I Get Lonely, Bad Engine, Becoming a Real Estate Agent

Welcome back to the Mike Andes Podcast, where we discuss the ins and outs of owning a small business. If you're new here, the Mike Andes Podcast is all about starting, maintaining, and growing your small business. Today, we're talking about mental health. How can you take care of yourself when anxiety and stressors of business start weighing you down? Next, you should be sprinting to scale your business to a point. How to find your level of profitability, and why you should stay there. Finally, Mike talks about his journey to become a real estate agent and why it'll be worth it. As always, you can find the video versions of these over on the Mike Andy's YouTube channel. But let's get started and talk about dealing with the stressors of business.

Today is Saturday, which means trail running. It is every single Saturday. Clear my head for a couple hours. It's the highlight of my week.

This is the halfway point. Checkpoint number one.

I finished my trail run this morning, but this is one of our Airbnbs, and they keep getting complaints about it smelling like smoke. And it's actually from what we think is one of our plumbers that had smoked and they brought the smell in here. But the past few. 10 past few guests of Airbnb have, you know, mentioned that. So we actually got this ozonator thing, ozone air purifier. We've tried everything from a diffuser to an air purifier. We have an AC in here, but this thing works pretty, pretty well. The thing is, you've got to make sure it's unoccupied. You can't be in here while it's happening. So today, fortunately, no one's gonna be here for the next four hours. I'm gonna let this thing run and even, like, I just turn it on and you get, like, this chalky metal y thing in your mouth. It's not.

It's not good.

But hopefully it'll clear that out. I think, honestly, it's kind of seeped into a lot of the. The wood, either the cabinets or the closets. So I'm hoping you can get this smell out of here. We have two guests coming into the Airbnbs literally in an hour. So I. I am cleaning. And let me walk you through a couple things about how I deal with mental health. Obviously, for me, a big part of mental health is just exercise, eating right. But sleeping is the one I really struggle with. And usually, like, I have a very predictable issue, and this is the problem. I'll have, like, business problems that get me nervous or stressed. Not necessarily always my My problems. But whether it be a franchisee or an employee or something, going on financially or in the business typically keeps me stressed and then doesn't allow me to sleep well at night. This happens maybe once every, like, two or three weeks. But if it happens a couple times in a row, a couple nights in a row, that's what can lead me to kind of break down even further.

And the thing that I kind of get to when I get really low or worn down is probably loneliness. And again, we're talking like maybe once a month. But it can definitely be lonely when most of your problems and things you do with throughout the day is employees and other people that have only a business relationship with you and not really a personal one. So I know everyone has their own opinion and they want to give their how to fix Mic. I know everyone wants to do that, but I think all of us have certain insecurities or things we deal with or depression, whether that be from genetically predisposed or even from your family. And I think it's healthy to talk about it because, like, no one's perfect. And everyone behind closed doors has their own problems, including me. See, the thing is, when you deal with people all day long, and really all it is is a business relationship. Cause either employees, franchisees, vendors, suppliers, that can really start to wear on you. And you don't have as many personal connections as you probably should. Usually the weekends are the worst because I've worked all week, and then usually I have a whole bunch more to do on Saturdays and Sundays. And it just feels somewhat overwhelming. This week specifically is like, every single night I was up late trying to figure out this whole loan thing. Getting a letter together, videos, charts, graphs, like, everything I could for the headquarters loan. And then this weekend, it's like, there's just still so much on my plate. And it's not about getting overwhelmed. I don't really get overwhelmed. It's more a matter of, like, all I do is work. And that's the decision that I've made. It's not like I'm doing this for sympathy or asking for people's opinions or anything like that. I have made the decision to live my life this way. And there's just gonna be times we have low points the same way as if you were a parent and you decided to have low points. Kids and all the rest of it, there's gonna be times you wish you didn't, or there's gonna be times that you kind of regret having to stay up all night taking care of them. So everyone has their own issues. And I'm not asking for sympathy, but realize no one is perfect. Everyone has their dirty laundry. And regardless of what social media says, everyone has their low points. Today. I don't really wanna make a video. I don't really want to make a live video. And I'm not doing it for anyone else when I make it this afternoon other than myself to kind of help me get out of this. Cause I know this is not who I am. I. I don't feel low a lot. I'm not depressive personality. It's just a matter of I got to get through this point and I got to relax, do a run like I did this morning, unplug a little bit, and I'll be fine. Everyone has these moments. Don't feel like you're alone or you're weird or you're strange. Especially as a business owner, there's me plenty of moments. Be depressed, afraid, and feeling like you're alone. And I've talked to other of our franchisees about this, especially the ones that have been in business for a long time, are much larger, have a lot of employees, and sometimes it's very lonely because you literally feel like all of your connections have something to do with the business and money. And like you have to start. You almost start questioning yourself like, well, would they even be in my life? Would they even be friends with me if they didn't make money from me or they weren't somehow tied to me in a business sense? And that can get wearing on someone, even if that's not true.

