DAY 12 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 the part that we don't talk a lot about is that while I'm here, I still need to manage my other 8-figure business and make sure everything's running along when it comes to HomeWorks, the software, Augusta Franchise. And so today, uh, because the past couple days we've been doing training and tech training here in Dallas, I've got to make sure everything else is going smoothly with the other businesses, have engineering meetings, and take care of business. So first things first, we gotta go get a lift in at the gym. We have 14 miles before we are out of gas, so we're gonna stop for gas first. I've been having pretty much the exact same supplement routine since I was probably 15 or 16. I started lifting weights about then, a little earlier, and I started doing basically creatine, amino acids, a daily vitamin, and then biotin. Biotin was a little later once I started realizing I was losing my hair, probably due to stress. And then most recently I started adding a fish oil and vitamin D because I did blood work and I was a little bit low in vitamin D, likely because we live in Washington State where there's not a lot of sunshine. And also because next week I'm starting with a trainer and for the very first time ever they're going to be telling me what to eat. So I'm gonna be on a food plan. I don't know if I'm really looking forward to it because I love food. I love the food that Brianna makes me. I love eating out. Realistically, if you want to get down to 12% body fat, you're gonna have to change your diet. And so we'll see how it goes. I will definitely be showing some of that in the vlog because it's gonna be painful. All right, so this is the gym that Bree and I have been going to. Hey, Vance! Hello. You want me to record you? I'm recording you. What a goat. So one thing I've been doing since we got here is I use ChatGPT to take all the comments on YouTube and Facebook Put them in like one chat, and then when I'm working out, it just reads them to me and I respond back what I want to say. So I don't get to all the comments, but I get to as many as I possibly can. So if you ever see me accidentally skip yours, it's not because I'm trying to; it's just because I basically answer questions while I'm working out, and then I stop. Okay, I gotta show this to you because before I came— we came to Texas, about a week before, it was my birthday and Brianna got me one of my favorite presents I've ever got. And that was a subscription membership to— it's called Sweat House and it has a cold plunge because that was one of the biggest things I was gonna miss from home was my cold plunge. But it also has a sauna. So it's called contrast therapy. So basically you stay in here for like 20 or 30 minutes Then you hop in 45-degree cold plunge. And then over here, kind of hard to see, you got a vitamin C shower, which basically just means water with probably like citrus or something injected into it. But it's really nice. The hack here though is I have 2 phones. One is kind of mostly for social media because this phone that I'm recording on gets filled up really fast and I don't have a lot of storage. Yes, I only have 128 gigs of storage and it's not good enough. But what I can do is I can go in here for about 10 to 12 minutes. I put my other phone right here, and then every like 10 or 15 minutes I can swap 'em out so they don't overheat. And that's kind of how I've been doing like my daily recaps and like the social media stuff is here at Sweat House, and it's great. I'm headed back to the Airbnb, but it's raining, and it's been raining for the past 2 days, which has actually been really useful because they haven't had rain for, really meaningful rain for a few months, And it is like all the grass, unless you have irrigation, is 100% dead. So I'm really hoping that this lines up really well with next week when we turn the ads back on, that grass is starting to pop up, people need mowing. But I'm headed back now, gonna do a podcast with Lee on the C-Suite Unfiltered Podcast. This bad boy, I turn this on so I have some light. 'Cause if I have— if I don't have that light on right there, this light behind me just completely, like, Makes my camera look horrible. So hopefully this will be fine. So Lee is the VP of Sales. So if you ever consider joining Augusta Lawn Care, that's who you talk to.

Welcome back. Another episode, DC Suite Unfiltered with Mike Andes. You are in Texas. We are not in studio. How are you doing, sir?

Good, man. I think— what if we just named this DC Suite Unfiltered with Lee Park? I think that might roll off the tongue easier.

DC Suite Unfiltered with

Lee Park. Yeah, but nobody— there's no name right now. You're after the clout, bro. Let's

go. Yeah. No, I don't need, I don't need the clout, man. I'm part of the team. So, uh, uh, yeah. How you are in Texas? How is that going?

