failing. So we just go, okay, here's the 13 reasons why. Number one, if you don't have no money, start here, right? If you can't get any new jobs, if you have a broken compensation plan, no one's showing up to work like, like start here. And so it's just a way to turn around a business without me having to be there. And I just made sure that I could give this book to any of the people I went on turnaround and they could have read this and turned their business around because it's super humbling and really tough to like. Even the owners that allow us to come out like they're, they cry on camera. There's really humiliating things shared because they have no money in the bank and they're stressed out and relationships are afraid and hopefully that the, the book can serve as a way to turn the business around without me having to go.

What was the strategy behind the turnaround?

1 of 1 Content I create something only you can do in terms of just if people want to make media in general, just do what you can do. I feel like I'm uniquely capable to be able to look at a profit and loss statement and diagnose the issue in a labor based business. Because I've seen thousands and thousands of P Ls and I've helped a lot of people via phone and video. I know I'm uniquely capable to do that. And I can show up at most of these businesses and within a matter of hour to at least know why they're having a problem and what to do about it. And start that was the first part. And that 101 content I think is really interesting because there's a lot of other owners are also struggling and guess what? They don't go on social media and say anything about it. We all Think that everyone's successful in business because that's the only theft we see online. And so I didn't want to normalize failure. That's not the objective of the turnaround show. It is to realize that failure is a part of the journey. And most people who become successful actually had a moment just like you currently have. And so if I can just prevent people from quitting at the last low, they'll eventually come back, they'll rebound, and there's a road map to get out of that situation. And that's the objective of it.

And you weren't charged any money to go do that, right?

Yeah, we. As soon as we. If we ever charge, it immediately flips like the dynamic of why I'm like, I'm there for them to be vulnerable, share openly and honestly and want. They want to change things so people can buy consultant calls. That's fine, I don't care. But if I'm going to go film it, I want it to be raw reaction, like, we're not staging anything. This is real conversations with real people, real employees. And it's really what the profit on CNBC used to be. I don't know if you ever saw that show back in the day. Like, I loved it and they quit it like three or four years ago. I was like this. So we originally like, hey, how can we recreate that? And we just try to keep better, getting better. Every single video honing in the production side. And it's really expensive and it's very time consuming, but, like, I'm in a position to be able to do it and it's my way of giving to the community. I know when you give, people come back. Like, people still want us to join Augusta and they want to join Copilot despite our flaws, and I'm grateful for that.

What does the next five years look like for you, Mike?

Dude, let's go. Really more of the same. There's nothing new. We're going to keep improving Augusta. We're going to keep selling locations, we're going to keep making the product better. Every single month. We're changing and improving the support structure or the software or the back end support and coaching. Like, we're always changing it. Copilot is just going to keep adding better, keep adding features. I have like literally hundreds of roadmap for like four years of. Of like, we're just gonna do more of the same. And I think really that doing the boring work is such an important, integral part of growing success. So they quit and then once they actually start getting success. They jump on and start a different building. It's like, what in the world? Just keep building. You already have momentum and so nothing's gonna change. We're just gonna keep doing the same thing and getting better, hopefully better at it every single time. So we turn around videos every Friday. Those gonna keep coming out and they're gonna keep getting better. And so it's more the same. Doing the boring work and getting the reps in is. Is really the mantra for at least the next five years.

When does that book come out?

I'm hoping to do it Aug. 4, because that's when my book originally was launched, my very first one. And that was the same day I got stuck underneath the dump truck. And so it's like a. I'm hoping August 4th is when I can release it. It's the most work I've ever put into a book or any piece of content. It's been eight months with my coach kind of working on it with me. It's been a grind. But I'm hoping for August 4th.

What's the difference between a good franchisee and maybe a not so good franchisee?

I wouldn't classify or label them as good or bad, but I would classify them as what is who is a good candidate to be a franchisee and who should not be a franchisee. And this is something I've gotten more clear on and we've gotten better in the past year or two in terms of determining who we turn down six out of seven people that want to join Augusta. Most people shouldn't be franchisees. Most people should not be franchisors. But I think it's a massive positive if both parties realize their relationship is beneficial to each other and is beneficial. I would say who makes a good franchisee is someone who likes systems and procedures, is willing to follow them, and even if they don't understand, has enough trust that what has been done in the past is replicatable. If you're probably not a great fit for a franchisee in terms of if you like full autonomy, you don't want to follow systems, procedures, you want to do whatever you want to do. Whereas if you want to join a franchise, it's like the goal is twofold. One is, if you're new, the benefit is typically you cut out. Instead of five years of pain, it's usually two to three. You cut out a large chunk of just the learning curve because you gotta learn so many elements and build the systems and build the infrastructure that otherwise just handed to you the Second reason someone would join is if they're, they're already a larger business and instead of having to scale like that element of scaling can be fixed by just joining a franchise that has a ton of locations and already figured out all the problems with hiring and training, training general managers, getting an office staff set up, having it. What's the difference in a regional manager and a general manager? What happens when you have a person that's really good at sales as a general manager versus operations? And what do you do if someone wants to just start locations? These are the type of things that a franchise, if they've done 100 plus locations usually has figured out and you can just expedite yourself by two or three years. Again, just not a huge saving, like two or three years of saving of time and hopefully just plug into their system and pour money on it. You're bigger. That's what you want to look at a franchise. This is why like people like Shaq have 405 guys or whatever. It's simply a matter of they realize that this is a proven system. I'm not going to try to reinvent the wheel. I'm going to hire a CEO and just pour money on it. And if I can get 20, 30% returns compared to 8 or 10% in the stock market, we have a winner. That's really what I'm focused on is like improving our unit economics on so many different levels. And that's why Q4 is such a killer for this industry. So we're going like all in on Christmas lights, whole new brand trademarks, websites, everything. Because like I need the margins to be high enough to where once you hire a general manager, you hire a regional manager and you go on and go start 10 locations. It makes sense compared to putting that money just in this s P500. And that's like where my head's been out a lot. And I bet I'm gonna go out on a limb and say this book private equity playbook has a lot to do with things like that. Economics are so important things like that.

