How He Runs a $200K Lawn Care Business Out of a U-HAUL

I've always said that growth creates chaos.

This video might get my franchise license revoked.

This is Marcus.

That's not exactly our brand image right there.

Three years ago, as an 18 year old, he joined Augusta Lawn Care, pushing a lawn mower.

I shouldn't have been as arrogant when I was starting. I thought work was pretty much going to come to me.

Now he's starting his own location.

Right now is probably the lowest low I've ever been in my business. We have some pretty tough neighbors.

It's not easy to stay positive when everything around you seems like it's crumbling down. And Marcus is no exception. He's got two trucks, both of which are now in the shop.

Our trucks going down at the same time.

The total repairs are almost $14,000.

Sounds like a lot. That is. Here's our truck for today. U Haul.

Today we're going to be checking with Marcus to see how it's going in his first spring rush and scaling his business to $20,000 in monthly revenue.

That's how it's done. Sometimes you just got to make things work.

Hi, I'm Marcus, and I own Augusta Lawn Care Services of Redmond.

So I started a 3F program franchise. Fe forgiveness. Basically, if you work at an Augusta location for two years full time, you get to start your own franchise for free. They waive the initial cost. All you have to do is buy your own truck, your own equipment. Got my tools and stuff in here. And get started. All right, we got an idea. Meritocracy in action here. So we got the metal blade on the end of this combi system, but it vibrates quite violently when you've been using it for a while. Cole came up with this genius idea. Why don't we use. What is this called? Um, it's like pipe insulated pipe insulation. Yeah, pipe insulation, duct taping it. That'll reduce the vibration. Genius idea. Meritocracy in action here. Best idea wins, even if it's a pool noodle.

The nice thing about Redmond is 48% of the entire city is covered by tree canopy in the hot spring. Days like this, you get a lot more shade. It's tougher, though, in the fact that when we are doing pricing over the phone, which you do with command center, they're unable to see the property. A lot of times that is, it is covered by trees. So there's a downside. But otherwise, the more growth, the better around here. That's what's nice about the Pacific Northwest. Makes it a lot easier to retain work on the Schedule.

Here's my shop space. It'll be nice, be able to park, you know, eight to 10 trucks over a period of time. Four to six trailers, about big roll up door, which nice. It's about what I want to grow this location to over the years. Right now, just myself and one employee, two trucks wanting to grow this year to about 200,000 in revenue. Big shed, big roll up door that you saw in the front. Pretty nice. Put a little office in there and then all the materials basically I'd ever need can go in there. Everything in here is organized. It's a ramp rack, some boxes, shelves, some mowers. Pretty decent space. We could park in here if we need to. As we're working on tools and things. Got some pretty tough neighbors, so I'm going to take care of them right now. The hula ho. They're right there. You see them? Oh, God, they're storming. Okay. I think they know what's about to happen. Really trying to sell this on the owner. That we could dump debris. That'll save a lot in debris fees. We'll negotiate something. If not, there is a dump about 300ft down the street that way. So really good location, right outside of my service territory. So really a two minute drive into where I actually serve clients. Nervous I'm gonna get stung here.

Oh, boy. $1,600 a month sounds like a lot. That is.

Save the bees. Here we go.

Right in front of our front door. Or else I'd keep them here. This is Redmond, Washington. So I'm actually competing with Amazon's in this area. And we were working right near the Microsoft campus. So it's a huge land.

That's how it's done.

Mike Andes, I know you're back in the field. You kind of got to relearn some of these skills, right? Take it from me. Look at these lines, okay? Can learn a thing or two from me. This before, this is after. That's how you do it. My candies. Let's see what you got.

Now, now, now, Marcus, I just want to remind you that I taught you everything you knew because you came and you didn't know how to mow grass. I taught you how to mow grass. So all those stripes, I take just a little bit of credit for each one of those. Thank you very much.

It's my first month where I made more than $10,000 in revenue. I got the second employee now, so this month I project to do about 20,000, maybe a little less than that. The month after that probably about 23,000. Then looking to hire another guy in mid June. Slow start to the year. So January, February. I really didn't do a lot in revenue. I was going to say I'm just going to do mowing, just going to do regular services as we're starting the business. But I threw all that out the window. My scope was too narrow. Not only in terms of territory like service area that I was going to get service, but also the scope of work or what I was going to do. So when I was starting, I thought work was just pretty much going to come to me. You know, I'm gonna have a super narrow scope. I'm gonna stay super dense and then just focus on that. So I did a lot of door hangers and things like that. And I still wasn't getting a lot of work. It was winter time, January, February, still grass. And things aren't really growing much around here. You're more focused on leaf cleanups and stuff. So I just knew that going in that most people have a super wide scope and, you know, they're inefficient and stuff. But to me now, with hindsight's 20 20, I feel like now that's just part of the game. You're just trying to get stuff on the schedule. That's your only priority is close ratio. So I shouldn't have been as arrogant. I should have just got stuff on the schedule to begin with.

All right, 30 minute mow. It's $45. Get it done about 15 minutes or less. Should make good B for P on this one. So I'll do the string trimming. Cole's going to do in the mowing. We'll knock it.

Leave the blower here for when Cole gets done. Probably get done in the next couple minutes. So I'll type up an estimate while we're waiting here. Knock down and scalp.

