How I Started a 7-Figure Lawn Care Business - Ep.67

Hey, everyone, it's Mike with Landscape businesscourse.com Whether you're listening to the podcast, watching us on YouTube or Facebook, I want to say a big thank you for spending your time with me today. Today I'm going to do something I haven't done before on the podcast or with landscape business course, and that is really share my story. A lot of the course members, a lot of the podcast listeners, a lot of times ask me about how I started my company and what I did along the way and, and really how did I become a landscaper and really choose that path. So I want to tell you my story. It's not to brag, it's not to tell you about the great things that I did or anything like that. I really feel like I'm just starting. But I do hope at some point in my story, there's someone that is out there, maybe a young guy or someone that just coming out of college or something like that, that can identify with me at some stage of my story and can hopefully inspire you to do something similar or even surpass what I did. So I'm going to tell you my story. And so basically what happened is I was about 11 years old when I really realized that if I wanted to go to college, that I was going to have to pay my way through. And I really looked at college kind of like my way out. I kind of looked at it as my way out of my family's financial past and generational what they had been going through. And so I wanted to go to college, I want to go to a doctor, actually, and I want to become a heart surgeon more specifically. And so I was about 11 years old, figured that out, and I would kind of already been ahead in my schooling. So I had skipped grade seven, I did grade nine and ten in one year. And then while I was in grade 11 and 12, I did my first two years of college. And so basically when I was.

I was basically able to go to college when I was 13 years old. And. And by the time I was, I just, just finished, I just turned 18, I believe when I officially got my bachelor's degree, it was really when I was 17, but when I was 18, I officially got my degree. And so, yeah, like, I started college when I was young and I wanted to become a heart surgeon and I wanted to go into medicine and things. So how that all changed a lot of times is where people ask me, why did I go switch from medicine over to lawn care? So all throughout college and university, my brother and I Had been mowing lawns around our neighborhood to pay our way through college. So when I was like 11, like I said, and he was like 13, 14, we sent out a whole bunch of flyers. I think it was like 100 flyers around our little neighborhood that we were in our little gated community area. And we said we basically offer our lawn care services. And it was just called Andy's Lawn Care. That's my last name, Andy's. And so Andy's Lawn Care. And we were in business. And I still remember being at the post office with. We were sending out all these flyers and basically what we did, we asked one of our realtor friends for a list of all the addresses in our neighborhood. So he gave us that he was able to get that information for us. And then we got.

Basically a whole bunch of these flyers, printed them off. I designed them on Microsoft Publisher, which now I don't even think it exists. I think it's just Microsoft Word now, but Microsoft Publisher. I made it up on my little. I think it was 98 software. I forget what it was, but made up on my little laptop. Sent these flyers out. And.

I still remember being at the post office praying over these envelopes and these flyers and hoping that something would come of it. So we started that year and that first year, I still remember we made $3,000 gross revenue. And that for 11 and 13 year old, you might as well be the richest person in the world. And so we're. We thought we were set and that's what paid our way through college. And so we work on the evenings and on the weekends around our neighborhood. And then my brother, when he turned 15, he was able to drive. And so we actually got. Cause before that we were just pushing our lawnmower around our neighborhood with a wheelbarrow and a push mower. And then we got riding lawnmower too. But when he turned 15, then we were able to drive around. So that kind of increased our market size. And so we got. We had an old. I think it was a 98 or 99 Dodge Caravan, big green square box thing. And it was old and the floors were musty. There was like mushrooms growing up in it. We ended up tearing those out the back, the back. We would actually. We took out the back seat and then the trunk would open up and we would stick this piece of wood in there to prop it open because the springs were all broken. And then we'd put two of our push mowers in the back of the Grand Caravan. And then we would have a Little trailer, little utility trailer that we'd throw all the clippings in and have our riding lawnmower and our weed eaters. So we were set. We had the two push mowers in the back. And there's a lot of crazy stories. Like that green Grand Caravan had like this massive dent on the side from when way back before that, my mom had smashed up against the side up at a gas station on one of those concrete blocks right as she was pulling in. And so that's how we started. And so we did that through college. And so I come out of university and right in my last quarter. So as I was going from 17 to 18 years old, my last quarter of college, I decided to take a six week trip to Kenya and visit some clinics and orphanages there and really work as a medical student and get experience and then just obviously just enjoy the trip. It was my last quarter of school and so I went to Western Washington University. Like I said, my last quarter, I went over to Kenya and was doing this project to kind of. It was like my capstone project for my degree and I'd been studying pre med, so I was ready to go to medical school. I had applied to different universities and was ready to go. And then I went there and it was a fantastic experience. I was able to do all sorts of procedures and surgeries and see incredible amounts of different diseases and sicknesses and help us so a massive variety of people and ailments. And so it was an amazing experience in Kenya. So I was in Nairobi, but then Nairobi is basically a city. But really I went out to the little villages like Kalangbari and Tigoni. So those were some of like the hospital I went to and the different orphanages in those little towns and cities and villages, really. And so I saw really what it was like. I got robbed a couple times by a couple gangs there. And it was a great experience all in all those six weeks. And I went a year later to Malawi, to Africa as well, the year after that. But that six weeks there was really eye opening for me, like over there I was able to do so many a variety of different medical things. And when I came back, I had already shadowed doctors over here and things. But I began to do it more and more as I finished my degree. And in that meantime I was just selling insurance, I was selling credit card processing, doing a bunch of sales sort of things just to kind of make my money, make a little bit of money as well as just still doing the lawns with my brother.

