I'm Spending $297K Before Making a Single Dollar

Hey everyone, it's Mike Andes, and today I'm gonna be sharing with you exactly how I plan to build a $1 million business in the next 12 months. I'm moving across the country to Dallas, Texas to do it, and I'm gonna show you all the money that I have spent in the past few weeks just getting ready for the project. So before we spend— before we get a single customer, before I mow a single lawn, before we make a single dollar in revenue, I've put over $200,000 into the business. And I want to show you exactly what that budget is. And this is a— this project of getting to $1 million within a year is very different than a project that I did a few years ago where I went from $0 to $1,000 in daily revenue, but in 30 days. Because here's why it's different. Number one, my budget when I started that first project was about $50,000 is what I spent to get the business off the ground. In this case, I'm spending over $200,000 before we even make a dollar in revenue. But the amount of revenue that we make in the first year will absolutely be much greater with this project. And so this whole project is about how you can scale quickly. This is not necessarily saying that you need hundreds of thousands of dollars for a lawn care business or any home service business. Most home service businesses for less than $5,000, you can get started. And for most people, that's how they should get started. But if you're looking at much more as an investment or wanting to scale quickly, this is going to be the roadmap. And I want to be fully transparent about what I'm spending, before we even get started to make the business grow that fast. So I know that there will be people that will say that I'm dumb because I'm spending hundreds of thousands of dollars doing something that they could just do for nothing. And you don't need money to start such a simple business. And I would say I agree with you to start one. You do not need that kind of money to start a business where I'm going to work less than 10 hours a week on the business. I need a general manager. I need infrastructure to scale quickly to $1 million. And so if that's not for you, You do not need everything I'm about to talk about, but realize that if you're going to scale quickly and not be in the daily operations like I'm going to be, you'll have to spend money. So I want to share the budget. The very first thing and the biggest item on the budget so far has been 4 vans. So we got Promaster high ceilings, 2026. And we did this because if they're high, the high top, that allows us to be able to drive the stand-on zero turns into the back on a ramp and be able to not have to duck way down. So those are the 4 vans. We got them relatively new, so under 10,000 miles. They're 2026, so this year's version. They're $42,000 apiece. And so let's just say $168,000 total for just the vans. Now this is the biggest item, and it's also the one that could very easily be Financed. So everything I'm talking about today, I'm paying with cash, but you don't have to. You could absolutely finance your trucks, your equipment. The bigger items on this list are actually financeable. I'm just looking at from a strict perspective of what's the dollar amount, and because I'm doing it with cash. But yes, you could probably get in this for 10, 20% down and finance the vehicles, finance the equipment, finance a lot of this. I'm just choosing not to do so. So 4 vans, $168,000. Those are the Ram ProMasters that we are getting. Okay, the next thing we got is 4 ramps. So on the back of those vans, we're putting ramps. We have a preferred vendor at Augusta Lawn Care. They're $5,000 apiece. We get them shipped to one of their distributors and then they install them. So that's literally happening this coming week. So 4 of these ramps, all in for 4 vans is $20,000. Approximately. Again, this is all at the top of my head. So if I'm off by $1,000, forgive me. I'll get really precise and show a lot of the paperwork down the road. But $20,000 for the 4 ramps. Now these ramps, the reason we actually got the ProMasters is because of these ramps. And on the back of the ProMaster, they're flat. Whereas with the Sprinter and the Ford Transit, they have a little bit of a bend to them on the back of the doors. Whereas with the ProMaster, because it's flat, we can remove the doors, make a ramp that is very secure and waterproof and water doesn't get in. So obviously there's other ramps I'm sure that work, but we have a preferred vendor at Augusta specifically that other owners have used that they like and that the ramp is long enough to where the mower can get up over the crest of it without scraping the bottom of the deck. And so because it's already been used, we know it's secure and solid. It is an expensive ramp. Like, yes, you could probably put, pieces of plywood or like 2x6s and try to get a mower in the back. But like, we're trying to do this at a very different scale and different size of business. So $20,000 for the 4 different ramps. And then we wrapped, we're going to be wrapping, I should say. So wrapping all the vans. And so we have a preferred vendor that has hundreds of locations across the US. I'm thinking right now it's probably about $1,200 a pop for the wrap. It's probably gonna be more actually. It's probably like $3,000. I apologize. I was thinking half, but we're doing the full one. So $3,000 a pop, let's just say $12,000. is gonna be for the, the, just the wraps. Now these are full wrap of the entire van. So the Augusta brand shows max. It's just a big billboard driving around all the time. And in the long run, the reason we wrap our vans or our trucks is because this is where brand awareness comes into play. 'Cause all the neighbors of your customers, the people in their neighborhood, they see this all the time. And for everyone who's like, you don't need a wrapped truck, you don't need a wrapped truck, But in the long run, I want leads coming in 'cause people just see my crew out in the community. They see them doing great work. And if I have a rolling billboard right next to them saying, hey, call this number, this is our brand, they start to think about Augusta Lawn Care, Max, our mascot, the vehicles, what they look like, the quality of work. Whenever they think about lawn care, I want them to think about us. And in order for that to happen, it's easier if I have a wrap because my branding will stick better. So that's why I'm willing to pay the extra 3 grand.

