He Went From $30k - $1M in 7 months!

Hey, everyone, we're on the road and today we're visiting Augusta Lawn Care location out in Omaha, Nebraska. Now, Jordan came less than six or seven months ago to join Augusta Nation, and he actually has six locations he's going to slowly move into over the next five years. He's going from zero. He'll probably get to about a million dollars in revenue in his first 12 months in business. But if you're trying to grow fast, some of the things he's talking about, the constraints, bottlenecks that he faces, will also be something that you will face. It's a really good one. Jordan from Omaha, Nebraska. Yeah. Show me around. Show me the place. And then we kind of go through kind of what you're doing. How many guys you have already up and running.

That's been a little bit in flux. But from six to. I think right now we're at five.

Okay. Okay. So almost solo routes when they're all.

Out, actually we have four trucks. Okay. So we team up a team. And then there's usually a couple solos.

Okay.

And then we have two trucks that we just use for projects.

Got it.

So. So, like right now we've been just doing projects on Monday and then mowing three days a week and then kind of having Friday for rains, stuff like that.

Good stuff. And then what do you have to pay for this spot?

It's like 18.95 with fees and kind.

Of a shop space and everything.

Yeah. Like it's bathroom and an office.

How do you like the John Deere's?

They've been good.

Yeah.

Yeah. Like, to be honest with you, that was one of the things that we financed and they were super easy with, especially with new. Like a lot of the other suppliers they wanted to go through and have like two years of business.

And that kind of stuff where John Deere was really good with that.

So it's from John Deere, the financing, not Sheffield?

Yeah, from John Deere.

Okay.

Sheffield wouldn't finance me since it was a business.

Since it's brand new, like.

Yeah, correct. So pricing wise, they were. They ended up being just a little bit more. But, you know, financing options were great. So.

Cool. And they're. They're all local. Like the John Deere.

Yeah. There's a shop on, like both sides of town. Cool. They'll deliver us parts. We haven't really just little problems, I guess. And the 48s mow a little bit better than the smaller ones, but they've. They've been working good.

Yeah, that for the 48, that was my first stand on ever before that was all pushed, and I went to 48 John Deere stand on. It lasted up until, like, two years ago. I think they had it. So that's cool. This is the cool thing.

Let's go.

We got the Jeep one. Let's go.

Conveniently parked inside today, huh?

Yeah. Is that your personal car?

Yeah.

That's awesome.

Yeah. We kind of got to the spot where I was shuffling through vehicles, and it just. I was always in the way, so I thought, let's just get this wrapped. It looks nice.

Super sick. Who wrapped it for you? Night? Local guy.

We actually have a guy that's. That's about an hour and a half from here that does primary, like, race car wraps.

Oh, really?

So he was. He'll do the trucks for, like, 1700 bucks.

The whole thing.

Yeah. And they're. You can pick them apart a little bit, but it's a really good deal. And it's like a different type of vinyl that they use on race cars. And then this was, like, a little bit nicer.

Yeah. Because even your pictures, like, wait a second. Like, this is, like, a really good wrap.

Yeah, they did pretty good. I mean, that's sick. And it stands out. Like, it's. Yeah, it's kind of flashy.

Yeah.

Maybe a little too flashy sometimes.

You estimates in it sometimes.

Yeah, we do. I do fertilize with it. I use it more than you think. Like, we have a little utility trailer. If we run over, I mow yards and do all that kind of stuff with it.

Okay, cool. That's awesome, man.

It's out there getting done.

And so right now, like, has it been six months now that you've been starting?

Since, like, I think our first invoice was the end of February.

Okay. So, yeah. Okay. Six or seven months. So kind of give me, like, maybe just for Augusta Nation watching, like, the month by month in terms of revenue, and then kind of even, like, what you're doing for marketing, because I know that's been, like, the big focus, like.

Yeah.

Really focusing on getting new customers.

So we started out, like, really hard, focused on door hangers. And then we had, like, I've always been running, like, really lean on staff, so we kind of ran out of time to go to door hangers. So then started working with open sale. Okay. Which was one that Max is using, actually Canadian place. And I've just kind of let them handle it. They feed me data on what lead cost is.

Facebook and Google.

Facebook and Google.

Got it.

And then the other thing That I did was. Got Google guaranteed or I don't know, LSA.

Yep.

