My Plan to Build the World's Best Lawn Care Business

Hey everyone, My name is Mike Andes. I'm the founder and CEO of Augusta Lawn Care. And today I'm going to be sharing with you my plan to build the business to $100 million and make it the best lawn care company in the entire world.

Before we get into the show, a big thank you, today's sponsor, which is Gusto. If you haven't Already, go to gusto.combootcamp if you are currently writing checks out for your employees or using timesheets on paper like this, make sure you check it out because it's going to be digitalized. It make it very simple and it's like nine bucks a user per month after the 90 days of free trial. So check it out today. Go to gusto.combootcamp so for many of you, you might have watched me for a long time, for many years. Well, three or four years or perhaps maybe in the past couple months, you've been drawn to the channel because of drama with the city or, or because of some drama with customers and videos that we have made. We've gotten so many subscribers over the past couple months. And to that, I am very, very thankful for all of you. But I wanted to kind of refocus on the vision of Augusta Lawn Care and really why I make all this content. Our goal at Augusta Lawn Care is to change the level of professionalism in the landscaping industry. Today I'm going to outline the three different things that I'm going to be doing over the next probably 10 to 15 years to make that dream a reality and build a business. And that is the number one lawn care company in the world. So the first thing that I have to do is create an unfair advantage for franchisees of Augusta Lawn Care. So currently we have 43 locations that will be growing exponentially over the next few years. And here's some of the things that we're going to do to make sure that is an unfair advantage for the franchisees. And when I say unfair, you have to keep in mind that I'm not trying to be against or tear down other lawn care lawn professionals or businesses. My goal, though, is to make it where becoming a franchisee literally is almost like an unfair advantage. It's like playing a bunch of sixth graders basketball against a bunch of high high schoolers. It's just not even fair. Like, there's a massive advantage by being a franchisee. The first is by having big price discounts for our franchisees, by having the brand power to step in and talk to larger manufacturers and suppliers and get really, really good discounts for our franchisees. This is something that we're really looking to do as we pass location marker over the next several months. Number two is operational efficiency or the second part of this equation when it comes to creating this unfair advantage for the franchisees. Another part of that is the operational efficiency that we hope to build by being a franchisee at Augusta Lawn Care. Whether it be pay for performance in the software we build, whether it be command center where you don't have to have the overhead of an office or office staff and you're able to scale out to multiple locations much quicker because you don't need real estate and because you don't need to find admin and office workers. And that churn is very, very bad in that specific type of industry, typically. So again, operational efficiency by reducing overhead. Another way we're going to create an unfair advantage for our franchisees is really time saved to scale the business because you don't have to start your lawn care business and figure out how to build a website and how to design your marketing and how to do a logo and do all of your marketing videos and your pictures and make sure that your social media is on point and, and you don't have time to figure out how to run P4P and do the software. Then you're doing, you're running payroll and then you're trying to figure out how to answer the phone and get a phone system. Then you're trying to figure out, you know, the best CRM and how I'm going to format my estimates and invoices. All that's done for you as a franchisee. And so the goal is to make it where someone can jump into the systems, get trained and within a couple months, literally save 1, 2, and eventually 3 years of spinning their wheels and spending their time and money trying to figure out on their own. Again, another massive advantage that you'd have as a franchisee. The last thing that we're starting just now to start getting a hold of is software again, creating an unfair advantage for our franchisees. We have a lot of plans for this in the next five years and I really think that this point, the unfair advantage for our franchisees will become evident in about three years. Right now, I don't think it's like this massively, incredibly different that is just blowing everyone away, but I think in three years people will look back and say that by joining Augusta Lawn Care, it is almost unfair against anyone else that would otherwise start their own lawn care business. All right, the next Thing that we're going to do to build $100 million lawn care business is going to be retaining control of the company by self funding it. Just about every franchise out there, as they get to about where we're at right now, goes and gets private equity. They go get outside funding and they give up control of the business. And trust me, it is very, very appealing to do that. I'm going right now through the stress of trying to grow a very fast growing