DAY 7 of Building a $1M Business in 1 Yr
In this behind‑the‑scenes vlog, Mike Andes documents the seventh day of his challenge to launch a $1 million lawn‑care company in one year. He and his team pick up two newly wrapped vans, discuss design tweaks (color balance, mascot placement, text positioning, and protective bumpers), and plan the interior layout for equipment such as a Z‑Sprayer, stand‑on and push mowers, trimmers, edgers, and blowers. Mike explains the procurement strategy: leveraging preferred‑vendor discounts (22‑27% off) to save roughly $20 k on a $70 k equipment budget, and details the rationale for choosing 32‑inch ProStance mowers over larger models to fit typical lot sizes and avoid fence damage. The vlog also covers operational logistics—training four new technicians, installing wheel locks, and setting up a cowork‑ing office for Google Business verification, including signage, window clings, and vehicle branding. Mike shares a brief email‑list hygiene effort (archiving inactive contacts to protect sender reputation) and reflects on core company values, emphasizing constant improvement. Throughout, the tone is practical, candid, and mildly humorous, with occasional technical explanations about mower mechanics and Google verification requirements.
Chapters
I moved across the country to build a $1 million lawn care business in 1 year. And today we're picking up the 2 vans that got wrapped, and we're gonna go pick up the equipment and the mowers that's necessary for the first setup. Oh, and by the way, I actually have pants and my boots and my hat, because finally, after a week of being broken down in Wyoming, the vehicle we shipped here from Washington finally showed up. Hi.
Hi.
We were seeing if the first van was done or we're still waiting on both of them. Augusta, are they done? We were just trying to get the 2 vans, and if they're not done yet, that's no worries.
Yeah, I told him it was gonna be closer to like 3. Okay.
Sweet. Better than I thought. Your AI is the issue. This is fine. Yeah, yeah, I gotta apologize to the design team. You can tell them. I had told them, like, I was mad. I was like, dude, this green is not right. But this is fine. Okay, team, I come to you with a repentant heart. I'm very sorry. The green that I showed you was synthesized through AI and it turned neon. It does not look like that in real life, so I apologize for the false red flag situation. I will say that Max's face should probably come down about 4 inches, 'cause like his hat's getting cut off on the top a little bit. But other than that, it's fine. The green is just fine. I apologize for the false flag. Okay, so the other day Terrell sends me a photo of this thing and he put it through AI to color grade it and it turned this into like a neon green. And I was like, I kind of had hoped that this bottom part would stay yellow. From a cleaning perspective, the black is going to be probably better, but I'd like a little, little more yellow on it. So this is the first design we've ever done for this size of a van. So the design team is kind of like massaging it, and every van's a little different. So the high top, you can see here, I would have really liked Max to be brought down just a little bit, and then this yellow carried out through here potentially. But it doesn't look bad. Like, I'm not saying we gotta redo anything. So this is, this is the previous place's work.
Oh yeah.
Just the little things like this. My bigger concern is, see how the wrap goes right to the edge of the ramp? That's gonna get all beat up, so we'll probably have to put some bumpers on there. Like that whole lip right there. Yeah, like 6 inches. Put some like rubber stoppers probably. So the first 2 vans are done, they're wrapped beautifully. Couple little edits we're gonna make on the next vans, but this is the first design of this size of vehicle wrap, so a lot of this is just dogfooding things for Augusta. I'm actually trying to reduce the amount of text as much as possible, like even this is quite a bit. If you're gonna do a small font, in my opinion, you gotta have a really high contrasting color.
Yeah.
So like weed control, fertilization, mowing, it's a lot of text, but it's white on black, which allows it to be seen a little easier. Same thing with the phone number. I think a lot of times people will just like do tons of text all over the place, but you'll notice we always are trying to make sure this is something that can be seen like 100 feet away. I see a lot of vans that look good when you're like close up to it and you can see what's actually going on, but then you walk halfway across the street and you're like, What does that say? And so even the phone number, you'll see we're trying to put the black text on yellow just so it's very easily visible. Even if you are 100, 200 feet away, you should be able to read everything that's on the side of these wraps. And honestly, you want like maybe your services, your name alone sometimes that will carry this, like Augusta Lawn Care Services. They probably do mowing, fertilization, weed control, and it's here. You don't even have to have this text. I think most people put way too much on their wraps. I try to keep it to the name of the company, services, mascot, and phone number. And you're like, the phone number is antiquated. Look, we still get more than half of our leads coming through the phone. And so I'm going to put the phone number on the side of the truck.