Uh, good. Like they had like 2 months of no rain. And so yesterday and today, the first time it's rained since. So I'm excited because the grass should start growing. So people actually should need their lawn mowed. Uh, so next week we start running the ads again. We turn them on for a couple of days and people will see that in the vlog. But like leads coming in when you don't even have any of the equipment set up like we didn't last week. So this week we have 2 vans completely finished, ready to go. Next week we turn on the ads and then we'll get the other 2 vans done. So should be good.

And as of right now, I guess by the time this releases, it'll probably match up pretty well with how— as the vlogs are coming up and actually might even be behind. Uh, do you have people hired outside of John or people in the pipeline?

Yep, we have 2 locked in as of yesterday. We had their technician training. And we got them like coming on. So next week we start the ads, the week after that the first employee starts, and the other employee is very flexible, uh, in terms of when he starts. So like basically once we have a full route, we'll bring him on.

Nice. I know this is obviously a business experiment, but I don't want to get into all that. You have the vlogs, you have the websites, you have the trackers. So like, how is Mike Andes personally doing in Texas? Enjoying it? I'm assuming eating lots of meat and barbecue.

Uh, not, not really. Not a lot. So next week I actually start with, uh, my— I have a new coach for, for health stuff, and I've never had someone do, uh, my diet. So I'll be on a meal plan, dude. I'll be eating the same thing every day. But that, that's, you know, they say abs are made in the kitchen. So, uh, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be doing that for the first time ever. Uh, but we've ate out a couple times, but it's mostly just get out of the house. Like, I've been working a lot. So I had warned Bree, I'm like, hey, the first 6 to 8 weeks, really 4 to 6 weeks, I'm going to be working a lot more. And it's mostly because like buying the trucks, the vans, equipment, I'm not working on the business. I don't have to be doing it, but that's the best content. Like if I don't have those shots, we can't use them the rest of the vlogs. The next one's like when I talk about going to site 1, I need to have a shot of me going to site 1 ideally. And then yeah, there's just been Um, you know, obviously delays on every single front. I would have hoped that by now I had at least 20 to 50 customers, but we had to turn the ads off pretty quickly. So, um, we'll see if we can make anything happen the last like 4 to 6 weeks of the season.

Yeah, I think, I think you'll get something going. I, I personally enjoyed watching you do the— what is it, the Z spreader or whatever it's

called? Z sprayer.

Z sprayer. That was— it was great to see you back on a piece of equipment because, yeah, those, those are touchy, dude. We, we rarely use stand-ons, so that was— it was fun to see that.

Yeah, I, I, hey, I did pretty good. I'm not gonna lie. Yeah, I was surprised. I surprised myself. It came right back. It's like riding a bike, dude.

Yeah, awesome. You asked me about acquisition.com and I felt like, um, going to the workshop and I felt like my answer to you was generally vanilla and kind of gave like an overall, like, this is what it was. But one of the things that I think I've, I've really started to realize, or that I took away from the way they presented their offer and the way that they communicate, and it actually relates back to you saying, you know, an owner said, oh, Mike's too unemotional or too, you know, um, lower highs, higher lows. To even keel. I've started to lean into being kind of the opposite of that on sales calls and in the new video I just recorded. It's much more fast and loose. It's more high energy. It's more relaxed, less buttoned up. Previous videos and, you know, video sales letters, webinars that I've done, it's been very like rigid and buttoned up. But the main— Eddie. Eddie, who is like Alex's right-hand man, The main guy, he like was the exact opposite of Alex in terms of demeanor and communication style. Like super fast talking, tons of witty off-the-cuff jokes, like very like left, right, center, moving all around the room, like everything. And I was like, I like that balance. Like it almost balances out. And so I was like, could I take more of that approach? And I don't have to necessarily be like the buttoned up, like even keel, lower high, higher lows sales guy for Mike. You can do that and kind of have the status of like, okay, this guy's an industry expert. His sales guy is more off the wall. I don't know. And like, I think I've, I think I've buttoned myself up a lot over the years and tried to become more professional, but I'm like, maybe I should shift back and lean into the like, hey, this is who I am. And I'm like really confident that this Augusta thing is great. And I'm not the expert, but like we have experts on our team that are gonna help you. So I don't know what, what, I guess there's no question there, but like. That's an evolutionary change I'm making right now. What are your thoughts on that? Do you think it's good when like there are different personalities that kind of play off the founder and CEO? Do you think it's better when there's kind of this like uniform? Because it— because like Jocko's team, like to give you a different example, Jocko's team, they're all the same. They have the exact same speaking cadence. They all like same words per minute, same presentation style, everything. And they're all— most all of them are military background. So there's some influence there. But That's the opposite. Like every single person that presented at acquisition.com on Alex's team, all drastically different personalities, communication styles. And I don't know if that was for you at like the scaling workshop, but offers workshop, they were all very different. And so what are your thoughts on that? Like, I guess like homogeneity as an organization, like consistency or playing in or leaning into the variety? Like what are your thoughts on that?