We were like at 30,000 in April. Like, that was our first big month because we actually started mowing and we were at about four grand in spending. And then it's just been kind of trailing between 10 and 12% is what we've been spending. Our biggest month just due to a big project, I think was in July. And it was like 71. Somewhere around that way with both locations. Right, right.

Yep.

And then we ghosted locations in August. Okay. And that was our first full month together. We were like right at 58, 59,000. And I think this month, especially with aerations, they've been really working out. We might. Might be that like 75, 80 again.

Got it. And so is your plan to take, like. I know you have two locations now. Are you going to break one off once that one location is it say 60 to 80 or what are you thinking? Or more or less just keep running one massive.

I think we're just going to keep running one massive one until I feel like it's going to. Something's going to break and then we might look to branch some stuff off. We're about 40 minutes from our farthest place right now.

Got it.

And we do have a lot of business over there. We have one full day of mowing. So that one's kind of a killer for P4P just because of drive time. Right. But otherwise, I mean, everything is 20 minutes to where the other location is at. I mean, it's just so tight.

Yeah.

And then space is really hard to find.

Right. So it might be the only actual constraint.

Correct.

Got it. Okay.

And then I think, like, you know, just.

Dreaming a little bit, is that we might go to maybe like a team lead and a storage unit in.

That area and still have the one hub.

Correct. Cool. Because I just, like, especially since I want to be involved in it, I've got a little bit more capacity to manage and I just think that that's the best way to do it.

Even if you had like a spot like this. A couple of those.

Yeah.

Just for the sake of finding something. And then one more larger hub for training people. All the rest.

Correct. Yeah. So it's probably more leaning towards, like, GM plus.

Yeah. No, it's awesome. So this year, are you. Did you ramp your spending like the three to four grand a month or. It basically just stayed the same the whole time.

I just had them manage my cost per lead and. And it just kind of aligns. So it stays in that 12%, you know, because as our revenue went up, there was more leads available. So, you know, so we, as long as we stayed under, like I think $36 on Google and we, a couple of times we bumped up against like 60 bucks. That was the maximum we went. And that, that part of it stayed pretty same. So like last month, I think total, that was with the lsa, which is separate from the agency, the agency fee and what we were spending with them. I think we were at like $7200. So.

Okay, so it has kind of scaled with the revenue.

It has, yes.

Got it.

Okay. Yeah. So it's, it's moved along that way and I, I mean if I can continue to keep that cost down, it seems like it's working. Like we're at. I just looked at it for. Because we have some bi weekly. So if I average the next four weeks, we're like 147 reoccurring budget hours, recurring budget hours.

Not customers budget hours.

Correct.

How many customers do you think that is right now?

It's like 234, something like that.

Wow. So it's pretty high volume.

Yeah. And then plenty of projects too. Like, I, I started increasing my price because that's like, I like to explain where my challenges were at. I didn't expect them to be. I thought the sales thing was going to be hard. I thought finding the leads was going to be hard. Where the constraint is probably employees and finding the right team that works together. And we've had some turnover here and part of it was my delay and like I was trying to give everybody a chance. I wanted this to be.

Like an option for them to grow into probably to the point where I was hurting morale and dragging the team down. So we made quite a few changes in the last couple weeks. We've lost some people, lost some people we didn't want to lose. So started raising prices on projects and we've got a few that have been declined based on that. But we're still, I think we're at like 250 hours this week with projects like 220 next week and easily be in that 200 the week after.

So probably about 60. Somewhere around 60% is recurring.

Yeah. Like that's way better than what we started at. Like we were opposite.

Wow. And so of the, of the leads that are paid, the ones that are coming in say 40 to 60 bucks.

What's that close ratio been like as a, as a total? We are still running like in the 60s.

Okay. Oh.

But the mo ones are like, it's, it's so hard to filter that out. But it seems like, like we very seldom get denied on those. But I think it's partly because of our pricing.

You build up the density, that's good.

But I think it's, you know, like, I don't know if I'm doing it completely right because, you know, profitability has been tough right now. But you know, we get to a point where we could get close to, you know, maybe in that 300 hours by the end of May next year and then raise our prices. That's like just an automatic huge win for us, you know, even if we just go up, you know, to 80 bucks an hour.

Yeah, I'm a little interested with two things. So one, in the past few weeks you've said you made some changes on like the hiring, the culture side. It's interesting because when you're growing this fast, like you have in the past six months, basically the business has changed every two months.

It has.