In fact, some of my most happy days are the ones where I feel most productive, haven't slept very much, but the mission and what I'm doing is pulling me so hard that I just love every single one. And I'm fully intent and aware of every single moment throughout the day. The ozone machines seem to have worked. I got the diffuser going, I got some Toblerone. We get a little welcome card that we write out for them as well. Then things inside of here for their Airbnb stay, all the restaurants I like, the trails I like to run. So some people might criticize me and say, well, you just keep that stuff to yourself and not talk about it on social media. The thing is this twofold number one is it's actually strategic. Because, see, if I don't share those things, then that's what leads to burnout, in my opinion, the reason people make videos on social media and all the rest of it. And then all of a sudden they stop is because they were putting a facade on and that is only sustainable for so long. I, on the other hand, want to make videos for a very long time and be able to share the entire journey of growing Augusta Nation to a thousand plus locations and a billion dollar company. If I'm going to do that without burning out, I have to share everything. Otherwise I'm putting on a show and there's nothing inside of me that wants anyone watching these to think I'm perfect or I'm somehow God. That's not how anyone is. Everybody has problems in the state, even for the people in the comments that will tear me apart for this video. So for all the keyboard warriors out there and keyboard therapists, just remember you have dirty laundry too. You just don't share with it online for everyone. All right, let's go ahead and get the live show started. This thing started back here. That is what causes the purple light. I got this bad boy. So what I'm actually doing right now, before I get started with the live stream, you can see here, is where I do my live stream off of stream yard here, the camera set up. But I'm actually making a video for the bank. And like we've been talking about over the past few days and weeks, I've been doing a lot with the bank and try to figure out a way to get the SBA loan. And because of what I talked about yesterday about the underwriter and the issues with all our different entity structures and unprofitability because of the gains I made in the stock market, all the rest of it, I'm gonna make a video. I've already done a long document for them, charts, graphs, projections, explanations, et cetera. But I'm actually gonna do a video. I'm making this video for any of the SBA and anyone really in the decision making process and the underwriting for the 504 loan that Augusta Lawn Care and myself were trying to put together. Just explain myself in terms of why this loan is really important for us and why the past few years on paper look so different than what the reality really is. The way their entity structures have been changed this past year makes my returns in 2021 look very different. We always lose money on our first location because we spend a lot of cash on all the trucks, the trains. We don't go into debt at all. So there's always a loss on paper for the first year of a location. The second year is typically stabilization and just barely profitable. It's always the third year when we start new locations at a corporate level or even our franchisees that we become really profitable. I took those capital gains and put them into the businesses and invested heavily in the companies. And then, and then the last thing is the fact that all the investments that were last year do not show up on the income statement because I was doing owner's investments into the companies. And then the companies were spending the money which is on the income statement showing a loss or less profit. But again, I am not expecting those capital expenditures and investments in the future and we will have much more profitable years going forward. Thank you so much for your time and for your help on this project. Just trying to create more of a personal connection with them and having a face behind just all those numbers and graphs and data. And at this point, I don't see any way forward without getting this loan. So I have to literally do whatever I can to make sure it happens. So I've done the, the analytical and the number side and now I'm gonna take more of the approach of, hey, I have. I'm a real person. And here's a video of me actually talking about what I already gave you in a document. So that's what I'm actually gonna do right now before we get started on the live stream. It's gonna be great. And we're live. I'm happy to answer any questions I possibly can. Thanks for joining. Sorry, it's been a long night. I would say if you're doing lawn care and landscaping and you're below a million dollars in revenue, I would probably start with landscapebusinesscours. And if you are bigger than a million dollars in revenue and your landscaping business or you are anything besides a lawn care landscaping company, I'd probably start with MBA for entrepreneurs. You know, you wanted to even take that kind of work because I don't want to trim an entire lawn with a weed whacker. It's really about systematizing, you know, what your setup is going to be and then trying to stick to it. Like, if you're going to do box trucks, just do box trucks. If you're going to do trailers, just do trailers. How did you learn so much? There is so much knowledge in your brain. Since I was a kid, I liked reading a lot. I hate reading now because I got burned out in college. Like, I never read anything. Now I only listen to stuff. There's no silence ever. I'm either listening to a sermon, I am listening to an audiobook, I am listening to a podcast. I'm always Trying to learn and I learn at two times speed. I'm really good at auditory learning so I can learn it. I listen to everything at 2.2x to 2.5x and unfortunately that causes me to talk fast because it's not good. I need to work on that. Slowing down when I'm talking. But it's because I listen to everything at 2x to 2 1/2x. I'm gonna have to jump off of this because I got other things I got to get done. Gotta work on this bank stuff. I got a whole bunch of projections I gotta work on and a couple reports I have to work on. So take care everyone. Have a great rest of your weekend and we'll see you tomorrow. Mike Andes listen to everything at two times speed. While he's an excellent auditory learner, everyone has a different style of learning. Some people prefer to burn through information as fast as possible and others like to take their time and let the.