Well, unfortunately for everyone listening, they will not be able to see your video webinar because now I'm on, my mugshot is on there for the first 6 to 7 minutes and they have to sign up, they have to fill out a lot of form for you, I think, right? Yes. So

augustalawandcare.com/franchise.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So hey, I'll get there. augustalawandcare.com/franchise. You can see my 6 to 7 minute like sales— could we change it to where it's now a— what's it called? VSL. There you go. So video VSL of me. And then once you book a call with Lee, then you get his 30 to 40 minute video long presentation. Uh, to answer your question, yeah, like unfortunately the word diversity has been like kicked around the past like 6 or 7 years and I think misconstrued. Uh, I think that the reason you want diversity is because differing thought and so different personalities, different communication styles, different ways of thinking is important to be able to maximize the amount of people that you can actually reach. And so if you are only trying to go after one demographic, whether it be politically or whether it be from a financial perspective, like you probably want one certain type of person to be able to talk to that 10%, 20%, 30% of the audience. But when you're trying to get everyone to go in the same direction, I think diversity is really important. In diversity of thought, diversity of opinions, diversity of backgrounds, diversity of a lot of things to be able to get the most rounded way of attacking a problem. And so, you know, if you want to switch from elephant to monkey, you know, here and there, that's fine. You know, it's good. Okay. I finished the podcast with Lee, but one of the things that we do and Lee goes over with me is we go through each person that's interested in joining Augusta Lawn Care. as an owner or franchisee. And we send them a package with some Augusta swag, a letter from myself. And then what I do is I actually go see their notes, look at their market, and then make a video for them personally. And Lee and I discuss like individual, like what, who are, who's a good fit, and whether or not I should even make a video for them. So it's usually like 1 out of 15 or 20 that originally like book a call with him that want to join Augusta actually end up getting in because they get like It's gotta get through him. It's gotta be a good market. It's gotta get through me, and then they can join. So today, these four—I just—it's a very basic spreadsheet, but I make individual videos, and I just use my phone and shoot a quick video saying, "Hey, would love to have you. Make sure you talk to other owners. Look through the franchise disclosure document. Talk to Lee. Make sure it's a good fit for you and your family." A lot of times, these sales can take four to eight months—the sale cycle. Because it's a big decision. People are changing their brand. If they're an existing owner, if they're coming into the industry, they have a lot more questions. And so part of that process is just trying to create personal communication. And if you have, you know, 2, 3, 4, 5 leads a week, it takes all of a few minutes to shoot a quick video personally talking to the camera, saying their name. Don't use AI. Don't try to automate this, in my opinion. Just send them a video personal from you. It'll mean more than every— a lot of stuff you could do in the sales process, convincing them, or automations, or texts. And I got some sequences, like, just show them you're human and you genuinely do care. Hey everyone, it's Mike over at Gusta Lawn Care. Just want to send you a quick message. I know you've been in touch with Lee about potentially joining Gusta Lawn Care. Hey Andrew, it's Mike Andes here. Hoping you're super well. I just want to reach out. I know you've been in touch with Lee about potentially joining Gusta Lawn Care. Hey Daniel, it's Mike over at Gusta Lawn Care. I just want to reach out. I was talking to Lee about you. in your market there. And I know you talked to our owner out in Pooler, Georgia, but I just want to say thank you for even considering joining Augusta. I really