Interview: Starting and Building a Systems-Oriented Business

Hey everyone, this is Mike Andes and you're listening to the landscape business course podcast. Today is gonna be a different episode because it's actually a video that I have transcribed into audio. So if you want to see the video portion of today's episode, just go onto YouTube and search up Flip TV. That's the name of the company or the channel that interviewed me for this podcast or for this show. So this, during this episode they did some sit down, talk with interview with me. They also interviewed some of the employees that work at Augusta Lawn Care. I think they're there for the day and went out with the estimator and some of the crews and things like that. But I thought there was enough audio on here that you could learn. Take away some of the key points that I talk about. Nothing new or groundbreaking if you listen.

To the podcast all the time, but.

Maybe something that you want to listen to and then go watch the videos. They show some cool videos of our crews working and our shop and set.

Up and stuff like that.

So I'm gonna go ahead and share this with you again. You might hear some like blank spots with just music playing. That's when they have some B roll and some nice shots of the crew again. You can find it on YouTube if you go onto Facebook. You can see on landscape, business courses, Facebook group and things. There is also a link to this YouTube video, but without any further delay, let me go ahead and play this for you and hopefully you can hear something that is going to be beneficial.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Mike Gandies is the owner and founder of Augusta Lawn Care Services. Although he's only 24, he's well known in the industry for his podcasts and business landscaping courses that have garnered thousands of students and viewers. A true entrepreneur at heart, YouTuber, author of several books, and an owner of Mike Andy's Media, a recording studio and also Anytime Fitness, a gym. We're going to go in and interview Mike and ask questions like, how do we start a successful landscaping business? Do we need experience? Can we start without experience? How much does it cost? What equipment? And try to ask as many questions as we can to provide you with the best content. I'm excited. Let's go in and meet Mike.

Well, Mike, good morning. Thanks for having us.

Thanks, Paul.

This is Mike Andes, owner and founder of Augusta Lawn Care Services. So thanks for being with us. Upflip TV is an extension of uplift.com and we want to be able to interview successful owners and entrepreneurs like yourself and give back and help them understand how to start a landscaping business. So before we dive into the specifics about the business, we'd love to hear your story. Tell us where you come from, what's your background?

Yeah, so I started mowing lawns when I was 11 years old and basically did it as a way to pay my way through college. My brother and I both kind of started the business together. At the time it was called Andy's Lawn Care, our last name. And so we would push our lawn mower around our neighborhood and a wheelbarrow and knock on people's doors and ask if we could mow their lawn. And so that first year, we made $3,000 in revenue, which for an 11 year old, you basically think you're the next Bill Gates. And so at that time, we knew that we needed to make that money in order to go to college. Our parents had never gone to college. We had kind of seen what living paycheck to paycheck, I guess you could say what that felt like. And we didn't want that. So our way out kind of was going to college. And so I wanted to become a doctor. And I figured, hey, I'm gonna be in school for the next 20 years of my life, so let's get started early. So basically we started when I was 11, mowing lawns. When I was 13, I started college, and that was locally here at Whatcom Community College, and then transferred over to Western. But we basically did the lawn care to pay our way through school. And so we were able to get through school debt free. And that was kind of a big thing for us. And so that's why I started. And then when I finished my bachelor's degree, I had gone to Africa and done a bunch of shadowing over there, a bunch of work in the medical clinics and orphanages over in Kenya, and kind of came back to the US Feeling like the US medical system wasn't what I wanted to be investing my whole life into. So I looked at entrepreneurship as sort of my way to scratch the itch of playing with different things and trying to do good in the world that way instead of just medically. And so I ended up dropping my medical school application and started my MBA at Western in the evenings and at the same time started Augusta Lawn Care when I was 18. And so we've been doing it for about six years now and just started franchising the business around the country. And that's kind of where we're going right now.

As far as your upbringing, has anything in your life occurred, happened that really contributed to your success now.