Information sink in a little too fast. Luckily, MBA for Entrepreneurs is designed to be taken at whichever pace works for you, whether you're starting, growing or saving your company. The MBA entrepreneur teaches the principles and fundamentals of small business ownership. With over 350 in depth lectures and bonus live streams, you'll have access from anywhere through the teachable app. You can learn more about the course over at NBA the number four entrepreneurs dot com. Next up, find the right level of profitability for your business and stay put.

It's Monday morning. I'm headed down to the Mount Vernon location per usual for my weekly meeting and I wanted to get there early because we have a new hire there. I wanted to say hello but literally standstill traffic here Monday morning in the middle of nowhere. We never get traffic here. Never. This is throwing a monkey wrench into my morning. This guy is very pleasant this morning. Very pleasant. Cutting me off. Let's go.

I'm late. I'm late. Well, not late. I'm three minutes early, but that's technically late. This is probably the second to last time you'll ever see this shop because we are moving now that the property is going to be closing next week for the Mount Vernon location. And so this is probably the second to last time you will ever see this place. They started out here somewhere. I just got these laminated. These are two page document for P4P got new hire so they were getting onboarded. There is the document we have for all the owners at Augusta Nation in terms of their scorecard. So we kind of go over the main metrics, the KPIs for their location every single month. So that's. That was our first scorecard at this location. So getting up and rolling here Monday morning. Check this thing out. Man, this thing is torn apart. I have no idea how to do this stuff. This is like literally Chinese to me. So.

So last week this truck literally got fixed. I. E Got a brand new motor in it. I should say brand new because it was not brand new, but it was new to this truck. However, we are suspect that the mechanic gypped us because literally within two weeks, the motor is sputtering, burning a bunch of oil. So I think they put in like a piece of garbage motor in it. GM here, Caleb, he knows mechanics and looked at it like, yeah, this thing's been sitting around for a long time, so we're gonna have to go back and be the squeaky wheel because you can't give us a motor, charge us $7,000 and it's not working two weeks later. And using a motor that is pretty apparently sitting around for the past couple years, probably in some scrapyard. So that stinks. Honestly, sometimes these meetings where I come for like a few minutes seem some bit of a waste. And eventually they are waste because the general manager completely takes the whole thing over. But a location like this one, where the GM is new especially, I like to show up at least once a week just to show my support. But my big thing is I also don't want to get in the way of them managing. And so even when a few weeks ago, I found, you know, when employees start contacting me for operational issues or time off requests, things like that, it's not a good sign. So I actually back off a little bit. And that's why I don't want to show up more than once a week. Because if I do, then they start contacting me for things that like, no, that's a gm and I don't want to disarm the GM by answering back the employee and giving them permission for something that the GM potentially might not want to be giving them permission for or has already talked to them about. So it's kind of a fine line. It's weird when you have general managers, but you're still the owner because sometimes the employee will still look to you as a decision maker when you're really trying to empower the, the general manager to make decisions in the business.

