DAY 2 of Building a $1M Business in 1 Yr

I moved across the country to build a $1 million lawn care business in 1 year. It's our first week and everything's going wrong. John, the general manager, he's interviewing someone today.

But he was late to the interview. Probably not going to move forward with this guy. If there's an accident that happens, you've got the dashcam that can see who's at fault.

There's mold and it's not livable.

People say they're going to do those things and then they don't. Mike does those things and like, I don't want him second-guessing him, him choosing me.

Today, our hope is that we can get ads up and get our first customers. Dallas-Fort Worth is like, 7 million people. We're targeting Flower Mound and Southlake. All right, we got updates. I'm back at the Airbnb in my office. First update, Terrell and his wife that came for the media side, they showed up at their VRBO that we've paid for 6 months. There's mold and it's not livable. So they've got a different Airbnb for the next couple nights, and they're in dispute with the current owner trying to get the place cleaned up and pest control in there and the whole 9 yards. Secondly, the vehicle that we shipped from Washington to here with all of our clothes and everything else in it broke down and is gonna be delayed by 3 to 4 days, which means I have the same shirt as yesterday and the day before, and we're just washing the same set of clothes multiple times. So that's a lot of fun. I have ordered, you know, the essentials to make sure I get through the next few days from Amazon. Fortunately, we're in Dallas. We get Amazon delivered within like a few hours. It's great. But last night, like 11:30, I had this idea. I was like, Well, for mowing, it's hard to sell mowing services and then like a week and a half or 2 weeks mow someone's lawn. Typically, they want it done within a few days, their first service. But when it comes to fertilization, weed control, we could sell and do ads right now. And then just put them on next month's schedule when it comes to our 9-treatment program. So as of today, we are running ads and we are live. So this is the message that we get from Command Center basically saying, hey, We are now taking calls. We are running ads. So officially, Augusta Lawn Care Flower Mound is live and open for business. Within a couple hours, we'll be running ads, taking phone calls, and setting up new customers. Let's go back and check in with John, the general manager. He's interviewing someone today. Hopefully we can get a couple more applicants in for next week's training and also getting the racking put in the last van. People go out and get like a $2,000 office space or shop space with half an acre of land when really all you're trying to do is get a Google Business Verification for an address. And so you can do that by just getting a membership at a coworking space.

Oh.

Yeah. So you don't have a long-term lease, you can leave at any time. Also, we can use any office in the entire Metroplex. So there's a whole bunch of Regus offices, we can drop in any of them. So if we're interviewing someone, we can actually go closer to them.

Basically what I'm gonna be doing here is I'm just installing these 2x4s For our weed eater racks that we're going to have. They're going to go on this side. I'm going to have some 2x4s over here as well. But there's multiple ways to skin a cat. I mean, you can do it. I even thought about not using 2x4s and just getting different types of brackets to hang like our weed eaters on and the blowers and everything. I was just looking at different types of brackets to use. And I just found out that I was spending way too much time on it. And I kind of noticed I was talking to Mike yesterday about how, like, how much room is actually in these vans. Originally I was like, I don't know that there's going to be a lot of, a lot of room for what we need. And then stepping into it and working on it and kind of planning, I'm like, we have plenty of room to put fertilizer and multiple pieces of equipment. More than enough rack space and shelf space. Like, we can really go all out if we wanted to. I mean, there's storage up here. I figured they would, like, keep their— First aid kit and their jump starter here and maybe their bag of tools up here. Whatever they can fit up here, they can kind of just store up here so it's not in the way. And it can just ride there all the time. It'll be in every vehicle. So if you take another van with you, if you need to, like, everything's going to be in here. It'll be kind of consistent. Stain is a nice touch. Yeah, yeah, I, uh, I mean, I didn't really need to do that. Um, just wanted to. I thought it looked a little bit better. You're gonna do something. I mean, it only took like an extra 10 minutes, you know what I mean? And like, I had the stain at the house, so, and I'm just trying to get rid of it anyway, so it was like perfect. One on each side for now. Another thing I liked about Doing the self-tappers where if a technician's by himself or he's at the house and one of these boards just like gets loose or whatever, either he can bring it to me or he can do it on his own. Just zap another one in there. And I may be over— you know, overcomplicating things. I may be just thinking about it too much. Better than, you know, not having enough attention to detail. Well, and I think for me personally, that I think is at least with With my previous employer, I think that's why I was successful there, was just the attention to detail. And I think upper management kind of saw those things over the years, and it's served me well.