And so like when I, when I first got my, went from like one employee to four, I lost my first guy that I thought was going to build the whole business around because I had to change the way I communicated. I was no longer out there with them. So like, what were those things you learned as you got one employee, two employees, now like seven, eight employees? Like, what does that look like differently?

Yeah, I think to start out with the mistakes that were made is like underestimating the amount of training that's needing. And you know, I was expecting general managers to be doing a lot of budget hours and that didn't afford for training. So the first initial people I hired, only one of them had experience and the rest of them did. And I thought, oh, this, you know, this long care, I picked it up relatively easily. We should be able to do that. And maybe we could, but we just aren't afforded the amount of time it takes to train.

And when you're growing that fast, you can't even train one before you need to get to the next one.

Correct.

And if you have any churn in those two to three first weeks, they're behind now. Yeah, got it.

And then I was like, I'm like a couple of different things that I really held tight to is we, we need to be there when we say we're going to be there, like above all, and then the quality side of it. So we really struggled not with showing up, but quality wise, especially as we were growing all the new guys, all the new guys. So that. And you Know when I was, like, trying to run it as two locations, I had two GMs that were in place. Okay.

And coming from the same.

Same location. And it just. It wasn't a good mix. You know, maybe wrong person, wrong seat. But I didn't give enough training to somebody that's brand new. So worked through that and found a, you know, a guy that had managed before, that had been in the industry and have been really looking for people now that have more experience. We just aren't afforded, like, as we grow. Yeah. Maybe, you know, we can take people that have good attitudes, that are young, that are hungry and train them, but it's just not fair to them right now. Right. And that's probably been the biggest mistake.

Got it. So I'm assuming you're kind of acting as GM and then you're kind of finding, like, as you grow. It's more like I'm going to find an operations manager come for sales.

Yeah. Some of the office kind of, like, maybe ahead of the game, but trying to pick those individuals out now. So Mike, that I have served as gm, is really strong in operations and restructured his bonus structure and everything, like, based on operational goals, efficiency, yellow slips, things like that. And, you know, just trying to build that, like, that's what it's going to be.

Right.

And then just kind of looking for individuals that match the other, you know, future growth for sales and outside of it, too.

That's cool. As you go into winter, do you think you'll still keep the ads on or what's sort of your plan for the off season?

Good question.

Because now it's probably still around that 40 to 60 per lead.

Yeah.

But when that drops, do you have a plan for that?

Yeah, I think, like, a couple of different things is I'm still gonna try to keep it seasonal, and I don't think people know what winter services are, so advertising for that might be tough.

There is some snow around here, right?

There is, yeah. We were like, 20 inches. 21. Okay.

Okay.

So. And about six events. So it'll work into that. So my thought is switch it. As the leaves start to fall, we're switching to fall.

Advertising for cleanups and then roll into Christmas lights and then probably slow down until we have an event coming. Like, you know, knowing that snow and stuff is coming.

You are gonna do snow?

Yes.

Okay. Okay.

Yeah.

Do you get much snow in December usually, or.

No, I think, like, at least the last few years. It's generally January, February, maybe. Yeah. Okay. So.

Well, that would work well because Then you could do the lights, get them off and then for sure. Because that's what, like, that's what most people they're like, if I do lights and it snows in early December, I'm toast.

Yeah, for sure. And that'll be the still the challenge. We can get snow, but generally it's. It's still the weather. Right.

So leaves right into Christmas lights then.

Right.

Hopefully in the snow.

I think they're going to lay on top of each other is going to be some of the challenge because like, we like, I didn't mow last year, but Mike told me they mowed till the middle of November last year. And I think Chris had similar deal too. So we might end up, you know, we have a situation where we're, we're mowing, doing leaves and hanging Christmas lights. And that's going to be, you know, maybe where it gets a little more difficult.

Right. That's cool. Cool. Well, hey, this is an awesome shop.

Yeah. So it's always as clean and never, never.

It always looks like this never gets dirty.

Exactly.

Actually, all this stay here sitting just like this.

Yeah. Yesterday, of course, it rained, so everything got. Got swapped up.

That's great.

But a little bitty area for, you know, like maintenance stuff in here. Right here. And then. Okay, this is bathroom. Bathroom and shop and then a pretty nice office, really. Just kind of nice to have some organization and stuff like that.

Yeah, no, it's super cool. It's awesome.

Nice area for like doing some type of training.

Yeah. What was kind of the training that you changed since the beginning to now? Like, obviously grew really quick. That's what causes all the stress.

