Full Course to Start a $1M Lawn Care Business in 2026

Hey, everyone, it's Mike Andes. I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn Care. We have over 170 locations around the world. And today I want to share my journey of starting a lawn care business, growing it to a million dollars in revenue, and then being able to scale that across many locations. I first started mowing grass when I was 11 years old. And the reason I started mowing grass so young was because I need to save up for college. And the reason I need to save up for college so young is because I actually started college when I was 13 years old. And I did this because I knew I was wanting to become a surgeon, either a brain surgeon or a heart surgeon. I wasn't really 100% sure. I just knew I was gonna be in school for a really long time and it would cost me a lot of money. And I kind of looked at college and my education in university as my way out. My family had never really gone to college, and we didn't have a lot of money. We moved like 20 some odd times before. I moved out when I was 18, so. So, like, we didn't have money. And so I thought, hey, if I can make a bunch of money being doctor, then I should become a doctor. And I certainly did enjoy medicine. And I was the kid with, like, bone structures and skeletons and muscle diagrams all over my walls in my room. And So I was 13, going to school in university, and basically paid my way through college using lawn care. Now when I turned 18, I went to Africa, more specifically Kenya, Nairobi, and the outskirts, which is like Kalangbari and Tigoni. And I went to several orphanages and clinics in and around that area. And I was able to do tons of crazy stuff as a medical student there. Stuff that I could never do in the US like birthing surgeries. I worked a lot in the pediatric burn unit and just saw all sorts of crazy, awesome stuff. I would usually see between like 40 and 60 patients a day. Coming back to the US getting ready for my medical degree and getting my MD I was really disappointed by the fact that as I shadowed all these doctors and I shadowed dozens, a lot of the day was spent with paperwork, bureaucracy, figure out insurance. And furthermore, the more specialized the discipline of medicine, the less variety they saw. And so I figured, like, look, if I'm going to become a brain surgeon or I'm going to be a heart surgeon, and I'm going to be the best at something, I'm probably going to do like four or five procedures max for the rest of my career for the next 40, 50 years, that's all I'm going to do. And I didn't really want to also go into debt for my medical degree, which I would be forced to because I wouldn't be able to do the lawn care thing on the side that had got me through my undergrad degree. So it's in that moment I was 18 years old, I decided I was not going to go to medical school and rather I was going to drop out and start Augusta Lawn Care. Because up until that time I'd been doing it part time on the side making like 20, 30,000 in annual revenue. And starting Augusta Lawn Care was a big jump for me to be able to go full time and start scaling up the business. That was when I was 18. And certainly the first few years there was no evidence of success in terms of financially from starting the lawn care business. It was extremely difficult. I worked crazy amounts of hours. I saw very little in return in terms of profits. But I was growing quickly. And fast forward. Just a few years later, I got in a workplace accident where my hoodie got caught in the PTO of a dump truck. Now the PTO is the thing underneath that spins really fast and I was manually engaging it and turning it on because the cable had broke inside of this old Ford 1991 L7000 and dump truck. And so I had gone underneath the dump truck to engage the pto. Power takeoff. As I came out, my hoodie got caught on on the pto. Now if you want to see some gory accidents, go check out, just type in PTO Accidents on YouTube and you'll get your, your fair share. But you'll see that people get their appendages taken off. They get stuck in there and they just get wrapped up and they, they pass away. And so in a split second I remember being pinned up underneath the dump truck, looking out from underneath and we were in a neighborhood at one of our customers houses. I was doing a walkthrough of the project, getting the crew started was going to dump their three yards of cobblerock and then head back to the office to do estimates the rest of the day. In that split second I got caught. I remember thinking like, oh, this is how it's going to end. And it wasn't like I was freaking out, it was just a matter of like, oh, this is how it's going to end. Because immediately my hoodie and my T shirt wrapped up around my neck and just started cinching super tight. Uh, and in a split second I dropped out of the pto, it just eviscerated, like just completely shredded my sweater and my hoodie around my neck and I fell out. But it took a couple weeks to kind of be go to the hospital, get repaired up, and then be able to work again. And in those couple weeks, I realized that my business had no systems and it was built on me working 80, 90, 100 hours a week. And I still remember being at the hospital and literally facetiming my crew on their next job for that day. And it was because the business was built on me. It was built on me being at every big project, understanding the technical aspects of excavation and grading and drainage and all these elements that were very complex. And not even that, just not even having basic systems for the simple stuff. And during those two weeks, I started to restructure what the business should look like. I had already gone to business school and the first couple years of Augusta at night did my MBA master's in Business Administration at Western Washington University. And. And so I already knew conceptually how to run a big business. A lot of it didn't apply to, like, small businesses, but nonetheless I knew conceptually. And so I started drawing out what a business should look like in lawn care and landscaping and in home services when it comes to systems and procedures. Everything from the compensation model to how estimates should be done and the sales system, et cetera. And so coming back to the business, I started implementing those systems and over the next couple of years turn the business into being very profitable to where I don't need to be there on a daily basis. And then we eventually franchise the business and now have almost 200 locations around the world. But in those couple weeks, I realized that the business was built on me, not on systems. And I started to document those systems and share what those systems were in my YouTube content and on landscape businesscourse.com and I just started sharing those. And if you actually go back on landscape businesscourse, you can, you can see the lacerations still on my neck are fresh. Cause I started making those videos two to three weeks after I got out of the hospital. And that was crazy. That was a crazy journey. And it served me well going through that because I realized that the business needed systems and needed procedures. But I wanted to pass that along to everyone else in the lawn care landscape community. Cause like me, they probably ran their business, they very unprofitably working crazy amounts of hours. And the vast majority of home service business owners do. And the reason I know that is because I see hundreds of home service Business profit and loss statements every single year and the vast majority are running on very thin if any profit margins. And so as of today I want to be able to give landscape business course away for free. This is going to be for lifetime the ability to have all of those systems and those procedures all locked up in one spot in a course. Now I create a landscape business course as a way to be able to fund the media team that over the past four or five years I've been able to grow and expand and use to create more content. But now I've been able to create other products like Copilot, CRM, P4P software, Augusta, the franchise, lawn care, web design, home service, web design and those are now able to fund the media side. And so I want to be able to give back to the community that has given me everything.