See, bigger is not always better when it comes to your business. Some people think you just got to grow, grow, grow. Because you hear someone like me say, you need to build a million dollar business. This is partly what I'm talking about at our Mike minute Mastermind with the franchisees this morning. Because see, I actually believe that there's a few different distinct stages of a business in terms of size where you can still run really profitably and efficiently. When it comes to home improvement, I typically see that number, that annual revenue number being 200, 800 plus thousand dollars in annual revenue at sort of three different stages of a business in terms of size that you can be very profitable at. At 200,000, you're a solo operator. You're typically going to have like a helper working out in the field most of the day at 500,000 in revenue, you're either going to have a GM or you as the owner are going to probably working two or three days a week out in the field and the rest of the day is doing estimates, admin work, etc. And if you're going to go to 800,000, that's typically when the business can run on systems. But your general manager or you as the owner are going to be a full time non revenue producing employee because you're basically just doing estimates all day long, hiring, training and you're not producing any revenue out in the field for the company, which is a big drag when it comes to overhead. And in this morning's Mastermind, I really want to talk about how I feel is the best way to grow is sprinting to a certain level and then making it profitable at that level. So instead of spending three or four years trying to get to half a million, I'd rather you scale to a million quickly and then spend a couple years there being profitable by raising your prices and thereby reducing your close ratio and slowing down growth.

This is an example of something called penetration pricing. All penetration pricing really is, is where you lower your price in order to penetrate a market, gain market share and then you raise your prices down the road knowing that you're going to be able to convert 80 to 90% of those customers because you have a high quality service and people don't want to switch providers. Now how fast you jump from one stage to the next, how deep do you try to penetrate the market and use a lower price to increase your close ratio? There's a lot of different factors that go into that and that's what we're talking about on today's Mastermind with the franchisees. Some of those variables include like the time of the year, whether or not you have enough employees, and a big part of it is how much capital you have on hand and have in reserves. The moral of the story is stop asking people on Facebook and online about what your pricing should be and how fast you should be growing. There are so many different variables and no two people's situations are the same. You've got to make sure you do what's right for your business and grow it to the size that's right for you, your family, and your goals.

I felt like it was a really solid mastermind this morning. Very foundational to what we believe in and growing to capacity and switching to profitability. So sometimes I feel like I just am just answering questions, but other times I feel like that was a very foundational piece of content for augustination. So this morning was very successful.

We are back on the road. We are rolling back towards command center. I'll be calling, having an appointment with my attorney. And I just notified that the person that we interviewed for Anytime Fitness is not going to be able to take the job because their other position offered them, I think, more money and they didn't want to leave. So very sad. We're going to have to continue the search for the office manager at Anytime Fitness Point.

As always, you can find the video version of this interview over on the Mike Andy's YouTube channel. But without further. But without further ado, here's Mike and Layla with the breakdown.

Sorry, do you want to explain what you're doing?

I'm just talking into the void.

Do you like how much deeper my voice goes for the podcast?

It's like knowing your business. And I'm like, hey, how's it going? Let's show some of the iterations. Let's start with the first one. Okay. Trash. Absolute trash. Garbage.

Never use mowers and dollar signs. It never works.

It doesn't look professional. Oh, that's a mower.

Well, it's supposed to be mowing.

Someone's mowing through the dollar sign.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like creating two tracks.

You didn't get that the first time? No, dude, it almost looks like like a. Like a broom.

Oh, yeah, you're right.

You're right.

Or like a. Like a lightsaber. Oh, man. Anyway, yeah, so garbage. If you guys want this logo, hit me up. And this is our second logo.

A little bit better.

A little bit better.

Kind of still like it. Like, it's very professional looking. Like it looks like bank wise insurance.

