From the Bottom of My Heart, THANK YOU

Hey, everyone, it's Mike Andes and you're listening to the Business Boot Camp podcast. Today we have a special episode. It's more of an announcement and also just a thank you, but it's gonna be a good one. And before we get into today's show, though, a big thank you to today's sponsor, which is Gusto. If you haven't already, make sure you check out Gusto.com that's G-U-S-T-O.com Bootcamp and get a free 90 day trial. The software, completely free. And one of the things I haven't talked a lot about is that it integrates with QuickBooks. So if you use QuickBooks for your invoicing and for your billing and for all your expense tracking, you can integrate that directly with Gusto. And so there's absolutely no double entry and there's no crossover. Save yourself a lot of time. And guess what, it's only six bucks a month per employee. So check it out today. Save yourself a lot of time on your. On all of your payroll needs. And check out Gusto.com Boot Camp now, today. The reason I'm saying it's different is because I don't really have a topic as much as an announcement and a thank you, and that is that we have made it to 10 franchisees for Augusta Lawn Care. And so for a lot of you, maybe you just started listening the past few months. I know most of my listeners in the past five months have really begun even got to know who I am, but maybe you listened for the past five years. And I've done this for over six years, I think now. And so I just want to say thank you to all the listeners and everyone that has done so much for me and allowed me to really chase the dreams that I have and specifically for the landscaping industry, which right now my goal is to really change that industry and increase the level of product professionalism in that industry. And so to do that, three years ago, I started a landscape business course. And so that started off as an online course and a podcast. It started to grow and it turned into a conference, and then it turned into a book, and then it turned into me having a video studio like this where I've been able to create more content. And that's why most of you have probably heard about me only in the past four to five months. And it's allowed me to make enough money to where I can pay someone else to do the work that I was doing before in terms of day to day operations at Augusta. And so, so much has opened up and so much has been given to me, and I'm just incredibly grateful and thankful.

And I just, I'm blown away. So earlier this year, this is what happened. This is kind of a story. You might find this interesting. So, you know, earlier this year, we kind of came to a crossroads because for the past three years, I've known that I wanted to franchise Augusta ever since really starting to get to know the landscapers and then also having an injury on August 4, 2016, which really required me to be really start thinking about how does a business run without the business owner? How does a business become system centric instead of owner operator dependent and being less personality dependent and more system centric? And so I knew I wanted to franchise Augusta. And so, you know, I still remember a few years ago or two years ago, I guess it'd be contacting, you know, franchise legal, like legal assistants and advisors and going to a conference down in Texas about franchising and like, what are the steps? How do we get this set up legally? And it was kind of like a lot of information. I knew it was gonna take a huge amount of. Of money just to get set up in terms of legally and getting all the documents done correctly and making sure we are set up to protect the franchisees and the brand, but also to protect us as the franchisor. And so just a lot of different stuff, you know, getting together all the training material, getting together like the systems and procedures and actually like putting it down. And this is exactly how we do things. So there's a lot of information. And so that was almost two years ago. We went to a conference down in Texas, down in Dallas, and. And that was really cool. And they kind of went on the back burner, to be honest. I knew.

Went on the back burner for a couple reasons. One landscape business course was getting very popular and so started to make a lot of revenue from not a lot, like a good amount of revenue coming in from the course and the book. We had the conference. So we started Proplus, where I was mentoring one on one with these landscaping companies. And it was really fulfilling, was really good in terms of revenue. It didn't take a lot of other people, it didn't take a lot of infrastructure, didn't take any legal setup, whereas the franchise was like, it was a pretty daunting task to get set up and hundreds of thousands of dollars, a lot of risk, and really I couldn't sell any before or even talk about it hardly before I had it set up legally. And so spending all this money and time getting operations manuals and franchise disclosure documents and doing all of this stuff before I even could go out and see if there was a market for it.