Blackberries. Then we'll have a separate item here. RMS regular mowing services. So $40 weekly, $60 BI weekly, and then every time the initial MoW will be $1.50 per minute per man. So we basically take as long as we need to to knock everything down. We probably have to mow over that lawn a couple times in the backyard just to get it really down to a nice desired height. And then $40 weekly, $60 BI weekly after that initial visit. So as Cole's wrapping up here, I'll blow off the backyard junk, set this estimate in. So command center is going to get this. They'll send it to the client. Hopefully the next Couple hours or so go from there.

Done deal.

That does it. My second kind of hurdle that I had to go over was both our trucks going down at the same time. This remains our situation. Key you in because there's a lot going on. I have two trucks. They're both down. They're both in the shop getting repaired right now. So this is why I have this u haul. One truck, p1 just the other day sprung a random coolant leak. It overheated quite a bit. So we're fixing the coolant, putting a new radiator in there right now. And then they're gonna test it. It just came at a bad time that our second truck was already getting rep. We had to get that first truck in the shop as well. So they're both sitting in there. We were waiting for it. So we had to take a U Haul, get an enterprise rental for a day. We're $2,500 in right now. I don't have a second truck. So my second truck does not have the paint nor the decals yet. It's actually sitting in our just storage area. And somebody stole the catalytic converter from it and it already needed a new transmission. So add that to the list of things. There you go, right there.

Needs a whole new front system. Right there's what they cut it off. Here's our truck for today. U Haul, two trucks are down. So now we're down to our last resort. Had an enterprise truck the other day. Now this gives us a little bit more space. We had a 12 foot ladder we needed to get in here. So 15 foot u haul.

Gotta do what you gotta do. You gotta make it work. And it was just pretty hectic because we had a lot of things on the schedule for that week. The tipping point is going to be tomorrow. In which they call me and say, hey, this is either going to be a $5,000 new engine that we need to put out here or you know, the radiator hopefully will fix it. This video might get my franchise license revoked.

That's not exactly our brand image right there. You actually pack a lot of debris in there so bad. Just stomp it down. Things are happening. It's springtime. Things go wrong. When they do get a U Haul. I suppose.

Sometimes it's just got to make things work.

All right. Got a broken sprinkler head. It happens. Be able to look at another one.

Same model there. Looks like a rainbow sprinkler. Go get a new head for her. It happens. Very sorry. We'll fix this right Away. We'll have this fixed for her by today before she even knows it was broken.

Home depot does not carry rain bird sprinklers. Now we know for next time.

Try another store.

Financially, that's another hurdle we're running into. Right now. It's pretty low on cash. Between, you know, paying wages and these truck repairs. Between both the trucks, $14,000. All right, our other truck's ready to go. Gonna take back this U haul. Here's our other truck. Not yet painted, no decals yet. This one needs a new catalytic converter, A new transmission. Needs the paint, needs the decals. I already have the green racks on the side, so I'll put those on myself. And then the ramp on the back. We'll just take this tail and put the ramp on the back, which I already have. So I already have the ramp, already have the green racks to pay. Now, on this truck, we're looking at 7,300. So that includes the transmission, front body system for the catalytic converter underneath, among other things, getting repaired on here. About 1800 for the paint, plus 500 for the decals. And then this thing is ready, set up to go. Definitely more of an expense, to say the least, than I thought we were going to be spending on this stuff. But it is what it is. Hurdles are hurdles.

One more note on appreciation. Appreciating what you do have, because it's top of mind right now. Things go wrong. I'm.

About to pay $13,000 in new truck repairs, paint, new decals, and things. Separate equipment. Things go wrong. One truck needs a new engine, Perhaps one truck needs a new transmission. But you realize what you do have in moments like this. So I could scream at the world, say, woe is me. Or I could realize what I do have. My father, he's been a firefighter his whole life. He just retired. Shout out to him. He taught me a very valuable thing in appreciation is that there are so many people that live their lives, are never able to leave the hospital in their entire life. They don't have legs to walk on perhaps. Perhaps they can't take a breath of fresh air without the use of a machine. Perhaps they never really get to live a full life for the American dream. Perhaps they were never born in America. Where there's opportunity everywhere and there's success everywhere and there's comfort everywhere.

We really appreciate what we do have here.

There. I see so many instances now where people are almost too comfortable. They got door dash delivered to them, their groceries. They don't do their own cleaning. Life is great. They got a Tesla. Their entire life is automated, and they still wake up and complain and scream about the world. I would argue that's part because of their diet. They consume a lot of news, a lot of negative news out there. But people don't realize what we do have here. We could roll out of bed. We could get on our own two feet. We could take a breath of fresh air. We could go out and work and grow a business.

Not a lot of people get to do that. So we do need to take that opportunity. Stop complaining. Get off social media. It's toxic, it's cancerous.

Go be out in nature. That's what's so nice about lawn care and landscaping. I actually get paid to work out in the sun and rain and heat that everybody seems to complain about. But.

That'S our subconscious self. We like being out in nature. When your head hits the pillow at the end of the night, you get a huge sense of fulfillment. Not everybody gets that. So appreciate what you do have. Right now is probably the lowest low I've ever been in my business, even though it's only a couple months in. So I have plenty of pain to experience. But in pain and suffering is growth. I'm more than aware of that. I learned that under Mike Lee and Liz. Thank God for them. Thank God for progress and education.

And.

We'Ll get after it tomorrow.

Moment of truth.