Yeah.

So if you had like one or two people for three months, you get them really solid, then you add it to like, for sure going from zero to five, six, like, that's tough.

Yeah. So honestly, probably, like really leaning on Mike or Odom, which is my general manager, and like really focusing more on finding people with experience. But right now is just kind of waiting until they're ready to go with somebody else. Like, they're gonna stay with Mike, they're gonna be there. And I don't think we're doing the best in that area yet. Yeah, like, that part of it I think is still lacking and we gotta find a little bit better way and there's lots of systems that I'm probably not taking the time to follow when in regards to that. But it's, it's still working pretty good. And we're kind of at the end of season, so.

I think I need to really focus on that going into next year, knowing that we need to grow and continue to add more people. And how are we going to manage that part of it? Yeah.

How was it when you were like, hey, we did two locations too soon. I need to bring these GMs back to basically being in the field. Did that go well? How did you handle that with the GMs? Because sometimes that's just more of an ego thing.

Yeah. So it worked pretty good with Mike because that's the way it started out. And Brian, the other gm, he was already working in the field quite a bit, so that part of it wasn't hard. But I kept him on as GM.

Too long and we. We ended up demoting him last month and he quit yesterday, so. Which is understandable. I mean that. And I put a lot of that on my shoulders too, because I, I didn't.

I didn't take enough time to do the training. Like, it just, it takes so much time and you got so many balls on the air. That's not. That's an excuse, I guess, that I'm using. But it's a reality of, you know.

What it was because you're adding probably at least 10 new recurring a week net. Probably 12 to 15 total.

Yeah, it's. It's a lot of new. That's stressful for the guys.

It's also all the yellow subs happen.

Yeah. And it's, you know, like ideally Mike would go do all the new ones so we could kind of set the standard standard, but it just impossible. And now they're in the middle of their route and they have an overgrown mow and it's three hours exactly. It just makes it super hard to schedule and stuff. But. And that's, that's even getting harder now because we have so many modes. Like 90 events on a day like Wednesday has gotten bloated just because we're trying to put all of them into one location. You know, so we're keeping some kind of density. You know, those are the areas where like a copilot, I think could grow a little bit. You know, that would be very helpful like some AI or something to help us know that this is where these need to be clustered.

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Okay, good.

We're working on it.

So yeah, I think that that's. That.

Just. Just to, like, recap that whole growth thing. Yeah, it's. It's still always the same things. Like, the stuff that I thought was going to be hard wasn't necessarily hard. I knew the hours were going to be here. I knew that I was going to have to do the sales and stuff. And I. I thought that maybe I wouldn't be as successful at that because I haven't done it before. Really? That part of it was okay. Managing the cost and stuff is okay. It's just been trying to create the right team. Right.

Yeah. That's cool. So your expectation coming in was like, hey, how do I get the leads? How do I get the sales? And then you got that. And now that's the constraints, like, oh, I've got to figure out the labor for sure. Got it.

Yeah.

How have you adjusted, like, on that front? Like, what was your approach at the beginning versus now?

Probably a little bit more quick to act, like, just recently, like.

You know, like. And that was a big mistake. Like, I had some individuals that I just kind of let hang around, you know, hoping that they're going to get it figured out and, you know, hoping without actually doing anything that honestly helped them grow either. It's just, hey, when you do better and then they didn't do better and there was no consequences. There was nothing there. Yeah. So I think being a little bit more quick to jump on top of that, trying to make for sure that we always keep that funnel full of new people. I think I'm just going to have to live with reality that there's going to be turnover and that we're going to have to sort through and try to find the right ones. Because the weird thing about it is, you know, you put out. I sponsored a bunch of ads last month because had my brother working for me and he's a school teacher. He went back to school. We had another young guy that was going to college, so they're leaving. I wasn't prepared for that. They left and had a gap. So I dumped a whole bunch of money on. Indeed. Like, I think we spent 2,500 bucks, which is a lot, I think. And we got lots of applicants, but very few had experience. And the ones that experience, they wouldn't do. The higher. I was using higher flux at that time, they wouldn't fill that out.

You know, so. So just. The candidate pool is small, right? Like, a lot smaller than I thought.

Yeah.

Like, there's people mowing everywhere. You can drive through any neighborhood today and you'll find people mowing there's just, there's not as many candidates and you know, finding a way to be more prominent in the industry and attract more people that, you know, can make good money.