My wildest dreams could not hope for. What I have today, I still remember just hoping and praying that could build a million dollar business. What I have today is a direct result of the home service community and the lawn care community. I'm so, so thankful and I want to be able to give back to the younger version of myself or the person that is struggling in their business to be able to figure out how to implement those same systems in their business. And so I made the course completely free as of the day. It's actually Christmas day when I'm releasing this December 25th, 2024, it's completely free. There are dozens, I think like over 50 or 60 hours of content in here and you're going to see the evolution of these systems as I grew the business and then scaled it across hundreds of locations. Now the reason I called it landscape business course and the reason I'm giving away this today for free is because I still remember in that two week period when I was stuck and.

Really thinking whether or not I was right in switching out of medical school because I was, I had been young going through medical school for so long, everyone just anticipated me to be this next doctor and like cure disease. I did a lot of research on multiple sclerosis coming up through my university days and like there were professors like saying I was throwing away talent and all those sorts of things and, and so when you're hit with the hit the reality that your business is unprofitable built does not have the systems runs completely on you working insane amount of hours. It's extremely demoralizing. And so I still remember typing landscape business course and nothing showed up and I wanted to build that for that version of me and that's what I built over the last several years inside of the course. And I hope that if you're in the same position, whether you're thinking maybe this industry isn't for you, you're thinking maybe you don't have what it takes, you wonder why you crazy amounts of hours, but see no money in the bank. I hope that you watch the course, it's completely free, and you're able to get the tools required to turn the business around. That's my only hope and my only thing that I can really give to you today, here on this Christmas Day, is that gift of knowledge that unlocked the business for me and has given me everything that I've ever hoped or dreamed of. It's night. It's almost 19. 18 years of lawn care, landscaping, home service, industry experience just consolidated into that course. And it is truly what I believe can completely transform your business. So landscapebusinesscourse.com, go head over there. It is free. It is the entire course. Nothing was removed or redacted or changed. We actually added 10 more pieces of content to it in just the past day or two. And I'm really looking forward to seeing what it can do for you and your business. The only thing I ask is that on Instagram or Facebook, if you can tag me as you're watching the content and tell me what is impacting you, that would be a huge win for me as a way just to kind of see some response of, of what I'm trying to give. And I hope it makes a difference in your business. I appreciate you all tremendously for everything that you've done for me, my family, for those that I love, for my team, my employees. And giving us the opportunity to serve you all is a great honor. A great, great honor. And so I hope you have a fantastic day and enjoy the course. Take care.