Per van.

Okay, other costs we have are what we call Augusta Leads. So I paid $7,000. Again, this is all before we spend, we make $1 of revenue, all this is going out the door. It costs $7,000 for the whole year, but they're gonna, what they're gonna do for that $7,000 is run all my Facebook ads and all my Google ads, LSA, for the entire year. There is no, they don't take a percentage of how much I spend. So I'm planning to spend over $100,000 in marketing in the first 6 to 12 months to get to $1 million in annual recurring revenue. And I know again, I know for a lot of people like you don't need to do that, you just do all word of mouth. That's awesome, that's excellent. My whole goal with this project is to show how to scale very quickly without being in daily operations in a market I've never grown a business before, but using simple services and systems. And so part of that is I don't wanna be running ads myself. I wanna lean on people that have done it before. And we have a department at Augusta that the owners can use. And all they do every single day is just optimize Google Ads and optimize Facebook Ads. And so they'll be running all of those for me. I had to pay the $7,000 upfront, but that includes the entire year and all my Google Ads, all my Facebook Ads. And that's only about 7%, like less than 7%, 'cause I'm gonna spend well over $100 grand in marketing. Like, that's only 7% of what I'm spending on the ad platform. So it's a really good deal overall. Again, you're like, well, just, just run your ads yourself. Okay, you're right. But I can only spend 10 hours a week and I'm not going to be there after the first 6 months. So I need the business to run without me. I need to rely on my general manager. I need to rely on systems like Command Center, Augusta Leads, other people to do work for me because I can't be there running it all myself and juggling everything.

Another big reason we're doing the Texas trip is to really stress test the Augusta Lawn Care systems, whether it be Command Center, instant quotes on our website, the Augusta leads department that runs all the ads.

What happens when we want to grow really fast?

And if that's of interest to you, and as you're watching the vlog, like, hey, I'd like to start a few of these locations myself, definitely feel free to book a call with Lee. He is going to go through your market. We're going to do a 20 to 30 page analysis on whether your market works well for the Augusta model. And He's going to make sure it's a good fit for you and for your business and for your family. So if that's of interest to you, down in the description there is a link to book a call with Lee where you can scan the QR code. It'll be a one-on-one call. It's not high-pressure sales. We want to make sure it's a good fit for you. It's a good fit for Augusta Nation.