All right.
So these are all the wraps. Unfortunately, they're basically waste because they're the wrong size. So we might use some of it, but like they're beat up and they don't even fit these vans. So right now we're kind of using them as— you can grab that side— as essentially cardboard between these doors. And then we're going to try to fit the Z-Sprayer in this one van. So what we're going to do is we're going to take all of the doors because remember, we had to take the doors off the back of these bad boys to install the ramp. We're going to put all the doors here and then the other van, we're going to go with a whole bunch of equipment and fill it up with some mowers. All right. So van 1 is just the Z-Sprayer, all the doors up front. We got to take those doors back to the dealership tomorrow. But there's actually still a lot of space in here. Like, honestly, they're going to have so much space here. Like, the Z-Spray is relatively compact, but I think we'll send this one back up to the office area and then we'll use that empty one to go pick up some mowers. Got a 45-minute drive. We'll pick up some mowers, some equipment. All right, so I was in contact with the design team, and overall they think that all the text on these designs were shifted up a little bit. So like the phone number, it's too close to this mirror. So from certain angles, from far away, it actually kind of covers up one of the numbers. So bringing that down— Max's face is a little too high. The text overall, like the services, it's a little too high. So we're going to contact the manufacturer because the proof they sent to us did not look like that. And it gives more space for the yellow and for just— it looks better overall, the spacing of it all. So these aren't perfect, but these are the first one for all of Augusta, so we can adjust it, make sure it's good, and hopefully adjust things. Also, we were just— I was talking with the media team. We have 41,000 people have subscribed to my email list, but sometimes people don't open up emails. And on this challenge, I'm emailing like 4 or 5 times a week with like daily kind of behind the scenes. And most people, like their 5, 10 years they've been on the email list, they don't open up the emails. So there's about, there's over 10,000 contacts we're probably just gonna archive so that way we don't get blacklisted for spam because we're sending a whole bunch of emails and most of them aren't getting opened up. So we're doing this thing right now where we basically are cleaning our email list. It's something you might wanna think about even in your context for your business is like, if someone's not opening up your emails, has never done that and you're having a low open rate, it might be a good thing just to not send them emails anymore. So that way you send it to people who do open up the email, sending signals to the email providers that, hey, this is like a very valid email provider and email sender and increase your open rates. So that's kind of what we're trying to do because on the daily vlogs, when we create these vlogs, I'm also writing like a little article of some behind the scenes and stuff I'm learning. So if you do want to be part of that, by the way, Just go to mikeandes.com, go to the very bottom, there's the newsletter club, you can join there, and then you'll get like a daily behind the scenes from me on the vlog. This is what you call undercover. Not really, it's an obnoxious— so I have this necklace thing on, and it has a magnet underneath my shirt, and then this just sticks there. So it's not undercover at all. This thing blinks red, like watch. Alright, so it's on. Now it's flashing red. So it's definitely not covert. But here's the thing. Let me show you guys this. So these Ray-Bans, these are these glasses from Meta, right? Version 1 on these— see, they're going to turn on. 3, 2, 1. Okay. So on version 1, you could cover up the light on this thing and no one would know you're recording. But that's not good for privacy. And I understand that's a little creepy. So they made it now where you cannot cover this thing. And if you do, Oh, no. Every 6 seconds it's checking to see if you're covering this light. So watch this. I'm recording. All right, so see that light? That light is very visible and there's no way you're doing this covertly. So unfortunately there's really no way to— like, just watch this. I'll cover this and it's gonna turn off. Camera lens blocked. And so it just turns off. It's so annoying. Anyways.
It's blinking.
What?
It was still blinking.