Yeah, we thought this looked a little bit like an R. So we were.

Like, I don't know, LCR Lawn care rookie would get yeah.

Long karaoke. That's the one. And then. Yeah. So then this is going to be our final logo. You guys are looking to sell your long care website.

Let's go longer. Business. Business.

Sorry, Long hair business for sale dot com.

Let's go. Pretty cool.

Yeah, that's good.

It'll shrink too.

Like the preview and then the enroll. Now he has it. So it's like a. When you hover over it, it goes yellow. That's cool.

Andrew, do you want to explain what you're doing right now? Not to put you on the spot. Redesigning the entire MBA website to better represent where we're going with the new MBA program. I'm very excited about it. Let's go. Very sleek and refined. And it's on site. Mbaforantrepreneurs.com coming soon. Actually, wait, by the time we launch this, will it be live? Yeah. This coming week. Right? Let's go. Yeah. So check it out today. Check it out.

Link in the description below.

We kind of already broke the news because Zach likes to break secrets and things like that. But we definitely have a new project we're working on. It's not done yet, but it's gonna be really helpful for business owners, especially this coming winter. In my opinion, there's gonna be a lot of people selling their lawn care business trying to get out of the industry just because of. It's been so hard with hiring and inflation. So because Zach likes to share secrets, I'm gonna go ahead and let him do that.

What's up, guys? So check this out. Spin around. Stephen, cut this out. Oh, you can't spin around here. Oh, that's garbage. All right, check this out. So we got a few logos going here. We already kind of shared a little bit about it. But what it's going to be is kind of a site that you guys can go on. You can upload your information and your financials and hopefully it will help you guys get connected with. People are interested in buying a business to help you guys get out of business. So I get.

So the day was just mostly operations. I didn't really have a whole lot to video. A lot of calls, emails, text messages. It's only 5:30. I was able to get out of the office early tomorrow. You'll figure out why I got out early today. And yeah, today was just. We have one of our franchisees. They are selling their location. So they're selling it to another person that's going to be joining the franchise. So setting all of that up, getting ready for the training. We are changing our training for the franchisees from three days to four days to accommodate a whole bunch of new stuff that we're going to incorporate into the training. So that's going to be great. Today I also made sure that we got what we call one click estimate email sent out for our franchisees. So a one click estimate email is basically where you email all of your customer base and you pitch one service, you have one call to action and basically they click on the button and it initiates an automation that says, hey, this person wants an estimate for the specific service. So finished that today. Just a whole bunch of calls, emails, texts. Today it was a pretty boring day in terms of the vlog. But now I'm going to get out here, go do some shopping cuz I got to get some juice, go do a run. It's going to be great. And then I got a bunch of stuff I got to do this evening and tomorrow you'll hear more about that.

Life is short. Eat tortilla chips.

I eat pretty healthily, but what would life be without tortilla chips and guacamole?

Life is short. It's time to start that business you've been brainstorming. Take that vacation that you've been dreaming about for years. Oh, and also sign up for the Mike Andy's Text club. We promise it's not a ton of spam. We really like to make sure our audience gets exclusive access to to these new products and services before anyone else. You'll get notifications whenever Mike goes live so you can jump in and be a part of the conversation. Join today by Texting Landscaping to 360-227-6362. We're down to our last segment now. Mike is on the way to becoming a real estate agent. But why? It might just make all the difference down the road.

So I'm becoming a real estate agent. Let me explain.