That we have for all the owners of Augusta Lawn Care. Actually, this building is going to be the future place where we train all the owners, but right now it's in a different spot. And so he is working for about 4 weeks prior to us getting there and starting the business. So I got to pay him during that time. Now I found my general manager, John. He's a phenomenal general manager. I'm really looking forward to working with him, but I actually found him months ago. So I was running ads. I had hundreds of people apply. I then sifted down about 40 to 50 that I started doing back and forth with. We did video interviews and Loom back and forth, and I whittled it down to a small group of about 8 or 9, and then finally selected John. Now that was after traveling to Texas with my wife to visit John and his wife, take them out for dinner, get to know them personally, and just make sure that that was really cemented, that relationship. Because the number one most important thing in all of this is my general manager. The success of this location will hinge on that because I cannot be the leader in the daily operations of the business. I have to have a phenomenal general manager that will make sure quality control is high, Make sure that team culture is good. Make sure that the equipment and the vans are taken care of because they're going to be taken home with the crew. So the GM wages, I'm going to go ahead and include like the cost of me flying out there. I'm going to include the cost of the Indeed ads. I'm going to include the wages for like a month or so of the general manager. So it's got to be at least $15,000 when I take all that into consideration. Again, I'm talking about running the Indeed ads, me traveling down there with my wife for a couple of days, and then also the general manager's wages for the first month. So there's GM wages. Okay, another one we kind of glanced over is equipment. Now every single one of the vans is gonna have the exact same setup. So these 4 vans are going to be one for me so that while we're there for the challenge, I will have a van. It'll be the exact same setup as everyone else, all our technicians, so that when I leave in 6 months, I can just give the van to one of the crew since they'll be going into spring rush and they'll be growing. They can just use the van. So I'm not gonna have any different of a vehicle. And same thing is true with my general manager. And so these four vans are all exactly the same: same year, same model, same dimensions. Everything's exactly the same. So my general manager, he's going to have one of the vans, then the first two technicians, and then myself. And so we're going to outfit all four vans exactly the same. It's going to be a mowing setup, and then for the one van of the general manager, he's going to be the one that does most of the chemical applications. First off, because he has tons of experience. And he has his certificate, but most of the treatments that we're putting down actually don't require the applicator. But we're going to likely make it where most of his time is spent doing treatments 'cause they're more flexible with timing. So if a crew goes down or someone calls out or anything like that, he can step in if needs be to the mowing side that you can't just keep pushing off. Whereas the treatments, you have some flexibility a few weeks based upon the weather. to be able to get treatments done. And so his van will be set up as kind of a backup for mowing. So if something, a mower goes down, he can just go swap that out with the crew and keep them out running as most efficiently as possible. But also he'll be doing treatments with a more flexible schedule because he can move things around on the schedule with treatments. So when it comes to equipment, we're really looking at 4 mowers, trimmers, blowers, everything that's needed to outfit the vans, and then 1 Z-Sprayer for the general manager for his van. And so that is the setup. So I'm going to generalize this and just say, by the time we look at a zero-turn mower, we look at some trimmers, some blowers, a Z sprayer, we're probably looking at a solid, let's just call it $70,000. Again, I could be slightly off here. I'm just trying to, this is, we have not purchased this yet. So all of these we have purchased. The equipment we're purchasing in the next week or two, And we'll be looking at local dealers and seeing which ones we're going to use. We'll probably use a couple different ones and probably about $70,000. It might be a little bit less because my van won't need a mower. I'm not gonna be doing any work. So we might hold off on that 4th mower for my vehicle. So $70,000 in equipment. OK, another thing that we spent so far, again, before we have made one single dollar of revenue, we spent money on software. And again, I know that people are gonna be in the comments saying, you know, you could just vibe code all of this, or you don't need software, you don't need to spend money on advertising, you don't need a general manager. I understand that. I cannot be there in 6 months. I have to build the infrastructure to be able to leave the business and it still run well and continue to grow. Like, I've gotta build a million-dollar business in a year. I'm only gonna be there 6 months, meaning it has to keep growing after I leave. And in order for that to happen, I've gotta have a great general manager. I've gotta have backup when it comes to like, Advertising, command center answering the phones. So I don't have to like set up a whole team of office people and worry about that. I gotta have reliable vehicles. I can't go get used vans that are like 10 grand that need fixing every week. So there's definitely a lot of costs that if you're just getting started, you do not need. Now I am using cash for all of this. If you wanted to finance, you could absolutely finance some of your biggest tickets like the vans, the equipment, Sometimes your ramps, you could probably get that financed as well. So you could absolutely take my budget that I'm about to share and take 80% of it and just say, well, if I'm going to get loans or equipment debt or van loans, that I could get this way less cash upfront. I'm just sharing the cash price since we're using cash, but you could absolutely finance some of this. So in terms of software, I'm a huge fan of software to make sure everything goes smoothly. We are using HomeWorks. Obviously, I'm the founder of HomeWorks. So we're using that. I paid for the entire year upfront. So that's about $4,000 that I paid on the enterprise level. But the reason I bought it now is 'cause over the past couple weeks, the main thing I've actually been doing is setting up automations and making sure that everything is dialed in. 