Yeah, but it turns off the recording. It's just that this is obnoxiously weird and annoying and everyone looks at it and gets distracted and doesn't just talk to me like a normal person. So we tell them that we're recording. It's just a function of it would be nice if it wasn't blaring in their face as they're trying to talk to my eyeballs here. It's blinking. Anyways. So I have not— I don't even know what I'm purchasing right now or picking up. John did all the purchasing. He knew the person that kind of runs this dealership. So it's not the closest one to our market. John has worked with this dealership before when he worked with the city. So I'm just kind of following what John says. Also, same thing with the equipment. I think I'm picking up 32-inch zero turns, but then we got 30-inch push mowers as like backup just in case, and then trimmers and blowers. But like, I'm not even sure which brand I'm picking up exactly. John made the decision on all of those. So fortunately, the brands that they have here, we get between 22% and 27% off just for being part of Augusta Nation. So this alone is saving us $9,000 or $10,000 just this pickup. Uh, what, all our equipment all in, I think it's gonna save us like almost $20 grand. Hey, hey, are you Scott?
I am.
Oh, let's go. Do you mind us recording?
Yeah.
Okay, cool. Thanks for having us out.
Nice to meet you.
Let's go. This is Terrell.
Terrell, nice to meet you.
Let's go. I think I'm picking up some stuff today. Yeah, yeah, let's go.
We appreciate it, man.
What was your name?
Adrian.
Adrian, good to meet you, man. Nice to meet you. Um, I only have one van today.
That's fine.
So I was thinking I'd probably pick up enough for like 2 vans worth of equipment.
Okay.
Because on Thursday we have all like our training with the techs, and then when the other 2 ramps from TER are done, we'll come over and get the rest of it. Is that fine? Yeah, okay.
Yeah, we got room, we got plenty of room, so it's just up to you.
Cool. Yeah, I think maybe— I'm thinking like 2 of everything. Like maybe if I get 2 stand-ons, 2 push mowers, and then like 4 trimmers, 4 blowers. And is this the closest one to where we're at?
There's actually another one that's closer in Grand Prairie over there.
I think this one's maybe 15 or 20 minutes longer, but he was like, maybe some of the maintenance we can do there. But he's like, I want to work with Scott.
Yeah, that's what he told me.
So, okay.
He's got 4 blowers, 4 weed eaters, 4 edgers.
Okay, let's do 2 of each of those then.
2 of each.
Yeah, let's do that.
Okay.
I'll pull the van around, is that fine?
Yeah, yeah, if you can park right here, and then I've got stuff in the last bay over here. We'll go grab out. So perfect, got everything to go.
So what I'm thinking is we'll put the 2 stand-on mowers right up against the vapor barrier just because we don't have the wheel locks here with us now. They'll be installed tomorrow, uh, and then we'll put the push mowers and then all the hand tools behind it. And then I guess the other 2 will probably be another week or 2, I'm guessing. It's fine, we'll get those other ramps put on. I'll probably pick them up right when I, when I pick those up.
I'm on your time, you just let me know.
You're the man.
It's no biggie at all, man.
I appreciate it. Do you want to maybe, once you pull out here, maybe walk to some of the main features if you don't mind.
So you definitely got run-flat tires on the front. You don't have to worry about being down in the yard with obviously pneumatic tires. It's got easy access panel right here so you can get to all your pulleys.
What's the size difference on the motor between even the 36-inch? Does it scale down a bit?
36 probably goes up like a couple horsepower.
Okay, okay.
But I want to say it might still be a 600, so don't let me tell you wrong. Okay, one thing on this unit which I didn't get a chance to tell John— how often do y'all scalp?
Maybe once a year.
Okay, so in that one time a year, they put They put this plate on here so that, you know, if you're ever going to adjust down to scalping, this belt here has to go to the top pulley.
Oh, interesting. And why is that?
Because the way that it runs from the engine to this, when you drop this deck down so low, ah, then this belt will be at an angle like this.
And just wear out.
It's going to eat it right up.
Really?
So it has to go to that top pulley. Pulley so that whenever you drop it down, now we're in line with the engine, the crankshaft pulley.
Got it.
Yeah, and John, man, good dude.
Yeah, did you know him from that church there?
Yeah.
Okay, very cool.
That's where I met him from originally.
That's awesome.
I couldn't believe whenever he reached out to me, I was like, let me just ask you, why did you reach out to me whenever you're in Flower Mound?
Yeah.
Out that way. And he was like, dude, I just remember your customer service. And he goes, I thought if you're still there, I'm going to reach out to you and see if we could do business.