Yeah, like, how I determine success is probably a little bit differently. I think success is really about being content. That's how I look at happiness. But in terms of contributing to that, I would say there's really two things that really spurred that. One was going to Africa when I was 18, 17, 18 years old, and I went there about six weeks, volunteered in some orphanages and clinics and things, and just to see sort of people that have nothing. You know, kids that have been abandoned by their parents, thrown out, you know, people thrown off trains, thrown in fires, whatever. Now orphans being as happy as they could possibly be, having nothing in this world, and yet being so fulfilled and content and so seeing that as a baseline for happiness, it was really important for me. So despite the success financially or money or business or whatever, having that as a baseline of what real true success is and contentment was really powerful for me. Secondarily, on August 4, 2016, it was the same day my first book was published. On that same day, I got into an accident at work and basically got trapped in the PTO of a dump truck, and it strangled me. So the PTO is kind of basically the thing underneath a dump truck that spins really fast. It drives basically the energy for the dump to work, and so it has a lot of force that taps into the engine and basically is the motor behind the dump system. So I went underneath it, caught the back of my hoodie, which is a dumb thing to do. I was stupid to go underneath, but it caught the back of my hoodie and strangled me and went to the hospital and things. Fortunately, I was okay. Went, you know, was able to come back to work after a couple weeks, but it was a kind of a wake up call. Slash, you know, after that feeling like I was on borrowed time, I could, you know, kind of. I was lucky to still be alive. And so those are kind of two pivotal points for me.

Someone who's starting a landscaping business and he has one or two employees. Tell us about the strengths of Mike as your boss.

Okay.

What do you love about him that others can replicate and apply in their own business, in their own life?

He cares about people. He's the most generous person I've ever met. And everything about his life is pouring himself out for others. So how he talked about himself seems like he's accomplished a lot. He's accomplished way more. So he discussed building an orphanage or discussed the orphanage. He built the orphanage for the 70 children that were there, funded the project. He bought the land, he built the building he hired the children and taught them trades. So now those kids are now working and supporting themselves. So he's very humble. So he gives and gives, and he probably sleeps two hours or less a day.

Two hours or less.

So how do you not follow a leader like that?

Right.

Mike, If I've got no money, I'm a teenager. How do I start a landscaping business? Where do I start? Give us some of the basic steps that you would take to make a successful business.

Yeah, I would say the beautiful thing.

About lawn care and landscaping, for someone wanting to get started, there's a low barrier of entry. You don't need thousands and thousands of dollars. You don't need big debt. You don't need a bunch of employees or a big office like this. Even, like, you can start off really small. So when we started, we started. We started with $1,000, bought a blower, a weed eater, and a mower. It's really all you need. And at the time, my brother and I weren't old enough to even drive, so we would just walk around. Our neighborhood eventually upgraded to a van, and we throw the mowers in the back of the van. However, the beauty of starting the lawn care business is that you don't need a bunch of money. You don't need a bunch of trucks. You can get started for nothing.

Well, what if I have no money at all? Zero. And tomorrow I want to go out and start a business? What are somewhat creative ideas or things that you would recommend that would not limit me from doing fulfilling that dream?

I would go. If I had zero dollars and all I had was some good working hands. I would walk down the street and I would figure out which properties need work done. I would knock on their door and say, hey, look, Mr. Jones, I can do this, this, and this. It's Gonna cost you $1,000. Whatever it might be. Trimming a bush, pulling weeds, moving a bunch of debris. Maybe it's after a windstorm. You go out and do this, and you find a bunch of branches, and it's going to cost you $1,000. Can I have that money? Yes. They give you $1,000, then you go buy the brake, the mower, whatever it is, and you get started. I think most people just analyze way too much. They think about it way too much. It's just that simple to get started. And I think getting started is the biggest hurdle for most people.

We looked at the landscaping industry as a whole, and we realized that 74% of all the landscaping companies maybe make more than 50 a year. And then that smaller fraction, about 24 to 26%, contribute to 1 million plus.

Yep.

What do you think the difference between that first group and the second group is?