And can you guys know the industry really well? That's the slowest time of the year for everyone. They're laid people off and then they struggle with cash flow in the winter because they're afraid to let go of their employees. Not like give them certain days to come back and then they use all their cash all but I like just to stay afloat, carry overhead because they.

Don'T have season specific offers for season specific services. And so that Q4 in, in the green industry, I would venture to believe based upon the PNLs I've seen. If you take out one quarter, we're probably mostly 20% profit profitable. But one quarter of negative cash flow brings that down to 4, 5, 6%. And so we got to solve that one queue and one quarter. And I would recommend anyone, regardless what industry you're in, look at your P L in terms of quarters and say, where's the problem? And then how do I create season specific services and season specific offers for that quarter to kill it?

What is the new brand called for the Christmas lights?

Augusta Christmas lights. Just got to throw that hat on on a max and we're off to the races. We're going through the whole trademark process and like just making sure there's no national brand around this. So we think we can dominate from an SEO perspective in five years. I think people are going to think we make more money on Christmas lights than mowing. To be perfectly honest. There's just no one that's playing this game. What we think we can do, the goal is just to make that Q4, they can still accelerate and then go into spring rush with a lot of cash to be able to actually take all the leads that come pouring in during that time.

What is the best piece of advice you've ever been given?

Dude, best piece of advice I've ever been given. Give me one second. I underestimate how much work is required to be exceptional. And if you actually want to be the greatest, the amount of effort and time and energy that is required to make that recipe happen is far beyond what you are currently thinking. If you want to be the best in your market, if you want to be the best in your industry, if you want to be the best in your family, you want to make the most money. The amount of effort and energy and sacrifice required to make that happen is 10 times, 100 times what you think it is. And to be the exceptional Michael Jordan, the amount of effort and time and energy that went into that is vastly underestimated. The person that plays pickup basketball and the person that's pushing on a lawnmower vastly underestimates just how much time and energy and effort goes into becoming elite at the thing that you're doing. And the only thing that's separating you from, you're at today, from where you're going to be is skills. And in order to get those skills, you'll need to get knowledge. And so the only unlock in life is how do you get the knowledge that other people have into your brain. And so that's why, whether we listen to podcasts or books, whatever, the only thing keeping you from success is essentially skills. And the only way to get the skills and knowledge is unlock it from other people's head. And so if you follow that roadmap, things work out.

And the last question for you, Mike, what are you most proud of, dude?

Proud of?

Lord, I love the squirm. Happens every time.

Proud of honestly reflecting your life. So there's a lot of different things that you look at, indicators of success, because when you're not seeing the bank account, the only way to keep going is to have some sort of evidence and benchmark. So if I am trying to lose weight, I might not necessarily lose pounds, but if I could lose inches, that might be indicators of success that point me in the direction of continuing. And for me, one of the most satisfying and.

Things I'm quote, unquote proud of is frontline team members that join and then they stay with us for. If they stay with us for two years, they get their franchise fee waived and they can become an owner for free. They were 17, 18, 19 years old starting out, and they came. We worked crazy amounts of hours and for two years plowed their head into the dirt and just working hard. And then they've gone and started become owners, and now they're doing the same thing. They're replicating that type of giving back, and that's extremely rewarding to me. And now my owner, success manager, that kind of helps all the owners on so many levels in terms of emergencies is actually one of the. Is the very first what we call 3F program, franchise fee forgiveness. He came 7 to 8 years old, minimum wage, starting out two years, lived in a van to save up money so he could become a franchisee. Started the 3F program, rans a profitable location, now hired a general manager and is working for corporate to help other owners do the same thing.

That's freaking awesome.

Awesome.

Yeah, that's super awesome. Of your franchisees, is there how many. What's the largest franchise you have as far as maybe revenue and locations?

There's a few that are knocking. They're like, around that three location marker, we have someone about to join the first executive model, which is six locations at one time. We have quite a few owners that are in multiple ownership, like multiple territories. And then I'd say the most of is three. One, two, three. He has one, two, three. Yeah. So probably three me right now. And then I think as time goes on, there'll be more and more people that join with the expectation that just from day one, they have a whole territory chain.

Super awesome, man. Again, thank you for your time being here. I love what you're doing. Keep doing it. Keep crushing. Appreciate it.

Thank you for everything you do for the industry, man. Appreciate it.