Even when I started first mowing lawns, I would listen to bigger pockets and other real estate books like Rich Dad, Poor dad and learned everything I possibly could about real estate and real estate investing. All right, here we go. There are three reasons why I'm becoming a real estate agent. The first one is for me to save on fees. Because every single time you purchase or buy real estate, two and a half percent typically is going to the buying agent and two and a half percent is going to the selling agent. So like 5% of the purchase price is just going in real estate agent commissions. I want to get my 2 1/2% back by self representing myself. And now that I have a 5, $6 million real estate portfolio, I've spent tens of thousands of dollars in just agent commissions. When usually as an investor I find my own deals, I usually literally just send them a screenshot like I want to buy this and we go put an offer on it. It's not like they do a lot of. And so I'd rather just find the deals myself and save on these commissions. Let me be very, very clear. And that is I am not becoming a real estate agent to sell real estate. I'm becoming a real estate agent to invest better in real estate. The second reason why I want to become an agent is because access to better deals. All right, when you become a real estate agent, you get to know people locally, brokers get to know you, and you're able to get on the inside, know how of these deals that are coming on the market prior to them even coming on the MLS where everyone else gets to see them on Zillow and fit in all the rest of it. I can see them prior to that and hopefully get a better deal and access the deals that are off market. This is what we're dealing with, you know, late at night and I gotta get 70% to pass the quiz. That is one question out of a 35 question quiz that I am getting wrong. Now. The third and final reason why I want to become a real estate agent is to be able to teach everything that I know to Augusta Nation. All right, so in our daily masterminds, we've already talked about real estate in the past. Ray Kroc was one time giving a lecture and he asked a student, what kind of business is McDonald's in? And they said, oh, well, that's easy. It's hamburgers and french fries and milkshakes. He's like, no, it's real estate. And so as I begin to think about Augusta Nation people getting multiple locations, I start asking myself, is the play actually for them going to be owning the real estate that each of their shops are sitting on top of and then renting that out, appropriately via house hacking on Airbnb or short term rentals, or renting it out and being becoming a property manager or subdividing it on a shop space and commercial land and leasing it out? This is a tiny house. I bought this bad boy and it's hopefully going to get delivered here next week so you guys will be able to see it. And my goal is to make this pay for the entire property that we're getting for the Mount Vernon location. So yeah, house hacking to its finest. This will be an Airbnb on wheels, so it's considered an rv. These are all options to make good money in real estate, but furthermore, it's a very tax efficient way of growing your wealth. And in the seven steps of wealth in Augusta Nation, the last one is investing. And over the next 12 to 24 months, a few of our owners are going to be reaching that level. And I want to make sure I have plenty of knowledge to be able to pass along to them for them to be able to grow their wealth using real estate. For example, last week on one of the Mike Minute masterminds for Augustination, we talked about the option of becoming an agent. And then if you self represent yourself, you get two and a half percent of your commissions back. If you're a first time home buyer, you can literally get a 3 1/2% down FHA mortgage and that's great. And if you're able to self represent yourself and get 2 1/2% of that back, you can literally get your first house for just 1% down payment. That's an excellent deal. Especially if there's some shop space on there, you can run your business out of there. This, this is the type of investing strategies I need to learn, grow and understand so I can pass this along to our owners at Augusta Nation.

Speaking of real estate, this is one of the Airbnbs that we have managing. And you can see this is where people book. This is the calendar on the back end where you can see all of our distributions. But what I did just right now is book off the 8th, 9th and 10th. And the reason I did that is because we consistently keep getting complaints about a single smell of smoke. And what we actually think has happened is the wood, like the trim, the closet doors, the cabinetry, literally has absorbed a smoke smell because we put an ozone maker into the room and that should clear out all the smoke smell. And it does. Then it comes back after a couple days and we keep getting complaints and giving refunds to people. So we're literally going to take those three days. We're going to have the contractors come in there, paint it, they're going to replace the shelving and the sliding doors on the closets and hopefully just get rid of that smell once and for all. Like we just keep getting complaints and we can't have that keep happening. Now every single state is different when it comes to getting your license for real estate. And so literally what I'm doing right now is studying and this is what I was doing last night is why I got off a little bit earlier, stayed several hours last night, late last night. And yes, I am having a little bit of lunch that is just lettuce, spring greens with some ranch. No habanero ranch. Like a healthy version of it. So just wolf it down. But every single state is different. In Washington state, for example, we have to do 60 hours of training and then 30 hours of practice. Then you'd got to pass quizzes. That quiz allows you to get the certificate. That certificate allows you to then go take the test. All of this information is literally what I feel, is how I learned in college. It's like memorization. Pass the test, get the piece of paper. A lot of this is not super necessary to be a good real estate investor or even a good agent. And I'm not trying to sell houses. Like, I'm not gonna sell houses. I'm not gonna be the guy like, I want to sell your house or like, you know, you want me to show you houses on the weekend and doing open houses. I am not gonna do that. This is for my own personal investing and for training others in Augusta Nation. But I gotta get through this. And it's a pain in the neck. And I literally feel like I'm back in college. And I was got. I got burnt out in college on cramming for tests, reading books, and just cramming information in my brain for the only reason of passing a test. I hate it. So this is very painful. And it's something I have to, like, force myself to do. And I get tired doing it. And it's like the only time I read, like, and try to do this anymore. I only listen to audiobooks and I only watch videos. I do not read at all, hardly, Literally, besides my Bible, don't read anything. This is painful. So 90 hours of course material, not so bad. But that's like 30 evenings. If I do three hours in an evening, that's like 30 evenings plus the quizzes. Then I go sit the test. And I got to actually know the information because if I don't get that 70%, I don't pass. See? And then I get distracted all the time with like, actually real investing in real estate.