do appreciate it. I know you already got multiple businesses and are crushing it. I know a lot of people in the comments are saying about I should just start these locations from scratch, do it myself, not have any marketing budget, start with like door hangers and stuff like I did back a few years ago when I did a location with a much lower budget. I understand that. And I think if I was first starting out, that'd probably be more helpful for me too. But even if you're seeing with these owners that are interested in joining Augusta, it's people that are executive, it's people that already have multiple businesses and they're trying to put capital to work. So the first 2 private calls or videos I've made is for executive models. The 3rd one is as well, people that like they are executives, they had this, this individual already has a $20 million business, they need to put the capital to work. And putting in the stock market right now at all-time highs, interest rates going up, could look very, like with AI and everything, it's uncertain. And even if it does a good year, like 8 to 10% return. But if you can go ahead and put, start multiple locations, yes, you're gonna put $500,000, $600,000 into that. If you're able to, the year after that, make $100,000, $200,000 in profit and you have full control over it, It's an asset that grows in value and you're able to do something that isn't going to be disrupted by AI. That's what's appealing to them. So I understand 100% the notion around, Mike, why can't you just do these locations from scratch with no money, you out in the field doing the work? I understand. I'm trying to bring in higher caliber, more experienced operators into Augusta Nation. It'll help everyone that's already in the system. And when people come in, it'll be much more of a growth mindset, 'cause they have the capital, they have the experience, and it's just like, let's go. And I think it'll help every single owner inside of Augusta to be around people like that. And as the founder, as someone that is leading, it is my objective and my responsibility to bring in the best operators to make sure that the caliber and the average of the business operators inside of Augusta is as high as possible. What I do is I just make sure I put notes in here so that way Lee knows that I've sent that video to them so he's not caught off guard when they're like, yeah, Mike, I was talking to Mike And so I put that note in there. I sent him from a secondary email address, and he already got a message back from my first call. Says, the video made my day. Thank you, Mike. Your YouTube video in 2019 is why I decided to reach out, and so far very happy with the experience. Have a great weekend as well. Thanks. They want to be able to know that there's real people behind it that care, that really are trying to connect with them. And so that's why I still take time to make videos, and I genuinely believe If you're trying to sell anything, if you can make 5, 10, 15 videos a week and take 1 or 2 minutes— like, these are a minute a pop— make these videos and do business with people, uh, and most people appreciate it. Now, this 4th and final person that's interested in joining Guest, they already have a business. They're doing around $500,000 in revenue, and so they're not gonna be starting multiple. They're starting one, but they'd be converting their location over, and That takes a lot of trust when you've built a brand over the course of several years and think about joining Augusta. I really appreciate that, and it takes a lot of humility to do that—to realize, hey, I could use help getting to the next level. And so I'll approach this slightly different in terms of how I make the video. Hey Walter and Andre, it's Mike Andes here. Hoping you're super well. Just wanted to reach out. I know you've been touching with Lee and thinking about joining Augusta and converting your existing business over. I just want to say thank you. I certainly appreciate it. I know you guys are already at 500,000 and crushing it. We got problems. We got problems. This is Matt from Augusta Leads. And he's telling me we got problems.

