DAY 11 of Building a $1M Business in 1 Yr

I traveled across the country to build a $1 million lawn care business in 1 year, and we have finally hired our first couple technicians. Now there's supposed to be 3 technicians this morning, but one of them's already called out because he got in an accident on the way here.

So hopefully he's okay, and hopefully he ends up working out.

But today we're getting our first 2 technicians. They've already been onboarded, they're getting paid today, and I really want to show behind the scenes of tech onboarding. I went to the hospital. They thought I had either had a concussion or broke my neck.

If you ever think something's a little loose up top, that's why. Just FYI. If you hit budget hours at this location, you're basically gonna make about $30 an hour. Just as a rule of thumb.

Give yourself to a cause, let the work work on you, and you'll find yourself in places that you would have never imagined when you started.

I think that for most home service businesses, we do not train our technicians enough. We throw them a shirt and we say, good luck. And I don't think that's necessarily setting them up for success and that level of commitment to them. How can we expect them to get in our trucks, be a great brand ambassador, work efficiently, etc.? And so we spend one full day and the first part that we're sharing today is some of the video training. We go over our performance pay, our bonus structure, and how they can make more money inside the company with upsells, etc. We're going to break this into 2 parts. Everyone in the comments has been saying, hey, we like the slow— like just slow it down, let it go long form. So this is behind the scenes. You probably have never seen another company's tech onboarding or onboarding of any employee. And so I want to give that behind the scenes view. And hopefully over the next couple of days, you're able to get some ideas of how you can incorporate these into your own business.

And then with the franchise, I didn't know how franchises work.

Oh, royalties.

Really matter.

Yeah.

Royalties. 2 years later, they moved it up.

Yeah.

Oh man.

Numbers went up. So they came back and said—

What's that?

I think we're good.

Okay. They came back and said they wanted 8%.

Wow.

They just changed it on him?

Yeah, because our numbers, like all the other locations, was still at 4%, and they moved us up because our numbers were higher.

That makes no sense.

So, and then I was like, man, so it's just like HOA then.

Well, thanks guys for coming. I appreciate it. Steven, DeAndre. So I appreciate you guys being here.

Uh, you— we—

if you didn't already clock in, the team at the office, they'll clock you in and make sure you're paid and all that stuff.

A lot of times when you have a new technician and people are late, they are moving schedules around on you, they're constantly like all of a sudden asking for extra hours or guaranteed hours, or they're trying to negotiate their pay— a lot of times you have a lot of red flags, like things like that, before they even get hired. That's usually not a good sign, and usually you would let someone go. That being said, sometimes technicians have been burned by bad bosses, bad companies. They've worked in a corporate environment and they don't trust people. And so the onboarding day is a great thing because it allows the technician to be able to come see how it's like working for the business, understand the culture, see the equipment, see the vans, and actually see like, do I see myself being here? A lot of times if you hire someone, they quit their other job and they come work for you day one and they find all of that, all of that out. It can be like, oh man, I'm stuck here and now I got to go look for another job and I'm going to leave here in the next 3 to 6 months. But I got to stay here because I don't have anything else. I would rather them come for an onboarding day, make sure it's a good fit, and then go give their 2 weeks notice. And so how we pitch the onboarding day is very much like, come make sure it's a good fit for you. You know, like before you commit to this long term, because we're looking for long-term team members, make sure it's a good fit for you. Come see our equipment, come see our vans, see how we pay. See your manager, like talk to everyone in a room. We'll pay you, you're onboarded, and like we're paying you real. We give you food for the day and it's great for them. And it's a great way for us to know, like really see them in a different environment besides just interviews, just videos, just talking to them, like get them around the team. Are they a good team player? You can pick up on a lot of really good stuff during these onboarding days. And that's what I'm looking forward to today.

All right.

All right, so my name is Mike. And so I'm not— so typically this is a franchise. Augusta Lawn Care is a franchise. So most of the time you have a franchisee that would be the owner, kind of like you've experienced, and then you'd be working for them. There's not a franchisee of this location because it's owned by the corporate side of things. Mm-hm. So it's actually the first corporate location for Augusta Lawn Care. I'm the CEO of that company. And I started Augusta Lawn Care When I was 18, so 12 years ago, 13 years ago. And then we franchised about 6, 7 years ago. And now we have about 250 locations around the world. The difference with this location is like there's not really a franchisee. John's the manager, GM of the whole thing. And our goal is to start, you know, multiple locations around the DFW area. So this is the first one. But over the next few years, our hope is to basically start 1 or 2 a year. How we do it at Augusta is— and we'll go through all like the stages and how you can move into these roles. But basically, we don't really have like 50 guys at one shop. We'll usually have 6 to 8 technicians, 1 general manager. That's the location. But most of the time what happens is our technicians that stick around for a while, they have the opportunity to move into a GM role, assuming that we're starting more locations. And so realistically, like with John being the GM now, the hope is that in 6 to 12 months we're actually finding a GM for this location so he can go start the next one. And so there's definitely opportunity, especially for those that start early and are our first couple of team members, to be able to actually move into John's role In the future, and then John would start the next one and the next one. And our hope is to kind of copy and paste this around DFW. So don't mind the cameras. This is Terrell. You'll get to know him. He's great. He's been on the media team for a while. Our goal is to kind of document a lot of this. So the reason I'm even here for the next six months is we're just trying to document starting a location for the other owners. And one of the big pieces of that, in my opinion, is we don't do a great job of training our technicians. A lot of times, if you've been at other companies, it's like here's a shirt, hop in the truck. We'll train you, have fun, right? I don't think that's a great way to train technicians. And so today is really just— this is the type of thing that we want to do with our technicians, is bring them in, really understand the systems, make sure you understand the equipment, the vans, and then make sure you're set up for success. Um, and so I have a big YouTube channel. That's why we document all this stuff. If you ever don't want that camera in your face, just tell Terrell. You do not need to be on camera. Being on camera is not part of this job. If you want to be, awesome. But if you don't wanna be, don't feel bad. Like, hey, I just don't wanna be on camera. That's totally fine.

There's a way past that.

Yeah, exactly. So if you don't want to be, it's not—

no pressure whatsoever.

It's really though, we're trying to train other Augusta owners, but also just other landscapers in general. We don't really look at other landscapers as competition. We want everyone to do really well. And so I share everything like that we do today and how we do marketing and how we do advertising and how all that I just share online. Little fun fact is that there's another lawn care business in here. This morning I was dying to go to the bathroom. I come running in here 'cause Like, I had to go to the bathroom so bad. It was pouring down rain. I'm running around this office trying to find the bathroom, and I look and turns out the grounds guys are right here.

