I'm doubling down...GOING ALL IN!

It's not clickbait. I am spending almost a million dollars over the next several years doing exactly what I'm about to outline in this video. Franchise. Franchise. Franchise. Franchise. Franchise. Over the past several years, we franchised Augusta Lawn Care and Now have almost 100 locations around North America. However, I've also dabbled in real estate as a way to be able to have the debt required to continue scaling up Augusta. Scaling up a franchise, extremely expensive from a legal standpoint, from an accounting standpoint, there's a lot of red tape and registration and, and licensing that goes into every single state that we open up in. So I've always looked at real estate in the past as the way for me to be able to protect equity and then be able to tap into that equity when I need it in the form of debt for Augusta as we grow. Now, though, as I start to look forward over the next several years, I'm determined to really take a different angle at how we look at Augusta lawn care. And that is, I don't want to just attract people just getting started in lawn care, landscaping, and newbies. I also want to attract the investor type that is looking at Augusta Lawn Care and comparing it to every other franchise that is to similar simply a use and a return on capital. So when someone wants to buy a McDonald's franchise, for example, that franchise might do two, three million dollars in annual revenue, but they're going to have to invest a million, $2 million just to get that thing off the ground. Now, that 1 to $2 million might end up becoming 2 or $300,000 in annual profit. The typical franchisee for a McDonald's location is not just buying one location. And furthermore, they're not actually being an owner operator. They're not going to be there actually making milkshakes. They're not going to be the one actually flipping the burgers. They're looking at selling simply as an investment tool for their money. And when they look at the stock market, they look at real estate. But when they look at business, they say, hey, I can make 15, 20% return on my money versus the stock market or real estate, where I might make 10 or 5% return on my money, or if I go into bonds, 2 or 3%. So business is a great investment vehicle. And that's why a lot of times people will use franchises as a way to protect their wealth, using a system that's already tried and true and has a lot of metrics behind it. This is why the likes of Shaquille o' Neal owns Hundreds of franchises in terms of five guys and other restaurants and other concepts, simply because they believe in the product, they believe in the model. But more importantly, they believe in the numbers and the return on their investment. It's very common for a profession that has a lot of cash flow and income, like athletes, doctors, lawyers, et cetera, to want to invest in franchises because the return on their capital is so much better than investing in the stock market. Now, if a franchise has a proven model that is successful 80, 90% of the time compared to an independent business in the same industry that has 40 or, or 50% success rate, that is why most smart money, or money that is being deployed from an investor goes towards franchises. The majority of franchises that are started are actually not started by independent operators. They're owned by companies that own 20, 50, 100 different locations of that specific franchise. Now, don't worry, I'm gonna get to how I'm spending a million dollars on what I'm talking about in just a moment. But let me explain this. The reason a sophisticated investor would rather buy into a franchise compared to their own independent model is because of a track record. And they can see the, the success rate and what the return on capital is going to be. So, for example, If I spend $2 million buying McDonald's franchise and I get $200,000 in profit, that would be a 10% return on my money year over year. Now, a smart investor is probably going to leverage 1.5 of that, put $500,000 down, and therefore get a 40% return on their capital on an annual basis. So what I'm trying to do with Augusta Lawn Care is start getting it prepared for that type of investor. Now, before you jump in and say, well, you're losing the heart by having these larger investors that buy 10 locations at a time, let me just back out and just say one second. That is, last year, we literally started the solo operator model where someone can get started and not have any employees. They literally get started for $8,000. It's very, very cheap. However, I'm also wanting to be able to bring in a sophisticated investor that's strictly looking at the numbers. Now, we are by no means ready for that at Augusta Lawn Care right now. We're not ready for that growth. And we don't have a proven record where someone with a million dollars or wants to come in and start 10 locations. However, my goal is over the next few years to prove that that model will work. And that's where the $1 million comes into play. So what I'm doing over the next few years is spending almost a million dollars to make this a reality, and that is prove that owning 10 locations is a great business model and a great vehicle for this type of sophisticated investor. Over the next six months, my