Hey, Mike, hope your day is going well. I'm just making another weekly update here. So I'm going to take a look at the data in the account, talk about what are some key wins as well as what are some key challenges. And then we'll dive into the ad accounts and discuss what are some of the changes that I've made here this week. We spent a little under $1,000, $993.10 overall Conversions means our cost per conversion is $99.28. Now I do need to highlight something here. There was an issue with tracking on the website, specifically tracking web form conversions and attributing those back to ad platform. So it is possible that you actually have more than 10 conversions from ads in the last 30 days. Those conversions, those web form submissions still happen, so you would still receive those customers. It's just the ad platform would not be attributed. So this has all been resolved. It was just an issue with some data tracking on the backend, has been resolved.

Right now it seems like there's a problem with something on the platform-wide. It's affecting all tracking. So it'll spend your money, but it won't tell you got leads. And so trying to get to the bottom of that and at least let the owners know so they don't— no one freaks out this week that there's not any cost per lead doubles. What's nice is every single month Augusta Leads gives a report to the owners and kind of walks them through their whole account and shows them what they're doing. Because like, the thing I hate about any agency I've ever worked with is they're like, yeah, like we're working on things. And you're like, well, what are you doing? And like, could you show it to me? Like, I would like to learn. Whereas with Augusta Leads, we show the owners every single month, here's what we did in your Google account, here's the negative keywords, here's what's working, here's what's not, we're gonna put more budget this direction, we're changing the creative here. And so that way they can learn. It's not like we're trying to gatekeep anything. And they keep their accounts, not like it's all through our account either. So I think that's the most transparent way of doing it. I always was so bothered when agencies would just, I'm just giving them money to manage my ads and then paying a bunch of money on ads, but like I didn't know what was happening. And so in the monthly report, it seems like he's just gonna tell them like, hey, our cost per lead for this one week was a little off because of this issue with tracking. But we mostly use UTM parameters to get that information into HomeWorks. And that's the main thing is that we have the referral source inside HomeWorks so that when people run, reports using the MCP or API, at least the referral source says Facebook or Google, and that is at least being transmitted over. It's just not transmitting right now back to Google, uh, to the actual platform. All right, we got a little yoga bowl situation on the call with the engineering team. This is what we call a product demo, and so everyone shows off what they've been working on this week. Some of these demos aren't super like, they don't look fancy, but on the backend it's, it's moving stuff. It's really good. One small thing that we've been working on, Anna's presenting right now, is basically allowing for someone in HomeWorks, if they have a declined payment, it doesn't kick them out right away. It gives them several weeks, kind of like a grace period, and so they can go back into their account. We don't want to kick someone out over one failed payment, credit card that got compromised or canceled or anything like that. All right, another thing they're demoing today is A bit of a behind the scenes. This is the new upcoming dispatch board. Just a sneak peek, not the full thing, but that's the big, big release coming out in the next few weeks. You can see they're talking about timelines for beta. We're gonna do a private beta, then a public beta, and then we'll roll it out just to slowly ease people in because it's gonna be the biggest change we've ever made. Right now working on what's called custom areas and seeing what we can do with these on the map. On the dispatch board. It's gonna be so cool. This is one week of what we've been working on. They're doing a fantastic job. So another project that I'm working on with the media team today is we post on all the locations— Facebook, Instagram, uh, Google Business Profiles. We post 3 times a week, and for a long time it's been super difficult because everyone's market is so different. Like, if you're in Australia, if you're in Canada, if you If you have palm trees, if you have no grass at all because you live in the desert. And so it's very difficult to create location-specific social media and content. And yeah, you can kind of use AI, but a lot of times you can kind of tell it's not super— like, we try to avoid that. So we recently hired last week a photographer and a videographer down in Australia to go shoot with one of our locations 2 or 4 times to get all the seasons of the year. So that we'll have original content from Australia. 'Cause little stuff that people pick up on, customers, like what kind of vehicles, what do the trucks look like? The trucks in Australia look very different than the ones in the US. For example, our locations out in Arizona, they don't have a ton of grass, they don't have big trees. And so it's very difficult. We're working on right now with the media team, it's a huge project, is creating an annual plan for those 3 posts, but then making it region specific. So we'd have like 5 or 6 regions Like, okay, is this northern, like snow? Is this south, like desert? Is this more of a temperate climate, et cetera? And trying to group them in like 5 or 6 and then have like all of them have different posts. It's a huge project and it requires a bunch of different posting schedules and it's a big deal. So I'm working with Zach, Heather, and the, the design side of things, uh, today and, uh, trying to figure out how do we make this happen. We're already making progress towards it. It's just one of the small little complaints that owners have, and that is like, hey, it'd be nice if the social media that you did post, we appreciate it, but like, it'd be nice if it was more region specific. But it's going to 5 to 6x the amount of work that we have to put into it. And so I'm trying to make it where instead of every single week creating 18 or 20 different posts across all these different regions, like 3 for each, instead we just take the best performing posts each year and schedule them out. Mm-hmm. 'Cause most customers are not looking at your social media posts every single day. If we can just take the best, let's call it 150 posts. So 3 per week times 50 in a year. If we take the top 150 posts that we know perform really well and make those region-specific, then we could schedule out the whole year and make sense of 5 to 6x-ing our work for one year. But then we know that each year all we're doing is taking the lowest performing posts and swapping them for better performing ones. Okay, so I'm about to start on the mastermind that we have on a daily basis for Guestination. But a couple quick updates. I'm looking at our rev-share program for HomeWorks. Let's see if I can show this. So we have 59 referred members. There's 112 people have joined the program, which is great because that means in the past few weeks, 59 people have joined HomeWorks from a coupon code given by a member. And we give 25% of ongoing revenue, not just the first month, first 3 months, first year, As long as someone that you refer joins Homeworks and stays with us, you get 25% of all their subscription revenue. So that's super cool because if you do the math on that, that's like over $10,000 a month already in the past couple weeks that is now going out every single month to members of Homeworks. And that's just from this month. So I'm super excited about that. Uh, another update is John just messaged me this. Let me see if I can't share this with you. There is a Code that showed up on one of the vans. Check engine light, so he's taking it to the dealership.

