I Built a Business IN 30 DAYS to Prove it’s Not Luck!

Last year, I actually went to North Carolina, which is 2,000 miles away, and started a lawn care business. The goal within 30 days was to grow the business past $1,000 in daily revenue. And we did it multiple days in a row by the end of the month. My name is Mike Andes. I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn Care, and we have over 150 locations around the world. These four things that I learned definitely replicated and be used to grow your own business past 100,000. I'm starting with no employees, no equipment, and no customers to prove that systems build great businesses.

The very first thing that I learned, and if you watch the videos you'll see is test, test, and then go all in. Now, this is in reference to marketing. When I started the 30 day challenge, I thought at first I would do every door, direct mail, Facebook, and Google Ads. And I started doing this, and they did not work. Now, that being said, when I started the 30 day challenge, it was like in the middle of the summer. It was not in the spring rush. However, I definitely had to keep testing. And that's what I find so often the times business owners won't do when they're first getting started is they're like, oh, it didn't work. Or like, I can't get any leads.

And it's like, well, how many things have you tested? And like, Well, I had $1,000, so I spent it all on this one thing. I'd rather you spend $200 on five different things in terms of marketing channels to be able to figure out which one's working and then go all in. Because it turns out after testing, like, six or seven different marketing channels over the course of the first couple weeks, I realized that every door, direct mail did not work. Facebook and Google Ads didn't work very good. I was paying way too much per lead. But what actually started working was me holding a sign on the side of the road, and every few hours, I would get a lead.

Also, what really started to work well was door hangers and just putting the price of the lawn mowing on the door hanger and then putting on the door of every single person in a neighborhood. So what did we do? We went all in on door hangers. I actually hired someone part time to go out and do door hangers every single day for the last couple weeks of the challenge, and that is when we started to grow very quickly. You're gonna crush it. Yeah, I just know it. I hope you get, like, one an hour.

So what did I do? What am I Trying to compare. What am I testing? I'm testing to find out what is my lowest customer acquisition cost per channel of marketing. We tried all of these different things and finally came to the conclusion that hanging up door hangers and then also holding the sign on the side of the road somehow was the lowest customer acquisition cost. And that's what we went all in on. So if you're just getting started, don't just dump all of your marketing budget in one area. Test multiple things and figure out your lowest customer acquisition cost across all platforms. The second thing is go fast.

Then slow. And this is much more difficult because we only had 30 days. But in general, when you're getting started, I want to do things in sprints and then kind of level off there. A big challenge inside of the 30 day challenge was the fact that I need to get multiple employees up and running pretty quickly. Where generally I would recommend you grow to capacity, go fast and then take time at capacity, raise prices and get your footing a little bit. Like, get used to having one employee before you hire a second one. Get used to having a few employees before you go, hire a general manager to run the location without you. And so in general, the part that I was not able to execute on well in the challenge was going slow. We've got lots of momentum behind us and we're finishing out this one month with more than 20 mowing customers and we've gotten over 60 leads and we're more than four weeks booked out on the schedule. But in general, I can do things so fast that I had to stay in go, go, go growth mode to be able to hit the challenge. When reality, if you had two or three months or if you have a year or two years, you'll want to grow, get to a certain level and then stay there for a while, slow down a little bit, make profit, and then be able to grow in the next stage after you've gotten your footing. The third thing that I learned really the hard, this is probably the worst thing I did the entire time was train the GM. Now I only had 30 days and it wasn't until the last week that I really tried to get the general manager trained up. In general, when I do my training for Augusta lawn care and for franchisees is I say, hey, it might take you 6 to 12 months to train your general manager. I didn't have that luxury, unfortunately. And so I had to take a relatively new team member and try to within like literally one week, get them up to speed.

Well, well, let's go ahead and get things kicked off for the sake of the video. Maybe give me a 30 second kind of pitch in terms of why you think it'd be a good fit. And then we'll jump into some questions.

That just wasn't setting them up for success. And it's not fair to the general manager if I'm like just dumping things on them and then I'm bouncing. And so number one thing, when it comes to a location that's not being ran by an owner is, is the general manager. If they're a good general manager, the location will be profitable. If they're not a good general manager, the location, regardless of the market, regardless of timing of the year, regardless of anything else, it will usually underperform or be unprofitable. I don't really fault my GM though, because I didn't train them correctly. The general manager dictates whether or not a location is successful. So if you have the time, train them up. Do not rush it. Never rush a general manager hiring. It has never ended well for me or any location inside of Augusta.

You know, he's in front of the, he's running the numbers, which is something that I never had. You know, you know how to cut grass. But it's like, how do you run the actual business? How do you make the most of the business?

The fourth and final thing that I learned while on the 30 day challenge is that constraints.

Breed creativity. Let's go. The beautiful thing about having 30 days is that was the constraint. Time in that case was the constraint. Because of that, I had to get creative. Because of that constraint of time, I had to get creative with the door hangers holding a sign on the side of the road. Like, we did not plan for that. We only had one design ready to go. All of a sudden started working like, oh snap, it's working. Let's get like two or three more of these. Let's try to sell projects on the side of the road. And they're like, oh, the yard signs, literally within 24 hours, all of them were stolen. I okay, we're not doing that anymore. So all those ones I just ordered, they're going to sit there and do absolutely nothing. You have constraints of time or money or skill. Creativity is the only solution out of it. So I had a constraint of time. I also had the constraint of money. We only spent about 40 to $50,000 with the franchise fee, about $60,000 we spent to get this location off the ground. When I left that location, there was literally work on the schedule for the next six weeks when I left. So we definitely were able to get creative and go all in on door hangers in order to be able to grow fast. But the problem that I really didn't do in all of this, that did not train the general manager well. And I find that if any of these four things are left out, then things fall apart. You looking at yourself like, I don't have enough money, I don't have a skill, I don't have enough experience, I don't have a truck, I don't know this. Or I'm, you know, even looking at yourself and seeing your own deficiencies in your character or in your abilities. Great. Get creative. And how do you sell the jobs online? From your website, via text, via email? These are the type of things that prevent most people from becoming successful business owners. They look at their constraint and they default to their lowest common denominator of their skill. And for most of us, that's low and they fail. Instead of getting creative, looking at their gaps, looking at where they're weak, and then figure out a creative solution to overcome those things. If you want to build a business from scratch in 30 days to be doing over $1,000 in daily revenue, click this video right here. Every single day, I made a video walking through this whole process for 30 days straight. Watch the videos. I think it'll help.