I told my team to get ANOTHER JOB...

And we were actually one time, $199,950. Like we were $50 away from being at $200,000 in monthly revenue. I would really love for Marcus to be able to hit 200,000 before he moves down to start his own location in a few months. So it really just comes down to whether or not we hire more people and use that to be able to pull jobs forward and get the work done. This morning, though, is the morning meeting we are going to over the July 2022 financials for the location. And we're also this morning talking about start.

Start making money, even if it's on the side, without an employer and having something that you can do independently of a boss. And the reason for that is because first and foremost, even if it's something small, like 500 bucks a month or a thousand bucks a month on the side, you start having multiple streams of income. And everyone always thinks multiple streams of income, like, oh, I've got real estate and I have multiple businesses. I'm going to have like these stocks and all the rest of it. Look, if you had a job that you're working, you know, every single day at, and then you have something on the side that you do, and then maybe you start doing something online, you can have just a couple, few little small 500 bucks a month, 600 bucks a month, that makes a massive difference. This is the one day that I show up to the Bellingham shop and I do a 7:30am Optional meeting that people don't have to come to, but they can come to. They want to talk about investing, business, their career, etc. It's completely optional, whatever it is, photography, doing something, some other skill that you can do on freelancer.com or craigslist or whatever. And you know, all of a sudden that's a thousand bucks a month. That thousand dollars, throw it into some sort of investment, a couple years later you have 25 grand. That's enough to go buy a house. Regardless of whether or not you want to do that full time and be a business owner really doesn't matter. But starting a second stream, a third stream, doing something on the side, like for example, with every little thing you look at, you can make a business out of it. And then we have the regular 750 meeting with the entire team. It's really hard when you do break a fence. It's like, hey, how do we get the exact same board for this fence? It's tough to get the same thing. And they all have certain stains on them and things of that nature. But you're able to go to a hardware store. You got those panels, you got a nail and some hammers. You got it fixed pretty much right away for them. So that was pretty quick. You got it fixed. So I really appreciate that.

All right, so this morning, I've already had several meetings. We had with Marcus, then with Lee, then at command center, then with the media team. You might not notice, but with the media team, we gotta be really clear. I have to be really clear with them what's included and what's not. Like, what do we not show in the vlogs? And then what do we show? Because I actually don't to vet the vlog very much. We have yet to cut anything out where I'm like, hey, don't post this, or, like, take this out. So they have to have, like, a really good pulse on, like, what I want in the vlogs and is allowed to be shown versus things that, like, cannot be said. Names, things like that. So, so far, so good. And now I'm headed down to Mount Vernon to do some interviews as well as check in on the progress of the property, which is wrapping up today. And then we gotta figure out installation of some electrical and a septic tank. So that'll be a lot of fun.

By the way, if you are interested in becoming a general manager for Augusta Lawn Care, you can apply using the link in the description. It's going to be the very top of the description if you're thinking about becoming a general manager. Now, this might not mean that you're necessarily a general manager for one of my locations. It could mean for anybody in Augusta Nation. So what I've done in the past when I ask for GMs, is we put together a roster and then we give it to all of our franchisees. So if they're trying to start their second or third location or I'm starting starting one of my locations, we tap into that, see who on there is the most qualified and potentially might be in the market close to where we're wanting to start another location. Now, what's really cool about being a general manager, whether it be from one of my locations or one of the other owners in Augusta Nation, is you get the exact same training, and you come to training just as if you were becoming an owner. So it's a really great way to get started. Even if it's something you're going to do for two, three, or four years and then go start your own location, it's a great Place, place to get started. I know specifically right now there's actually a couple locations looking for a general manager, so definitely apply. I know in Tennessee, in Washington State and Texas, there's already a few people looking for general managers in Augusta Nation. So definitely, if you're interested, if you have experience leading and managing people, definitely apply down below. And the salaries and all the rest of it, it's going to vary based upon your location. But typically a GM that I have is going to run the location as if they were an owner, do all the employing, all the hiring, all all the buying decisions, and they're going to get a salary plus a good cut of any profits that they make from that location. I really see being a GM as a really good place to get started without the risk. Maybe you don't have 40, 50, $60,000 to get your own location started and off the ground, but it's a great place to like get your feet wet, learn about management, learn about the systems that we talk about at Augusta Nation and whether you start your own Augusta Lawn Care location or another business, it's just a great place to get started. The biggest requirement is being able to lead and manage other people. If you like following systems and procedures and you like living by the book, this is gonna be a great opportunity for you to the best GMs are the ones that follow the systems religiously and they're good at execution. It's all about creativity and coming up with new things like, here's the systems here, how they work, here's your budget. Go execute. If that sounds of interest to you, definitely look at the link below.