Hey Mike, change of plans here. So that one van that's at Regis right now, it's got all the equipment in it. That's the van you're gonna need to take. There's that engine code came back on this van today, so it was gone yesterday, came back today. So just run the codes and everything. I'm gonna take this to the dealership hopefully today. I'm gonna take this to the dealership and have them check it out. Hopefully get that repaired. But yeah, I would just feel better if we got this taken care of before I send you out on this one. There is the keys to the van are in office at Regis, and then you're also gonna need.

So I'm gonna go instead of picking up an empty van, I'm gonna go pick up the one. That has the Z-Sprayer in it because we've got to get our rental car back. I was going to extend our rental car for another week. It's going to cost $1,200 per week. Insane. So like, forget that. I'm going to use one of the vans, uh, and that's fine because we have 4, but 2 of them still don't have a ramp or the wrap. So I'm hoping next week that gets done, we get all the rest of the equipment, and the following week when our first team member technician DeAndre is starting, Monday after next that we're ready to roll. And so that also means that next week we can turn the ads on in preparation for the following week when we can actually start work. So finally, finally, we're about a week and a half away from getting our first service under our belt. And next week we can start turning on the ads. So I'll try to show you a little behind the scenes of the mastermind that I do on a daily basis. So I go into StreamYard, I create a livestream, and then I basically use HomeWorks to text all the owners a link. To the livestream. And then I go— we have a form they can fill out called the Mike Mitz Mastermind. It's a Google Form. They can fill this bad boy out. And each day when I do the Mike Mitz Mastermind, I just go to the form, answer the questions, and we do a live video. But we send out the text via Homeworks. And then on the Facebook group as well, the Augustination Facebook group, I make sure we post in here each day as well. So this is how the mastermind works. You can see up here I have like announcements, questions, education. And then what I do is I just share my screen. And I'm able to go through question by question on the mastermind. So let's roll the tape. These usually take like between 20 and 40 minutes. Mr. Anonymous, Mike, how do you think about time of year when launching a new location from scratch? My, my instinct is to launch going into spring. But then I look at Charlotte, where you start around June, and Texas, where you started around late September. So I'm trying to understand how much weight you actually put on seasonality. If the GM funding, equipment, everything else already is, your mindset basically go when you are ready, or are there times of years where you'd rather wait and launch into next spring? How do you decide when the right time is to start? Yes, you are 100% right in your instinct that going into spring is going to be the best. I would say if you want your Google account to be ranking high and you want, um, max exposure in terms of SEO going into spring, being open a little bit before that is useful. I would not recommend opening in September, October like I'm doing in Texas unless you are going to hit the ground running extremely hard in spring rush and you know that you don't want to be getting equipment, trucks, and vans, and ramps, and hiring employees during spring rush. So I know that I am probably going to quote unquote waste $30,000 to $40,000 just in inefficient labor over the off-season. Another part of this is it's gonna make it look like we're never gonna hit the challenge for the first like 3 to 4 months. Everyone's gonna be like, bagging on us. And I'm okay with that because I know if I can get established here and now, like even the other day when we got our Flower Mound location verified in Google, within a matter of one day we went to the first page of Google. I think I'm first or second organic spot there. And like, I've been doing follow-up phone calls and just like asking the customer for a review. And there was one person, he left us a review and he didn't accept his estimate. I was like, hey, I got a 5-star review. Let's go. But I'm just gonna be doing everything I possibly can to, over the off-season, to make sure that SEO's firing on all cylinders, technicians are firing on all cylinders. So like when we hire people, the first employee doesn't start until a week and a half from now, but then the next one's starting in like 2 months. And then I'm gonna do another tech training and do the exact same thing for like December, January, and February. And so I just wanna make sure I have so much excess supply, all the technicians, that when we get to high demand in spring rush, I can gas the ads. And in a matter of 6 to 8 weeks, I think we can get to where I want, we need to be at in terms of customers. But I'm probably going to, yeah, $30,000 to $40,000 is what I think the extra cost of doing that over the off-season is. But if you're trying to maximize your customer acquisition costs and bring that as low as possible, you wanna start probably in like January, February, get things set up, and go right into spring rush. All right, love you all. Hope you have a fantastic weekend. We'll talk soon. Bye. All right, all right, there's the mastermind. And now I'm hopping right onto my next call, which is a new member orientation for HomeWorks. So when someone joins HomeWorks, I, uh, have a call with them, all live on a call. So right now there's 16 members on this call, and I'm gonna go ahead and have a call with them. How this works is just a little button at the bottom. If you wanna ask questions, just click raise, raise hand, and then I'll call on you. So yeah, Miles, go for it.