Grounds guys of Flower Mound. So if you're watching, come say hi to us because we're neighbors now.

We're down here.

Look forward to seeing you.

So the goal here, uh, in, in kind of the DFW area— I'm here for 6 months. John's the general manager.

He'd be your direct report, obviously.

He's the one that's hired you guys up. He'd be managing all the daily operations and just making sure you're set up for success. There's a few things we're doing at this location that is new to Augusta. One of them is you take the vans home, you have a dedicated route, your equipment, it's all on you. Like, it's basically you, you can put as much as you want on there, make as much money as you want, have your own van, have your own equipment, etc.

That's kind of new to Augusta.

Usually they have a shop space, everyone meets up. You're good. Everyone meets up and is, you know, going from one central spot.

Yeah, one of the biggest downsides of having technicians take the vehicles home is that loss of culture, that loss of team, that loss of camaraderie in the mornings, in the evenings. And so we will definitely be doing a weekly meetup with all the vans to do things like blade sharpening, equipment maintenance, inspections of the vehicles, but also just get the guys together, probably do a breakfast every time. Even if it's an hour. So is it super efficient like P4P?

No.

But like there's that sense of culture still and team and like when they're on the WhatsApp group and someone goes down like, hey, I'll come help you. And so there still has to be that teamwork and that camaraderie. And my hope is that the increase in pay that they're able to get on P4P by having their own vehicle is a greater benefit to them. That extra money, the extra compensation than just seeing the guys every morning. And hopefully if we can get 90% of that benefit by having once a week where we have intentional time for team building, intentional time to just get them together as a team, I'm hoping that we can get 90% of that benefit without 80% of the wasted time that usually happens at the beginning and end of the day at the shop and all the drive time to and from the shop from their house.

So my goal today is we're gonna watch some videos and then ideally if you have questions, just tell me to stop. Or like every 5 to 15 minutes there's a gap anyways, and we'll go over what's being talked about. I want you to be able to leave today knowing like how to make more money, how to move up inside the company, all of that good stuff. The goal in having more trained and seasoned technicians like yourself is like you can hop in from day one, be efficient, and within a matter of hopefully a couple paychecks be making way above base. Kind of the thing that probably makes Augusta different than a lot of lawn care companies is we use P4P. So today we'll go over that a lot. It's called pay for performance. Basically, you make 30% of all the revenue you bring the business across the top. And so, oh, by the way, we don't do royalties at Augusta, so don't worry about that.

If you're like, man, I just bashed them as HOAs.

15%.

Yeah, no, it's a flat—

so how Augusta works is they just do a flat fee. So it's $1,600 a month. Doesn't matter if you make $2 million or $200,000 a year. It's just the same $1,600 per month. So we don't move royalties up. We've never moved the monthly fee up on people. Don't worry about that. That's, that's, that's kind of the overall structure of things. Um, so we'll start watching videos. The first one's really just about the mission of like Augusta in general. So very high level, but then the goal is like, as we go throughout the next couple hours, we go right into like how you can make more money, how you can move up inside the company, all that good stuff. So again, if you have any questions, just stop me and we can pause the video. No problem.

I think one thing to be careful of is being almost too picky with technicians. And then there's other people that literally it's like if you have a pulse, you're in the truck. And if you, if you find yourself on either of those extremes, an onboarding day will help center you. Because if you're way too like, just get them in the truck, if you have them for a day around you and every 10 minutes they're going out and taking a smoke break, they're always— they're late to the onboarding day, they can't pay attention to the video, like it becomes really clear you should let them go. On the other side, if you're more skeptical, And it seems like no one will be good enough for you. An onboarding date is a great way for people to prove to you that they they're good, and they might not be great in an interview where they are nervous, they're fidgeting, they're they just they haven't done an interview for three four years five years because they've been working at the same place for a long time. They're just nervous, so they talk a little fast, they get jumbled, they might not be great at eye contact. Like you got to realize that if someone's been working somewhere ten years, they haven't done an interview for ten years, they're gonna be nervous. And so sometimes. People who interview really good are not great technicians. Sometimes those are the people who have been jumping from job to job to job and they're good at interviewing versus the person that doesn't really interview great 'cause they have worked at one job their entire life. And so the onboarding days is a great way that if it's not a good fit at the end of the day, we can cut them loose. If after the end of the day they don't feel like there's a good fit for them, they can leave and we haven't like got them in a truck and like got assigned lockers and set them up in payroll and a whole bunch of other things that take more time from the team.

Why does it keep starting like 15 seconds?

Hi, my name is Mike Andes. I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn Care. And although I'm not the owner in your local market, the franchisee—

Don't listen to that part.

I am the founder that started the business several years ago. So I was 11 years old when I started pushing a lawnmower around my neighborhood and making money on the side. My brother and I did. And I went to college when I was really young. I thought I was becoming a medical doctor. And so I started college when I was 13. Now at 18, before I actually went and got my MD, I dropped out of medical school and kept mowing grass. And that's when I started Augusta Lawn Care. And I think for a lot of people in this industry, we come from backgrounds where we don't necessarily want to go to school. We maybe didn't have great grades, maybe we dropped out, and we want to be able to create an environment and a culture inside of Augusta Lawn Care where you can grow your career, whether it be just getting started, taking it to the next level, and being able to grow wealth for you and for your family. At 18, I started Augusta Lawn Care, but a few years into it, We had grown quickly, but we had no systems, no procedures, pay for performance, all the systems we're going to talk about in this orientation. We didn't have those. And because of that, I grew the business quickly, but I was making no money. I was working 80+ hours a week and end up one day I'm underneath a dump truck with a hoodie on and the PTO underneath the dump truck that spins, it caught my hoodie. Now, if you want to see some pretty gory action, go to YouTube and just put in PTO accidents. It doesn't end well usually. By the grace of God, I was able to— all the sweater and my shirt wrapped up around my neck, squeezed super tight, and then it just shredded and I fell out. I went to the hospital. They thought I had either had a concussion or broke my neck. Fortunately, I did not. But over the course of a couple of weeks of being in the hospital and recovering, I realized my business did not have systems. It run on me working.

So if you ever think something's a little loose up top, that's why. Just FYI.