And so you're kind of just crossing your fingers, you're kind of hoping and praying that's going to work out and you're kind of doubting yourself all along the way. And at every single junction of the franchise process there's just more paperwork and really you got to know your system so well and you got to make sure it's proprietary and how we protect those things and you know, how do we create software around those systems? And just a lot of stuff that we went through. And so it came down to this spring, right? I honestly felt like we were gonna franchise in a year or two. And I said that literally a year ago, that it'd be a couple more years, like probably 2021 or 2022, because I was kind of getting comfortable with landscape business course. A lot more new listeners, a lot more podcast listeners, more people coming to the course, more people joining Pro plus, which is no longer in existence, but landscapers used to be able to join that. It was 379 per month. And I would do more one on one training webinars and more longer form teaching and training. And so I was kind of getting comfortable because I knew that was scalable, I knew I could make that pretty big. And honestly what it kind of came down to is I started to see even in Proplus, where I had the most one on one connection with these landscapers and business owners, I found that still the things we talked about, still the things I believed in so much, the things that we talked about on every training video, on multiple instances, on the phone, one on one calls, all these things, and yet people still were not doing the things that were fundamental to the growth and the success of the business. Profitability wise, cultural wise in their business and their team culture and their marketing, their advertising, their branding, their online presence. Just so many things we talk about, but they weren't actually getting done. And so I was pretty frustrated, to be honest, and seeing companies that I would try to help and we'd mentor and talk to and coach one on one and in training and all these things, and yet they'd still go out, do something different and just like completely ruin their business and go into debt and just financially be irresponsible. And so that was tough for me because when I coach someone, and I am, especially if they're paying me to do it. I am so invested in, in their success that like when they don't succeed, I do take it super personal and I start questioning like, okay, what did I do that I did not convince them to make that change? Like, was there. Should I have said it more forcibly? Should I have been more blunt? Should I have made an extra call? Like, there were so many things that like, it was very disappointing for me not to see people implementing things in their team, in their business, in the financial and the marketing side of their business that I knew would help them. And so that was happening in the spring. Then what also started to happen is I started to realize that my day to day need at Augusta Lawn Care locally, our shop locally, was beginning to not really exist. Like I did not need to be there. We had created systems, we had procedures. And me being there was more of a hindrance in some ways than it was good. Because as an entrepreneur I went there every single day trying to figure out ways to improve and break it and experiment and change. Whereas like the systems were in place, they worked. They just needed operators to go in and make it as efficient as possible. And so I was realizing that, I was realizing also the fact that I had great people that could do that. But if I didn't start making the franchise, they would eventually have to leave the company if I did not create more places for them to grow into. And so people that are extraordinary on our team that I knew wouldn't stick around for three or five years just mowing lawns or just, you know, answering the phone, like they're gonna need places to grow into. Cause their skillset is that good. And so to keep them, I knew I needed to do something more and give them opportunity to grow more. So that was another part of it. Right. So I'm frustrated with landscape business course because like I see people that I invest so much of my time and like my mental, like I lose sleep over them, like having financial issues and things like that. But yeah, they're more implementing the things I need them to do. And I didn't have any power over that. Cause like it's their business, there's getting advice. And so there was frustration there, there was frustration locally at Augusta because it was, the system was working, everything was operating well. But like I as the entrepreneur wanted, I wanted that scrappy like building thing again. Whereas like locally it was, the systems were in place, everything was working well. It just needed an operator and operators to operate the systems. And then, and then those things kind of collided this, this spring and so we, we made the decision we're going to franchise right away. In my mind, I thought we were a year to two years premature. I'm like, well, I could still make quite a bit more money on this landscape business course thing. There's a lot of people that are starting to listen and the Pro plus and then like the conference is coming up and like, we can, you know, put some money aside because it's gonna take hundreds of thousands of dollars to get this franchise thing off the ground. I could learn some more.

You know. And at the end of the day, I literally made the decision in about two days that we were going to.

Franchise the company. And honestly, what kind of pushed me over the edge. Like, I was already in decision phase over this one week period in, I think it was March. And then I had a discussion with one of my leaders at our local Augusta shop. And I was kind of like, me getting pushed over the edge, realizing that I need a place for this individual to grow into. And just having a local one shop is not going to be it. Right? They're never going to be able to do podcasts. They're never gonna, like, be able to, like, help in landscape business course a whole lot because, like, it's all revolving around me. I wanted to create a brand that embodied the systems that I believed in and allow other people to enjoy in the success of that in terms of the franchise and then have the people that are coming through at my organization be able to train them and show them the systems that we are using. And so.

