how I use the reminders app to run a $10M+ business

Hey, everyone, it's Mike Andes. I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn care. We have 150 plus locations around the world, as well as copilotcrm.com and today I'm talking about something that we've been talking about with owners at Augusta Nation recently. And I've just been thinking about with my mentor as well as just in general. And that is something. One thing that my mentor was talking actually about, he said he was talking to someone else and they were talking about what their next plan of action for the business was. And the person talking to him said, well, that doesn't scale. And this mentor got so mad and was just freaking out. And the reason was, is because he said a lot of times people label something as not able to scale it. And when people think about scaling, it's like, well, if you can't do a hundred times, why do it once at all, right? And my mentor thought, you know what, really what this person instead, instead of saying what the truth was, and they were saying it was not, that would not scale. That action would not scale. The next thing that they wouldn't need to do the business. Oh, well, that doesn't scale. When reality, they were using that as a way to get away from the fact that they're too lazy to take the next action in the business. And a lot of times people will simply shirk away from the thing that is necessary in their business because they're too lazy to take action. And they want to be fancy. And that's really what I want to make this video about. And that's what I've been thinking in terms of. Fancy is not the thing that scales. Many times the things that are the most mundane, the hardest to do, and the things that seemingly don't scale are the things that win. And unfortunately, fancy things is what most people put a value on. And I've noticed that even when I make videos that are super fancy and I actually know they're just tickling everyone's senses, people will like those videos. Why? Because everyone can comment about it, everyone has an opinion, everyone can share an experience about that specific topic. Whereas if you just really make a really simple basic statement, like if you have no estimates on the schedule, you should be knocking on 100 doors every single day. Like, no one wants to do that. And everyone say, oh, knocking on doors doesn't scale. Or are you too lazy? Because if you don't have the estimates on the schedule, you need to go get estimates, and if you don't have the money to go out and spend on ads to get the said estimates. You should be able to go knock on doors and if your excuses that doesn't scale, it's likely you're too lazy and you're trying to get fancy. You're trying to get the next big Facebook ad, the next big YouTube ad and everyone's looking for this hack on getting more leads. When in reality the, the basic, the basicness of finding a customer that has a need and you can fulfill on it is lost. And so sometimes just fancy is the thing that is the fancy is the thing that doesn't scale. And the best plan doesn't win. The best execution wins. And it was something I said on a mastermind with our owners at Augusta Nation recently in passing, but afterwards someone regurgitated to me like that's so true. It's not about having the next fancy plan and putting it a strategy. And everyone wants to have this like grand master plan and take four courses and go to a conference and read a book about their strategy and their, their plan of how they're going to get customers and how they're going to grow a business. When reality it's like, okay, great, I'm glad that you know 1, 2 steps. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Great, where are you starting step one? So in reality having the plan from 1 to 10 is not necessary. What is required is execution against step number one. That's the person who will get further. Well, if I don't have the plan, I can't get started. You don't need steps one through 10. You only need to know the next step. And this is something I've been really thinking about because at augustination we have monthly coaching, we have quarterly roundtable calls, we have every single day I have a mastermind where I talk to the owners and answer questions and we talk about business and marketing and investing in the economy and that's fine. But I do believe there's such thing as being over coached and that is having too many steps ahead of you that you're thinking about. And because you get fancy with the plan, you never actually execute on the next step. And in my opinion, when it comes to coaching and everyone's like, well, should I get a coach, should I go to conferences, should I get booked, should I get a course, whatever, I would only get coaching, I would only buy a course, I would only go to a conference. If you don't know what the next step in your business needs to look like. Because if you know what the next step is, Every single minute should be focused on execution, not planning. And for myself personally, what I do is I have a to do list. I have a plan of things that I need to get done. But I am going to focus on one major thing per day and I have a list. And you can do this inside of your iOS app. You can do. I use Google Tasks for this. So I have all these different lists that I have and then I star one thing per day. That one thing per day is the next step that I need to execute on. And I tried, I try to make sure I get it done that day. Sometimes the tasks are bigger and it's things that might take a couple days. But I know that any moment in my day spent on that thing is really where any sort of outsized returns will come from. And if I can finish that one thing, the other 20,000 things on my to do list aren't, aren't as important as getting that one thing done. Because I've realized that if I can get that one thing done on that list, I, I will move the ball in the right direction. The other, all the minutiae, all the other stuff that you'll keep you busy in your, in your business, answering back to leads, emails, phone calls, meetings. There's a litany of other things. Things break down, employees don't show up, you have to do applicant interviews. Those are, things are all important. But what's going to actually strategically move your business forward is usually like one thing. And so I get very concerned when people are having every single day they're getting new coaching and they're getting, they're listening to new books and having new strategies. I get concerned by that because they've gotten wrapped up in the plan instead of the execution of the plan. And creating a plan might make you a great YouTube creator. Creating a great plan might make you a good coach. Creating a good plan might make you a good course creator. It is not going to make you a great business because a great business owner executes on the plan. And so I'd really recommend trying to take a thousand things you're trying to your business and say, okay, what's the thing? The one thing that I need to execute against and then all the minutia it has to get done. But I am going to exclusively focus on this and get that done and attack it today. This happened recently where I realized that there was a bottleneck inside the company and I needed to hire someone and I put it on my list and within 48 hours this we had found hired and onboarded a team member for this role. And then the next day my next highest priority thing was also find someone to be able to do this certain type of advertising that takes a long time to learn and understand. And I was beating my head up against it, not having a great result. I needed to go hire this person. So again, 24 hours, that was my main objective executed on it. And this is in my opinion how you make real progress. Not trying to get around the things that don't scale. It's not scalable to hire one person, it's not scalable to go on an all out hunt and try to find the the individual that is going to fill this role. However, it is the thing that is going to allow me to execute on the planning that I've created. And I'm not going to go to more conferences, I'm not going to get other people's opinion on my business, I'm not going to go to other mentors and try to get their opinions on things when I know what the plan and the next step is. And so people get fancy. And especially when like the economy goes poor like it has recently and leads start to shrivel up, people start to really crave fanciness because they think fancy is going to sell fix things. And I like to boil things down when it seems like people are getting fancy to like the basics. For example, I can guarantee you that getting your estimates out faster will increase your close ratio. Guarantee it. So we can get fancy, all this other stuff. But just getting your estimates out faster to your customer will improve your close ratio. I can guarantee you that advertising and getting your name out to the customers, you're going to get more leads, I can just guarantee that. So like if someone's not doing advertising.

They can start advertising tomorrow and have progress. I can guarantee that painting, decaling your truck, having uniforms is going to get you more leads. Why? Because people driving by you all day long aren't going to remember a white truck. And if they need lawn care service and they like what you're doing, they need to be able to contact you. I happen to think the same thing on a website, having a great website, you will get more leads. It's just basic like we get make things so complicated and we want the fancy plan, we want this like cookie algorithm landing page and we're going to do this tracking code, we're going to send them this lead magnet and all those things are fine, all those things are good. But I think that fancy gets in the way of execution time and time again. I can guarantee you if you're having trouble finding employees, being able to pay them more will increase the number of people that are applying to work for you. If you just randomly increased how much you were paying people by $10, $20 an hour, you would have more people applying to work for you. So the question is, how do then that's not the bottleneck. Finding people is not the problem. Being able to pay them more is the problem. So these are some of my thoughts. Hope it's helpful and we'll see you tomorrow.