Crazy amounts of hours and being involved in every single aspect of the job. And I was limiting my team from growing Because everything went through me. I'm literally on the hospital bed videoing my crew with FaceTime and walking them through the next project. Why? We didn't have systems. And so in this orientation, I'm going to introduce you to some of the systems that we use at Augusta Lawn Care to make sure that our team and owners are able to not have a business that is so fragile. I want to go over the stages of success inside of Augusta Lawn Care. Now, you might just be getting started as a technician. There's also stages for a general manager and 7 stages for an owner. Altogether, that makes 21 stages of success. Let's first go over the 7 stages of success for a technician. So you're going to complete infield training with your trainer. Once you do that, you're able to get stage 1 of success as a technician. Now, after you achieve 2 consecutive pay periods above base pay on P4P and you get a pay for performance bonus, Then you get to stage 2. Now we're going to talk a lot about pay for performance, how you can make more money by being more efficient and working hard inside of Augusta Lawn Care, because we truly believe the harder you work, the more money you should make. Now, a stage 3 technician is going to earn 5 online reviews mentioning your crew or the work that you do. Again, trying to shine in our communities and show that our level of professionalism is what sets us apart. Number 4 is you're going to lead 2 morning meetings with the team. So, I know it's not necessarily the funnest thing to have to speak in front of others or do public speaking, but these are skills that we can achieve. And whether you stay with Augusta for years or whether you stay for just 6 or 12 months, the ability to learn this skill of leadership and be able to speak in front of other people is super valuable. And so, whether you're here for a long time and you move through all 21 stages of success or you're going to go to a different industry that you're passionate about, We want you to be able to gain skills at every single level of success to make sure that you can make more money, you can gain more skills inside of your career. All right, a stage 5 technician is gonna be when you're actually a trainer for a new technician, because one of the best ways to really cement and learn a skill is to teach it to someone else, because you have to really understand it and then give it in a digestible way to them and teach them how to do all the things required to be a successful technician. Stage 6 technician is where you're going to earn 2 profit sharing checks. Now we're going to talk more about profit sharing, but one of the things that make us unique at Augusta Lawn Care is that as the location becomes profitable and stabilizes, the profits that come into the business, we give a piece of that to the technicians. Assuming that you are on time, you've been with the team for more than a quarter, you're able to get a profit sharing check and a piece of the action goes to you. Now, a stage 7 technician not only trains one other new team member, but 3 new team members and really irons out the skill of being able to pass along what they've learned to new members of the team. Now, at the technician level, that's not the only area of improvement. There's also stages of success for a general manager as well as for an owner. Now, a general manager, whether it be one of your owners that is trying to start a second or third or fourth location down the road, or maybe they want to go do something else and eventually get the business to where you can run it. As a general manager. We've created the roadmap that once you pass stage 7 of being a technician, you're eligible to be able to be a general manager. Now, that could be a couple of years, but you gaining the skills and staying as a stage 7 technician allows you the opportunity and the skills to be able to become a general manager. Now, a general manager is also going to learn, come to training. They're going to learn more about the business side of things and making the business profitable. Now, at the end of 2 years of being a general manager, You're eligible for what we call the 3F program. That's the Franchise Fee Forgiveness. This actually allows you to become an owner. And even at the ownership level, we have 7 stages of success, ways to be able to move up inside of your career. And what's really cool about the 21 stages of success inside of Augusta Lawn Care, there are members of the team that have started at stage 1 of being a technician, gone through all 7 stages of technician, they become a general manager. They were eligible for the 3F program. Where they get their first $35,000 that you usually spend to become a franchisee at Augusta Lawn Care, that becomes zero. You get trained as an owner and you can become an owner inside of Augusta Lawn Care. And so you might have worked at places in the past where you're an hourly rate, the harder you work, you didn't— it didn't really matter, you just paid an hourly rate. We have pay for performance to eliminate that. You might have been in a place where the owner is making a bunch of money, but you don't get to see any of it. That's why we have profit sharing. You get a piece of the action. And If they're making a bunch of money, that's awesome. You have the path to actually become an owner inside of Augusta Lawn Care as you move through your stages of success. All of this ties back to the fact that our core value at Augusta Lawn Care is constant improvement. We focus on that whether you're a stage 1 technician, a stage 4 general manager, or whether you're a stage 5 owner. Everyone is on the board. The reason we do this is because I don't believe that a landscaping job, a lawn care technician, I don't believe that's a dead-end job. Assuming you allow the work to work on you. Assuming that as you're working, you're listening to audiobooks, videos, podcasts, trying to improve yourself as a human being, as a team member, as an employee, as a business person. Gaining these skills and constantly improving allows you to move up these stages of success and move up to the next stage inside of your career. Constantly learning and improving. I encourage you to do this. This is what will unlock the next stage of Making more money in your career, gaining more skills, leadership, and being able to give back to those that you love. So as we go through the rest of the onboarding, this is fundamentally why Augusta Lawn Care exists: pay for performance, profit sharing, open book management so you can learn about the business. All of it's here so you can earn more and get to the next stage of your career.

That's the 21st stage.

Yeah, and then real quick, guys, on the on the stages of success, I think the For you guys with the technicians, one of my favorite ones is, is helping the person beneath you when they're coming in. That's going to be very important for what we're doing because we're going to lift each other up. We're going to be a solid team. And so I think that's just very important, just moving along in your career, is you have to be willing to share everything you know to somebody else if you want them to be successful. If you want your business to be successful, you have to share your knowledge. You have to be willing to You know, take time with them and, and show them and make sure that they understand everything that's going on and they have the right footing to be successful. I'm big on that because I've had that in my life with people just helping me out, and I wouldn't be where I'm at without some of those other people, and it's a good feeling to have. So that we're going to focus on that quite a bit, and that's when you're doing that successfully, you're going to fit right into being a general manager and taking on one of these locations if you can, if you If you can do that, you know, out of the goodness of your heart and just love to do it, you're gonna be successful at it.

Well, for us, it's like everyone's taking a van home. And so that's why the base standard of just working here is you've gotta get the cream of the crop.

And so that's 2 things.

Negative side, much harder to find technicians that can do that. They gotta have a clean record.

You're looking at things like drugs.

You're looking at lots of other aspects. Even where they live is important.

That's the downside.

The upside is you bring together the best people. Now when they have a team meeting and they get together in the morning for breakfast, they're alongside a whole bunch of savages as technicians, people that are efficient, on their game, take ownership of their equipment, take pride in their van being organized.