business requires a lot of money and you're losing money, you're losing a lot of money. And I would, I would sleep better at night and it'd probably be a lot easier for me if we just took on outside equity. And I gave up say 20 or 30% of the business now and another 20 to 30% in about two years and I could easily get 5 to $10 million in that time period to basically scale the business. I wouldn't, I wouldn't have to worry about funding all the time. And how we're going to do that. Let me explain how we're going to do it and why it's important. How I'm going to make sure we self fund Augusta Lawn Care and I don't have to go get equity is by offering ancillary products to the rest of the landscaping community to help them grow their business through lawn careweb design.com lawn caremedia.com, landscape businesscourse.com all websites built to improve and grow the lawn care and landscaping businesses, regardless of whether or not they're in a part of Augusta Lawn Care and those other ancillary service are going to be other things that we plan to have in the works in terms of helping landscaping come with their marketing, helping with their digital media, helping them with lending and their financing. These are all things that we hope to offer down the road, all as ways to make sure that we keep money coming in so as Augusta grows we are able to self fund it and not have to give away any equity. Now here's why that's important is because if I give away equity and I give away control of Augusta Lawn Care, I can't do what I feel is necessary for the brand to actually dictate change in the industry. Just growing is not going to be enough for Augusta Longer to really make the changes that it needs. There's so much more we want to do besides just build a big business. We want to change the industry the same way that Amazon put so much pressure on every E Commerce and every retail giant by producing you know, two day shipping and then having wear free returns and a great selection. All of these things completely changed the industry. And I realized that this is not going to be easy. I'm going through it right now. It's very, very difficult. We are building a massive headquarters because we need it. We right now we have four offices spread out in different spots. We need to bring the under one house. I know that. But it's a multimillion dollar operation to build this thing and that's risky. It's a lot of work, it's a lot of time and effort. And this is why I share my monthly numbers with all of you. Because you're really part of this, you're part of making this happen to where we don't have to give the business away to venture capital or angel investors and give up control. Because there are absolutely things I need to do with the business as it grows to actually dictate change in the industry. And that's the third thing, Third thing that we're going to do is impact on the industry. I really believe that higher wages and really a better workplace and better opportunities for the employees of this industry is fundamentally one of the reasons why Augusta Lawn Care exists. Whether it be Pay for performance P4P where employees get a percentage of the revenue they earn for the business instead of an hourly wage or whether it be profit sharing or open book management. The things that I talk about and preach on this podcast on these videos is not just for Augusta Lawn Care franchisees. It's to as we grow, other people will begin to realize that this is the recipe for success and they will follow in our footsteps and they'll begin to realize that they're going to compete with us and with other elite brands within the industry. They're going to have to make changes, fundamentally change, fundamental changes in their business like how they treat their employees, how they pay their employees, the information that they share with their employees and the care they have for their employees future and the financial future of their employees. The impact I want to make on the industry is that I want owners to start focusing more on numbers and culture instead of trucks and equipment. This is very big for me and I feel like as I begin to grow in the kind of the public eye of the industry, my, my bend is going to be pushing people towards what's your numbers and how do you treat your people and how do you hire and et cetera. Those are the things that move the business forward, right? Knowing your numbers and marketing and the numbers and the financials behind your business and then the culture and the hiring practices that you have, that's what actually moves the needle for your business much, much more magnitudes, more than what type of equipment you buy or types of mowers you ride. And so I hope that as I grow in popularity, I can take that attention that comes towards me and divert it towards what's actually going to move the needle for these business owners to. Because that is not equipment and it is not the type of mowers that you ride. All right. The last part of impacting the industry is I realize that by doing these changes in this street, the same way that Amazon polarized so many people in the retail industry, some people love them, other people hate them and say that they're taking away from small business and all the rest of it. There's going to be people in this industry that hate my guts. And these are the ones that have mistreated their employees, hid information