Mike Andes recounts living in a small closet adjacent to his gym and a veterinary clinic for three years while building Augusta Lawn Care. He uses this personal sacrifice as evidence of the commitment required to scale a franchise business, noting that profitability is difficult until reaching roughly 100 locations and that he trained franchisees from that space.
During your 20s, you're either going to sacrifice for the next five to 10 years or you're going to wake up when you're 35, 40, 45, 50 years old and regret not making those sacrifices earlier on. For three years, I lived in this closet. Next door to me right here is the gym Anytime Fitness that I own. And you will hear people drop deadlifting plates all the time because there's no insulation in that wall. On this side, there's a veterinary clinic thing, and I'll hear dogs barking ever so often. But this is actually where I slept. You can kind of see it, just a bed and there's no hot water in here. So this is basically kind of where I lived and operated out of, also known as where we train all the franchisees at Augusta Lawn Care. Until you hit 100 locations, it's very difficult to be profitable. Those three years I stayed here.