Yeah.

So it's something I don't want to lose.

Yeah.

So I keep trying to practice that. You know, you're training employees and you're trying to mentor them and trying to get them to be better. But you as a leader, you as, as their coworker, You also have stuff to learn, and being able to self-identify those things without anybody telling you about these things and how to overcome those things is very beneficial to your personal growth. So I've learned a lot about myself just over the last month, like how I've had to adjust to different things from what I'm normally used to. What I was doing at my house was I was pre-drilling these holes just a little bit, and I'm gonna have to do that here.

Yeah.

I just don't like this drill that I have to pre-drill, so— boy, I'm sweating like a pig. So I was running into this problem too where I was just trying to get it in. And I would just go at it crooked. How have y'all enjoyed y'all's stay so far? Yeah, we're not really settled. Yeah, there's like mold and dirt and broken stuff in our rental. Oh, and like the depiction of it looks entirely different than what we actually got. Oh no, I'm trying to get a refund or trying to get them to do a mold test to make sure it's like safe. Yeah. Well, it's not good for you.

Yeah.

That's for sure.

They were like declining.

I'm sure they were. So what were you doing right before this? I had an interview this morning for one of our tech spots, and I've been communicating with him for a couple of days. And so I interviewed him. Probably not going to move forward with this guy yet anyway. I mean, I think there were some good things about him. You know, he was ex-military, but he was late to the interview. And then just a few other red flags that we had. I just feel like he needs a chance, like he needs something to get him going in the right direction. I feel like this could be it for him. Like, okay, being late, like that's— maybe he's having a bad day. I think giving grace a lot of times can be beneficial too. So just because somebody's late or doesn't pick up your phone call right away doesn't mean they're going to be a bad employee. It just means maybe they're having a bad day and it just wasn't their day today. Everybody has bad days. So like, I always give a little bit of grace for those things. It's not just a hard line like, oh, red flag, you're out. But if you start to see it like multiple times, you know it's just going to carry on. I've also had a lot of green flags where they're communicating well with you. They show up early to the interview. They provide you all their references and resume, and they're just They're dressed real nice and they're well-spoken and they do all these great things, and then you hire them and it just doesn't, it just doesn't relate. And so what I've learned is you just don't know. All you can do is just make your best judgment and decide if he's a culture fit and just decide if he meets some of your simple requirements. And then also making sure you're putting him in a position to succeed, him or her in a position to succeed and be successful. I think those are very important things to consider when you're hiring. It's not so much just on the employee. I think a lot of it is management. If you're not giving them clear objectives, if you're not giving them the clear set of what's acceptable and what's not, you can't expect them to just follow unwritten rules. So you just have to be a leader. You have to lead. You have to talk with them and teach them and train them. And get to know them. You know, a lot of people, they don't want to know their bottom-level employees, you know, because they're dealing with other things and they just don't feel like it's worth it. But for me, if I've— if you've worked with me for 2 days or 2 years, I'm going to kind of treat you the same way, with respect. Can you hold this board for me?

Yeah.

I just want to make sure I get my measurements right. Thank you, sir. Yeah, okay. This one didn't go on as smooth as the other ones did, but that's all right. Like, being able to grow this thing is, is, uh, it's gonna be fun, you know. It's gonna be a lot of hard work too, but one thing, like, for me, like, doing this one, like, I'm, I'm learning, like, Like from the ground up, like everything. I've never— prior to this, I did— I've watched Mike's content for a few years. Like, even if I didn't, if I hadn't watched Mike's stuff, I don't know that I'd even be working here because I just wouldn't understand like his systems and like— but I've seen him go through it over the past few years. And so I at least like had some background knowledge in like P4P and why he does certain things. That's helped me a lot. Had I not known that, it would be maybe a little bit different. Because Mike hasn't been like hovering over me.