So I just finished an interview here, down here at the Mount Vernon location. We got ourselves a winner. Probably gonna offer him a job. Looking forward to it. He actually worked down in Alaska for the fisheries, so we'll offer him a position. One of the things I love about Augusta is our daily masterminds that we have with franchisees. And I go over Q and A, we talk about investing and all the rest of it. Now what's really interesting at Augusta Lawn Care, we have seven stages of wealth in Augusta Nation. The first one is literally building your business to $500,000 in annual revenue. The seventh stage is literally investing in other asset classes like real estate, the stock market, etc, and learning that game. And my goal is to them through all seven of those stages, not just the first one, just growing a business and getting it off the ground, but all the way to where they're actually divesting into other asset classes. Now A really good question came this morning and that was, why does it seem like sometimes the advice you give is actually completely opposite? Their analogy was, well, in the Bible, God doesn't change his mind. He doesn't like, tell them different things. He's consistent about what he wants done, the rules, the regulations, right, etc. And I said, look, it's very important to know the context of a business when it comes to advice, because, for example, I would tell Someone that's under 500,000 in revenue to only focus on close ratio. That's the only thing that matters. Whereas someone who has a million dollar business and is thinking about multiple locations or potentially trying to not be renting anymore, but buy the real estate, have a rental property house, hack it, get an Airbnb, cover the entire mortgage of that property and have an asset that's going up in value and not have to basically have rent free for their shop space. It's a win, win, win when it comes to business and investing and growing their net worth. And so why does it seem like it's so different? It's all about context of what the size of the business is. So if I'm telling someone to focus on their team and focus on leadership and management, they're probably a larger business. If I'm telling them to only focus on marketing and investing money into markets, the only thing that matters, probably in the first stages of their business getting that first step of wealth and agustination, is 500,000 in annual revenue. And so I was thinking after the mastermind about their analogy when it came to the Bible, because they did. Hey, things do not change throughout the Bible. And here's the deal. You could theoretically say that God changed His mind because in the Old Testament he required the shedding of blood and killing goats and doves and cows every single time he came to church. It was like, kill the calf because you got to have an atonement for your sin. Blood has to cover your sins. And that did not change. However, you could say that God changed His mind because in the New Testament he didn't require that anymore. He didn't require goats to be killed and sheep to be killed. And you'll bring your sheep and get it killed and get blood on your hands. He didn't require that anymore. And it's not to say that he changed his mind. He still required an atonement for sin. He still required blood, but it had changed from blood of bulls and goats to his own son. And so this is the thing, when it comes to your business is what I'm saying. Whether you're listening to myself or anyone else that's giving advice about business, you have to remember the context of the business size. It's very, very important. What goes for company getting started is not the same advice for the person that's growing a large company. It's not to say that that is contrary or different or opposing each other. It's different stages of building a successful business. At certain stages, you need to focus on certain things a lot more than other times.

