My Business FAILED... The Next Day I Started ANOTHER ONE!

Hey, everyone, it's Mike Andes, and you're listening to the Business Boot Camp podcast. Today's gonna be a different episode, kind of explaining what I'm doing right now, a big business decision we made recently, and not really talking about subject as much as just what's up and why we made this decision at Augusta Lawn Care. And I think you'll be able to learn something from it. And before we get into the show, though, a big thank you to today's sponsor, which is Gusto. If you haven't already, go to gusto.combootcamp, as we're gonna be talking about in the episode. Starting a new business. There's a lot of things you have to do, a lot of things you have to software systems and bank accounts and credit cards and equipment and vehicles and employees. One of the things that you want to take off your plate is getting set up correctly with setting up your employees and paying your payroll. And so I highly recommend gusto.combootcamp check that out as a way to make sure you streamline for a very, very cheap cost. Your payroll, your automatic deposits, and all things employees. Check it out today. Go to gusto.combootcamp now, today, like I said, is a little bit different. I'm just talking about something that I've recently done and kind of been working on and something that I mentioned on the last episode of Business Bootcamp podcast. On the last show, we talked about how you kind of have times where business decisions go wrong, things happen that are seem negative. And last week.

Because the coronavirus that was kind of started down in California, because of that, the food show that we are planning to be at all weekend was canceled. So for those of you not aware, ketosiscups.com is a company that I've started really to figure out the food. Food industry. There's a few things that are very specific to that industry. I wanted to learn, I still want to learn, and I thought it would be a great way to do that. So we launched this product. It's gone really well, and we were really hoping to go wholesale and really start getting larger accounts down at this food show called Expo west, or Natural Food Expo, or whatever you want to call it down in Anaheim. It's three days long. We rented a booth down there, had three of us going down there for the whole week and setting it up, had chipped down tons of samples and all of our booth and, you know, backdrop all that stuff. Anyways, then two days before we're supposed to fly out, the event is canceled. Well, it's postponed for like six months. And so.

Like I mentioned on the last podcast, it was like a big negative. It was like, not fun. That was on a Monday. No, wait, let me get this right. That was on a Tuesday evening. All right, so Tuesday at 5:00pm, they canceled the show. They canceled the whole Expo. There's like 80,000 attendees. Usually there's over 4,000 exhibitors. We were one of those. And so, you know, really kind of disappointed. Obviously, to protect the attendees, protect the event, you know, from a liability standpoint as well as just everyone's health there, they had to stop the event. And all the buyers from, like, the big retailers and whole food distribution networks, all them, they were pulling out as attendees, and so they had to cancel the event. A lot of the exhibitors were even starting to pull out. And so.

That'S five o' clock on a Tuesday evening. That evening. I'm currently listening to a book about Sam Walton, who started Walmart. And I was working out and I started thinking about, well, why don't we also start some corporately owned franchise stores? Cause right now, as you know, Augusta Lawn Care Services is the company I own. We do lawn care and landscaping, and we franchised last fall. We now have 13 locations across the country, or we did last week. And so now we're at 14 this week. But anyways, so that Augusta Lawn Care, I was thinking about that. I was working out a lot of things that I ideas I come up with is when I work out. And so I come up with this idea. I'm like, why don't we start another corporately owned store for Augusta? And there are several things that I wanted to do this for already. And that is like, number one, I'd be able to get really good information for the franchisees that are just starting out. So the companies in the lawn care landscaping industry, they already have an established company. A lot of those are the franchisees that are switching over to Augusta Lawn Care. They're converting their brand. But then there's also also other people that are coming into the system. They've never done landscaping, they've never done lawn care. And they are starting from scratch. And I wanted to do that again, and I wanted to get some really good numbers and data and analytics for them as well as like, okay, this is your budget. Spend it in this format on these certain advertisements, and you're gonna get this result, right? And I wanted to duplicate that several times and get really, really good numbers. And so I was thinking about that, and then literally a couple Hours later I was at my parents house and I thought of who could do this? And this. Basically the concept was okay, if they could have a Walmart like this massive store, making millions and millions of dollars, dozens of employees, if they could trust someone that did not have equity in the company and they did not have an equity position in the business.

