From Mowing Lawns, to Estimator, to Managing a $1.7M Lawn Care Business (Lee Park)

Hey, everyone, it's Mike Andes. You're listening to landscapebusinesscourse.com and today we have another interview here on Roundup, the landscaper's best show for interviews for other landscapers. So really looking forward to it today. A few weeks ago, there's a few of you that asked specifically to talk to people that are within Augusta Lawn Care and people that either work for me or franchisees. So we've tried to do that the past few weeks. Last week, we had Chuck Fought from our North Carolina location as a general manager. Today we're gonna have Lee park, who is the general manager for the local Bellingham location, which was actually the original first location for Augusta Lawn Care. And next week, we're actually gonna have Liz, who's operations manager and really helps me a lot at the franchise level, is going to be joining the show. So you're gonna get your daily dose of Augusta here the next few weeks here on Roundup. But without any further delay, let's go ahead and welcome Lee into the show.

And.

And hopefully, I think today, as I was talking with Lee, you know, everyone always asks, like, what are we going to talk about? I said, really, the main objective today is really to kind of inspire the. Those that might be out in the field, those that might be kind of feeling like they're in a industry or in a business that they think more paycheck to paycheck or even, what am I going to do for this season, this mowing season? I'm going to go get something else and kind of job hopping and just kind of giving them the inspiration and. And the knowledge that this is an industry you can grow in, finding the right company to be able to scale with them and learn so much. So without any further delay, Lee, welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on.

Yeah, thanks for having me, Mike. Happy to be here.

Cool. So without. Without taking too much time, maybe just kind of introduce yourself a little bit. Obviously, people know you work for Augusta. Tell us, you know, how old are you? I know you got married in the past couple of years, you're getting a new house, a lot of things going on, but give us a little bit of the 32nd version of who Lee park is.

Yeah, 30 seconds.

Uh. Oh, did I lose you?

My beautiful wife?

Can you hear me, Lee?

Either I lost him or he lost me.

Yeah, I can hear you.

Okay. For some reason, you dropped out there, so maybe try that part again.

Okay, cool. Can you hear me? Okay?

I can hear you. You're just a little bit blurry, but you're okay.

Okay, cool. Yeah. So names Lee park, born and raised local, Bellingham, Washington. Been married for two years now to my beautiful wife Sarah. Been working for Augusta three and a half total years, I think now. And went to school in Chicago. Didn't really know what I was going to do with my life, but I knew I liked working outside. I knew I liked working with my hands. And that's kind of how I found Augusta. So that's kind of like the quick 30 second intro.

Cool. And so tell us what you were doing before you came to Augusta and kind of the whole interview process. At that time, I was still very much in day to day operations. We were up in Blaine. Tell us kind of how that came about and what the position you kind of got hired on for was.

Yeah, so I applied to Augusta because I had typical, you know, summer job lined up as a college student. I was a park ranger and basically my time was going to end in September there. And the park I worked at, it was like a private RV park, was less than a mile away from the old Blaine shop. And I was like, well, I've seen these trucks drive by every day. And I was like, maybe I'll just go over there and drop off a resume. So that's when I first met Liz. I just dropped off a resume and I just was like, hey, you know, I have a little bit of experience with some equipment. I see you guys are local. Just figured I'd drop off my resume, see if you guys were hiring. And so I didn't meet you until the interview process. Actually, I just met with Liz. Liz basically, you know, passed the res, my resume off to you and you and I did a quick, you know, 10 minute interview and from there I guess you just kind of offered me a position to start mowing lawns. So.

So. So just for everyone listening, the back end of that story is he came to us in September and we usually don't hire people in September because in our market, our spring rush is really where we need the most help. And then we try to solidify a solid group and then keep them all the way through the rest of the year. So we weren't necessarily looking for a whole bunch of people to join the team. But definitely after Liz met with him and then I interviewed him like, hey, we have to get this. This person's really, really good. And someone potentially long term could be with the team. And at the time we didn't necessarily know we were going to franchise, but definitely looking for. We knew we were going to scale. And so having someone like Lee, we knew we could not pass him by or let him go get another job. And so I think it was pretty quick. You joined, right? Like you just gave like we contact you right away and you gave your two weeks notice.

Yeah, I didn't really have time to give a two weeks notice because I like had an end date. Like I had a summer position basically as a park ranger, so. So you guys were like, hey, if you want to join, you can give your two weeks. And I was like, I can start literally at the end of this week. And I think I started within like five days.

Very cool. So first, from someone's perspective, like yours, that has pretty quick now, now been with us for, you know, three and a half years. Kind of maybe summarize the changes. Not so much on your level, but from a business standpoint, Augusta in general, obviously, when you joined, I think we probably had five or six people, if you maybe seven, I forget. But kind of walk through what changes you've seen over the past three and a half years now.

Yeah, I guess to give kind of the quick, quick synopsis would be, obviously the big one's going to be personnel change and location change. So we grew pretty substantially. So when I got hired, I worked through the winter. So you only had. You had a couple people that were kind of part time. So yeah, there were two guys that worked kind of part time with us, and then it was me and four other guys that were kind of the main crew that work through the winter. And then you had two part time guys kind of helping us out. So when I got hired, it was, you know, five trucks and five employees and you and Liz, basically. And from then till now, three years later, I mean, whole new shop, you know, couple acres of property and 13 trucks. And now in the field, currently 14 employees.

I think I lost you again there, Lee. You were giving. Can you hear me? Go back to where you're saying. You said now. We're currently 13 trucks, 12 guys out in the field or 14 guys out in the field. Go back to that part. Sorry.

Yeah. No, you're good. Yeah, I was just kind of rounding that.