Over the weekend. I came up with this term called capacity based growth. And it's basically where you grow to capacity in terms of without having to buy more trucks and equipment. You make sure you maximize your efficiency and your revenue up to a certain level. Then you switch, switch to where you raise prices so you don't have to keep buying more assets. But anyways, Lee's been helping with me creating a framework for it. So it's actually a really good tool for our owners to actually know when to grow and when they should be switching more to profitability mode where they raise prices, their growth kind of slows down and their close ratio goes down. So he's been creating the framework kind of formalizing what I was talking about in our last Mastermind and over the weekend that was just a alerted that if you actually go to augustalongersurfers.com franchise, if you go all the way down here to the startup costs right here, we we didn't do our math correctly. Shame on us. Look at this. You add up all the initial costs like the solo operator model and it actually ends up being 12,999. I don't know where we got 9,000. That's got to change because it needs to match up with the franchise disclosure documents because that is a breach. You have to have all your marketing material has to exactly line up with your franchise documents. So mess that one up. Gotta change this up right away.

Alright, so I'm gonna tell you all about the deal I just purchased. We're gonna head over to the bank and get a hundred thousand dollar check so we can close on the deal tomorrow. But before we do that, while we're driving, let's talk a little bit about clickbait. So this is for everybody that is saying you're doing these clickbait titles for your vlog and it has nothing to do with the titles and all the rest the of. Alright, let me explain this, okay? If I titled the videos the way that my day actually went, it would look something like this. 46 emails, 96 phone calls, 32 voice notes. That'd be day one, day two vlog. Four and a half hours of Zoom calls. Like it would be super boring. You gotta remember that literally 90% of my day I can't share in the vlog because it's either just a bunch of Augusta operations emails and calls and phone calls and text messages and zoom and all the rest of it or it's just confidential. Like I can't share all the drama that happens. And trust me, there is a lot of drama that happens over the course of 90 plus locations. Cuz I. I don't want to share things that are confidential. Effective July 8th. What in the world? The bank is closed. That's crazy. I gotta go to a different bank.

Look at this.

Effective last week, it's closed. Literally it's all boarded up. Gonna have to go to a different branch. They must have known I was coming for my money. Hundred thousand dollars. Like we can't afford it. Lock up the bank. Okay, back to what I was talking about. Clickbait. Most of what I do throughout the day is either really boring or I just can't share it. It's too confidential. So the other 10% of my day, I have to somehow make it interesting because most of my day is just Augusta stuff. And you guys would get so bored if I just talked about Augusta stuff all day, every day. So I take that 10% and say, okay, what's interesting about today? Is it real estate? Is it something to do with the gym? Is it something to do with my online businesses? Is something to do with anything else other than Augusta and confidential stuff? And I try to make an entire video about just that little part. Now, if you want me to do boring titles, I'm sorry, you should probably just unsubscribe because I'm not going to make these videos for just 200 people a day because no one would click on videos that the titles were that boring. So I'm gonna make it interesting as much as I possibly can. Now let's talk about this property that I just purchased for the Mount Vernon Augusta Lawn care location. First and foremost. Why am I doing this? Because a long term play and I want to invest in this location for the long term and keep it for myself. Secondarily, the rent on our current place is going up and I just don't like the location because there's a lot of theft and I don't really feel like the owner wants us there and will not sign a long term lease. I don't like that hovering over my head. As I grow a location, I want to have security, I want a long term lease, or I want to buy the land myself. So there is this property like 5 minutes drive from our current where we rent. They were originally asking for a purchase price of $650,000. It's perfect. It has a rental property, it has land, it has a spot for us to be able to have the shop and an Airbnb. It's gonna be great. But they wanted $650,000 and guess what? They didn't get it. They lowered their price. They lowered it down to 600,000. Then they lowered it down to 570,000. Did they get 570,000? No, they didn't. I offered $540,000. And in order to get that nice juicy price, I Had to come in with some negotiation tactics. So what did I do? I gave a nice, beefy, earnest money, $20,000 in earnest money to show that I was a serious buyer. What else I do? I waive the inspection, because I don't need the inspection. I'm buying it for the property, not so much the house. So I was able to get this property for literally $540,000 instead of $650,000. And if you're not telling me that we're in a correction in the real estate market, I'm sorry, but we are. And fortunately, I was able to buy it at a pretty good interest rate. Five and a half percent. Not fantastic compared to last year, but better than it was even a month ago in terms of interest rates. But tomorrow is the closing date, and we need $100,000 to close the deal. So we're going to the bank to get the cashier check.

