Review of Augusta Lawn Care Franchise (Worth It?)

My name is Nick Reed. I own an Augusta franchise over here in Marysville, Washington. Today, I'm going to be answering some questions that the viewers had about some. Some general stuff involving the franchise and my experience as a whole. The first question I have is, I already have a good business. When would it be worth it to join Augusta as a franchise owner? And basically, I would just recommend joining as a franchisee if you're looking to scale to the next level and you can't do it without more systems and support on the back end. So, you know, if you're still out in the field, you're doing estimates, you're doing field work, you're stuck in that zone, and you need to, like, transition out and focus all of your time on estimates, let's say. And you don't have the money to rent and, you know, pay for all the equipment associated with the office and all those expenses. The main selling point of the Augusta franchise is the command center. And basically what command center does is while you're out doing estimates, you're out in the field, they're answering your phone calls. We have basic and full service. Basic, you know, they're going to answer your phone calls and they're going to dispatch stuff to you. They're going to take the notes. That way you don't have to spend time with the client on the phone. And then we have full service where they're going to handle your scheduling, your email, all the communication, your dispatching. And basically you're going to be focused on selling jobs and managing your crew. And then at that point, you can scale to the moon. And then from a marketing and branding perspective, you know, Mike is always testing out marketing. He's always staying up to stuff, what he's seeing a good return on. And he has different corporate locations. We have one in New York, one in North Carolina, one in Washington. And he's testing these things on a national level and taking data and seeing stuff that we don't have time to do as business owners. We're not going to sit there and invest all of our time in watching marketing. You know, we need to get out there and make sales and make stuff happen. He's always testing stuff like that, always staying on the cutting edge. And then the branding aspect, I think we have 65 locations or just over that now. And as that increases, more and more people are going to move across the country, and we're going to establish ourselves as a trusted brand, and that's going to benefit everyone. If someone had an Augusta franchise here in Marysville, and then they moved to Jacksonville, Florida. They have a franchise there, and that actually happened recently. And I told them to call the franchise down there. If you've hit a plateau and you're definitely looking for support and you just need to delegate stuff, I would definitely recommend the franchise at that point. The next question I have, is it hard to trust the process and implement the systems that come from the franchise? The answer is no. From my personal perspective, I've used the systems for the last year. I know that they work. I used them for two years while I was working as an employee. I know that they work. We try to approach everything from a simplicity aspect, and it just makes it really streamlined for clients and office staff. What is Command Center? How does it help you grow your business? I already touched on this one a little bit in the first question. Command center, it's basically a call center. It's located here in Ferndale, Washington. They take all the calls from 65 franchisees. And command center is going to handle all of the client interaction. They're going to be able to run your payroll, they're going to be able to schedule dispatch. Basically anything that you would be tasked with as the owner other than sales, Command center is going to be able to take off your plate. Why does Mike talk about P4P all the time? Would that be considered ripping off employees? This is probably my favorite question because I wasn't fully on P4P for an entire year. And I think it's amazing because it doesn't limit your highest performers. So basically I would show up every day and I would be incredibly focused on efficiency, and everything was within my control. So it's no longer asking for a raise and feeling like you're worth more. You have the decision every single day to decide whether you're going to be incredibly efficient or if you're going to be slower and make and make less. And it's not a ripoff because when you implement P4P, you need to guarantee a base wage. Because if there's going to be damage cases or if you're going to go above budget on a project, you're going to get knocked down to your base amount. And the base amount is going to be enough to still keep your employees with the company. So P4P basically is giving employees ownership over each day that they go out into the field. And it creates a level of accountability that they wouldn't have on an hourly basis. Because on hourly they're incentivized to take longer on projects, take longer between Jobs maybe make stops and they're going to maximize their hours on the clock and try to get overtime so they can make more money. On P4P, the owner's incentives and the employees incentives align and whatever's in the best interest of the company and the client is also in the best interest of the owner and the employee. So you need to do a good job every time or else you're going to get called back and then that's going to eat into