He gives you that ability.

Yes, which, um, that was something I learned too, because it was like people say they're going to do those things and then they don't. Mike does those things. Um, so when he tells you, hey, like, this is yours, you know, you need to make these decisions, you need— like, he gives you that ability to do it. Like, you need to go and move forward on those things. And like, I don't want him second-guessing, uh, him, him choosing me. Um, so I like— I want to do great, great for him. When we were going through the process, he, uh, invited, um, my wife Emily and me to dinner with him and Bree, which I thought was like, that was my deciding factor. Like, after that, I was like, if he picks me, like, I'm definitely moving forward with this because him bringing my wife into it, like, it made it just as much her decision as it was mine. And like, she was really nervous about it. She was like, I just— she gets nervous around people she's never met. She's not— she's real shy. And she's like, I just don't want to like mess anything up. You know, um, and, uh, she was, she was really nervous, but we both enjoyed it and had a good time. And then it really just, it helped her understand, uh, what the process was going to be like, uh, coming up. And like getting her, um, her buy-in on it, uh, was important for her and it was important for me. That's all I'll be able to do on this one, but basically it's, it's in here. Um, I'll adjust, make sure it's still straight. Um, Here and make sure like we're not bowed or anything like that. And then I'm just zipping these other screws in there, uh, just pre-drilling a little hole and then just zipping them right in. It'll take 2 minutes. But for these, I just need something a little bit smaller to get in here so I don't split the wood, because on one of them got really close to splitting the bottom of the wood. Not that it would like harm anything for the most part, but just from looks and stuff like that. But, uh, well, that's pretty much this one.

Hi.

So this is just like a basic rundown of the Motiv. All the capabilities of it are not implemented yet, like we— I still have a lot to like go through and like really dial it in, but this is just kind of like a simple overview of it. So like right now I'm in Fleet View. Currently I've only got one dash cam and one GPS set up for one van right now as far as it being programmed into the system. And so you can see that unit right here. It shows you where we're at. So where this is going to come in handy, since we're taking— since the technicians are taking their van home, we're going to be able to just monitor it because you've got the dash cam, but it's also fed through the OBD2. So it kind of tracks the location, it tracks everything that's going on with the vehicle. If it's got low tire pressure, if it needs an oil change, if it's due for inspection, it keeps track of the vehicle's like maintenance history. So I can go in there and like program certain things and let it Notify me when it's due for this and due for that, so I'll be able to keep up with the maintenance on the vehicle. But most importantly, tracking the vehicle and then also protecting Augusta with if there's an accident that happens, you've got the dash cam that can see who's at fault. And so it also protects the technician, you know, if they get into an accident and, oh, you know, he pulled out in front of me and we have no way of knowing that, I can check it. at any time of day and it'll pop in and show me exactly where it's located at and do a video of where it's located at. So like right now I have the vehicle labeled at 6976, that's just the number off the license plate that I picked. Once we get technicians in, I'll assign their names to it and, you know, for instance, say Travis, and I can see where Travis is and Noah and whoever else we have will kind of be displayed on it. So that's just a quick overview of the mapping. That's just the box that I put into it for right now. This is going to adjust as we go along, but it's just a huge area. And like I said, we may need to go outside that box for certain areas or for certain situations, but for the most part, that pretty much covers our service area and where they're probably going to be living. Because if they live over here in a certain area, I would have to change the geofencing to allow them to go to that certain area. There may be some shops that are— that only specialize in this repair. that we have to go further out of our service area to go do those things. So the geofencing will most likely get adjusted as we move and as we get different technicians coming in, because we're going to get technicians from all over the Metroplex. So we'll have to change those parameters outside of our service area. Overall, it seems to be a pretty, pretty good system. It also goes through like engine codes. So I know like how the vehicle's running, like if there's any engine codes that we need to get taken care of right away, you know, I can schedule that with the tech. And we can do all those things. So seems to be a pretty good system.