Yeah, I was like looking like there are closer ones. It's like, nope, for the purchasing we're using Scott, then we'll go to the other ones later on for maintenance.
If you need to.
Yeah.
And if you need to for maintenance, then I'm going to send you out to— because here's the deal, you guys are going to get special treatment whenever you come in.
I appreciate it.
Okay, it's not— if we're 4 weeks behind on service, whenever you guys come in, it's gonna be priority to where if we can get you guys out within a few days, okay, we're gonna get you out.
I appreciate it.
Because we know you guys are using it to make money, right? I appreciate it. Special treat.
You're the man. Thanks, Scott. You have a good one.
Appreciate it.
Take care. We just picked up the mowers and the equipment. We're now heading to pick up the second van that was wrapped that has the Z spray and the vans. I'm talking like, you know, spend too much time with Terrell. And then we're gonna go pick up the vans and get the Z sprayer with all the doors, and then we're gonna take that to the Regis office. And now that we have a wrapped vehicle, we are going to Verify the Google address. Let's go inside real quick. We're back at the coworking space at Regus, and we are going to set up the office inside for the Google verification. And so we tried, we tried to do the Google verification before, but the problem is we didn't have a wrapped van, we didn't have uniforms, we had no signage or branding in the office at all. So we're gonna try it— try again. So I just want to make sure that when we do the actual verification video, it is as good as we possibly get it. Looks like John has got like first aid kits, power pack jumpers just for the guys, and then tool bags for all 4 vans. That's awesome. So some of the signage we are planning to use on Thursday for the orientation with the technicians, but I want to set it up So that way this office looks like ours, which it is. So to be in full transparency, I have seen about a 70% success rate on verifying Google when it comes to coworking spaces. So I'm hoping we fall in the 70%. I have also seen it be very difficult. So if you're watching, you're like, I want to get a Google address verified. Instead of having, you know, just service areas. I don't know, for some reason Google is the most fickle thing when it comes to address verification. All right. Oh, these are the window stickers. Hey, we are in business. So I got 2 of them. Hopefully this is for location number 2 though. So I'm gonna leave that here. I'm gonna stick this bad boy up on the wall. Oh, look at this fancy thing. Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. Well, look at you. Okay.
Okay.
So we're gonna put this— oh, it fits like a glove. Literally an inch, inch more and it would not be working. All right, so this is not gonna stay here forever, so don't yell at me. Because technically to leave a window cling up, they do charge extra per month. But, oh yes, I know this is not the way to put these on. Everyone's screaming at me in the comments. This is gonna stay up for all of 10 minutes while we make this Google review or Google verification video. Let's see here. These are our core values. Handle with care. Okay, let's do that. Ooh, very nice. Do you know them off the top of your head? Do what? All 7? I only really care about one. It's number one. Oh, Constant Improvement. The other ones are good. These are actually made by Command Center, like the first year of Command Center, and eventually I'll probably change them or like consolidate them down to like 3, but the only one I really care about is we embrace constant improvement. Everything else is gravy. So what's the specifics on like what they require? That's a good question that no one knows, but I've seen some people's videos that like aren't half as convincing and somehow it makes it, like it gets passed. So I don't really have a great answer for that one, honestly. Let's go make the verification video. And I got my key. We'll close this thing and we'll give it a shot. So this is blocking us from doing a lot of like LSA or local service ads right now, and it just doesn't show up to customers, which makes it very hard to get customers online. Show your location, equipment, and proof of management. Your video is only used for verification and won't be shown publicly. So let's show them everything we possibly can. So it says show your business name printed on business card, branded vehicle, or business license. So that's what we're gonna try to do today. Video did not show your business. Show storefront interior and equipment. Show street signs, neighboring businesses, or recognizable landmarks.
Okay.
So maybe what we'll do, I'll do both vans, I'll show the equipment inside, and then let's like show— man, this is tough because like recognizable landmarks would be all the way out in the middle. Main road. Like, let's show this thing, 3917. I'll show this address and I'll come back around. Uh, your business name printed on business card. Okay, on vehicle. So actually, they are looking for vehicle, which is funny because like someone in the comments the other day was like, I verified my Google Business and didn't have my vehicle wrapped.