And I look forward to seeing what that looks like. How we kind of look at it too, like that's the 21 Stages of Success, the board there, by the way, that was just the graphic that was shown on the screen. But like, I hate, like I had jobs before starting a business I hate when someone's like, okay, you get more responsibility and no extra pay. It's like, okay, that stinks. Okay. Like, my objective is that as you move through these stages, you're making more money. We don't come here for fun. We need to provide for our families. And I understand that mowing lawns in 100-degree heat is not something like we wake up every day like, let's do that. Right? It is a means to the end. And I want to make sure that when someone works harder, they make more money. And so that's why P4P is so foundational, because I— you've probably been at places of work before.

You're working with the guy next to you.

You know, you're making maybe a buck more an hour and you're doing like 80% of the work.

They're sleeping. They're stopping 5 times to take a bathroom break and smoke 28 times. And you're just like, this is crazy.

It doesn't make you want to be like, let's get out there and hustle.

Yeah.

So we'll talk about P4P.

I want to introduce you to Nick, though. He is actually the regional manager, so he helps John until we get to 3 locations. Then John will become the regional manager and he'll be managing other GMs. which I would love for both of you to be able to move up into that role. Uh, over the next 2 to 3 years in this location, you are probably the— like what we talked about in that video, you know how I said it could take a couple years? In this location, in a couple years, we will have a few locations. And so we'll be looking for what are the technicians that have moved through the 7 stages and are capable of leading a location. And you're like, well, that's daunting. Constant improvement. You will come for training. We will work through things. There's elements John's learning. Like today he's Shadowing me as I'm doing this, like you will learn all these skills. And so I just encourage you if you if that's something like I would like to build something more than just being technician. There is the opportunity for that. And then we have guys like I have some guys at the other locations up in I live in Washington by the way. But like up there where I have another location close to us, they've been there for years. They're like I don't want to manage people. I I just like making thirty thirty five dollars an hour on P four P.

They crush it.

They're just super efficient. They get in there and hustle. They like training the other guys up. They like seeing how they know all the customers and they're able to like. pass that along and their standards become everyone else's standards.

They love that.

And they're like, I don't want to be a manager.

Just leave me as a stage 7 technician and I'm a happy guy. Maybe it's because up there we don't have 100-degree heat for 60 days straight. But it is— it's really up to you.

And what's interesting about this is like, we're going to be doing this together. And I think that's going to be— it's unique that— I mean, this is the first location, but we're trying to get these pretty quick. And so it's We're gonna move pretty quick. We're gonna have to hit the ground running and just pick it up real quick and just go with it. There's gonna be a lot of growing pains, um, with it, as with the vans and just other, you know, uh, issues there. But we'll, uh, we'll get them figured out. But, um, like I said, we're gonna be moving quickly and we just need to hit the ground running and just, like I said, start from the get-go and just, you know, just move forward pretty quick and efficiently. So I'm excited to just move, uh, to move on these.

Yeah, I kind of think these locations kind of like a startup.

It's like when you join, it's like not everything's perfect yet. It's like, hey, we're still figuring out how we want the vans situated and like what wheel locks we're going to use. And okay, the back ramp, we got to put some different rubber stoppers on it.

It's not everything.

Everything's not dialed in. Kind of with any startup, when you get in at that level, there's the opportunity to grow with them. And so there's nothing inside of me that would be like, we want a minimum of 3 locations in this area. Minimum. We'd love to get to 6. And so there's definitely the opportunity. And I want to make that clear because in that last video I do say, hey, maybe your owner doesn't want to grow and you might have to move. And we do have technicians that do that. So one of my technicians at my location in Bellingham, we're not trying to add locations there. It's been the same way since we started.

I started it.

He moved just down an hour and a half south down towards Seattle area, and he became the general manager for one of the other owners. So it's always a transferable skill, but at this location you will not need to move. If there is someone that is willing and able to be a general manager, I will likely be like, let's, let's put the money behind it. Let's get started. It's, it's a larger investment. This location, probably $400,000 to $500,000 of the vans and the equipment, all the rest of it. Like, if there's someone ready and they can move into that role and they're confident, we'll back you up. So just want to put that side note.

So this is Nick.

He's the regional manager.

You might actually hear from him or he might be in your WhatsApp group occasionally.

So he's going to tell his story because he actually started at 19 years old as a technician and now he is the VP of Franchise Success. But he's been an owner as well and he moved up through all 21 stages. So I just want to hear his story real quick here.

Hey, so I know you just started here at Augusta, and this may feel just like a basic lawn care job, and that's exactly how I felt in the beginning too. So I found Augusta as a random job, and I had no idea where it would lead. But working here has truly changed my life in more ways than I could have ever imagined. Where I was at before Augusta, I didn't have much structure or support. I'd been kicked out by my parents in high school. I was on my own when I was 17. I didn't really have role models, guidance, or just any kind of clear path in life. What my life looked like at the time, I was smoking weed all the time, I was drinking all the time, and I was headed nowhere fast. That's sort of what my life had become. I felt like a victim because of my upbringing and coming from a broken household and just the circumstances that I was raised in that I didn't have control over. And I just did not see myself as someone who could ever run a business, let's say. I used to think business was for people with degrees or they had money or like better backgrounds or just people who were smarter than me. I just really, I just needed a job. 2019 is when I started working there, and I've been with Augusta now for about 7 years, and I started as a technician, obviously, right at the very beginning, And at first I was paid hourly. This was before we had P4P or pay for performance, which we'll get into later. And basically I started working there. I was working really hard. I was grateful for the opportunity. I thought a couple more dollars an hour, cool. And what Mike noticed during that time was a gap between production and pay. So we had people such as myself, you know, young and working hard, producing more than everyone else but making less, versus we had other guys who were older, who had been around longer, who were producing at a lower rate, but they were making— they were getting paid more. It's like, clearly didn't make sense. So it was around this time that P4P was created, and the point of P4P, pay for performance, was to reward people based on what they actually produced. P4P rewarded merit Instead of just tenure, like instead of just rewarding people who've just been around for a while. So immediately after Mike implemented this, I became one of the top earners. I think I'd been with the company for about 4 months at that point. And what this started to do was change how I viewed my time. I wasn't just trading dollars for hours anymore. And so the way I was thinking about my day and my work, I wasn't just like, oh, I'm here, I'm working for X amount of dollars per hour. Instead, I could see based on my efficiency and how I conducted myself through the day, how that translated to how much I made, and then also what it actually did for the company. You know, again, when I started, I was just trying to make more money. But over time, what P4P actually did, it got me to start thinking like an owner. So I started thinking about cutting waste, all things that you want to think about as a business owner to make it run more efficiently. P4P got me to start thinking in that direction. So I wanted to be more like that. As I became more efficient on P4P, I became more curious about the business. I started to see how my daily actions affected the financial performance of the business, and it was starting to make sense to me. Around this time too, I know the company had an Audible account, so we would listen to books, podcasts, things about like self-development, self-improvement, business, things of that nature. And, you know, probably for the first 6 to 12 months when I started working there, I wasn't really interested.

in that.

