Road to $1 Billion (Behind the Scenes)

It's Christmas Day. I'm in Las Vegas to work on a few secret projects. In this video, I will share what they are and how they will change the lawn care industry forever. In 21 days at the Augusta Lawn Care Annual Conference, they get revealed.

I'm nervous. I'm really nervous about this next step.

This is what Kun looks like. Has anyone seen a straight edge?

You need to fire us. And this was a really serious moment.

We lost an owner inside of Augusta

Nation, and after a long, sleepless night,

we boarded our flight home. The clock is ticking. Let's get working. That was nothing but luck. Okay, so one of the things that I'm working on here in Las Vegas this weekend is something we're launching in a few weeks called the Gust Elites. This is ad management optimization. 100% off your plate so you never think about it again. And it's really going to guarantee that when someone starts another location, they immediately get to profitability within a matter of a few months. Two major difficulties when it comes to starting multiple locations. Number one is finding a great general manager. Number two, though, is getting enough recurring customers to get above break even as fast as possible across the board. When we look at locations break even point, if they can get 100 recurring customers, in addition to the fact that we know they're going to upsells little projects that come in, et cetera, we know they're going to be above break even. That's that 20 to $30,000 in monthly revenue marker with a GM in place. And so one of the things that we've been working very hard on for the past year and a half and testing religiously is how do we guarantee owners that they give us a certain amount of budget, that we will run all the ads for them instead of just giving them the training for Facebook ads and Google Ads. In the past, that's what we've done. We've given training and tutorials. Here's how you run your Facebook ads, here's how you run Google Ads. Here's the creative inside of Gusta leads. We will actually run the ads for them and guarantee they will sell 100 recurring jobs. I think it'll be a game changer for owners to be able to start multiple locations and have a budget in place that they know they'll get above break even within those first few months. Another big change that we're making as we head into 2026 is that we're really focusing on multi unit owners and allowing our existing owners to get four, five, six, seven locations. But to do that, in addition to the launch program, we also need to give them the support to have great general managers. And so we actually have a roster of a couple thousand applicants across the country, as well as a couple hundred that have submitted video applications already. I'm talking. These people are coming. Suits, ties. They have experience, home industry. They've managed locations before. This is really sol. And it taps into the fact that people are generally starting to know Augusta as well as my brand, and then they see that as a hiring, as a national thing. It has a lot of credibility to it. So we're attracting some really solid operators, and they're ready to move. They're ready for a relocation bonus to be able to become general managers. This roster across the country allows our owners to be able to choose the best general managers right from day one when they're starting a new location. The best general managers from my locations has almost always been people that moved out of state. And I gave them 2 to $3,000 for relocation because now they're. They're committed. They just moved their family. It's not like, oh, it was a bad day today. I'm bouncing. They move their whole family. They're all in. Some of you guys are gonna be exhausted by lunch. After that basketball game, I saw Brian Connor walk on that court, and I said, I know he's gonna sprain something. And sure enough, he said, I have to admit, I sprained something. Dude, seriously? Oh, man, these guys. Dude, I'm being put to shame.

Oh, oh, oh, what the heck?

Never give up. Okay,

so let me tell you a story about a shoe so small, almost meaningless until you don't have one.

It was October. The leadership team and I had a retreat planned.

Well, I overslept, and Mike woke me up when they were already in the Uber. So I jumped out of bed, threw on my clothes, grabbed my socks and shoes, ran down through the lobby and hopped in the Uber. And as we drove away, I realized I only had one shoe. And there's Nick.

Good morning. Morning.

Glad you got up on time.

You're telling who. Shut up.

With no shoes, Mike starts to give us his commandments, and he says, dominate your department. All of you. Liz, Nick, me. I need all of you to dominate your department.

So here we were, stepping on each other's toes, tripping over ideas. I had a bad attitude, and we were under a lot of stress.

How come?

I thought I was putting in max effort. I was putting in the hours. I was carrying the responsibility. How come the results weren't quality? And these are direct quotes from that conversation. Everything going forward is new. Me telling you what to do is not what's best for you as a leader.

We kept butting heads. Let me just say here something that we've all probably heard before but bears repeating. But a decade in business, 10 years in a business, starting it from scratch and building it with someone does not guarantee that you are the person to take it to the next level, to write the next chapter. And partnership comes with the possibility of maybe parting ways.

We are so inadequate to grow this thing to $100 million. And he looks at me. I call you a VP because I want strateg. I want solutions. I don't just want sales.

You need to fire us. And this was a really serious moment. Or I said, you need to equip us. You need to give us resources and tools to rise to the challenge, to become better enough to do our job. Can you imagine telling your boss to fire you? He had to make a decision. And neither decision was going to be easy.

But then he curtails it. All of this. If I fail to give you empowerment, that's my fault. And that's Mike saying, I need to practice extreme ownership as a leader. I need to empower you. I need to support you. And if I fail, that's on me. And if you can practice extreme ownership and I can, too, then we'll actually get somewhere. Then we'll actually do something meaningful. It's very simple. I just didn't know what good looked like in this new landscape. What got me here wasn't going to get me there. I had to level up. And after some reflection and quiet moments, on a very thoughtful plane ride home, I realized my greatest strength. My story, my unique story in the Augusta life.