Okay.
All right, that's as good as we can get, and if it doesn't work out tomorrow, we'll have to try again. Okay, your video is being reviewed. It may take up to 5 days until your video is reviewed. Let's hope that's like 24 hours. Add a storefront photo?
Uh-oh.
Oh no. Well, this is the part where we cross our fingers, hope, and pray. Alright, so we went on a little shopping spree. We got back to the office, verified Google hopefully, and let's go over what we bought today. So first off, we got edger number 1. Let's see how much we spent, what the damage is like. Okay, so we got 4 of these ProStance 32-inch mowers. All right, first off, you got—
there we go.
We got 4 of these bad boys, $8,000 a pop. So good news is at Gravely, we do save, I think it's 27%, which is really nice being part of Augusta. Let's see here. Is it 20%? I'll make sure I'm accurate. So ten. So we saved per mower. We saved $2,300. So that's 22%. So the listing price, just make sure we're all on the same page. All right. We got listing price for Pro Stance is $10,486. We're getting it for $8,100. That discount is because of the preferred vendor that we have with them. Same thing with Toro. Same thing with the trimmers, the edgers. We recently this year got a really good deal with Stihl, which I'm really happy about. So I'm really thankful for all the preferred vendors. This in and of itself, this, all this equipment, not just what's here, because we got 4 ProStances, 4 Toro push mowers, 8 trimmers, 8 edgers, 8 blowers. Everything all in is $47,000 inclusive of tax. And then we also got the Z sprayer, which was around $20,000. So originally our budget going into equipment was for $70,000. We're coming in at, with tax, right around $68,000 for all the equipment. So we didn't get the biggest, baddest blowers. I'm trying to optimize mostly for comfort for the guys. And so we're not doing big commercial properties. They're smaller properties. So those are the 430s. And then we got the FS91s in terms of trimmers. All right, come on inside. This is the Toro. So we were thinking about the 31, 30 inches, but honestly, I have seen so many problems with 30-inch mowers. I don't care what brand. I know there's gonna be someone be like, I use a great 30-inch mower. In terms of commercial, I have tried almost every 30-inch mower. I was thrilled when they first came out from Exmark. I'm like, oh, it's gonna be so efficient. Stuff breaks, they're heavy, guys don't like using them, the tube blades get messed up sometimes. So it's twice as many blades to sharpen and they cost more. So we got 21-inch commercial Toro mowers really as a backup just in case for whatever reason these bad boys can't be used. We really got the 32-inch ProStance from Gravely mostly because it will fit inside of a 36-inch gate. Now you can get a 36-inch ProStance or stand-on mower in general and it will get in through most gates, but if it's If the gate is 36 inches, you're usually scraping or like barely getting through the posts. And then we all of a sudden have to start a new department called Augusto Fencing Department. And we don't want to do that. I don't want to be changing out posts. So they're 32 inches. They're a little smaller, very compact. The tires are also very small. It's also a very light piece of equipment because it doesn't have a huge deck. The tires are small. It's harder to make damages. And honestly, the smaller mowers I've used when it comes to my crew, the less damage cases I have. Because if I have a little push mower and I hit a sprinkler head, it doesn't do any damage. If you have one of these bad boys at 60 inches wide, that thing's huge. It's extremely heavy. You can back into things, knock fences over, the whole nine yards. But mostly, most of the reason we're using this is because our average size lot is probably going to be in the neighborhood of 6,000 to 7,000 square feet. That's our guess currently. Obviously, only time will tell, but we really service— mostly focus on 4,000 to 8,000 square feet. That's gonna be like our mojo. And so this is perfect size. We're not bagging clippings either, so we're not worried about having a big bagging system like we do up in Washington. When we had zero turns, we have to— had to have the sit-downs so we could have a 3-bushel bag on the back that we can gather all the clippings. Don't need to do that here. So that is the full setup. This is only half of the equipment. We'll get the other half when we get the next 2 vans. But the objective today was really just to get these 2 vans up and running so that this coming Thursday we can do new technician training. There's gonna be 4 new technicians, at least 3, maybe the 4th one. We're still working on the 4th one. And that— this will just get it to where we can actually put them on the equipment, walking through the vans and making sure they're set up for success.