I just need to pocket these, and then I need to get a cashier's check, too, if I'm here.

All right, we got the cashier's check. Tomorrow afternoon, we close on the deal, we sign it at the title company, and then it's ours.

Last night, I kind of got all the contract ready because we gotta put a whole bunch of gravel down, fences up, because we're gonna separate the residential, where we're doing a rental property, and the actual shop space, plus an Airbnb for the tiny home. And so I got all the contractors ready to roll last night, and then I really hand everything off to Liz. We're a really good team because how it works is like, I focus on the acquisition, getting the property, and then I hand it off to her, and she does all the management. So then she's gonna find renters, make sure everything goes smoothly, like shifting the utilities over. So all that's off my plate after the initial acquisition and purchase of the property. My recommendation out there for any business owners or people that are trying to invest in real estate. If you have a business that's kicking off good money, don't spend your time doing the management of the property. And by the way, pay good money for your manager. If they're offering you, like, 5, 4, 6% of the revenue that you're going to take to be a property manager, probably not enough meat on the bone for them to actually get excited about managing your property. Give 10%, but expect a really good manager. Liz is the best of the best, but you're not going to be able to get a great property manager if you're giving them a 3% of the gross rent. Just stop being cheap. Stop tripping over nickels in order to save pennies. Some people are going to be like, why? Why did you waive inspection? Why did you waive the inspection? You are such a novice, you don't know what you're doing. Okay, maybe that's true, but here's the reason why I don't trip over pennies when I'm going after dollars. And ultimately this property is gonna probably save or make me six to $7,000 a month in revenue and the mortgage is gonna be like 3,000 or 3,200 with insurance and all the rest of it. So why in the world would I care about a little inspection when I know that the bones of the property, the actual infrastructure of the AC and the heating and the electrical is all brand new? If there's a $10,000 repair, it's not going to change whether or not this deal is a good deal. And Honestly, if a 10 or $15,000 repair is going to make or break a deal, you probably don't want to do that deal. There's not enough meat on the bone.

These type of strategies when it comes to the real estate side of things is what's going to allow owners at Augusta Nation to build their wealth in a very tax efficient way, especially as they get multiple locations or begin to grow and expand and need shop space. You can house hack, you can figure out ways to subdivide land and really make a difference. And that is why I'm getting my real estate license.

So the question is really, what business are we in? Do we actually mow lawns and do landscaping? Are we too like McDonald's in the real estate game? And I truly believe after an owner has been in business for five, 10 years, they have multiple locations. That investment tool is extremely valuable to build wealth and do it so in a very tax efficient way. And so yes, that is the game plan. 5, 10 years building your business, generating income, taking that income, investing in an asset that's tax efficient and grows and appreciates over time.

This has been the Mike Andes Podcast. We hope you enjoyed this episode. We have tons of lectures, interviews and more over on the Mike Andy's YouTube channel. But anyways, that's all we have for you today. We'll see you next time.

Sam.