Yeah, I always say to get to like 500,000 a year in annual revenue for landscapers. If you're going to get to 500,000, generally what I see the characteristics being that the entrepreneur is very strong and usually they're very strong in sales. That will get them to 500,000 revenue pretty easily a million in revenue. You're gonna need systems, you're gonna need procedures. You're gonna have a system for estimating, a system for following up with your sales. You're have a system for converting a lead into a paying customer and then how to convert them into a recurring customer and how to convert them into a customer that gives, you know, tells their friends and family, makes online reviews. And so you need to have a system for all of that. And so what we've done recently is launch the franchise for Augusta to really give those systems to, to people just starting out and they don't have to figure over the course of five or ten years they can have those systems from the beginning. The automations, the software, the things that we've created here so that they can build the business to a million plus, because it's not going to be one entrepreneur even. I don't care how hard you work, you're not gonna be able to make a million in this industry by yourself. You're gonna need great people, and those great people are gonna have to follow great systems in order to make a great business. And so it's imperative to have the people, the processes and those systems that will drive that business forward.

So are you saying the first ceiling that's tougher to break through is gonna be the 5000 to 500,000 or is there?

Yeah, I kind of break it up in a few different. It's a good question. So $250,000 is generally what I see as a step, the first big milestone for a landscaping business. Because at 250, the business owner is getting stretched. Because generally you get the landscaper, the owner, he starts out, then he gets like one employee. Then at 250, though, he usually has a second crew and he's still out in the field. He or she is out in the field. The owner's still out in the field. They're at every job, they're always on the phone. You know, guys, any questions are going to him or her. And so 250 is a stretching point. Because you have the owner out in the field, but then having a bunch of estimates and calls and customer service questions and all these things happening. And so at 250, they've got to make this decision, okay, am I really going to go to 500? Because if you're going to get to 500, you usually need some office support. So usually that's going to be someone answering the phones, emails, doing billing, sending the estimates, things like that. And so that's the first step is like 250,000. At 500,000, you really got to make the decision, okay, are we going to stay here, maybe have one office person, or are we going to go for a million? If we're going to go for a million, it's usually the entrepreneur, the business owner steps 100% into sales. So no longer are they doing anything on site. We, we call this like out of the field. They're no longer building the walls, trimming the bushes, installing the mulch, raking the beds. They are sales. They're doing all the estimates. They're figuring out how do we drive top line revenue. And then you have people in the office that are facilitating customer service, project management, and you have guys out in the field working. And so having those systems in place is really important to get to that point. And those are sort of the demarcations I see. It's like a quarter million. There's that stretch of like not when you need to start working out outside of the, outside of the field, working on the business instead of in the business. At 500,000, you have that office staff in place. And it's really about driving to the next level. The next place is really for the business owner to be full time salesperson estimates driving top line revenue.

What are some things that I think would put you ahead of your competition when it comes to creating opportunities for, for people looking to start a landscaping business or work for you.

Yeah. So the pay for performance thing is our big kick right now. Right. In terms of finding employees, not a.

Lot of people are doing that.

No. And in my opinion, it's partly due to the fact that it's not easy to implement, it's not easy to get established. There's a lot of questions. You got to figure a lot of things out. There's not a lot of software out there for figuring out a pay for performance type model. Basically, when I say pay for performance, the more money they make for the business, the more more money they make personally. In terms of right now, with the business that we created, Augusta, it's also finding franchisees because now we're franchising the business too. Right. So that's a whole different story of how do you find franchisees that are aligned with the culture and the mission of the business to expand across the country.

Hey, Seuss.

Hey, Seuss. Good to meet you. How did you end up with Augusta?

What was it? Craigslist ad, actually.

Yeah.

So, like, they have ads everywhere. I've seen them on Facebook. Craigslist, indeed. And so after I saw them there, I just applied right away.

Anything particular stand out about this company versus others?