Surely like a lawn care service we could do the same thing for like they don't have to be a franchisee, we could have them have the same support as a franchisee. They could do everything like a franchisee, but they'd just be a corporately owned store with a manager in place that would have a percentage of profits like profit sharing as part of their incentive package. And so surely that could happen. Well, turns out the next day I meet the person I have in mind and talk to them and say hey look, this is what I'm thinking. I would like to start another location that I like 20, 30 miles away. And we'd like you to be the general manager. Here's what we're thinking. It'd be brand new. This is why we wanna give really good data for the franchisees as well as it's information I can share on the podcast because it's no longer in a franchise disclosure document. And so I'm able to kind of like especially on landscape business course, cause for landscapers talk about how much we're spending on budgeting for marketing and where we spent the money and all, all the problems that we're facing as a small getting started business. So no longer with this big company established, it's like just starting out in a storage facility, one or two trucks, just getting started with an employee. Like this is really the starting point, step one, square one of starting a lawn care business. And I'm gonna be able to chronologically show that again. I did that in landscapebusinesscourse.com I was able to show my first three years what I did step by step by step. But now I get to do the same thing, except now it's six years later. Things have changed, marketing tactics have changed, we've implemented other systems. We have a command center, we have P4P, we have the systems for those. Those are things that are gonna be really, really valuable. So I'm really looking forward to that. So anyways, Tuesday 5:00 clock show is canceled. In my mind, not even thinking about opening more corporately owned stores right that evening, thought about it. Definitely something I wanted to do. It's definitely something. I take that back. I've kicked around the idea of expanding down the i5 corridor, so down, like, Washington state. Cause we're up at the very top. I've played with the idea of going down, and I've always known that there'd be a lot of benefits for the franchisees if we own more stores and we're able to have a very, very duplicate. Like, show them a budget for every single one, show them where the money was spent, and be able to say, hey, like, copy this. And so I knew there was benefit. I've always thought that. But definitely last week, like, literally one week ago, did not think in my mind that we'd be trying to start a store right now. Like, we're already starting to mow. Like, we've already been mowing in our markets. Like, we're late. And.

Yeah, so Tuesday, that happens. Wednesday, I meet with him basically by Saturday. So yesterday.

Closed the deal. The general manager signed on, and everything is a go. So we're buying trucks, we're putting a website up, we're getting phone numbers. We're getting everything set up. And it's so cool. Like, there's definitely. As being an entrepreneur, there's something that. There's just nothing that beats the startup phase of a business. And I love it to death. But what's really cool and kind of nostalgic is the fact that my brother is gonna be my general manager at that location. And so if you follow my story before, back when I was 11 and he was 13 years old, is when we started Andy's Lawn Care, where we, like, pushed a lawnmower around our neighborhood and.