So this is Dallas, and we are really just servicing this one small section. So Dallas-Fort Worth is like 7 million people. We're targeting Flower Mound and Southlake. So these are technically 2 territories when it comes to Augusta, but we're operating as one. And then what we do is we we ghost. The Southlake location. Our objective down the road is to grow enough to where we break Southlake off as its separate territory. But right now, Augusta-Lancaster, Flower Mound is the only territory. We're just servicing this area down here in order to be able to in the future break it off. And we will do that when we get about to $1 million in revenue and we have 6 to 8 technicians just on the south side of the lake. So this is Flower Mound, this is Southlake, this is our general service area. But because of that, When we do the ads, we are breaking it up by those 2, kinda north part of the area that we're serving and then the south area. So right now, as of today, we just turned the ads live. So inside of the Facebook ads account, you can see here Augusta Lawn Care of Flower Mound and Augusta Lawn Care of Southlake, because I know even though right now it's one location, eventually I do wanna break these out. You can see they already have a campaign, they just launched this one, and inside of it here we have a lookalike, or retargeting, and then in-market. Now instead of going through the ad platform, I'm just gonna show you some of the creative that we have built already for the Facebook platform. So right now from a budgeting perspective, we're spending about $280 per day on Facebook ads right now, and then about $500 per day on Google. Now I don't think we'll get that today, but over the next few days it'll ramp up to that budget. So I wanted to show you some of the strategies we're using on the Facebook ad side of things. So you can see we have fertilization, weed control, we have funny ones, and we have mowing. Right now we're only running these because I can't do mowing for another like 8 to 9 days. So inside of here, what we did— first off, I have the copy. So I give this to Augusta Leads, but they can do this like if I didn't want to be hands-on as much, they could do this for me. So I have the headlines that they're going to use. I give them 5 of those, and I give them 5 primary texts. And specifically what I'm trying to do is call out specific cities like Highland Village is inside the Flower Mall Market. Areas of Louisville we also target and really try to get really specific to the customer and calling them out. Inside of here I have some creative and I've used ChatGPT for almost all these. And the reason I did is because I was obviously not in the local area. In the next coming weeks, once we have our vans wrapped, I will absolutely be making videos and pictures using the vans in the local market. But the objective with all of these, you can see, is I am putting these billboards next to things that are local to their market. So it's like in the headline, the copy, and in the ad itself, in the creative, it's saying Flower Mound, and I'm going to target people in that area. And these are landmarks that they know of. If you lived in this area, like, this is the town hall for Flower Mound, and it has a Texas flag. So like We know that the number one way to be able to reduce your customer acquisition cost is to make it very clear to the customer that this is for them. It's also something that helps them stop when they're scrolling. Think about when you're even like scrolling on Facebook and you see like a local thing in your local city, you're way more inclined to stop because of that versus like a national or international like politics, like who cares? But if it's like down the street, it's a big deal. For example, if I say that Subway is opening, you're like, hey, Who cares? Subway's opening next door to your house. Now all of a sudden you care. And so the objective is to get close to them with these ads. So instead of just running one billboard, we have billboards for every single city inside of our market. And that's just for fertilization weed control. Then I have ones that are funny. So like if I open these up, for example, let's see here. This one is, the grass keeps growing, so does his excuses. Meaning if you're tired of having a landscaper that keeps calling you saying like, hey, can't make it, oh, this happened, like just call us and we'll take, take care of it. The neighbors started a group chat about your lawn. Let's give them something better to talk about. So kind of going from more of a humorous perspective on this side of things. So this one is, he's been on his way since Tuesday. This is very relevant given the fact that contractors at Anytime Fitness right now, they've been on their way for about 3 months. These are the 10 video ads I've already made. You can see I'm really— it's really close to my face because I had to shoot these videos in Washington State because we weren't here. I will reshoot these ads next week to make sure that I am in the local market next to their water tower, town hall, city centers, etc. But like, some of these are just random, like this one. Hey homeowners in Dallas-Fort Worth, see this weed right here? I don't want it growing in your lawn. So what do we do at Augusta Lawn Care? We create a weed-free guarantee that if you're part of our treatment program and there's a weed in your lawn, we'll come back and service the property for free. Click the link down in the description because within 90 seconds we can give you a price for your specific property and get you on the schedule. Folks, that is a forehead worth remembering right there. That's a scroll stopper. I know that I'm just looking like an idiot laying in the grass. When was the last time you went on Facebook, some guys are laying in the grass? That's the reason why I'm doing it like that, is just the hook. So those are the current ads. In terms of the budget, this is what we are hoping to do, but we are already 2 weeks behind on this. So I was hoping to spend $2,000 a week on Facebook ads, $4,000 a week on Google ads, and get my cost per lead around $60. If we can do that and close 50% of them, that would mean our customer action cost is $120. If we can hit that, I will dump money on this thing. I have a feeling we're not gonna be able to hit this, Given the fact that now we are 2 weeks past this date and we're running a little bit late into the season. But we won't know until we try. And so at the end of this week, Augusta Leads will send us a report. They'll show us what our cost per lead is for Facebook and for Google, and we'll see whether or not it actually has a good return on our investment. At the headquarters building, they're trying to figure out where they're gonna put the green waste bins because we're trying to navigate like wetlands and all the rest of it. So Nick Reed, he's back at the headquarters building, give me a video after talking to the contractor, and We got to figure out where are we going to put the green waste bin. Basically, we buy unusable land so that we can use land on the land we own. It's a big reason why here in Dallas there's a huge advantage because we don't have to bag clippings. We can just mulch them and we don't have to worry about bagging them. That's the whole reason this conversation is existing is we have to bag clippings in Washington.