It's time for a public service announcement. Last month, July 2022, the media team, we did $67,000 in revenue. Alright? Now our expenses were $66,400. We made a whopping $660 in total profit for the entire month. Now I do that on purpose. I run the media side of the business very much so. In terms of the more money we make, the more money we spend and making the content better and hiring more people, etc. And we're making more tools available like lawn care. Businessforsale.com it's going to be another tool for the industry. And so I spend all the money. However, we got to pay the bills. And yet I don't want to have a bunch of sponsors and people saying what I can and cannot say. Because some people would literally take what I just talk about, the Bible and be like, we don't want to have our content associated with that type of content. We want to have our product associated with that. You can't say that. And guess what? I'm not gonna bend what some sponsor wants me to talk about on my vlog. So in order to do that, we're gonna have to make some pay for the bill moments. Paying for the bills means that instead of me pitching things, I don't like to pitch it. Really. I like if you see value and if it'll help your business, I want you to buy it. I really believe that all the products I make are gonna help you, but I don't want to pitch them. So what we're going to do is Stephen, with his magicking magic editing abilities is going to put a little ding and then he's going to link up whenever I mention P4P software or landscapebusinesscourse.com or any of those other things. And that way it's not a pitch. And yet we still pay the bills. And those are the cows and they seem happy. And we're just rolling up on the Mount Vernon location. It's looking good. Okay, so here's the problem. I do not have a key for this house. I don't have any of the keys. Liz has the keys. However, I'm supposed to be here today to let the guy that supposed to set up the Internet, he's supposed to come inside the house and set up the Internet. I do not have a key. I don't know if I'm gonna have to break a window or what, but I think everything is locked. Should be locked. Oh, man. I do not want to drive 45 minutes back to command center just to get a key. This is ridiculous. We're gonna check all these windows and see if they're unlocked. I literally thought about crawling through the dog door. But the problem is this just goes into the mud room and then this is locked. Stupid. All right, what's going on back here? We are contacting. I'm actually just in my car on my laptop and because interviewed that guy and I want to go ahead and hire him. What's really cool is I can just go to what we call our dashboard and fill up this form. And then command center takes over from there. They, they're going to make sure they get a docusign, sign all of their payroll documents, get them set up in QuickBooks, set up inside the CRM and make sure everything is ready to roll. So that way, Monday, they are already logged into their app and everything. So those are not a docusign with all the employment documents. It's really, really simple. I don't even know how to do it all, but I just fill out the form, they take care of it all. Boom. And just like that, your information has been submitted. Two to three business days are required for full on boarding to be completed. Let's go. Gotta write out the final invoice here. 9500. And then I just send a picture of that to command center and they take care of the cookbooks. Let's go. As you might have figured out, I don't like really having paper. So receipts like this, I take a picture, I send it to command center and then I scrunch it up. Bye. Bye. Okay, so can't find a key. Nothing is unlocked. Can't break any of the windows. So I had to call and reschedule the Internet. No Internet for another week. But it's not a big problem. We don't have any renters and we aren't moving until next week anyways for the shop. So it's okay. So this is the end result. We got our driveway 15ft wide, comes in all the way through here it's been compacted and comes all the way back to this base back here where we're going to park all the trucks, the trailers. This is going to be the future home of Augusta Lawn Care of Mount Vernon. Got the rental property over there. And next week gonna be installing a fence as well as a tiny house for Airbnb. We should be able to make about 7, $8,000 per month in revenue using the property. And the mortgage is 3,000, including taxes and insurance and all that fun stuff. Which insurance is a little bit more expensive here because I don't know if you can see, but there's an actual levee over there to the river and we are in a flood zone. So flood zone insurance, not a good combo. But that house we should be able to rent out for at least $3,000. And then we should be able to get $3,000 a month on the Airbnb rental per month. And then this is probably worth at least a thousand dollars in terms of just shop space being able to dump here. And we're going to get a nice fence in here for privacy. It's going to look great. And that's a really cool tree, by the way. Well, we better drive on it, make sure it's actually safe, you know, test the waters. Gravel's done. Next week that fence will come in. So we won't actually be able to do this little loop that I'm about to do. This is where the tiny house will be. This is where all of the trucks, trailers, etcetera Will be. I'm just hoping I don't get stuck because although this is compacted, it's still relatively thick, loose gravel. Let's go.

I'm just in communication with the electrician because at the light, turn right onto East Division Street. Interrupting me. I'm just in communication with the electrician because on the tiny house, I'm thinking about putting a hot tub in the back area. I think literally it'll increase the value per night bike. In half a mile, turn left onto North La Ventra Road. I think it'll increase the value of that airbnb by like 40 to 50 a night. So if we can get like a 3,4000 dollar hot tub small one, it's like a two person one. But, but because of that, we gotta increase the amperage of the wire from probably 50 to like 80amp wire and panel. So gotta get that done.

