Culture Starts with Your FIRST Employee! Visiting Augusta Lawn Care of El Paso, TX

Hey, everyone. We're just headed over to the airport, not too far away from here. Josh had to get his beauty rest and wake up 30 minutes earlier than we really needed to to get ready for the day. But we'll be early, I guess, so drop off the rental car and head to apply. So it's currently getting 93 degrees a day. Here we go, Sam.

Hey, everyone. We just landed in El Paso. We're gonna be here for a whopping four hours. So gotta get the bags, get the rental car, drive out to see Abraham and his crew, and be back here in less than four hours. So see what we can do here.

Good. See you, man. Likewise.

Looking good, Looking good.

Thank you, sir.

Good to see you. Mighty fine here.

Thank you.

You guys work? You're working at this property? We work.

We actually. Josh, Nice to see you. How are you, man? Good, how are you? Nice to see you. You we actually do take care of. This is Armando.

Armando, good to meet you.

Nice to meet you.

Mike, this is Josh. Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you.

You don't mind the camera. He just follows us around.

This is actually our church. We come to this church and we also take care of it. Cool. We do. We're hired to maintain the. The grounds and make sure everything's clean and parking lot trash and all that stuff.

Blowing it off.

So today we come bi weekly. Today is not a week that we come, but they let us come in and film and take care of that treatment.

So.

That one right there. Yeah, we'll do that for them. We're not charging Metro.

We're just.

Just sake of the recording. Yeah, Perfect.

And are you just trimming it all up?

Basically, it's just. It's just to give it space. We don't want it. They don't want it all trimmed.

Got it.

They kind of just want space for the parking and then for the people head.

Or is it just fallen leaves for the winter?

Not this one. I'm sorry.

The one over there. Oh, okay. Okay, cool.

Yeah, that one's dying.

All right, well, don't mind him. He'll grab photos. I'll throw the drone up behind us, and then he'll probably grab you for a couple pictures or something like that.

Awesome.

You are smart. Both of you are smart. See, we're used to, like, where when it's hot, you go short sleeve.

Right.

You guys know how to do it?

Yeah, not only that, we have like another, like.

Oh, yeah.

Sun protection under this one too.

That's awesome. Yeah. See where we're at? It's like, oh, this is like the hottest day of the year.

And then we wear this.

This is cool for you guys?

Yeah, actually, yeah.

Oh, man. Has it cooled off the last couple weeks then?

Oh, yeah, for sure. We're still hitting 90 though. 90 degrees, yeah. So. But it's cool back. It was like hundreds. 100. Yeah.

What's the. The service that's most needed now?

Right now? Right now we're still mowing. Okay. For a lot of them were. We're kind of doing the last mow. Got it. Last mow. Like we just did. We come from the west side of town. And that one was the last one. This one got it. So. So yeah.

To clean up some leaves and stuff like that.

That's about to start cleanups. So.

Awesome. All right, well, we'll let you do.

What you doing there? Just brooming up. I don't think I've ever used one of these on a job. But these are supposedly really prickly, so I'm not going to try to hand pick them in my hands. Gotcha.

My name is Abraham. The location is El Paso, Texas. The main struggle probably would be finding somebody right, like a right hand man to help me grow, which I already found. Another struggle before the franchise and I have to be totally honest, was.

The.

Systems that I do now as to before service. Autopilot.

Is just without it, I don't know. With Command center, just amazing. There was a point where I wasn't using Command center to take my calls in the window last winter. And then there was a point where I was just getting too many calls. And then I just. I just started Command center taking my calls. And that just relieves a lot of headaches. So I would say those. Those two things are probably the ones that I have seen just far more improvement and made a difference. The best part, I honestly have to say, is the culture. The culture that starts way at the top with Mike and all the videos and getting to meet him a couple times I went to the summit, the first summit that he had. I've been following him for a while now and just being part of the culture and what we're trying to do to change the professionalism of Landscap.

Just incredible. Like being a part of that, of our mission, you know.

It'S really great. You know, I'm very humbled and I love being part of that, you know, and then just the way we're going, the way Mike's handling, you know, the franchise and everything, I love it. Just keeps me motivated and just giving it My best. So we can take over the city of El Paso.

All right, so we're just wrapping up here at a project with Abraham and one of his employees here, and now headed out for some lunch. What we're actually going to be trying to do here, just talk a little bit with this, is his first employee. It's really, really been really solid, and he kind of wants it to become a culture kind of standard and have people get to the next level in their career. So what's really unique about El Paso is the minimum wage is like, eight, nine dollars, or, like, the average wage around here is like, eight, seven, eight dollars for landscapers. And so P4P works, but just a very different model because they're not charging the same rates to the customer. So what we're going to talk about here at this lunch is just kind of trying to get his employ on board for really what the potential of the company is. And I think they're both on, you know, kind of on the same page in terms of what the future of the company's gonna look like. But Abraham has pretty big plans for kind of making a place where people can come start off mowing, but really grow something into something more, whether you manager or an office person or owning their own, you know, company. And so I want to talk about that a little bit here. Just trying to set kind of the cultural standard for what Abraham's trying to build here in El Paso.