Like, got, you know, started mowing lawns and making money pay our way through college, blah, blah, blah. Then I started Augusta. He went, you know, finished his schooling to become a teacher. He became a teacher. And so, you know, I started Augusta. Well, now it's kind of coming back full circle. He's going to be the general manager in this new location. So that's really cool. I'm looking forward to that. But the takeaway from all of this is that if that show would not have been canceled, there's no way we would have been starting this new chapter of the business. Just no way. Wouldn't have been thinking about it. It probably would have been next year. That's what Kyle was kind of thinking. Even Tuesday evening, like, after my workout, I was thinking, like, next year, Mount Vernon we could do. And then we could do an Everett next year, too. And then it just kind of became like, I was listening to the Walmart book, and I was Just like, he literally was like pumping stores out so fast. He was involved in every single one. But, like, it was just like, if they can pump out Walmart that fast, like 50 in one year, why can't I start? Like, I've always asked, why can't I take time out of the equation? And so I recently, one of the employees at Augusta Lawn Care, Marcus, he mentioned a book and we got in our Audible account. It's called 12 week year. And it really is about this concept of taking time and like shrinking it down. Like, why. Why do we think in terms of 12 months for a year instead of 12 weeks? And so I started kind of using that concept. And I've always believed in taking time out of the equation, getting things done, not thinking about, pondering, debating, and just like paralysis by analysis. Like, I'm not into that. And so, you know, thinking, like listening to this Walmart book, thinking, like, okay, well, yeah, I want to do one next year. I want to do Mount Vernon and Everett. I could do two locations next year, no problem. Then it's like, well, why not do one now? Like, why not take time out of the equation? Why not get one whole year under your belt, then start one in Everett next year? So that way when the franchisees come, you can take one that's just starting out, one that's been established for a year, and then one that's been very, very established, and it's gonna be like where they want to get to in five years. And so this is what is like, you know, this is the bottom line. When there's things that happen that seem negative, you've gotta keep your attention above it. Because if I would've got down because it really, like some people thought it was clickbait last video, it was not really. That business is gonna be shut down for six months in terms of, like, my attention on it and really trying to grow it. Like, it's. We're not focusing on the direct to consumer aspect anymore. So, like, it's very much like whatever gets online, we fulfill orders, but it's nothing like huge or major. And so it definitely, like, shut us down. Negative, Very, very negative. We've been looking forward to that for about four months. November, December, January, February. Yeah, like four or five months. We've been looking forward to this food show, preparing for it, getting all the banners, getting all the samples, like, getting all the marketing ready, getting all the pricing ready, getting co packer relationships ready. Like, everything was ready to go. And then like, massive letdown. But the fact that our Team is able to get over that and within 24 hours, making major decisions to. In other elements of the business, in other venues and areas that we can achieve. Like, this is what separates a great team and a great business from just average, like, wallowing in the issues of your business, wallowing in the problems which they're gonna happen. Like, they're just gonna happen. It's a business. When you deal with people, when you deal with, like, humanity, you know, conferences get canceled, business transactions get canceled, relationships go haywire, health goes haywire. Like, stuff just happens. And so. But how you deal with it is so important. And it's not take away the fact how negative a situation or circumstance is. It's how do you look at it? And I knew right away. I knew that right away, like, okay, there's obviously some reason why I should not be gone this weekend. And sure enough, if that would not have happened, there's no way our Mount Vernon would be opening next week. So literally in less than two weeks from that conference being canceled, our Mount Vernon store is going to be open for business and probably already performing services. And so it's very. There's two takeaways I want you to take away from that. And this is not, like, about tooting my own horn. This is about what can we learn from the guy behind the microphone? And that is two things. One is when you do get kicked in the face, when something does seem really, really negative, you gotta just like, okay, it happened like that. You can't change that now. It's like, okay, what's the good that can come from this? And that's not always in a very. It's not immediate like it was for me necessarily in terms of. You get a quick response of like, okay, this is like the direction we should be going. This is where I need to be chasing, like, no here, but yes here. That does not always happen. Sometimes months or years before that sort of change of direction happens. However, it's the mentality when something negative happens, A leader rises to the occasion and says, okay, that was a failure. We messed up. That was a closed door, Nothing happened there. It was a bad deal, whatever. And then they figure out where they're going next. They don't keep the camp down and everyone's morale is low and everyone's just wallowing in the issue and the failure. It's like, let's get up and get moving. Action, in my opinion, is one of the best remedies for failure. Action is the best remedy for failure. You can write that one down. And so I really truly believe that action is like, get up, go do something, look for the next thing. And then the second takeaway is take time out of the equation. Like you do not need to be taking a long time. It does not take weeks, months, years. People just think about stuff way too much. And so it's really interesting because even with the franchise, like I've talked to hundreds now of landscapers interested in the franchise and I'm, I'm careful because some people, I can just tell that they are gonna literally try to think about this for years to come and they're gonna analyze every single aspect and literally by the time they figure it out, like we will have changed systems, we will have evolved, we've made it 10 times better. And there's just, there's something about an entrepreneur that needs to be nimble. Number one, when issues happen, but even when there's opportunity, like when there's something really good in front of you, you gotta chase it, you gotta run, you gotta go, you gotta get it done. And so we were kind of, you know, fire on our tail because, you know, this cancellation, now we're going to do Mount Vernon. Well, guess what? We're already in the middle of like not in the middle. We just, we've already started mowing season and so like we gotta get to market right away. There's like no time to delay. We've got to get it done fast. We've got to have a plan in place. So literally within 48 hours, like we have a budget, we have a plan, we have a day to day action list. We know exactly, you know, where the money's be going, where it's going to be at, cash flow wise, break even points, all that's done 48 hours. And so those are the two takeaways I want to share with you today. Number one, when something goes bad, keep moving, don't stop moving. Go to the next battle. Like when you fail in one battle, when you fall flat in your face, get back up, look above it, look for what's on the horizon. What could possibly be the reason why that happened? What could possibly be the next victory after your major defeat? And two, take time out of the equation. Do it immediately. Go, don't analyze, don't critique, don't think about your past failure. You know, this week was a bad week, blah, blah, like go do, take time out of the equation. So really looking forward to this kind of new chapter. We're going to start one this year. Like I said, we already started it. Augusta lawn care of Mount Vernon. And it's about 20. No, 20 miles, 25 miles maybe from our Bellingham location. And we're just going to keep working our way down the i5 corridor. So next year, we plan on doing Everett, and we're gonna be able to get a very, very good system for the budget of these companies, and we're gonna track what they're doing and be able to have a really good blueprint for the franchisees. So I'm really happy about that. Really happy to have my brother back on the team. And I'm really looking forward to sharing with the landscaping community exactly what we're doing through the startup phase. Cause before I started making content like this, I'd already been in business, like, three, four years under Augusta. Now people are gonna be able to see what it looks like when we start from the beginning. I'm really looking forward to that journey. So a little bit of a different episode today. Just kind of sharing where I'm at and what's happened over the past four or five days. Been really exciting and look forward to the journey. Thank you so much. If you've been listening to the Business Boot Camp podcast, I'm Mike Andes. Till next time. Be great. Cause nothing else.