plan is to hire one of my general managers and promote them into becoming a regional manager. Now, the one that's going to be doing this, he's actually been a general manager for about a year and a half, has tripled the revenue at, and he's going to be the manager to all of my general managers as I begin to get more corporately owned or locations that I own. My goal is to prove that spending a million dollars on 10 Augusta Lawn Care locations will have a better return than spending that same $1 million on buying a Taco Bell or any other franchise opportunity. This is going to lead to massive growth for Augusta Lawn Care locations, and it will actually lead to the hockey stick kind of growth that we expect in a few years Leading up to that, we're really only appealing to owner operators. People are just getting started and that have under a coup million in annual revenue. That's fine, and that's good. And I want that to always be an opportunity for people to get started in Augusta Lawn Care. But I also want to prove that it's an investment vehicle and that it can be scaled to the point where If I have $50,000 and I want to invest it, it would be better spending that on another location in comparison to try to invest in the stock market or real estate or in cryptocurrency. The beautiful thing about investing in a business is that you have control over it. Of course, you don't have control over macroeconomic events like labor markets and economic shifts and recessions, but you do have a whole lot more control over your small business than you would over a public market, a stock exchange, or potentially an entire brokerage that might go bankrupt. So, yeah, that's my plan. Over the next few years, I'm going to spend a million dollars. Right Now I have four locations. I'm going to ramp that up to 10 locations, and my general manager being promoted to regional manager is going to manage those locations for me. You would consider me at that point a passive investor, because although I'm putting the money up, I'm not actively engaged in the daily operations of each of those locations. They'll do all the hir hiring, the marketing, the firing hr, et cetera, and then they'll be managed by my regional manager. I love real estate. I love the Stock market. I love investing in those vehicles, but honestly, I'm not interested in a 4 or a 5 cap or even an 8 or 10% return on my money in the stock market when I could do 20, 30% return over the course of several years. As I get a small business established and becoming very profitable. My goal over the next five years is to prove that this model not only works for one location, Augusta Lawn Care, but it absolutely works for 5, 10 and beyond. Unfortunately, because of franchise regulations, I am somewhat restricted in terms of how much I can share publicly with what these locations make. But my goal is that starting next year, I will show them as a portfolio of the locations that I own at the end of each year. So we can kind of track as we add the fourth and the fifth and the sixth and the seventh location. You can see the revenues, the profitability, and kind of see where the investments in this portfolio of 10 locations is going. And I don't plan to stop at 10 locations. I really believe in the model. The systems that we're building and the infrastructure that we're building now that I'm pouring so much money into and losing a lot of money is building the foundation that's required to actually scale and actually allow people to buy 10, 20 locations at a single time. And that's where I believe the brand and the power of the brand will really become evident. To be honest, when I see a founder not actively purchasing and owning their own locations inside of a franchise system, I become suspect. Why would you invest in other investment vehicles if you're not investing in the vehicle you've already created? I truly believe that my personal assets, my personal wealth and income is better spent on Augusta Lawn Care than in another investment vehicle like the real estate or, or the stock market. The challenging thing in the lawn care landscaping business is that from day one, you don't have tons of business. If you open up a McDonald's or Taco Bell the next day, literally you're having a ton of business. There's a lot of brand awareness, and immediately you have customers. Lawn care landscaping usually takes at least two to three years before you really see a profitability spike because there's a lot of ramp up in terms of getting customers one by one. And it's not like from day one you have maximum capacity because you have to constantly be hiring, getting more equipment and upgrading your fleet. I'm very much looking forward to having this new position in terms of regional manager and trying to scale this over the course of the next several years and I look forward to sharing that information with you all. If you've thought about taking your own business and making multiple locations, Whether it be 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or 100, check this video out here. I talk in depth about what you'll need to do at each stage of your business to grow multiple locations, whether that is corporately owned, you own them all, or you do the franchise route. Check it out here.