Come over shoulder.

A few things. So one, like, the easiest option would be just to put in a driveway from here to the road. The problem is that's going to require a whole other permitting process to make So I don't know if we want that to be a blocker. The whole summary of our whole meeting was that we have a bunch of options and we can't determine anything for sure right now. So that's one option, is literally from the road you have a separate driveway and you come in and just dump in that area. So that was option 1. Not ideal because it does involve more permits and everything, and it could be a blocker to actually taking occupancy. Again, we're up in the air. We have to see what putting the gravel in this whole area entails and what that's actually going to do to the stormwater mitigation and if that's a blocker. Other things that I will look up or look into myself is other dump solutions so there's nothing blocking us from occupying. So if we didn't have this ready by the time we move in, could we dump at the local dump? And then what are the costs? What's the cost of that?

Thanks for doing that, Nick. I appreciate it. Yeah, I agree with you about making the road, the angle, everything. In terms of the permitting around the wetlands, I agree also. I don't want it there anyways. So I think we currently have thought about it being positioned as ideal because if that wetland gets cleared out, I want that to be parking. Like, we need way more parking. Now I'm gonna hop on a quick call. We call our Mike Minutes Mastermind. It's a daily mastermind I do with all the owners of Augusta. So like right now, for example, there are 6 responses. Those are questions. I go daily live. So even though we're on the challenge, there's still a lot of other stuff that has to go on running the franchise, the software, and also Anytime Fitness right now back in Blaine. The contractors after 3 months still haven't completed. And I don't know if we're gonna take legal action or what, but they can't figure out how to get tiling installed correctly. So, still dealing with a lot of other drama besides just getting this location up and running.

This is Gabe, the manager of the Blaine Anytime Fitness. Here right now, actually, we have different bathrooms being actively worked on, repairing things that needed to be repaired, mostly because this faucet needed to be replaced. You wouldn't think that it would take so long, but things are always a motion in progress.

So what I actually do is I use HomeWorks. We have all the owners of Augusta in there. I text blast all of them every morning, a link to a livestream, they all hop on it. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another Mike Minutes Mastermind. Let's get the show on the road. We are in Texas. Everything that can go wrong has gone wrong. Last night I came up with this idea and I was like, well, we can't sell mowing right now. But we could sell treatments and then just have next month be their first service. So we are going to turn ads on today. So kind of excited about that. So Augusta Leaves is getting that up and running. Command Center is gonna start taking calls. So that is fantastic.