'Cause we're doing daily auto-billing for all of our services. Like, someone clicks complete and the card of the customer's being charged. We're not gonna have overdue invoices. We're not gonna have end-of-month billing. From a cash flow perspective, We're just charging the client. I wanna make sure that the customer's not getting a paid invoice receipt every single time, but they rather have a customer portal login. They can go in there, they can see, they can see their payments, they can pause service, they can do everything inside their customer portal. I've gotta set up all the automations though. I also have connected Claude to the MCP of HomeWorks, which is again, just like your AI assistant. You can plug in your chatbot directly into HomeWorks now. And so I've built a bunch of automations, one of which is, Initial mowing, I need to make sure that the general manager, John, at the end of each day is gonna go and change the price of that initial mow based upon our per-minute rate that we charge for the very first service. 'Cause almost all of our mowing services and our treatments are all gonna be sold over the phone at command center or from our website via instant quote form, every single one. There's no in-person estimates, it's very simple. And because of that, when someone gets their first mow, We charge a per-minute, per-man rate, which means in our software we've got to go back and adjust the price based upon how long it actually took. So I'm able to set up an automation like that though using Claude to just remind my general manager, John, at the end of each day, here's all the customers that had initial mow, here's how long it took, here's the price, can you just confirm this, make sure no one clocked out in or wrong or anything like that, and go ahead and charge the client. Also, I set up automations where it like leaves dispatch notes automatically in a lot of areas. I've set up, MTP reports to myself. So it'll send me more sales and like the projections for ads and new leads because I'm gonna be throttling the budget with the Augusta Leads team. That's the main thing I have to do is like, where are we spending the budget? What's our customer action cost on Facebook? What's our customer action cost on Google Ads? I'm gonna be monitoring that. So I want daily feedback on number of leads, where they're coming from, Where, like, are people seeing us on AI? Are they seeing us on Google? Are they mentioning our trucks? So when they call in, what are they mentioning in terms of where they saw us? So I'm gonna be monitoring that. That's gonna come for me though automatically from a report that I'm able to set up with HomeWorks and Claude. And then my general manager, John, is gonna be getting more operational reports on a daily basis. And I've set all of this up. That's why I bought it early, even though we're not doing any services right now. The software, I set it up though so I can get all the automations dialed in. I can set up MCP Access. I've connected the API. To a dashboard that I can run. It's literally 24/7 pulling data from HomeWorks and updating the number of recurring customers, what my churn rate is, how much monthly recurring revenue, what my annual recurring revenue is, what my 90-day churn is, my annual churn. Like I have this whole KPI dashboard that I was able to build and so that's why I've spent the money on the software. And so I got about $4,000 with HomeWorks and I've got like QuickBooks, And that's all being run by Command Center, like our bookkeeping. So I'm just gonna put $5,000 for now, although I did pay for that, like the annual upfront. So let's go ahead and add this all up. All right, we got $168,000. Let's add this all up. Oops, not the camera app. Okay, so we got $168,000 for the vans, then we got $20,000 $12,000 for the 4 ramps. Then we got $12,000, whoops, $12,000 for the wraps. Then we got $7,000 for paying the management fee for Augusta Leads for all of Facebook ads, all of Google ads. And they don't take a percentage in the future, so that's nice. And then $15,000 for the wages, Indeed, me traveling out to Texas to meet the general manager and his wife. And then our equipment, we're just kind of guessing right now because we have not purchased this yet, but we will before we get started. Obviously, we need the equipment. Another $70,000 and then $5,000 for software. I'm sure I'm missing a few miscellaneous things. And I'm sure that things like uniforms, things like that, we still got to buy. But right now, we're sitting at $297,000 as the budget. And we have not made one single penny in this business yet. And so I'm doing this Again, for full transparency, I don't want anyone thinking that I'm showing up there with no money in my pocket and I'm gonna scale a million-dollar business. Is that possible? Perhaps. But if you wanna have a business that runs without you and that I'm not gonna be in daily operations, I'm not gonna be hiring the team members, I'm not gonna be training them, my general manager's gonna be doing that, you're gonna spend more money. And so if you wanna go fast, this is the kind of model you're probably going to use. And we're gonna have to buy a couple more vans before I hit a million dollars. This is not all the money that will go into this location. There's a very good chance by the time I spend money on marketing that we will probably spend about $400,000, $500,000 to get this business from, from $0 to $1 million within 6 to 12 months. And so I want to document this, have the budget in place so that you can always see what it is. And I'll update this as time goes on throughout the project. But before we made a dollar, we spent almost $300,000 just to get on a customer's property and start generating revenue. So if that's scary to you, that's fine. You don't need $300,000 to start a lawn care business. When I got started, I got started for like under $1,100 because we bought a push mower from Lowe's, a weed whacker from Lowe's, and a blower, a little handheld blower from Lowe's. My brother and I, I was 11 years old, we got started that way. And we grew that to about $30,000 per year in pushing a lawn mower around our neighborhood and making money. Paid my way through college. So you don't need $300 grand to get started. if you're gonna do a smaller scale. If you wanna go fast, this is the budget I've currently spent so far, and so when you see how fast we grow, realize that there's a lot of investment and time in finding a general manager, setting up the software, making sure that all the systems are in place so that when we get there we can hit the ground running.