I just wanted to honestly listen to music and drink energy drinks and just kind of carry on with my day. But once I sort of opened up and I—

He literally brought to me a calculator one day. He was like, I calculated the cost of 2 Bang Energies and that might increase my efficiency on PvP. So like, I've made sense of buying these energy drinks because it makes me more money. It's like, well, you know, investments at all sizes, I guess.

I conducted myself throughout the day. and then how that affected the business, I started becoming open to actually learning about business and the things that happened behind the scenes, which after being in school, I didn't think I liked learning. So it was my first time in life post-school that I really, you know, opened myself up to learning something new again. And it was something that I was actually interested in or became interested in because I saw how it was affecting me in my life. And I realized bad grades in school Didn't mean that I wasn't capable. You know, like I was never the greatest at math. And what I realized is like just due to the stuff that I was dealing with at home and some of the subject matter at school, I'm sure most of us can relate, it's just not relevant. So it's hard to be passionate or perform well at that. Ultimately what happened is I started to build confidence through action just by asking questions, learning more about efficiency, listening to these books and podcasts. My mind slowly opened up to learning again. And at this point, I started to see growth within myself, and I stopped viewing myself as, oh, because I grew up this way, or because I was this way from the beginning, or because I wasn't the smartest in school, doesn't mean I'm fixed there. It was the first time in life that I'd realized that I can actually grow and become better. The 3F program, we'll talk about it. It stands for Franchise Fee Forgiveness Program. Anybody that works at any Augusta location for 2 years can start their franchise for free without paying the initial fee. And this is what I ended up doing. The franchise fee forgiveness program, the idea behind it is that, you know, through hard work and just on-the-job training, you know, learning the real way instead of like getting tens of thousands of dollars in debt, going to school, I could actually learn about the business While getting paid to do so. And then I have the door open for me to take the next step in my career. Ultimately, that's what I ended up taking advantage of. I truly don't believe that I would've been successful if I had gone at it alone. It was, I wanna say 2021 is when I started. I started that franchise. I grew it quickly, threw it into profit mode. We ran— I ran that business for about 4 years, made lots of money with it. Eventually I sold it. And that sort of brings me to where I'm at today. And that period going from technician to owner was the biggest leap I could have ever imagined. And it's crazy to think now where I'm at now and how my mindset has evolved, that that person that I was back then would ever qualify for running a business. And I'm glad that obviously I was in Augusta and I had the system of P4P and efficiency and open book management. The manager showing me the profit, the actual financial statements, which we'll talk about here in a bit, the actual financial performance of the business, giving me a look under the hood and giving me everything that I need, all the knowledge to succeed and take the next step in my own life. And I realize now how fortunate I was because most companies out there aren't interested in developing their people. They don't care if your mindset stays fixed. They don't care if you take the next step to their career. And I think that's what leads to a lot of young guys who have ambition sort of bounce around job to job, and after enough time of doing that, they get disillusioned, and then they start to have a bitter view on the world. And, you know, people like my dad, that's sort of how you end up on that trajectory. Yeah, I really— during this time, I went from seeing myself who literally just like needed a job to someone who could run, build and run a successful business and Make more money than I would have imagined. Where I am now, I realized I didn't say this in the beginning, but my name's Nick, Nick Reed. I'm the owner success manager here at Augusta. So my primary functions, I do the coaching and support for all of our franchise owners. So the owners of these franchise locations, coaching them towards success, making sure that they're, they're great leaders for their GMs and technicians that are going up through the 21 stages. And really just trying to get people to follow that same trajectory that I did. There's a number of people, by the time that I'm making this video, I think there's been about 8 other people who have followed the same exact path that I did, going from technician, taking advantage of the 3R program, and then becoming owners themselves. And not that everyone has to become an owner, it's just knowing that that path is there. is helpful. But other opportunities like becoming the GM or moving up within the same organization under good leadership is super valuable. And ultimately what I ended up doing, and again, 7 years ago when I started Augusta, I would've never imagined that this journey would turn out the way that it has. I ended up selling that business to join the franchise again because it feels great to be part of a mission and a purpose. and just have a greater impact and be able to kind of guide people through that same trajectory that I went through myself. You don't need to have everything figured out on day one. I certainly didn't. I literally joined or started this job because it made a couple dollars more an hour, but then I just, I saw the opportunities and I took advantage of them. The things that you do need is just to be coachable, be humble, becoming consistent, just always showing up for the team. That was a big thing that changed stuff for me. Instead of thinking about myself and the things that I went through and how my life is difficult and the things that I'm struggling with, the stuff that actually got me through to the other side was putting my energy towards thinking about the world and other people. Like, how can I support my team while I'm here at work? How can I support this business to make it the most successful possible? And it's easy to sort of look at business as like a transaction, like, oh, I'm, I'm not going to stick my neck out. I'm not going to work harder, but I think what we often fail to realize is that the only person that that's hurting is yourself. There's this saying that I love. It's, let the work work on you, and again, if you're looking at work, it's just like, oh, I'm showing up. I'm just doing hard work in the elements, which it is hard work. It's rewarding work. You go back, you look at yourself in the mirror, and you're happy with what you did and how you performed, But it's tough work, and it's not the kind of thing you want to get stuck doing for 30 years. That's why we have these stages and this trajectory in place. But letting the work work on you, just showing up every day, being consistent, showing up for the team, taking ownership, and learning, asking questions, understanding the systems, always trying to sharpen yourself, become a little bit better. That was ultimately what changed things for me. It was the opportunities. The environment was there. It was already created. I just decided to take advantage of those opportunities, and we see it all the time. People come in, sometimes all the same opportunities that I experienced that have changed my life are there, and some people just don't follow it, or they don't care, or they don't think it's real, or whatever. But then there's other people who see the same thing that I saw. They latch on. They follow the plan. They stay humble and teachable. And They let the work work on them. And ultimately, by serving the team better, serving the business better, you sharpen yourself into a person who has a higher capacity. You're capable of doing more things. More people start to rely on you. Your own confidence improves. And then you look a few years down the line and you find yourself in a position that you would have never imagined. I chose to take the opportunity seriously. I hope the same thing for you. Over the next, you know, the rest of these videos, we'll kind of go through some of the specifics about some of these programs and why they're in place, how they operate, just to make sure that you're clear and that the opportunities in working at Augusta are clear and present. And really the whole idea is like these videos will help you understand the systems the same way that I did that helped me grow into the person that I am. Yeah, thanks for being along for the journey. I know it's crazy. Happy to talk with anyone about my journey. And like I said, just give yourself to a cause, let the work work on you, and you'll find yourself in places that you would have never imagined when you started. So thanks so much, and we'll see you on the next one.