Our top guy, I think for like the last month and a half, he's right in that 26 to $27 an hour with P4P, which I think is industry wide a pretty good thing. And all he's really doing that on is mowing. He's not necessarily tasked with managing projects or doing any of that kind of stuff. So we can pay those. But also I have guys that are lower than that, like much lower that having a hard time making pay for performance.

Yeah.

And that's finally coming around. So like it initially that was a killer. Like we went through.

May, June and prime most of July and I think our average efficiency was like 64%.

Which that's not without trying but you know, just weren't figuring out those things.

Yeah.

And then that, then, then you don't have the leverage on quality.

You know, you, you can't get a lot of the. They're not motivated by money. Then that program doesn't necessarily work there. Right.

Yep, yep. So like basically within 12 months, if you fast forward like February, March, next year, like early next spring, you've basically gone to zero to a million in one year in terms of run rate, like the 80, 80,000. So what part of that is, do you think is like the next constraint? Like so far it's been okay, like we got the leads and they're coming in pretty solid. It's been labor going from say like 1 to 3. Where do you see that next kind of constraint for you?

The, the next one, it might be capital. Like I think there's going to be a top, a tight spot like when we. And some of it, like if I had to completely redo it over again, I probably wouldn't have purchased. Like I think I have, you know, the average price was about 20 grand, but I have, you know, almost $90,000 worth of pickups out there. Like had I had, I had it to do over again, I might have saved that cash and, and tried to get loans on those kind of things too.

Oh, you put those in the cash, correct?

Yeah, because I purchased all of them to start out with. I purchased a couple of trailers. You know, we did a lot of that. Like maybe I would have conserved cash a little bit more even.

Yep.

But at some point, you know, you know, to get to the 300, we have to add two more trucks, ramp racks, all the equipment, a couple more mowers and then like I think the fertilizer is a real thing for us. Now that we've got that many customers. We've already got some good interest overseeding and that kind of stuff's been really good. You know, to build that out. You know what's going to be all of the costs and stuff there.

Like even if you raise prices next spring, that'll help with like the P for P side too. Correct a lot then even just having your brand this year, all the people out there doing the mowing, like we found in a lot of occasions when we look at the number of applications on their website, the first year almost we hardly any native. So unless they run ads to it, they don't really anything. It's the second year once like the guys out there mowing now see it and then they come back next spring. Okay, who am I gonna work for now? You have a shot of just getting the people have already done the work for sure because they're watching. They know all the competitors around. Right?

Yeah. And I think that, that I'm hopeful that that comes like, and if that, if that does come like I, I don't know what will slow us down then. Like I think, you know, when we did that seven figure club, you know, I put like a three year goal of like 2.8 with some with profitability. But I think it's bigger than that. Like I think this market supports way more than that. And if we can find the right people.

And at that point, you know, maybe it's a small loan to get through some, some tight areas, things like that, but there should be nothing that prevents this being a pretty big deal.

Yeah. One thing I want to ask you, I'm interested in for you in Augusta is like we only have about 20% of them now that start with no industry experience and you had very little. And so I don't know if I actually know this answer fully. And I was like, why was it lawn care? Because when you, when you come in more of an investor perspective, you're looking for ROI and like what's my return on capital for the course of 3 to 5, 10 years? Like why lawn care? And then what was some of the things that you're like, hey, this is something I want to do.

Yeah, I think service industry I was already in. So I was definitely looking for that something that stayed, stayed with that additionally was also looking for.

Something that's more recession proof, which I think this is. And finally like what it ultimately came down to is scalability. Like I was looking at existing businesses, I was looking at other franchises that, that kind of stuff. And you know, you guys or Augusta fit the mix for the service industry. I personally like working with my hands. I've always been that kind of person. So that that part of it fits in me. Kind of matches my skill set, that kind of stuff. And finally like that the potential was huge, especially with the executive model. Like you know, even if you just completely textbook up to 800, you know, you're at what, four point something.

And that, that is huge. Where a lot of the other franchises even didn't offer that. You know, if you buy an existing automotive repair shop, you know, they're limited by their base spaces. I mean where this is really could be rather large. And I didn't want to promote an investment standpoint. I could have just kept on the stock market and made 15. I want something big. Like this needs to be like life changing. Right?

Yeah. And so your plan, I would assume three years, 2.8. Once you hit that, are you then going to start thinking like what's your plan is like try to replace yourself at the GM inside that GM plus model or is it like, hey, let's just get there and then see how that's the leads kind of fall.