Let's see. Well, pay period is definitely different. And then also the fact that there are no crew leads. It's like everyone's kind of equal. I got like pro scapes and Dolonic. You have crew leads. And sometimes that creates some issues among, like, the different crews because sometimes, like, crew members don't like the way crew leads are leading the landscaping jobs. But the fact there are no crew leads here and everyone's kind of equal makes it a lot more different and kind of like makes the dynamic a lot better, honestly.

That's awesome.

Do you lease or purchase most of your equipment?

We buy it all.

What's the better option?

Yeah, we buy it all. So I really recommend for, like, trucks, for example, that people buy second hand, cheap. The reason for that is because, first of all, we paint our trucks yellow. So if they're scratched up, I don't really care. We're gonna paint them, they're gonna look brand new, and we're done. And secondly, because, you know, in the landscaping industry, they're on dirt, they're on equipment, they're on rocks. Like, they're gonna get dented, they're gonna get, you know, chipped, they're going to get scratched. It's just part of the work. And so I don't cry if I have a four or $5,000 truck that gets dented. If I had a $70,000 truck and it got dented, I'd start crying. Or if I had a leased vehicle that I know is going to be a big payment or a big insurance issue, having that dent, that's going to become a big problem. And so the resale on a landscaping truck is horrible. If I buy a $70,000 vehicle, it's probably going to be worth 15,000 in a few years because of the dents, the wear and tear, the dirt, all of that stuff. And, you know, salting and plowing, it's just very hard on the vehicle. So I always recommend someone secondhand and buy them brand, you know, out, you know, just from Craigslist or whatever for.

The trucks and look for used stuff for equipment.

We will buy new traditionally just because it has a little better resale value. And we don't know how that equipment has been mishandled. Whereas I can get a Carfax on a truck and know where it's been and what's happened to it. I don't know if someone's, you know, tore out the wrong engine size on a mower or a skid steer or a track loader. And those can be big liability issues. So we do buy our equipment all brand new.

So you guys go through seasons in the year, walk us through those seasons and what you guys do in the, in the winter, what a landscaping employer or business owner can look forward to doing in the winter and different seasons of the year.

Yeah, so like, we're franchising all over the US Right now. And one of the challenges is that every single climate's a little bit different in this industry. It's not like computers that, you know, pretty much generally used the same way all across the country, you know, using software, watching videos, movies, whatever. Whereas with landscaping, every single climate, literally 200, 300 miles from here, can be very different in the way that what type of services are performed, what time of year they're performed, what, what the weather's like, wet, dry, what type of equipment is needed. And so it's pretty fascinating to see how the seasons do affect us so much. So in many areas of the country, some people will have plows for their truck and they'll do snow plowing throughout the wintertime because they have snow for three months out of the year. So I just got back from Chicago, and that's what they do, salting and plowing. Here, we don't have as much snow, and so we do have snow plowing. We do offer that. But we also are trying to get creative with other ways to keep the guys busy, to make sure that they can still get their hours. And that's just a very creative process every year based upon, you know, if there's storms, we're new cleanups, we're going to do tree work, we're going to trim bushes. You know, if there's a big rainstorm, maybe it's, you know, creating drains for people and, you know, making sure that there is plenty of drainage on their lawn. So lots of just getting creative during those slow times. I feel like during those times, it's really important to have systems in place for marketing that are push play. In other words, you know, if it's an email marketing campaign that you can send out to all of your customers and get more business when things do slow down and really trying to control that lead flow so that when you need more business, you can send an email or you can put up an ad out and you have a system in place that's gonna predictably bring in leads during those slow times where, you know, when you spend X amount of dollars, you get X amount of leads. And being on the cutting edge of that is very challenging. Knowing whether it be Facebook ads or Google Ads algorithm or, you know, Google local services, or all these different things that are changing every single day and just trying to figure out what's the ROI on spending dollars in that area. And that's the beautiful thing about paid media is you can control the lead flow, right? If I'm depending strictly on word of mouth, I'm depending on somebody else to bring leads to me. Whereas with paid media, if you can figure out what your customer acquisition cost is, you can have a dependable lead flow that you dictate. Like when you want more, you turn the faucet on, right? When things are. When you're booked out six weeks, you can turn it off. And so that's the beauty of knowing having a system behind paid media.