A lot of this, once, once John's with you in the training and the bands, that's what he always says. He just repeats himself over and over and over again. It's because once you know how to do a property correctly, And as you can see— oh, here, open it up. And Nick, in the next video, will go over like very specific things like the way that you trim, how you put the weed whacker line, all that stuff he'll go over in a second. But a lot of these elements we'll go over in the van.

Speed naturally comes with just more reps of doing it the same way every time. And if you nail the quality aspect and you don't have these callbacks that are super inefficient, you just learn how to do the same predictable result, which is you nail it every single time. And the second you step off that property, You know without a shadow of a doubt that you did a perfect job, you didn't miss anything, the client isn't going to call back. That's when you confidently start to become more efficient because you're not second-guessing yourself, you're not missing things, and you do it right the first way every single time. And that just comes with time. So repetition makes you faster, but the foundation is first learn how to nail the job and leave a property every single time flawless. Learn that first, make that your standard, and then by doing that over and over and over Perfect practice makes perfect. If that becomes your standard, and you're always leaving a property without shadow of a doubt that you did an excellent job, and you just do that over and over, speed naturally comes in. So that's what I was saying earlier. Like speed is not the focus. Just quality first, and then repetitions doing a perfect job. That's how you become a pro. That's eventually doing enough of those repetitions and not getting those callbacks. You instantly start making P for P once you've nailed those basics. So again, stage one technician. Don't come in and think, oh, I just need to rush and like just be fast at the beginning. Promise you it's only gonna work against you. Um, the system is not designed to reward speed. It rewards efficiency and getting the job done right the first time. So P4P, ultimately it aligns the incentive of you with the business. You make more, the business makes more, which allows the business to pay you more. Um, you know, it's, it's just a beautiful, um, connection, I guess, between the two. And unfortunately you don't see this in many industries.

All right, so before we start going into like the The deep dive of how to actually save time throughout the day. I wanted to run some numbers, so don't worry, it's not too complicated. As long as you have a calculator, you'll be okay.

So these are our prices for small, medium, and large properties.

We keep it really simple for this market. Small property is under 4,000 square feet. If it's between 4,000 and 8,000 square feet of turf, it's $79. And if it's over between 8,000 and 12,000 square feet, they're paying $109. You could say on average about $80. If you take an average of all our lawns, it's gonna depend. So for example, in Flower Mound, the lots are a little smaller. Down Southlake, you got a little larger lawns on average, but it varies, right? So all of these prices are determined by Command Center. They answer all our phones. They'll measure the property over the phone, give them the price. Also on our website, customers can choose their own price based upon the size of their property. So what this means for you is you get 30% of all the revenue you make for the business. Okay, so as a rule of thumb, let's say you make $1,000 of revenue for the business, you're making $300 for that day. Alright, it doesn't matter if it takes you 7 hours to make that revenue, doesn't matter if it takes you 12 hours to make that revenue. If you made $1,000, you make $300. Go ahead.

So the price here, if that's per cut, it doesn't matter if it's Is because we're doing weekly.

Correct. We're requiring weekly services for 9 months of the year, and then we require biweekly for the other 3 months.

Just real quick, I think it was $99 for mowing, $109 for treatments.

You're right. I knew there was a $109, and I also thought there was a $99.

So those are our prices, and you will be able to see all of this.

Like, there's nothing where, like, you're showing up to a job, you don't know how much money you're making ever.

So those are the prices.

But yeah, $1,000 if you made it for a day. Doesn't matter if it takes you 6 hours or 12 hours, it's up to you. Right now you're like, well then, like Nick said, why wouldn't I just go like super fast and like mess everything up? Well then tomorrow when you get a callback, you're going back to that property and guess what's not happening? You're not making any more money.

Yellow slips.

Yellow slips. Okay, so we'll talk about yellow slips, what that means. But essentially, as long as the customer's happy and you did a great job, you can move as quickly and efficiently as you can and make as much money as you want. Now we are charging The customer when we're on the property, $100 per budgeted hour.

All right.

What that means is when you go to properties and say, how many budgeted hours, how long do we think this job should take? Meaning this $49 job should take about 30 minutes. All right. Because if you take $49 divided by $100 per hour, about half an hour. So when you see budget hours, if you hit budget hours at this location, you're basically gonna make about $30 an hour. This is a rule of thumb. If you're hitting budget hours all the time and you don't have a whole bunch of drive time between jobs, Right. You're gonna make about $30 an hour. Now the hard part for this location, 'cause it's new, and Nick alluded to this, we don't have great route density right now. Over the next couple months, we'll be getting more customers. We start advertising next week.

I anticipate first month or two, probably not getting too far above base pay.

Mm-hmm.

But as you build out your route and you get more efficient and we keep adding more jobs in there, you're like, hey, I know I have 60 on my route, can I have 65?

Great, we'll put 5 more on. Now that's when you really start to make good money. Your routes are nice and tight. You're doing the same ones all the time. So you get really efficient at knowing the properties and you can make a lot more than base pay.

But to be very honest and frank, this base pay probably for the first month or two is probably where you're going to be at because we're still trying to build the route out.

That's really— we don't want to set the expectation that you're going to make $30, $35 an hour. And are there people that do that? Yes, but they're established routes and we're not there yet.

When you— when the technician gets up for the day for his route, will he be able to see what the revenue is for that day?

Correct. Yeah, so on, uh, the Field Force mobile app, you can see all your jobs and how much money they're making. In the P4P app, you can see how much that's going to make you on your P4P. And as you complete them in Field Force, it actually has a meter showing the jobs getting completed and how much you're making for that day. So you, before you even start your day, you're like, okay, Let's just make up some numbers. You say, okay, I'm making— let's do $1,200. When I added up all my jobs, I'm making $1,200 for the business. I take $1,200, times that by 0.3. So I'm going to make $360 today. Again, if you do that in 10 hours, you're making $36 an hour. If you do it in 7 hours, you're making more.