That's what I think. I think like to, to get any further ahead than that because I like I've changed so much from when I started. Like it was pretty clear to me that there was a huge amount of inefficiencies with having the two GMs like we had as early as we had. Right. Like that was honestly a mistake.

Both being growth mode.

Correct.

Tough. So tough.

Yeah. And it just. And like maybe if you find the right mix of people, having them in the same spot might be competitive. It might be good.

Yeah, I've never done that where they all came from one spot.

I think that like in, in general people want to point at us and them.

Oh, like their crew.

Yeah. So I think like some of the stuff didn't mesh well. Like meetings in the morning and these guys are showing up a little bit later because this GM isn't quite as structured on time. You know, things like this where I guess I could have stepped in and said that, but I can easily be over, over manage it and you know, I got to work on trying to pull myself back in some of those situations like that. But personally like having them start from the same location, having two separate crews, I don't know that that would ever be a Super healthy situation. Unless you had like the perfect mix of people.

Yeah. Like, I've been watching yours and a couple others that are doing so many, like growing so fast in one year. And I think like it's the hub and spoke. It's like for sure, start with GM plus model. And then if an area gets so dense and you have an excellent gene that like lives there and you find a spot that you can go get easy storage, then you break it off.

Y.

But until then, like the control of.

Yeah.

You being able to be here is just.

And I like, I obviously have more motivation to show up early to like be here on the weekends to do the sales at night. Like I said, it's just easier for me to do it as I'm growing my own thing. Like, you know, and to not take advantage of that would be silly.

Yeah.

But some of the things that I'm seeing is there are certain types of work that I think are still really valuable, like reoccurring bed maintenances, the fertilizer and some of that stuff. It might even be a situation where there's a manager for that.

Yeah.

And then, you know, because especially since it could cover the whole area, it's much more detailed. Correct.

Even with chemicals. Right. Like, yeah. You might just have one truck do the whole thing. For sure. That truck to make 300 grand a year.

Yeah.

Right. Yeah. That's cool.

Yeah. And I think there's a huge value in having like every company that's in Omaha that does fert. They. They unless they're a small dealer, they don't do lawn care. And you know, being on the person's lawn every week, plus providing that like as long as we can train and support keeping your eyes open and identify and grub damage and things that are changing. I think we have all optimal opportunity to upsell, to provide a good product, to be way different. Because the, you know, it's really easy to go around and ask about a trugreen or some of these other companies and their experience is really poor. Like, trying to create a better experience is hard too. Like, it's just. It's mother nature. It's lawns. I mean, things change during a week.

Yeah.

Where we have that opportunity if we're there. So I think, you know, still keeping it pretty simple, but maybe having two different areas, you know, might be a good idea. How.

Last question. Sorry. I know we're pressure time guys. Like, how have you communicated to your team as you're growing so quickly? Learning a lot from a leadership perspective, their Role changes quickly, too, because of the growth.

Yeah.

How are you communicating to them about the future?

Are you.

Are you saying, hey, we want to do this down the road, or is it okay? I just need them to be technicians right now, and we've got to just scale that. And I can't get ahead of myself.

I think that I try to talk about the future. Like, we do, like, review the P. L, which it's ugly right now, and talk about, you know, where they can affect that. But to be honest with you, unless you're the right kind of person, like, talking about next year is a big place to. To. To think about.

Yeah.

So to be honest with you, it's probably more about getting him through the week than it is talking about the other stuff. Yeah. And I may be completely wrong about that. I. I like to talk about it personally and, you know, give everybody opportunities to grow, but that's not also for everybody.

Yeah. Was that kind of like a bit of a reality checker, like Harvey at first, just to go from, like, oh, okay, I want these guys, but they're just not. And I need to just get the work done.

For sure.

Yeah.

Yeah. Because I like my. My manager experience, like, in the last few years has been like, managing managers, which is a completely different thing than where we're at now. It's like, they're just. You got to meet them where they're at, and that's usually not three years down the road.

Yeah.

But there are, like, I think, you know, Mike and Chris are over here. I think they can buy into that. And you can do both things. Right. Right. Just kind of be more here and now more about making their paycheck where they like it to be and keeping the quality where it is and then still have those conversations about the big picture.