You know, like, it came into March, like that was, that was happening. I was frustrated in on a couple different areas, made decision literally in two days, we're gonna franchise this thing. Went ahead and, you know, paid the $45,000 retainer for legal advice and, you know, started rolling. And Several months later, August 2019, a few months ago, we were able to start selling franchises. And so the first franchise was just like, it was great. I couldn't believe that someone actually paid for it. I couldn't believe that someone would trust me. We have no experience, no track record. There's no one that they could call and confirm. They were literally going off the trust they had for me listening to this podcast for years. And I was completely blown away that someone would do that. And I was just super fired up. Then we got two, and then we got three, then we got four. I was like, my goodness, this is awesome. And then there's always that, the couple weeks where like, oh, my goodness, this might not happen because like, there's, you know, people have stopped buying. Like, it's harder to sell these all of a sudden. And.

You know, I knew because we have training coming up in a couple weeks for the first group of 10 franchisees, and I knew that November was our deadline, and I was like, there's just no way we're going to sell, you know, five, six more of these. Like, maybe a couple. But I just don't know how we're going to do it. And just amazing how things work out. You doubt yourself all along the way. You kind of question yourself whether or not you're going to actually be able to do it. And we did it, closed 10. And it's incredible. I'm much more of an entrepreneur than I am an operator. I'm never the type that's going to be a CEO of a big business that's setting its ways and just going along, just manipulating stock numbers and revenues and things like that. I'm always going to be in the grow, build change in industry sort of phase. Like, that's just where I thrive. That's the only place I can be. And so it's just been amazing. And I wanted to take this opportunity to thank so many of the people that made this possible. Like, I couldn't be here without amazing parents and family, you know, a church, obviously, my religion and, you know, my belief in God is a driving force behind what I'm doing and committed to, you know, the mission of what I'm trying to do in life. And so. But I also want to thank all of you as listeners for From Landscape Business course to Business Bootcamp Podcast. The people who bought Zero Turn the Book and emailed me and so many emails of just like, I see Larry and exactly what I'm doing every day. And that was amazing. People who've come to the conference, people have joined Landscape Business course, some of which aren't even in the industry, but they literally bought the course just because they said they wanted to support what I was doing. That was so humbling for me. There's now hundreds, almost a thousand Landscape Business course members. And so I'm just humbled by that. You know, this upcoming conference we have in January, landscape summit 2020, it's gonna be the biggest one we had because last year was our first one. So it's gonna be bigger and it's gonna be a lot of fun. And just like, I'm super humbled that people would travel across the country, book a hotel, like, book flights, take time off work to come and learn and I want to thank our sponsors. Like Gusto has been huge to allow us to this facility. It's tens of thousands of dollars to build this place out and you gotta sign a five year lease and you gotta pay for the Internet, which is $540 a month and electricity and all of those things. The sponsors take care of a lot of that. And whether it be Gusto or freshbooks, I've had Toptal, I've had, I'm trying to doing this off the top of my head right now. Jobber has been massive on landscape business core. So all the sponsors, but most of all the listeners, I want to thank you all so much. It wouldn't be possible, but special thanks. Today is going to go to the 10 franchisees. I'm going to read out who they are and where they're coming from, just their first names because I haven't asked them if I can share their last names. But I want to say thank you to them from the bottom of my heart. They really have allowed this dream to start for me. And in my mind, I'm not very much of like a victory lap person. Like, there will be no celebration because we hit 10 franchisees. This is my celebration. Just talking and sharing with you guys. The amount of gratitude that I have to these 10 individuals is amazing.

And everything that they would really like, it's not like a franchise is not like, oh, like let's try this out and see if it works. Like you're signing a contract. It's like a marriage, like five, 10 years, a 10 year agreement to enter into a franchise. And so the amount of trust they have to have in me is enormous and I do not take that lightly. These first 10 franchisees, I will like do anything to make sure they're successful.

If the goals of a franchisee is to become a millionaire and build a million dollar business in the landscape industry, that's what the systems are built for. And I will do anything possible to make that a reality. And so whether, you know, when I was talking, even getting early in this process, getting set up with the franchise, talking to legal counsel, talking to advisors in the franchise space, so many pushed me away from the things that I fundamentally believe are the game changes with this franchise. The biggest one was the fact that we charge a set monthly fee instead of a royalty fee. Like so many advisors said, don't do that. You want to participate in their growth. You want to be able to, as they grow more, you get more money from them. And I just fundamentally could not.

