How to Go From Zero to Business Owner in 30 Days Flat

Hey, everyone, My name is Mike Andes, and I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn Care. We have over 150 locations around the world. And today I'm talking about if I was to start a lawn care business and I was trying to make over $1,000 per day in revenue, I needed to do it in 30 days. I'm going to walk you through the five major points I would need to know and understand. Now, if you want to see me actually do these things, go on to the Mike Andes main channel, go to June 2023, and every single day for 30 days. I actually started a lawn care business from zero and built it up to where I was doing $1500 per day, multiple days in a row. At the end of the month, I'm just going to focus on the five things that are actually going to make you a business. And making a business means getting customers. Let's focus on the first thing, and that is one customer per day. And if you actually watch the videos where I built the business over the course of a month, the main thing that I did at the very beginning was like, I'm not going to eat until I get one customer. And actually led to me finding a marketing strategy of holding a sign next to the road because I needed to get a customer at cost. And so I still remember when I started Augusta Lawn Care 10 years ago, I would actually put up on my wall, literally a calendar, and I would cross off each day when I would get one new customer. And so it was simply a matter of, I'm going to do whatever it takes to get one customer per day. Whether that be doing posting on Facebook groups, whether it be texting and emailing people. I knew regardless of what it was, I would not go to sleep until I had one paying customer. This leads into the rule of 100. This is made by Alex Hormozi at the very end of his book, a hundred million dollar leads. And that's essentially you're gonna do a hundred outbound actions every single day. Cause right now, if you're just getting started, I'm assuming you don't have a ton of money to spend on advertising. So we're gonna do a hundred door knocking, we're gonna do a hundred door hangers, we're gonna do a hundred dms, direct messages on Instagram, Facebook, et cetera, to people in our local area. We're going to do a hundred phone calls. We are literally in a cold call a hundred people, we're going to a hundred times text all the people in our Database, everyone inside of our phone. You probably have a thousand plus people in your phone, of which a few hundred you could probably serve as a customer, text them all one at a time, make personalized conversation with them, and do it 100 times per day. If you don't have money, you have time. And so spend that time taking action on something that otherwise most people would say is unscalable. Next thing I'm going to do is test marketing channels. I need to figure out if I'm new to the business, which marketing channel can I spend the least amount of money and get a customer. In other words, which one has the lowest customer acquisition cost. And honestly, what it's going to come down to when I'm looking at my different marketing channels, I'm either going to have to spend time or I'm going to have to spend money. Again. If you don't have money, you probably have time. So if you're going to have time, you're probably going to test marketing channels like door knocking. You're going to hold the sign next to the road. In fact, here's a picture of one of the members of Augusta Nation that held a sign next to the road. And he made two new customers in just one hour. Didn't take very much money. Mostly just had to take him standing there with, with his two feet and his hands. You don't need money to get more customers. You don't need to have money to test the marketing channels like door knocking, door hangers, very, very cheap signs, cheap Right now, if you have money, you're probably gonna do things that are a little bit more scalable. In other words, they don't take your time, they just take more money. Google Ads, Facebook ads, might do a door hanger strategy or every door direct mail campaign. These are all things though that take money versus time. The bottom line is I want to test what which of these marketing channels is going to work. And if you look at back last year when I went and started a business from scratch, the first two weeks I was testing all of these, I did door to door, I did door hangers, I held signs next to the road, I did everything. And all I was trying to do was test which marketing channels in my market were going to work the best. And figuring that out is the key to then be able to then deploy as much time or money towards whichever marketing channel is working the best. And remember, sometimes that will change throughout the year. The next thing I'm going to say focused on is filling the schedule and hiring. So if I look at my week, it's going to look something like this. And so if I have four weeks in the year, I am going to try to fill my schedule for two solid weeks. And that might mean that I'm able to do six, seven hours of work per day out in the field doing the work and the other hours day. I'm probably doing office work, admin work, doing estimates, etc. But I'm going to fill my schedule every single day for two weeks. When I hit that marker and when I hit that day two weeks from today, I am going to hire somebody. Because if I hire them today, this is the day they'll be starting. They usually have to give a two weeks notice. And so on that day is when I'll be able to schedule twice as much work because now I'll have a person that can help me do the job and I should effectively get almost twice as much work done. But I'm going to do that right here. Once I am booked out two weeks. And the only way I'm able to actually accurately know if I fill my schedule is to be able to use budget hours and estimate the amount of time that every single job takes. Because then I'll accurately be able to know every single one of these days when I'm filled up. I'm not just guessing. I actually have a way to measure every job in terms of budget hours. And when it adds up, it should be like maybe 30, 35 budget hours per week that I'm able to complete and then that's filled up. I got drive time and load time, I got to do other things throughout my day. I'm not going to get all of my hours by being on the job site. And so If I get 30, 35 budget hours, I consider that a full week of work and then I'm going to get two of those weeks and hire someone to start the week after. The fifth and final thing I would do if I'm starting a lawn care business is buy my assets based on sold jobs. So many of the time we all think in order to get into business, we need to go get equipment, we need to go get trucks, and yes, those tools are required to do work. But you can't do the work and you can't do the jobs without getting customers. So go out and get the customers first, go out and sell the jobs first. You don't have to do the jobs tomorrow if they're accepted. So what can you do? You can sell for the next couple weeks knowing that you're Going to start in a few weeks from now, actually performing the work that gives you the ability to be able to collect prepayments and gives you the ability to know what kind of jobs you're going to get so you can actually buy the correct amount of equipment. Because I see so often the times people buy way too big of trucks, way too, way too big of equipment or too much of it, and then it ends up sitting around doing nothing because they focused on buying assets before they went out and sold the jobs. And so if I'm able to go out and, you know, see, okay, maybe I get some debt on a truck, or maybe I get some debt on a piece of equipment that I really need. Ideally, the payments on that equipment is equal or less than the recurring revenue that I'm able to generate. And so I want to go out and get those jobs so that I'm able to know exactly how much I can actually afford. Because what actually affords the equipment is the jobs and the customers and the payments. And so without going on getting the payments and getting the jobs, why are you buying equipment? I made this mistake when I first started my lawn care business, and because of that, I had to go buy different equipment just six or 12 months later because I didn't know what type of jobs I was going to get. And sure enough, I bought the wrong equipment before I even got any customers. Also, the equipment type that you get, the type of truck, et cetera, is going to mostly be determined by the type of jobs that you get. So how in the world we even know what to buy before you go out and get some jobs and know what the customers are demanding? Same thing with the brand. The size, what, who can service the equipment once you buy it. But honestly, the size of the equipment, the type of equipment, the type of brand of equipment all comes down to what do your jobs need? You won't know until you actually go out and put your sales boots on and get some customers. So focus on getting the customers first, and you can even start your business a month from today when you actually start doing the work. But sell the jobs over the next few weeks so that when you hit the time when you're supposed to be doing the work, you already know what type of jobs you're going to have and you can buy the right piece of equipment. It'll save you a lot of time and money and you'll be able to actually generate your first dollar f. In my opinion, the person who generates their first dollar fastest will beat the person who buys their truck the fastest or buys their biggest piece of equipment fastest. Because anyone can buy a piece of equipment. It doesn't take a lot of IQ to do that. But it's a whole lot different to build a business. Why? Because you got to get customers, convince them to give you money. So focus on that first, and then you'll be able to figure out the truck and the equipment and everything else that you need to buy.