If it takes you 15 hours for whatever reason, you're not making that.

It really just comes down to how much revenue do I get completed in a day, I get 30% of it. Okay. So let's run some quick math of like a 1-week total. Now we do 2-week pay periods, so this would be usually over the course of 2 weeks, but I'm just gonna use it for the sake of this example how this works. Let's just say at $22 an hour, let's say you're working 8 hours a day, so that's $176, okay?

Let's just say if you were working 6 days, 6 hours per day, every single day of the week.

Just gonna do 176, 176, 176. Can someone get their calculator out? 176 times 5.

$880.

$880. Okay. All right. So if you were getting paid base pay, so $22 an hour over the course of 40 hours, you're making $880. Now let's say on P4P, you're getting jobs done, you're getting a percentage of the revenue.

Let's say you make—

you're just crushing it. And you make this.

You complete $1,200 worth of revenue.

You make 30% of it, $360. Crushed it.

Let's say on this day though, you had a couple yellow slips and you gotta go back to the property. Next day you're going and fixing those yellow slips.

Maybe you made some skid marks, maybe you broke something. You're going back to the property, not good. You might only make $80. Okay? And then the next day you get back kind of on track, like I'm at $200. And then let's say this day you start getting back in the groove. You got $240. Again, this is a percentage of revenue, 30%. And then here, let's say we got $220. All right, let's go and add these all up.

$360 plus the $80.

Can you do that for me, John?

$1,100.

Perfect.

All right. So in this case, P4P is higher than base pay.

So on your paycheck, you're going to see you got $880 plus you get In this case, $220 bonus. So at the end of every pay period, we're just taking the higher of either what you make on your base pay, 'cause we're always making sure you make base pay, and if you go into overtime, you're also getting overtime. We're always calculating that every single day, 'cause that's why you still gotta clock in and out, but then we're also tracking how much revenue you make for the business, and we're taking the higher of the two at the end of the pay period.

But that doesn't count kick in unless you hit the budget hours, right?

What does that mean?

Meaning like, okay, you know how you say we have a certain amount of budget hours to complete the law?

Let's say 30 minutes.

Let's say if it took me an hour for whatever, then I'm not hitting budget hours, so that 33% wouldn't kick in.

Not true.

Okay.

Think of it much more as I produce amount of revenue, I get 30% of it. Budget hours is an indication as to whether or not You're approximately on pace.

Okay.

And it also helps us know, do we need to raise the person's price? Because if it says 30 minutes and every time you go there, you're like, John, I cannot do this in less than an hour. Gotcha.

We will make sure we raise the price at the next price increase.

Because by raising the price, you make more money, gives you more budgeted hours.

Gotcha.

Whatever the highest is, like, so if it's like, so if you're higher on the hour side, then you get that.

Yep.

And if you— if the P4P is higher, then you get— so whatever number is higher is— am I right?

At the end of the pay period.

Okay.

The reason we do that is because otherwise you'll have someone just speed one day knowing that, hey, tomorrow I'll just hit base pay and fix all my mistakes. So it really rewarded people that were cutting corners. This takes the whole paycheck into view, and then you get the higher of these 2 numbers. Makes sense?

So it really rewards consistency.

That's why Nick was saying, like, trying to cut corners, yeah, in the short term you'll make some money, but if you go out fixing yellow slips, now you're losing customers on your route because they don't like your service. Now all of a sudden you can't make as much. Sure.

So it takes the whole paycheck and then you get the higher of both. It's like in this case, for example, if you work 40 hours and your base pay here is $22 an hour, Adding an extra $220, that's adding an extra $5.50.

On P4P, you made $27—

whoops—

$27.50 an hour. So by having P4P, you may go from $22 to $27.50 because we're taking the higher of either base pay plus overtime or P4P for the whole pay period.

Okay.

And usually these bonuses are larger because we do 2 weeks.

So wait, and then we take week one, we take week two, same thing exact applies, which is you take the higher of P4P or base pay.

And as you get more efficient, like if you want to get off earlier, that's totally fine. If you're like, hey, I want more jobs on my route, that's when you talk to John like, hey, can we advertise in my market?

I'd like to make more money.

So it's kind of up to you. It's like some of our guys, they, they could get done at 12, but like Nick, for example, he would always ask for more work. He's like, Put more jobs on my schedule, more jobs, like because he wanted to save up money. So it's you can kind of determine okay how much do I want to make? How how big of a route do I need to build? Because you're going to keep the same route all the time.

Right.

So like and I may have six houses on one street.

Yeah.

So that's the unlock is the route density.

Right.

Absolutely.

And that's where like I said we're going to build this together and we're going to have to you know be efficient with each other and that's going to be we're going to have to learn these routes very quickly and know what works and how to move. move things and y'all getting to know the customers, um, is going to be, you know, how we're going to form this density and know what works, know what day they need to be on, on the schedule, and just different things, you know, what school zones. Like, we're going to need to focus on all those things and where we're going to start our route. We're going to do the west side first, east side. Like, how are we going to map it out, right? Um, that's going to be the learning, uh, process for us.

And one thing too, like, because you have your own vehicles, we don't have a spot where you have to be at every morning.

So your start time is really up to you.

It's like the jobs just need to get done on the schedule.

Right.

So if you're like, well, it's raining this morning, okay, I'll start at 9. That's fine. You know, the weather pattern's coming through and then you'll be fine in the afternoon. Versus, okay, maybe there's rain coming at 2 or 3, you know that. Okay, I'm gonna start earlier, knock out my jobs.

And like play with traffic, 'cause you guys know traffic around here.

It's like, okay, I'm gonna get into town and then I will do these ones first and then I'll come backwards.

So you'll be able to play with it, 'cause like we will only meet once a week.

As a team, and we'll usually do like a little breakfast, sharpen blades, do some equipment maintenance, do checks on the vans together. That'll only happen once a week. So you have the autonomy to kind of move your schedule as you know what's— you know, you don't want to sit in traffic for 45 minutes every single day.