My question to you is, through scholarships, personal investments, and saving up, I have $30,000 in cash available to spend right now. So what percent should I allocate this for different categories to grow it as fast as possible while maximizing ROI? Uh, my goal is $1 million in 3 years, $10 to $20 million in 10 years. And like, I know I got to spend on the hiring, post-marketing, equipment, but I don't want to waste it. On one category. I have no living expenses, um, so I can like spend it all right now.

Do you know what your customer acquisition cost is or not yet?

Yeah.

What is it?

It's about $30 to $40.

On what channel?

Yard signs, like general marketing. We haven't really done online ads.

Okay. And when did you do the yard signs?

Throughout the whole year. Like we just keep them up as like salespersons pretty much.

Okay. And is that $30 to $40 cost per lead or is that per new customer?

Per customer.

Theoretically, even if that doubled to $60 cost per lead, for example, that's technically 500 customers if you spent $30 grand on it. I would 100% play the arbitrage game if that customer acquisition cost is true. I would make sure it's being tracked. The other part of this is the reason it's $30 to $40, because you're doing the labor of installation, which I'm fine with as long as, okay, you got time. Like, so like, let's hustle. Um, I would just double down on that if you're getting customers for $30 to $40. I would do as many yard signs as possible until that math breaks. Because at the end of the day, spending $30,000, you can go buy a truck tomorrow and your, your business will be worth exactly the same as today because you just convert cash into rust and a piece of metal. Anyone can do that. Uh, if you went out and got 500 customers over the next few months, you would have a business that's probably doing $1 million in revenue. Uh, and a business that does $1 million revenue, you can go finance equipment if you need to. So, um, I would just recommend If that is your number, CAC, and I would track it, make sure that is like, theoretically you're probably more like $60 to $70 because you're, you're doing the labor right now. But hey, if you wanna go put door, you know, yard signs out every single night for the next 4 months and you can make that math work, keep going. Um, but if you're, but if you're, if your CAC is actually $30 to $40, I'd spend all of it on marketing. That's the short answer.

All of it on marketing. Okay. 'Cause I was just thinking like, If I spend $20,000 and I have 20,000 yard signs and I just put them all out, like what about allocating, like give like a rule for like equipment versus hiring Indeed versus like marketing, like percent sort of?

Equipment produces no value, right? So if tomorrow you bought a $30,000 truck, if you look at the net worth of like the valuation of your business, it would be worth $30,000 the same way as today. Because you have $30,000 of cash. You just take the asset of cash and turn it into a truck. If you went out tomorrow though and magically did the same thing and got 500 customers, and that was like, let's just call it $800,000 of annual recurring revenue, your business is probably worth $400,000. The enterprise value would have 10x from 30 grand to 400 grand. So that's why customers and contracts is what builds enterprise value, not buying more trucks. Anyone can go buy more trucks. As long as you have money, you can go buy trucks. That's why there's no enterprise value associated with going out and buying more trucks. I would 100% spend as much as you possibly can, assuming the math doesn't break. Which means if you put out 100 yard signs and you're like, well, I got— I paid $3,000, $4,000 in yard signs and I was able to bring in 100 customers or whatever it might be. Great. If you go out and put out 10,000 or whatever it is, like if you 10x that, does the math break? That might happen. Like you might boil the puddle. Which market are you in?