That's super cool, man. I'm super proud of you. I really am. Like, you're new to the industry. You came in and we were all like, hey, he's just, like, from a finance. We know it's me tight. But, like, the fact that you grew that quickly is going to help so much next spring for sure. If you go in with 300 recurring and like, okay, now we need to, like, get an extra ten grand a month in cash. You can pull the leverage.

Yeah.

And so that. That's my biggest concern when we were talking, like, even before you joined is like, okay, he just does a bunch of projects. He's not gonna have anything to pull when that capital runs out for sure. And we got a problem. But the Fact that you've just done so well, the recurring.

And I found out, like, really quickly, like, I'm not comfortable chasing projects. Like, I would hate to be in that situation where, you know, that's 70% of your business and you are worried about where your schedule is three weeks from now. And even if you pack the schedule, like, then people could just fall off. And that's not a game that I feel terribly comfortable in. And I don't feel like I have very much control there. Where. If we stay where we're at, we have that lever to pull, and then we can still use projects to help support other things. We can raise that price or lower that price to just meet and fill demand. I think that that's still a nice tool to have too.

If someone else is watching, like, hey, I also have a little bit of capital I'm willing to lose for a year or two. And I just want to like, really go. What would be like, your two things to that person specifically? Like, hey, they have 2, 3, $400,000, and they're like, I want. I don't need money this year. I need to grow this as fast as possible. In addition, like, the marketing stuff.

Yeah.

Just getting the lead, like, what other Some things have you learned?

So the. Like, I don't know if everybody's going to be as lucky. Like, I felt like I was a little bit lucky with the season and also the ease of getting the leads. But you have to be super aggressive. Like, the. All the things that you say, like, time to address the leads. And I think now, like, we're starting to build organically. Like, we. I was super aggressive on calling people back if there's a problem or right on top of things. I think if you're willing to put those efforts in and really just work on building the pile of people, you know, that's gonna be the key. Like, if just. Just knowing that we. I don't think we would have been able to grow unless I was involved with it. Like, I. I really think. Not me personally, but the business owner has to be there pushing the ball ahead because the drivers are not the same. And then if I had it to do over again, probably having even a stronger focus on the operation side from the start.

And not being quite where we're at right now with staffing and the struggles that we have now, like, I think if I would have built better there.

You personally or like the systems, the training and things.

The systems for training. And then really, really took my time on hiring like that. Like having that strong GM to start out with. Which could be really tough though. Like you're, you're brand new. I did. All I had was a building with a couple of pieces of equipment in here, you know, and a guy that's never mowed yards before. So, you know, trying. Exactly.

But that's where honestly, like, I think Augusta Nation can help out too. Because you, I mean, we got some momentum now, got some good stories, so I think that some people can attach to that. And you know, if I could have really focused on trying to find that right person, like maybe putting. You do it anyway, but putting all your eggs in one basket to start there and making sure your systems are in place for training, making for sure that your standards are right about who you're hiring. And then I think we might have been in a little bit different spot here and we could even probably grown more towards the end for that part.

That's, that's a very narrow area like that. How can we support more like, most owners don't have to focus so much on sales like you did. Like you just went all in. That's why it's grown so much. They, they usually are cash constrained a little bit more and they're like, okay, I got to spend three weeks training, then I'll come back to sale, like a little bit back and forth and grow slower for sure. For someone goes from zero to a million a year, obviously it was not the sales, it has been operations. But like, how can I set you up for success more for someone that wants to grow that quickly from like a franchisor perspective? Because one of the things I actually thought about for this like a while back and it became, and you understand is I was thinking like here we put a place in the middle of the country where we actually send technicians to and we train them. The challenging part is now you have to invest in them going there for sure and then they might still turn a week later. And so that becomes very, very expensive and cost prohibitive. But what else could we do to make sure that we take some of the burden of training off of you?

I think that like the, the big thing and you're already taking actions on it is the GM training. But like a farm program for GMs would be awesome because that's really where it starts. Like we.

You know, Brian, that started out as a GM was really hard worker and that fit perfectly for getting the work done. But we needed to also be building the base. So having the technicians trained.

May help, but I think having that really strong operational person would be huge. And then if they were already trained on the training systems and what it takes to make for sure that we keep quality there and we train locally, I think it would be good. And then the other thing that I would say is like using the brand to get people through the door, like applicants, that we can continue to show that making money is possible here and the growth opportunity is there if they want it and try to front load that.

Yeah. Okay. All right. Good to know. Good stuff.