I could not tell myself that that was right, that as they grew and became more successful and needed the franchisor less because they figure out the systems, they don't need the franchisor as much. There was just nothing inside of me that could justify taking more money from them. And as I talked to more and more of them, other franchisees and saw what a royalty fee was doing, I just could not, I could not, like with a good conscience, charge someone a royalty fee. And that's actually why I delayed for so long from the time went to that conference in 2000 and January 2018. The reason I delayed so long in terms of becoming a franchisor is because so much legal counsel and advisors said, don't do it. Like, you want to make sure that if you're going to have hockey stick growth and if you're going to actually take this public one day, you have to have a royalty. And I just couldn't, I could not see the value for the franchisee to be paying more when they're really needing the franchisor less. Because you need a bunch when you get started. But as you grow, you need the franchisor less just to figure out the systems, you figure out how to work things, you make adjustments and you're off to the races. And then you use marketing and their support and their website and all that sort of thing. So that was a big thing for me. It was like making that change and, you know, all along the way, just like so many different things that happened, the thing, you know, constantly trying to put them first, that was always my goal, whether it be fees. Like you look at the FDD franchise disclosure document of Augusta Lawn Care versus, like the grounds guys or us lawns, we're about a third of the size. And if you look at the fee section, we have stripped out every possible fee, even if it was like, minuscule or like, didn't really seem important or might not even happen. I push the lawyers as hard as I possibly could to get the fees gone. Not so much. This is just me being perfectly honest. Not so much because I felt the fee might be taking advantage or anything like that, because most of them were actually like, they made sense. But for me, it was, how can someone trust me if there's, at every single junction of their entrepreneurial journey, there's a fee, like renewal fee, and then there's like a, you know, if you, if you want to move a certain part of your website, like, there's a fee for that and there's per hour for this, and then you got this fee and this fee. And then if you get this type of brand of vehicle instead of the one we want you to, there's another fee. And then like there's just so many fees. Like I'm talking like 100 plus fees versus ours, which I think is 15 if you count every little thing. And about eight of ours are things that should never happen. Like if overdraft funds or those things, things that we have to put in there legally. But I wanted it as simple as possible. $1,200 a month. That's all the fees they're going to see from us. There's no hidden stuff. There's nothing like that. And part of that all was just to try to encourage, as people came into the franchise, that they had to trust me because I didn't have 500 franchisees. For them to go give a call and ask and see their track record and see their financials, I didn't have that. And so we pushed hard for that. And so I want to read off the names of these 10 franchisees. I'm very thankful for them. I'm looking behind the camera right now because I actually have them in order over there, but I have them on my phone. I'll see if I can read them in order. So Thomas from Littleton, Colorado, I want to say a big thank you to him. He was our number one franchisee. And some of these, the order of them changes because in terms of we have certain disclosure times in states and so sometimes they'll contact me before another franchisee because their disclosure time is longer when they actually signed. This is when I'm reading these off. So in case the franchisees are like, I thought I was number five. You said I was number six. But it's because just when you sign, the timing of it. So I want to say a big thank you to Thomas in Littleton, Colorado. First franchisee. Next franchisee was Kevin from South Haven, Mississippi.

And Kevin already has an existing business and doing fantastic. And I was very humbled by the fact that he realized for him to scale and get to the next level, he needs the systems and he needs the procedures that we can offer to Gusta. Really looking forward to working with him. The third one was Abraham from El Paso, Texas. Really looking forward to Texas is just booming, but El Paso, looking forward to that. With Abraham, I was able to meet him at last year's conference. Great guy. The fourth one here was. Let's see here, Mike from Cypress, Texas. Mike is just going through a lot personally, but decided to jump on Board and is also a veteran and has been in the military. So thank you to him for that fifth one. We got Dave from Saline County, Arkansas. And so Dave joined again, switching over his business. Number six was get these right. Number six, there it is. Jeff from Sandwich, Massachusetts. And so again, Jeff was also. He's still in the military and is actually coming to training a little bit later because he needs to be. He has to be gone for a month, but he'll be coming here the week after everyone else and getting trained up. So, Jeff, thank you. A.B. and Natalie from Dix Hills, New York, joining us as well. And they are about to join the grounds guys and kind of bailed last minute over to Augusta. And so really looking forward to working with them. Incredible salespeople, incredible people in general. Just great hearts. Number eight, we got Nick from Cordova, Tennessee, which is really interesting. That's pretty close to Kevin in Mississippi. And so they're gonna have a really good brand presence around Memphis. Just really looking forward to that dynamic and how they'll take that market over. Really looking forward to that. Number nine is actually the closest one to me where I live, and that's in Oregon. Lake Oswego, Oregon. Scott Scott is an existing business owner of other businesses. He's actually looking to buy a landscaping business that's already doing 900,000 in revenue. And he's gonna use Augusta and the systems and everything to really improve that business and continue to grow it in Oregon. And so then the last one is Austin, excuse me. And Austin's brand new from North Carolina. And so really looking forward to working. All these people, you know, everyone from, you know, Austin who just came out of school and has a horticultural degree and has joined the franchise right up to people who already have really successful businesses that are willing to take it to the next level. But all of those people, I named all of them AB And Natalie, Jeff, Mike, Nick, Kevin, Scott, Abraham, Dave Thomas, Austin. I mentioned them all to say a big thank you to them. Like, if I look back in five years at what we will do to this industry and the changes that we will be able to dictate because of the franchise, these are the 10 people I will have to say thank you to if I write another book. These are probably the people I'll be thanking at the beginning of the book.