What do you want in the future.

For what you're building? I want to build a company to where I want to funnel individuals that come in, and I don't want them to work for more than two, three years and then just either move up in the. In the business or just learn and then provide a culture that, in my experience, hasn't even seen here in the city at all, or maybe anyone, for that matter. Right. Did you want to grab your str? That's what I want to do. That's. That's my vision. And.

You know, not worry about competition, not worry about.

I've learned not to get tied up with that. It doesn't matter, you know, what other people are doing. And that's why the culture that you bring to the table is very important for us.

Right now. Our shop is at my dad's house. He's got space, you know, he's got a little room where we put all our stuff. The trailer. Sometimes I park it at my house. Sometimes it's a bit easier. His head just locking and just ready to go in the morning.

So eventually we do want to move out of there, but he's, he's okay with it right now. No problem.

It is about a, say like a 15 minute drive to the. So sometimes going and coming with for tools or whatever does take a little bit of time, but anywhere you go.

In the city is.

You're not going to drive more than 30 minutes. So. Yeah, anywhere you go.

What's kind of the go goals in terms of like, I know, how many hours a week do you usually work right now?

30, 40?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, around there? 30, 35. Yeah. Do you want to work more like more time if it's available? Like, would you want more like 40 plus?

Oh, yeah, yeah. Yes, sir.

Yeah. Like, I think, I think if you're able to get where the second truck was able to get going.

Okay.

And then gbo run this whole route himself, basically.

Right.

And then it'd be really cool if we could set, you know, the paper performance system. So that way if he has someone with him as the business grows, like in the next summer, for example, that he can make a substantial amount more money.

Right.

And so that way it doesn't feel like it's. Now you probably work hourly a lot. Like when we, when we switch to P4P, what's cool about it is like, for example, the person that works behind you, they're going to match your standards, whether it be work ethic or like how you treat the job, how you care about the company and like how you care about money. Like it's a big deal, like you want to make more money and you're going to sip the P for P. You become the kind of standard, like when we talk with the franchisees, for example, we say, look, your first employee is like the most important because they set the standard for like everyone that comes after them, right? And but for Josh, he was kind of like our first one, right? And so you kind of set the standard for, hey, this is what's expected of you. We expect you to work hard, we're taking out the slack off. You shouldn't be on your phone all day long. We expect you to be able to want money like we want people who want money, because on the P4P system, we want them to go out and kick butt, right? And we want them to go make five or six dollars more an hour than they would somewhere else. But that only happens when someone's like, motivated to work, right? And so I think, like, the really advantage that like Abraham and you guys have is having someone like you working with him. All the time now, like, I just soak up as much as you can from him. And I can see it happening because.

This year it's been crazy. I can honestly see we could have probably doubled up, you know, all the stuff he was taking. So.

Yeah, because the thing is cool, like with the second truck, for example, you have a lot of bandwidth in terms of not having to go get more, but literally you could have you with one guy, Abraham with one guy, got four guys going. You could literally double the size of the company, if not even more, without having to go with more trucks or anything. You're at that point where the next year is really awesome because you don't have to go buy a bunch of space or another truck or more equipment. You just keep doing what you're doing. And literally you can double your workforce. You know, as long as you can lead someone and they're like gonna follow what you're doing, right. And bottom line, they're gonna match you.

Right.

And like, I think if. If I was you, even if you're only going to be doing longer landscapes, like two or three years, I would just be looking at this, like, where can you learn the numbers and like the mandre of a person? Because that's what's gonna carry over to any other business. But you're gonna be worth a whole lot more if you can, you know, how to teach someone how to work and you know the numbers of business. And so like, I know, I know Abraham listens to stuff all the time. He probably threw osmosis here some of it. But like, that sort of like knowledge is what's gonna lead to, like, massive better opportunities. You know, even if volunteer and Lansing is not what you want to do.

For a long time.

Right. You can be a video guy like this guy. But yeah, that's cool. Hey, great seeing you.

Likewise.

What would you plan to see in January?

We are trying to go, but probably. If not, I'll probably go on my own.

Yeah.

Because I really want to get that heat. End of his performance.

Yeah. And you know, you gotta make this guy rich. You heard all. It's good to see you, man.

So, yeah, we'll definitely stay in touch and Josh will definitely give you some of those videos up in the day.

All right.

You already use on social media pictures too. Yep.

Yeah. Do you want to take a couple on your phone right now? Checking out here out of El Paso. Had a nice little second meal of Mexican food. Head out now to Colorado, Littleton, Colorado, to meet with Thomas. He was actually our first franchisee ever so look forward to that and gonna fly there, check in in Colorado, hope to get a workout in and call it a day.