MY $5,000,000 IDEA | $300k Business in 30 Days (19)

I'm traveling 3,000 miles across the country to build a $300,000 lawn care business in just 30 days. This Augusta Lawn Care location needs to be making $1,500 per day before I can hand it off to a general manager and go back home. I'm starting with no employees, no equipment, and no customers to prove that systems build great businesses.

Today is day 19, and today we're trying to rent a cathedral here in Louisvill.

Now, if you watched yesterday's vlog, you realize that we came to Louisville to be able to see the Omni Hotel where we're having Landscape Summit 2023. The day after Landscape Summit 2023, we need a special event venue for just Augusta Lawn Care and all the franchisees. See, the problem is that after the event, it's Equip Expo, and they have a moratorium on the entire city in terms of venue space, and meeting rooms. So I had to get creative with actually, where could we have Augusta Lawn Care's conference for just all of us as franchisees? And we had a solution, which was basically go super late the last night of the event, do dinner with them, and go to, like, 11pm but instead, Brad had a great idea. He's like, hey, check out local churches. And sure enough, just down the street, there's a cathedral we're gonna go look at and see if we can rent the entire thing for the day for Augusta Lawn Care. So let's hope it doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

We have a bit of a problem because I finished my workout and I came back to the room, but Zach is sleeping so, so deeply. And we need to be at this church cathedral place in, like, 10 minutes. So I'm trying to, like, how do you nicely wake someone up? I've put all the alarms on. I've opened up the door, like, five times. So I'm gonna have to, like, hit him or something.

Sick.

I just locked the door on myself. Well, now I'm gonna have to just knock and wake him up.

I can't believe it. I came out here, and I forgot to bring the.

I'm gonna try to call this phone. Turns out Zach was in the lobby editing the video the entire morning. But you have to look in the bed. It totally looks like he's still in bed.

So this.

I was, like, tiptoeing around being as quiet as possible, trying to look for the key that he has downstairs in the lobby.

Dude, you have to look at your bed.

It looks like you're still in bed.

Dude. Look at this. That totally looks like you're still in bed with your feet and then over your head. All right, well, now that we have Zach is awake, and after he was dead in the bed. Dead in the bed. And now that Zach is back after being dead in the bed, we are headed to the red light. Whoa.

Red light.

Well, well, we're all gonna die. That's the third time we slammed on the brakes of the trip. Okay, so now we're gonna go to church. We're approximately eight minutes late to church already. Oh, my goodness. Am I pouring?

All right, so I think we found the one. And this is where we're going to have the event on Wednesday morning for just the franchisees at Augusta Lawn Care. And it's a cathedral. It actually burnt down in 1986, and they rebuilt the interior, but the exterior is completely original. And check this out. This is the original steeple. You can actually look way up and see the burnt timbers and the beams of the original cathedral from way back in the day. And they have pictures of this cathedral way back in the 1900s. Like, early 1900s, late 1800s. So, you know, I'm looking forward to being able to play this organ for the franchisees. As part, we have, like, an anthem that we build for our guest nation. We'll have a max mascot, and I'm just joking, but it's a lot of fun, and I think it'll be unique, and it'll allow us to get around the moratorium that Equip Expo has from Wednesday to the end of the week on all the event centers and hotels in the area.

Going to preach the good gospel of Augusta Nation.

Now, in today's video, instead of having a very boring montage of us driving across the country again, what we're going to do is compare several very popular franchises and see. See if potentially they would be a good fit for you or if they make sense. This is kind of what franchising is like, right? We got ourselves a half pipe right here. Am I going to go down it?

Not a chance.

But if I did and I had the skills to actually make this happen, you would be better is if I went right here, because if I go up on this angle, I'm going to be able to get to speed much faster. If I actually knew what I was doing. When I come to skateboarding, being up here would give me a much greater advantage because I would have much more speed by the time I get to the bottom and I want to do a trick, and I would be like a Much better trick in the air because I have better speed. And franchising is kind of the same thing. You get a little bit higher because the systems and infrastructure is built in a way that allows you better speed and get up to speed much faster. Hopefully allowing you to grow the business faster and do it in a way that's much more profitable than trying to figure out on your own and get up to speed yourself.

All right, so we're here at a playables because what play is. And I thought this would be a good example of actually the difference between a franchise and independence. This is an independent one location facility. If they have one or two maybe, but like it'd be local. But you can tell there's way too many options on the menu. We spent probably 45 minutes, at least 45 minutes in line and then they shut down like new orders. But then when they did that, the online order still kept coming in, so they were completely overwhelmed. The tickets were coming through on a little like receipt printer instead of like any sort of computer or any sort of database. So let's go look at some franchises that have nailed systems, procedures and cutting out all that fluff so they can just pump out profit, baby. Buffalo Wild Wings is a franchise now. This is a 20 year franchise agreement. You're going to need 750,000 doll in cash and a minimum net worth of $1.5 million. You're also going to be giving them approximately 5% as a royalty every single month as well as 3 1/4% of an AD royalty. So about 8 1/2% you're going to be spending every single month to be a part of their franchise. Their initial franchise fee is $25,000, but you're going to need at least two and a half to four and a half million dollars to get one started.

All right, so in a different industry, got batteries and bulbs. I'm assuming they sell batteries and lights. Kind of makes sense. Now, their initial franchise fee, pretty expensive. $49,500. The initial investment is going to cost you between 200,000 and $500,000. You need a net worth of 350k and you need at least 150k in profit. Now they have a 6% royalty, which means every hundred dollars you make, you got to give them $6 to be part of the franchise. They sound so less enthusiastic. Did we get caught or something? All right, now because we're waiting for this acai bowl for the past hour and a half now, we were considering going to the Massage Envy, which is also a franchise. There is an 8% royalty. There's also the fact that you're going to need about 600 to $900,000 to get started. Oh, the franchise fee. $45,000.

All right, now this is Planet Fitness. They actually are competitor of mine at Anytime Fitness. But you're gonna need a lot of money. You're gonna need $1.5 million in cash. Also they have an incredible royalty of 7% plus 9% for advertising. That's why you see their ads all over the place, right? Join for a dollar or whatever, $10 a month, 16% that you're gonna be paying to them for this franchise. Now you need a net worth of at least $3 million and you're gonna spend somewhere between 1.6 and $4.5 million. Alright now check this out though. We got a five guys over here. Also a franchise. We got an Ace Hardware. Bet you didn't know franchise. We got a Valvoline over here, we got a Pizza Hut. Guess what they all have in common? They're all franchises. Now Augusta Lawn Care is also a franchise and it costs somewhere between probably 30 and $100,000 to get started. But the difference with the Lawn Care is that it's a service based business where there's really not a lot of startup capital requirements and it's a low barrier to entry. Someone can get started technically for like 5 or $10,000 just on their own. And I think you're right. I think you're 100% right. And that's why with Augusta Lawn Care we don't charge royalties. Which means you can grow your business as big as you want. Million dollars, $2 million. And you're still gonna pay $1,200 per month as a flat fee to use the service.

Say a lot of.

And then they have like edits on them. So it's like no peanut butter.

Like half and half the base and all that. I just wish everybody could just find one the same one right.

Now the real question is, is all the franchise fees and the royalties and all the rest worth the brand exposure and the systems that you get?