If you're taking vans home or trucks home, your technicians are, the bar at which you need them to be at just to work for you is immediately higher because If they're having their van, like during training, I can't have them take the van home. They gotta get trained up before they can take the van home. So I need to know like they have a clean driving record. I need to be able to trust them with $100,000 of a truck, equipment, et cetera. And they represent the brand when they go home now, not just when they're at work. And so almost immediately, one of the things I noticed when we made the decision to hire technicians that are going to take the vehicles home is immediately our expectations are so much higher. Like the amount of people that we said no to was just so much higher because in the past, like, okay, look, they can just hop in with so-and-so who's really, really good out in the field. Great driver, great technician, been here for years. And, you know, we wouldn't have them take the van home, but they can work with so-and-so. But when every van is going home with the, with the technicians, you just almost like Probably I would say twice as many applicants have to come in to be able to get the quality candidate that you need, and it's been a forcing function of like the quality's got to be higher.

My goal was to be at my first stop by seven.

Yeah, that was the same thing.

So I yes, I would try to be at my first stop by seven. So a lot of the guys like what are you talking about? Like guys stop like I work with a guy like that. Man, I hate it. But he, but they, he was one, he was the nephew of the branch manager.

Ah, so a little nepotism.

Yeah, so he, you know, so he pretty like, we like this, this dude, I don't know, man. We like, we stopped at the gas station, dude was in QuikTrip for like an hour. Yeah, you know, like just, you know, and I'm like Man, see, and I like, I'm, I'm the type, like, I don't like when it's hot, like I bring my own, like I bring my lunch.

Yeah.

So I don't, and I don't eat heavy because it's hot.

Yeah.

So I like have like stuff. So, you know, and whatever stop that I'm at, if I say, okay, I'm gonna grab a bite, then I'll go to the next house. But I didn't like that. But this man, this guy used to stop at like Applebee's and he stopped. And I'm like, dude, we've been there. I remember the first day I rolled We didn't get back to the shop like 5:30.

Yeah.

And I was like, I was like, I, I was like, I can't ride. I can't. Yeah, it was, it was very— because I'm so used to like, I had a routine like how, how I work. That first day, man, we got back, I said, dude, we, I mean, we have to do something about this.

Like, well, that's what's good about this because you're on your own.

You got nobody else slowing you down. So you're gonna hop in that van and it's gonna be up to you.

Yeah, so complete your route.

There's nobody else to blame.

There's nobody holding you back. It's you getting it, and then you just go optimize it. You go do it. And the only part— and that's— it's going to be self-accountability, because if you're not making the money you want to be making, it's your fault.

Yeah.

You know, or it's, it's going to be a little bit on my fault if there's, you know, route density. Like, I'm going to be a lot— you know, I have a lot of part in it too. You know, I want to make sure we're setting y'all up, but, uh, but we'll be able to determine that if it's, if it's a lack of scheduling or if it's Sure. And so that's what's good about it. That's why I like the Solo Tech.

I think it's really great. And then too, you have control of your own equipment.

Yep.

I guess the worst thing when I was out in the field is like someone else beats up your mower, just parks it in the trailer.

Yeah.

So you head out your first job and—

Well, I remember back in the day, like I would go to your green, I'll be off a couple days or so, vacation or so forth, and my truck be utilized. And I'll go back and I'm OCD, I have certain things in certain ways, and I'll be like, this This person didn't clean this thread out, this person didn't do this. And not to pick, but it's just like you have your own get in, get out type thing.

Man, I deal with this so much.

I actually felt like the first couple hours of training that we recapped for you, I felt like we weren't quite there with these technicians. I think though, once we hit profit sharing, they saw how real it was to be able to make more money. I think one of the biggest challenges we have with Augusta is we talk about pay for performance. We talk about bonuses, we talk about profit sharing, we talk about open book management. And unfortunately, that has been promised to so many technicians and they never actually see it. And so there's this healthy skepticism when they're coming to an onboarding and they're being told those things. But I think that when we got to profit sharing, I saw it. I felt the shift. And you'll see it tomorrow when we go over more in the training. There was a shift of like, okay, This is real. They're not— they're not faking this because they're not hiding anything. And this is one of the biggest takeaways. When I was talking to Dr. Kashey, he asked me one question. He said, would you work harder for someone that you liked or someone you don't like? Like, well, if I liked the person, I'd probably work harder for them. Whereas the person I don't like, that's the type of person that, like, the technicians are trying to steal gas from you. They're trying to work under the table. They're trying to undermine the business. Because they don't like their employer, they don't like their manager. Well, what's the number one thing you can do to make sure someone doesn't like you?

Hide things from them.

And so this is where really the concept of open book management, uh, not started but like cemented in my mind is like, if I want people to like me, I should not hide things from them.

Mm-hmm.

What do most employers do? They hide things from their employees constantly. Hide prices, Hide expenses, hide how much people are making, hide how the bonus structure works, hide the invoices, hide the estimates, hide everything from the technician. Well, they don't trust you now. And if they don't trust you, they're less likely to like you. And so I've always— there's been always times where it comes back to bite you when it comes to open book management, and you kind of second-guess yourself and ask yourself, okay, maybe we shouldn't. And you just actually take it to its natural extreme. What does open book management look like? It's a publicly traded company where everyone can see their profit and loss statement. Everyone can see all the money they're spending. They can see how much the executives make. They can see the whole pay structure of the entire company. That's what open book management actually looks like. So if the biggest and the best and most profitable businesses in the world do it, why won't we do it in small businesses? And I think right when I said that, there's 5 people that are like, these 5 reasons. I just happen to believe that that level of transparency was what creates trust, and trust creates people that like their manager and their boss better and their company. And people that live in that environment are more likely to go the extra mile and deploy discretionary effort, and that's what I need from these technicians to make this location successful.

So what do companies lose when they don't have open book management?

They lose all the things they've never seen in their company. Great culture, people that go the extra mile, All the things they wish they had, they never get it, or they get it very limited. It's like unicorns versus making it part of the culture that we work together and we we we go out of our way for each other and we sacrifice for the common good of the team. But why would someone do that if you're not going to tell them stuff and you're going to hide things? You're like, oh no, you can't see our hourly rate. Oh no, you can't see the price we're charging for that mowing visit. Oh no, you don't get to see the material markup for that. Like, oh no no no, you don't get it. You don't get to see how much that upsell actually we made on that. And so unfortunately, people say they can't find good workers. No one wants to work as hard. I'm going to go back to being solo because I can't find good workers. But it's because you've never done the thing that attracts great people. And if you just ask yourself, like, what kind of environment would you want to work for? If you're great, you're amazing. What kind of environment would you want to work for? A company that shared information, talked about the numbers, didn't hide things from you. And maybe they don't share every little thing, but like if you had a question, they would work with you on how to explain about the insurance, the gas, or why we do things a certain way. I happen to believe that's the type of place you would want to work.

And so like, this is the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.