your performance time, the efficiency between all your jobs. It's going to be better for the company because you know we're going to be able to schedule more work and you're going to be able to make more money and you're not going to be limited at a base. So there's opportunity to make more money and you're not limited as an employee. So the next question I have here kind of relates to my situation is an Augusta lawn care franchise good for someone who's currently a lawn mowing employee but has no business experience? The answer to that obviously is yes. I was an employee for two years. I've never gone to any higher education. I graduated high school and I just joined the workforce. The franchise provides a level of support. I always describe it as an insurance policy. It makes me feel like any obstacle that I run into, I'm gonna have people that I trust and who have been there and done that, and I've seen them successful and I've seen the same system work over and over. I'm gonna have those people to reference. So I went into this with no business experience, but just from a purely support aspect. If you're willing to dedicate yourself to the learning curve, there's no reason why you couldn't take that next step if that's really what you're committed to doing. What has support from corporate been like after you join the franchise? Coaching calls, accessibility, communication, updates. So I kind of touched on this one a little bit as well. We do have a monthly coaching call and that's with Lee. He has worked at the original Gesso location, the first one, since before I did. He managed that location. Now he's supporting a franchise role. So every month we'll talk on the phone for half an hour. We'll go through all the KPIs, things that are going right, going wrong, and it's just like an accountability progress report every single month. So that's really great. And then from a communal aspect, every three months we'll have a roundtable meeting where all of the franchisees from around the country will jump on a zoom call, and we'll basically just talk about things that Mike has in the works, behind the scenes strategy going forward, things that we're struggling with, and people kind of bounce ideas off of each other. It's very collaborative, and I always have the feeling of being a part of, like, a network of people. I don't ever feel like I'm going at it alone. Is Augusta good for someone that has never owned a business and does not have any experience in the lawn care industry? It completely depends. It depends on your personality. Are you someone that likes to learn and challenge yourself and be thrown in uncomfortable situations that you have to, like, find your way out of? Obviously, there will be support from other people. You're gonna have to learn all the technical skills. You're gonna have to learn the business skills on top of that, and that's a lot for some people to handle. What I would recommend is basically going through and watching every video in Mike's YouTube channel. There's like a thousand videos, and they're all talking about the inner workings of the business all the time. And basically, if that's like hours and hours and hours of videos, if you watch all of those, it'll give you a good idea of what you're looking at and what you're getting yourself into. Same with the Business Bootcamp podcast. That's what I listened to. That was like. It was like 300 episodes when I listened to it fully. But I listened to it start to finish. I've been in the lawn care industry, and it's not rocket science. You know, we're. We're mowing grass, we're shoveling material and planting things. It's not anything crazy. It's actually very simple. Low barrier of entry, too, in terms of equipment costs. I listen to Business Bootcamp start to finish, and that's what actually made me think, oh, I actually have a grasp on the idea of business and everything that goes into it. So I would definitely devote a lot of time into learning the inner workings of business. You don't obviously have to know everything, but just have a general idea of what you're looking at getting into to be able to start.

Is there help and support from other franchisees? The answer to that is yes. You know, we have a Facebook group where everyone kind of, if it's a question that anyone could generally benefit from, I'll post it in the group and someone who their business is, you know, four times, five times as large as mine, you know, they'll comment on it, chances are they've been there and done that, and they can provide valuable input. You know, you can also communicate directly with people. Someone on the other side of the country might implement something completely opposite than you do. That works really well for them, and you might be thinking about it for yourself, so you can talk about it with them and their experience with it. It's very open. Everyone in Augusta is very willing to help and contribute to others. And, you know, we're all contributing towards the same goal, which is raising the entire level of professionalism in the industry. Because ultimately, whether you're aligned with Augusta or if you have your own business, you're operating on the side, everyone's going to benefit off of that goal.

Hey, everybody, it's Lee with Augusta Lawn Care Services, and I would love to talk to you about possibly joining the franchise coming January1. The price is going up, so if you'd like to get in before then, book a call with me. Click the link below and I'd love to meet you. Thanks.