All right. Everyone seemed to really like the S estimates that we did yesterday. We did a few of them. You can watch Yesterday's vlog, but it's actually for a property management company we do a whole bunch of work for. Sounds like the backyard has not been cut. So this looks a duplex. Oh, wow, look at this. Completely overgrown. I think it's vacant. This whole area needs to be knocked down. Oh, yeah, look, this is completely overgrown. It seems like they are kind of trying to do it as cheaply as possible. Am I at the wrong house? I don't know. Is this. Oh, it's like a four plex. It's all connected Here, see what's in the background? We got some mowers. So it looks like the front yard was mowed. We didn't do it. Someone's living in there. There's ac. Okay, this is the wrong place. The front yard looks really good. Said the backyard is what it needed. Oh, I see they're on the patio area. They want this cleaned up. Completely overgrown. Let's look in the backyard. This kind of a weird. Oh, yeah, this is what they're talking about. Check this out. Okay, so we're gonna need to weed whack all this. Got trees literally touching this house. But we're not doing this building. We're just doing this one. Okay, well, I gotta get back to that gate. Okay, let's see what's back here. Mercy. Okay, yeah, it's overgrown. All right. So, yeah, it's a vacant. Vacant house. Property management needs us cleaned up now. That's one way to do weed, Berry. Just put an actual tarp. Mercy. Okay, so this is not very big at all, but you gotta knock all this down. Okay? It's pretty straightforward. I don't even need to make a video for the crew. This is very straightforward. Yeah, this will be easy. Gotta give him a price for cleaning this up, mowing all this and in the front yard.

Yeah. So all this needs to be done too. Okay.

Now, at this specific location, we are in what we call profit mode. We're not trying to grow as much. And so to do that, one of the things that we do to switch to profitability mode is we actually cut out in person estimates. We don't ever meet with a person and actually discuss their project. Now, if you do this, you're going to inhibit growth because there are people who need them to go over projects with you, you and visit with you in person as an estimator. We don't do that, though. It's only drive by estimates, which means we come whenever we want. And I can do 15, 20 of these estimates in a day, no problem. Whereas if I'm meeting with people and having scheduled appointments, I might be able to say 10 of those in a day, but definitely not 20. And so it makes you much more efficient as an estimator. And literally, you get twice as many estimates done, allowing you to be out in the field still working. If you're a general manager, an owner, that's at 4 or 5, 600,000 in annual revenue. So this next estimate is literally like half a mile from here. And I could knock out these all day long and be flexible with my schedule as an owner. If I'm still kind of in the field and managing the crew without having to have scheduled appointments that tie you up throughout the day, and you feel like you're running around with chicken, like a chicken without a head. Okay, so these properties, you got to be careful on these ones because they want a property cleanup and they're selling the house. You got to be careful because you could do all this work and then they move out of town. And guess what? You. You're not getting paid. I'm going to require prepayment. They have to pay before the job even gets started. Because you got to pull out all these weeds. Look at this. This is, like, crazy overgrown. All these flower beds got to get cleaned up. So the goal here is they're going to sell this house. We're going to do a cleanup and then mow it until it sells. Well, if it sells in a week, because we make it look beautiful, I want to make sure that invoice is paid prior to getting this work done. Very overgrown and mature weeds. Like, this is literally like a lawn inside of the bed. These weeds, you know, have been knocked down but would have otherwise been 3ft tall. We gotta make sure this is paid for prior to even touching this property. You gotta be very careful of houses that are going on the market or for sale, because if that person has no tie to the property in terms of the deed and they sign the deed over to someone else, guess what? You're not gonna be able to put any sort of claim on that house. And that's leverage that you're gonna want to use. If a client is not paying you, and that is you can't put a contractor lien on the property again. If the owner's just moved away and signed things over, you now have no leverage whatsoever. It was a good day. I still have a couple more meetings. Lawn CareWeb, design.com. we're rolling out a few things and working on some stuff, so have a meeting with them. And then I have an hour where I'm working on my email because then after that, 7pm I have Lee coming over and we're going to do an interview. So make sure you check that out. It's coming out this weekend and just. Interesting. Stephen, I don't know if you want to use that with the interrupt. At the next light, turn left.