If you take your monthly gross income for the business, how much of that percentage wise are you spending on acquiring new customers?

Not a whole lot. I'd say it's about 1 to 2% on average for the year in terms of paid media. How you break that down a little bit different. Tucson, when I say 1 to 2%, I'm talking about like Google, Facebook, you know, if we do mailers or whatever like that, there's another percentage that we're not taking into account, which is the of part. Part of marketing, in my opinion, which is our intra packets that we give to every estimate that we go to uniforms. Those are all, in my opinion, parts of marketing, Whether it be painting a truck, putting the decals on, all our trucks are yellow. There's a reason why we do that. It's part of marketing, right? And so 1 to 2%, I would say, is paid media. Google Ads, Facebook ads are the kind of ones we focus on, and then probably another couple percent in other types of marketing. And really, in my mind, everything we do is a form marketing, Whether it be the way we answer the phone, the way we shake someone's hand, the way we mow their lawn, the way we park on the Road. That's all a form of marketing. And so I feel like having that understanding is what will lead someone to a really good lead flow of source of leads coming in.

So, Mike, tell us when you start a business, I think there's a tendency to want to do a lot of different things, thinking that that's the success model. Do this, do this. And you talk about residential, you talk about you don't do irrigation. Walk us through some of the pitfalls that I think a landscaper, owner, landscaping owner could get into that doesn't contribute to the bottom line. So what are some of the mistakes that they make on that end by doing way too much rather than just focusing on two or three or four services that really contribute to the business?

First of all, I think the biggest mistake in our industry is people get romantic about their equipment because most of us like our trucks and our nice shiny mowers. And at the end of the day, those are not a business. That's probably the biggest mistake that I always feel like landscapers in this industry make is we love our equipment, our big shiny trucks and brand new $15,000 mowers. Like those are $15,000 zero turn mowers that will sit on someone's lawn. And at the end of the day, we're mowing someone's lawn for 20, $30. So, like, it doesn't make economical sense.

So you need to start out and go for all that fancy equipment, as in the smart choice.

Yeah. Not to say that the equipment isn't good, it's more efficient, you make more money, whatever. But to make that the thing that they're striving for, or that is the measure of their success, is how big their trucks are, how new their trucks are, how many trucks they have, what type of equipment. They get really into that sort of thing. That's probably the biggest mistake. The second mistake is just what you mentioned, and that is trying to be everything to everybody. And so, yeah, we fell into that. And so last year we cut out services like irrigation. We used to do artificial turf. You know, you saw the putting green out there. We don't do that anymore. We sold our big tree chipper, we sold off big dump trucks that are hard for the average new employee to drive. So it's easy. We get wrapped up in gross revenue. Right. How big is the business? And so an easy way to grow your business is just add more services. If I have 10 services that I offer, it's pretty simple to get to 100,000 in revenue for one service. So for example, mowing, you know, you get 40, 50 clients, you can make 100 grand in revenue in the year. If I go out and do gutter cleaning, I can make 100 grand just by getting a few hundred clients and doing gutter cleaning. I can do pressure washing and I can do, I can do some mulch installation, I can use trimming bushes, I can do some irrigation, I can, you know, build some walls and build some patios. Well, If I have 10 services that all $100k in revenue and I make a million dollar business, which is kind of like a big thing in this industry. Like you mentioned, not too many companies do. I can do that. But it's much more profitable to have a business that does $500,000 in revenue, but does one or two core competencies services really, really well. They're more efficient, they're more profitable. The crews, you don't need as much skilled labor. You don't need people that know how to build walls and, and drive big dump trucks. And so that's really important is knowing the profitability of those services and knowing that as you add more complexity to the business, you're also going to add more overhead, you're going to add a higher level of skill that's required to get laborers and that's going to all add to the cost and expense of running the business. And so I feel like focusing on one. Two, like you can build a million dollar business just mowing. Like there's companies that do just that, there's companies that do a million in revenue, that just, just do spraying, that just do fertilization. And those are the businesses that have high profit margins, they're system centric, they don't rely on really skilled people. And they're the business owners that I feel have really been successful in their entrepreneurial endeavors is creating a business that is system oriented. And it's very hard to do when you have a gazillion services and you're chasing 100 different directions for different types of services.