But in that period of time there, I was shadowing doctors and things, and I realized that I didn't want to be in the same specialty the rest of my life. Like, if you were going to become a heart surgeon, you spend 10 years more going to college after your bachelor's degree and get a fellowship and a residency and all of that, and then you really just stay in that, that one specialty for the rest of your life. It wasn't like when I was over in Kenya, where we could do everything from a birth to a surgery and then do the burn patients. And.

I wasn't going to able to have that flavor and that variety that I enjoyed over there. And then more importantly, I didn't want to be a part of the bureaucracy of the medical system in the U.S. like, when people would walk in, doctors were interested more about, like, their insurance and how it was going to get paid for than just helping the patient. And it was just like a shift from being in Africa where people would just come in and we did everything we possibly could to help them, regardless of red tape, bureaucracy, insurance money. It was just like, about the patient. And so it really tore me. But eventually I realized that, you know what? I can't be in one one specialty for the rest of my life. It just killed me. I'm a little bit too scattered, I guess you could say. But really, it's the entrepreneurial kind of thing inside me. I wanted new and tried new things and tasting different things. And so I said, okay, I'm not going to go to medical school. I'm going to actually go to the evening MBA program at Western Washington University, and I'm going to start a new landscaping company and I am going to ramp it up. I'm going to make it big. So that's when I started Augusta Lawn Care Services. This is about four years ago now. And so I'm 22 now. Back then I was 18. And so I started Augusta Lawn Care Services and that's how it all started. I decided, you know what? I'm gonna become a landscaper. At that same time, I started Business Bootcamp Podcast. And so I really started just documenting my process of starting the company, documenting what I was learning in my MBA program, and it kind of all took off. And now Business Bootcamp Podcast has sponsors, and it's a great ride. I love that. I love the interaction with other small business owners. I get a really comprehensive view of a whole bunch of different industries as far as when people ask their questions on how to start, grow, or save their business. So it Gave me a lot of different perspectives and ideas from different industries about how to market, how to deal with people, and really exposed me to a lot of things I would have otherwise not seen when it came to business. So in addition to like my MBA, which was, you know, 6pm to 10pm during the evenings, you know, I'd wake up early in the morning, work all day in my business, then go to school, you know, from six to ten in lectures, four hours lectures, and then do homework. Like, I was just like literally ingrained in business for those few years. And so I ended up actually stopping my MBA probably about 85% of the way through because that was right as our spring was coming in. So. So it was a two year program. I finished the first year, was mostly through the second year. But then the spring of the second year came and I just couldn't get the class on time. I was growing the company, I was making good money. And then I looked at the average income that they were showing on the website of graduates from the program and I was like, you know, I'm over that. There's really no point in me trying to finish this mba. So yes, I did not finish. Maybe one day I'll regret it, but, but right now it does not serve me a whole lot to finish my capstone for my mba. But I did basically finish, like got the majority of the coursework done. And so now I am the owner and CEO of Augusta Lawn Care Services. This year we're looking to expand and franchise the company. This year we've opened up a second location to prove that the business model works not only in our small market that we currently are in as well, but now it also works in a larger market. So what I'm trying to do is take all the things I've learned from business. Bootcamp podcast from landscapebusinesscourse.com and all the members that are there. I'm able to learn so much from them. As much as I try to help them give as much valuable content as I can, they give me just as much because I'm able to test things. Like, so when we talk about things and I test them in my business now, all the course members go try it and they see what works, see what doesn't work. I'm able to get a lot of different feedback and input from around the country as far as what works with what, where it works in the country, what type of markets and things. So it's been very beneficial to me and from the audience that we've Created with Landscape BusinessCourse.com and Business Bootcamp podcast is why we want to franchise the company. So people have always asked me about franchising my landscaping company and creating a franchise around what I love to do and what I've learned over the past few years. And so I knew that was the direction that I wanted to take my company. And so a year and a half, almost two years ago, I really started developing the business model, really putting it together. How does it actually work? How do I create systems and procedures to actually create a process around this business model? And so a year and a half ago, I created landscapebusinesscourse.com and that's a course that people can buy. Right now, it's 250 bucks. They can basically get from how I started my landscaping business to the first three years. I walk people through from day one, like what you should buy day one, like a push mower, a weedy what you buy day one all the way through the year, number three, when you should be hitting $100,000 in revenue each month. So that was a process. And the reason I created landscapebusinesscourse.com is I still remember when I was 18 years old, when I finished that, I knew I was gonna finish not going to medical school. I canceled