Uh, GTA, Greater Toronto Area.

Oh, like in your service area, how many— what's your population?

Uh, I don't know, we're just like general suburbs, but there's a, there's a lot. It's a big—

Yeah, huge. So you might not boil the puddle, you might just keep running this math, um, and you doing the labor of installation. I just keep doing that. If you actually can play this math, I would spend all your cash on the, the door, uh, the yard signs, and then you can finance the equipment. That being said, I would also try to figure out a way to up— to sell customers something within 30 days that covers their CAC. Because if you only, you only need to make, let's call it $100 of revenue. Um, let's call it $200 of revenue to be safe. You need to make $200 per customer in the first 30 days. Because if you can do that and have a credit card, you can keep getting customers on the credit card and then paying it off within the first 30 days. Um, so I'd be trying to get to that as soon as possible by getting the credit card, establishing your credit. Mm-hmm. And then you could always finance stuff down the road, but your cash position shouldn't even go down if you can get a customer and make $200 in the first month. So whether it be a cleanup, whether it be a package you sell annually, if you can recoup the customer acquisition costs in the first 30 days and pay that off on a credit card—

But that's the thing though, my CAC isn't too accurate. It was only done like over a year, and like, I'm still like, it's like exponential growth right now, and I don't want to spend it all because honestly, I've never had this much money in my life, and I Like, I just don't want to spend like a crazy amount without knowing exactly what's going to happen, right?

As you grow your business, this will constantly be the case. And as you have more money and more problems and more people that you're responsible for at every single— if you're continuing to grow, that will always be true. So that can never be the deciding factor as to what is right and wrong in terms of decision-making. It's either I spend this money on equipment that makes no enterprise value, or I keep playing this customer acquisition cost game that currently is working, and I figure out an offer that I can recoup that customer acquisition cost immediately. So you never go negative on your cash flow. Like you should have $30,000 next month but be able to get 20 customers and spend money on CAC. Now the thing that you just said is very important. I was like, I just, I haven't, I don't have a huge sample size. Figure out what your CAC is because that's the math as to what, like if you would've told me, hey, I'm spending $200 per customer. I'm like, okay, that's not a great CAC. It's going to take you 6 months to recoup the customer acquisition cost. Let's not keep scaling that. Let's slow down a little bit. So I would just keep doing what you currently know is working until it breaks, which I would call it breaking when you're paying over $200 customer acquisition cost. Well, if it's $30 or $40, you keep playing that game until it's— the gig is up.

Okay. See, so just, just take the risk, just spend it all, right? Pretty much.

No, no, I wouldn't spend all of it. I would probably spend, let's call it $1,000 to $3,000 on more yard signs. I would track how many leads come in, track how many customers come in. and see what your actual customer acquisition cost is now. And it's like, well, it's still $30 or $40. Great. Let's go get $5,000 worth of door hangers. I would not spend all of it tomorrow on door— not door hangers, yard signs. I would not do it all right now because you don't know if it's going to break. Hmm. I would just do it in chunks despite the extra savings of a couple hundred bucks because of volume. Doesn't matter. I would just do it in chunks. And if you play your cards right, You'll be able to recoup how much you spend before the end of 30 days. It's like, what are you selling these people on the yard signs?

Just general services like recurring lawn mowing, fertilizer, weed control, uh, property cleanups, bush trimming.

So your goal is to get a property cleanup or an annual package for treatments within the first 30 days for as many of your mowing customers as possible. Because if you do that, you will recoup more money in the first 30 days than the cost of putting out the door hanger— sorry, the yard sign and all your customer acquisition costs. So your cash position should never go down. You'll have a credit card.

Okay, sweet. Thanks.

Yeah, man, good work.