Just eternally grateful. The franchisees of Augusta that maybe don't even know who Augusta is or who I am right now. But in five, 10 years that join the franchise and are able to scale their business, make it not Just a job, but an actual company that's a sellable asset and that they can pass down to generations and that can run without them being there day to day. They all say thank you to these 10 people as well. These 10 people are. They're risk takers because they're taking a gamble on me. They trust what we're doing and the systems we've built. And I am blown away. I am thankful.

There's not words enough to say how grateful I am for these individuals. In addition to everyone that we thank today, sponsors and listeners, people have come to conference. The people have joined the online course booklet. Like, I am just very grateful. And at these junctions in my career, I have to look back and say, I don't deserve any of this. There's nothing that.

I didn't do anything to deserve all of this. A great family, great parents, a great community.

An opportunity to share what I think about business. Something I love. It's my hobby. It's always. There's nothing else I'd rather be doing. It's just, I love it so much. And so for me to share that and people to actually listen and care and change their businesses and improve their lives and improve the lives of their employees and their community, I am just overwhelmed with gratitude. And I look forward to what we're going to do with Augusta. I think in the next five to 10 years, we will be able to change this industry. And I think we'll make a lot of millionaires in the process. And I'm not ashamed to say that, like, money is important, that money is going to help their families and their employees families, and it's going to change the industry and it's going to help the community that those businesses are in. And how are we going to make Augusta what it is like? So even like next week, next Tuesday, we have an off site with our whole team of Augusta at Augusta. And I'm going to go through our what you know, our what, our how and our why, you know, our why is to change the level of professionalism in the landscape industry. How we're going to do that is kind of a thing that we've been working on. And that is we are going to make employees feel like owners. That's how we're going to do it at these workplaces, at these franchisees. It's not just the culture, it's how they're getting paid, it's how they're being listened to, it's how they're being brought into the process of building the business. And that's what we're trying to build and how. And you know, everyone's like, well, what are you doing? Well, we are changing the industry. We're changing the industry by forcing our competitors to either change and adapt or they're gonna go under. We're gonna put them out of business by raising the expectations of the consumer. Same thing Amazon did. Amazon went in and now every E commerce place is expected to have free shipping and one day delivery and free returns and lots of selection and good price. We're gonna force that on the industry as we scale out. And so I'm really looking forward to what it's gonna do for the lawn care landscaping industry. More, more interested and more looking forward to what it's going to do for the 500 franchisees that we are going to build within the framework of the franchise and just really excited about the future. But I wanted to take this episode and just say thank you to everyone that made this possible. There's, you know, maybe once a year, once every two years, you kind of come to this juncture, you kind of can look back at your career or look back at what you've done. Be like, that was special and that's something that's memorable. And I couldn't have done it without other people supporting me. And I wanted to take this chance and this opportunity to say thank you so much. For those of you who listened for five years or five months, just all your support, your kind emails, the handshakes when I meet you in person and just the gratitude of me being able to help you in your business and you being able to listen, I just appreciate it so much. So without any further delay, without me rambling on, I don't want to cry. I made conscious decision not to shed a tear in this, in this episode. But I just want to say thank you. And so without any further delay, we'll roll this thing out like we always do and say until next time, be great cuz nothing else pays. I'm Mike Andes. We'll see you.