from their employees. Exactly. The people who do not want to compete with P4P versus an hourly wage because they can't afford it. They're the people who charge really bottom basement pricing, like bargain basement pricing. They're always price cutting people. And now the customer starts to expect estimates done on time of someone to answer the phone when they call. They expect professionalism and uniforms and painted trucks and insured an insured business and expect a professional to show up to them when they're doing an estimate and giving a proposal. These are things that are not commonplace in our industry. And by having our brand grow and put pressure on the industry and then my public facing image also putting pressure on the industry to make these changes. I believe there are going to be people that hate my guts and hate Augusta because of what we're trying to do and that is to put those people out of business. And I hate to say it because I don't like to see people suffer, but there are going to be people that will lose over the next five to 10 years because of Augusta Lawn Care. If they're running their business incorrectly. Their principles and their financials are not being ran in accordance to the best principles for running a lawn care business. And in my opinion, for those who want to see their prices go up, they want to charge more, they want to give more information and they want to help their employees get to the next stage of their career. They want to see the level of professionalism in their business, their communities, competition and the industry go up. They will fall in alliance with Augusta Lawn Care and everything that we preach, whether or not they become a franchisee, I'm not really too interested in. I want to make sure that they fall in line with what we're trying to talk about and changing the industry. I truly believe that a rising tide floats all boats unless that boat is anchored or tied down to something that cannot move. And so for other landscaping businesses and lawn care business, as we begin to grow in a segment of the market and a segment of the industry that most massive companies haven't touched and that is residential mowing and landscaping services, not just treatments, not just commercial. When, when we go after that market, it's going to touch very of so many small businesses. And I'm aware that there's going to be some people that are unwilling to change, unwilling to adapt, unwilling to implement P4P, unwilling to implement open book management with their team, unwilling to get insurance and do things above board with their employees in terms of pay. There's going to be people unwilling to do that and they will probably fail the same way that Amazon put, put out Macy's and all these other retailers out of business because they could not adapt the changing tides of the Internet. I truly believe with Augusta Lawn Care we can make those same changes in the industry by putting pressure on the people that have for so long made a bad reputation for the this industry that have consistently lowered the prices to just cut others and make sure that, you know, they are always the lowest prices and they can't compete on value, they're always competing on price. That will not become a part of the equation. And so that's how we're going to do it. And I think for some people, you know, the reason I make this video is the fact that most people, unlike me, don't share publicly their goals or their aspirations. And maybe that's not necessarily your cup of tea or you might feel like this is more of a public that I'm somehow bragging about something. In my opinion, I think that it's good to share your goals, your dreams, your aspirations of what you want to build. I think so many of us are afraid of failure and public failure and being ashamed because we don't attain the goals that we set out to do or that we proclaim to everyone else that we are going to achieve. I truly believe you got to become comfortable with sharing your goals, sharing what your plans are to do what you're wanting to do. And guess what? It's okay to fail. It's okay to mess up. It's okay to fall flat on your face, but get back up and that's why most people don't share their goals. That's why most people don't say that they're going to build a big business or that they're going to change an industry because they're afraid of failure. They're afraid of failure in front of other people. But at the end of the day, in five to 10 years, we will look back and I'm making this video for one reason. To do recall and share how sharing your goals and giving out to others pays big dividends. And none of this is possible without each and every single one of you. Whether you're a subscriber and you just hit the like button or whether you have helped in the process of building Augusta by making sure that we are able to self fund by lawn careweb design.com, landscapebusinesscourse.com, lawn caremedia.com by getting a coaching course or anything that you've done. I so appreciate it. I promise that over this journey, over the next five or ten years, as this plan becomes manifest, I hope to share as much as I possibly can, be as transparent as possible and whether or not you join our company as a franchisee, that you too can learn, grow your business and be part of the change we want to see in this industry. I'm Mike Andes, Augusta Lawn Care Services. We'll see you tomorrow.