my applications. And when I knew that. And I remember going online and looking for a course that would walk me through how to run the business side of a landscaping company. It was easy to find random tips and pieces all over YouTube, easy to find how to obviously mow a lawn and pull weeds and trim trees, but there was no systematic process for me to follow from step one all the way through a successful business. And so I still remember sitting at my computer at a different address and typing in Landscape Business course. And there was nothing there. There was a couple courses that were more about horticultural things and from universities, but there was nothing that would teach landscaping from a business perspective. And walk me through day one, all the way to a successful business. I'm really just scratching my own itch by creating landscapebusinesscourse.com and trying to help other landscapers like you do exactly what I've done. And so that's why I created it, and that's why I actually named it Landscape Business Course, because I still remember putting that into Google. And so the long. The long term as we go forward in 2018 and beyond is we're going to franchise our company. We're going to do it across the country. And it's been my pleasure to with landscape businesscourse.com. you know, whether it be the Pro plus members that I'm able to consult and we do hot seats and we really look at their business in depth, whether it be just the course members that look at all the different footage, the different course, the video content and see the templates that I give as far as commercial contracts and employee contracts and estimate forms that they can use. And really I've been able to perfect them just because there's so many people using them. And so as we go forward, we're looking to franchise the company and I can't wait for that. I'm really shooting for December 1, 2018 to be when we can officially sell them. And it's going to be great. It's going to be a different way of selling franchises. I want to attack our industry from a different perspective and I really think it's going to be very successful. So I hope that inspired you a little bit. I know it's kind of a broad level view and I kind of give bits and pieces over the past with the podcast, whether it be business bootcamp podcast or whether it be landscape business course. But I wanted to kind of give a full broad view of how I started, why I got into landscaping and why I'm there today. And a lot of people ask me, like, do you think you're going to be in landscaping for the rest of your life? And honestly, I don't think so. I think it's like a 10 year window that I will be doing this for 10 more years. I believe that it's like my first step of really hacking my skills of leadership, running a company, a CEO position, scaling up, franchising. It's going to be a lot of learning for me. But there'll be a point when it's better that someone else run the company and take it to be even bigger. And then I'll be able to take the money that I make from that acquisition and basically go and start something that is more aligned with health and technology. So right now I'm cutting my skills because I believe it's super important as a leader to learn the things of how to hire, how to manage people, how to deal with people, how to have meetings, how to do all those things. So that's what I'm doing now. I'm learning those skills and I think they're gonna be the ones that give me the soft skills, the hard skills, medicine and technology and all of those things. So down the road I'm not. You know, everyone asks me all the time, are you going to Become a doctor. I probably will never become a doctor. I don't want to be stuck in one specialty. But I promise I'll probably one day get into something medically involved with technology and really making accessible health care to third world countries. Like I was in Africa and the orphanages that I met over there. You know, when you go over there and you see all these kids that, you know, have nothing and yet are so happy and you know, their family has turned their back on them. They're, you know, they've been, you know, trying to, many of them have been tried, you know, parents have tried to kill them or they've been abused or whatever, and now they're in orphanages. And to see that, you know, there's one, her name was Margaret. She was basically mother to 72 children. They're living in a three bedroom house. And she fed, clothed and educated all of those children. And they range from 0 to 18 years old. And she just did it all. And to see that and to see how happy these kids were taking care of each other, how the older ones would meant to the smaller ones, to see all of that just completely changed my frame of reference on what it means to be successful, what it means to really enjoy life and to be happy. And so when you see that, you know, a bad day at the office or a landscaping job gone wrong or a customer that's unhappy, it just completely changes your frame of reference. And so I believe it's something everyone should do. Going over to an overseas country like that, volunteering in an orphanage, a clinic, and really getting to see what life is really all about. So with that perspective and then the business skills that I'm trying to acquire and learn and trying to develop, that's what going forward is really my goal and I believe my unique advantage. So thank you again for listening. And whether you're a business bootcamp podcast listener and you've asked questions on how to start, grow or save your business, whether you're a landscape business course podcast listener or you watch on YouTube or Facebook, or whether you're a course member and you've been able to support the channel and been able to, you know, get all of the assets and the resources there, I just appreciate all of you and I hope that story inspired someone to take action. Regardless of where you at in life, I promise you, you can do it too. Put in the hard work and it'll pay off. Thanks so much. I'm Mike Andes, landscapebusinesscourse.com signing off.