Writing books. Did you ever think you were going to write a book?

Well, two, I'm not very good at writing because I get really bored. So I was fortunate enough to hire an employee whose wife was a writer and so she kind of ghostwrites for me. And we've written two books now. We're on our third one that'll be published here in the spring and then a fourth and a fifth coming probably next year. So I've been really fortunate about that. And really it's just a different form of Content, right? Like the podcast. If you listen to all 600 episodes of the podcasts, you would probably get a pretty good digest of what the book really is all about in terms of concepts and business principles. However, some people want to read or some people want to listen to an eight hour book, they don't want to listen to 630 minute episodes, right? So it's really just a different form of media. And so whether it be interviews on a podcast or videos or books or whatever, it is just trying to make different media outlets to reach the audience is important. The first book that was published August 4, 2016, when I got Hurt, that's called Millennial the Young Entrepreneur's Guide to Breaking out of the Middle Class. And I'm not a huge fan of the title. However, it was more based upon my outlook from a financial standpoint on the educational system and how entrepreneurial, how an entrepreneurial teenager or young person that's getting out of college should be thinking about their finances and kind of pushing aside a lot of the middle class mentality of just being average. And it was more about a mentality thing more than a financial book, it was even a business book. It was more about a mentality of being average or settling. And that's what that one was about. The second book is called Zero Turn how to Grow and Build a Successful Lawn Care Business. And it's really a story. It's a story about a guy named Larry. He has Larry's lawn care and he kind of goes through the process of starting a business that's not built on systems, that is unprofitable, that takes way too much of his time, has no balance whatsoever with his family. And then he has to go through an accident. He gets hit in a car accident and has to go through the process of learning from another individual about how to run his business. He has to go through the process of creating systems. He has to go through the process of humbling himself and being a leader. And so that book is really a very digestible way to get my message across to a lot of landscapers that don't want to read a textbook style book. But that kind of book is two, three hours. You can read the whole thing. It's more of a story, but it gets a lot of the principles I want to share about being a great leader, having the humility to learn, building a system centric business instead of based upon your personality. And so those are the ones we've built written so far. In a couple months we're coming out with local Leaders, which is actually me interviewing. Similar to this, eight different entrepreneurs in Whatcom county, kind of the iconic businesses to Whatcom county, interviewed them and how they started their business. Put that into a book format. And it's gonna be also really a marketing tactic for Augusta as well, because my story's in there, right. And our logo is on the front cover. And so that's going to be coming out next spring. And then next year, we have two more in the works around landscaping.

Wow. Well, you're doing certainly a lot.

Yeah, we try to stay busy.

As far as these days, what are you spending most time doing?

I enjoy business. Like, some people think it's crazy or whatever, but, like, for someone. For some people, their outlet is golfing, right? So they golf every weekend, and when they go home, they look at Golf Digest, they watch the Golf Channel. For me, my sport is business. And so I listen to books about business, and then when I go home, I think about business. And two in the morning, I write about business and I record about business. So, like, it's fun for me. Right. And not that all aspects are there's, you know, 80% of it's a grind. 80% of it is just put your head down and get it done. But the same thing for golf. I played golf a long time. Not a lot of it is like, hole in ones or like, you know, victory pumping your fist. Most the time, you're just grinding it out. You're practicing on the driving range, you're getting a gazillion balls on the putting green, but you're doing that all for the fist pump for the win on the tournament. And that might happen once a year, that might happen twice a year, but being prepared for that's important. And so for me, I enjoy the practice. The same thing for golf. That's why I like golf so much. I love practicing. I just like toning the skill. And so I look at business in the same regard. I enjoy the practice. I enjoy the journey to that success, whatever that is that's down the road.