I started at the bottom.

I got hired for $14 an hour.

Look at me now.

There's an excuse.

It was a crutch.

And I think sometimes the thing that makes are the biggest thing holding you back right now.

And when those hard times come, you have to decide, should we part ways, or are we still better together? Finally, I told him, no matter what, you're gonna have to do what's best for the company, what's best for command center and a destination. When I told Lee and Nick this later, Lee said, thanks for speaking on our behalf, Liz.

I didn't know what they were gonna talk about. I don't preview any of the slides spe or anything, so I'll just. I don't want to add to it, but I want to just add A perspective real quick from my end of things, how the October 2024 infamous dinner went down. I would not pull that sword out very often. I was just as interested in their presentations as everyone else because I had never really heard their perspective. And I kind of knew the conversations we had had individually, but not like the outcomes or what they were thinking. It was really hard conversations. Reminiscing about those was, yeah, emotional. There was a high risk chance that all of them would have left. And I would just say if you pull that sword out too soon or don't have a relation of capital enough with the managers that you do that to, you will lose everyone. And so as blunt as they made it sound, I probably was probably that and more. But I knew we had all worked together for many, many years and I knew that they had it in them. And so just be very careful with using that very blunt instrument of anger. It's not something I would pull out often. I just want to make sure we're all clear for like, this is great. I'm gonna go back to first team meeting. All right, guys, this is what good looks like. Has anyone seen a straight edge? I would not recommend. I would not recommend that.

And I have somebody special that's going to come help you get organized for your mixer.

Let's hear. Okay, now on his eye level. Thank you everyone for being here. I really appreciate it. I pray that together this next couple days that we as a destination just get stronger. The bonds between each of us friendships and the relationships that we have will just grow stronger together. We ask this in Jesus Christ's name, Amen. I love you all. Have a fantastic evening and we'll see you tomorrow morning. Another thing that we are working on and launching at conference is our brand new website for Augusta Lawn care. And we're really going all in on instant quotes. The website design really emphasizes our unique selling proposition of answering the phone 24 7. And the 10 out of 10 question, we answer the phone every time. That's it. What makes us different? We answer the phone every single time. There's no other lawn care service in your market that can say that? Not a single one. We will answer the phone 247 with a human. And if every single line is filled, AI is going to be able to do it. And he's getting better. Specifically for treatments, applications and chemicals. In the past, we've really focused on mowing property cleanups and landscaping. Simple projects. And we'll continue to do that. But we noticed that 30 to 40% of our traffic because the lawn care is in our name is actually looking for chemicals, fertilization and these are easy upsells for our lawn care customers and our mowing customers and the people that we do property clamps for. And so we're really going all in this year on training our owners to really be able to use that upsell for two reasons. One, increase the annual customer value. So a mowing Customer may make $800,000 a year and then may I sell them winter services, our property cleanup. So I get them to $2,000 per year. But what's really cool about treatments, I can increase that to maybe $2,500 or $3,000 per customer per year. But I can also usually get all the annual revenue for treatments in a eight or nine step program up front. Meaning I can get the customer and then recoup all their customer acquisition costs within a matter of just a couple weeks when I sell them their annual package up front. We're in Chinatown at a coffee shop. But I wanted to go over something that I'm working on and just ironing out the last few details of something that we're sharing for the very first time at the conference. And that's really the full roadmap of what we're doing at Augusta Lawn Care. I've talked about taking the company public in an IPO initial public offering in about 10 years. And we'll need that to be able to fund the movement into robotics. Now I am in touch with a lot of startups, manufacturing companies, etc. I have not accepted board positions on any yet. But I have had offers to most of the time because they just want the credibility of the name and I'm not ready to. We're not ready to do that yet. Actually I co sign on any of their technologies. That being said, that is the long term vision to be able to cut the labor cost by 30 to 50% using software, command center and robotics. And that will become the moat that we put around Augusta Lawn Care right now. Robotics. The technology is actually there, but it's very expensive and we need legislation to pass around line of sight. Right now you have to have line of sight to the robot. It's not fully autonomous. If I have to have an operator just watching it. I think that'll change as full self driving and other legislation gets passed over the next couple years. So that's the ten year plan is have the distribution, have everything in place so that when robotics is ready we're able to scale internationally with thousands of robots and get really Good financing terms for our owners inside of Augusta Lawn Care. The reason I haven't talked about this, even though we are now six years into Augusta Nation being formed, is I hate when leaders cast an unobtainable vision and they have no vision or proof of concept. It makes me very apprehensive in general. And this is why I've only ever shared the next 12 months of what we're doing at Augusta. Now, if you go back and watch all the keynotes I've made each year at our conferences, we have executed every single thing I've ever mentioned that we would say we would do in that calendar year, every single time. That's 10 years. The part that I haven't really shared a lot is the five year plan and the one to two year plan. Now the five year plan, kind of on the way to that IPO is something I haven't talked a lot about and that is really solidifying the command center and the software side of the business. Because I believe the command center will be the brains of being able to manage, deploy and maintain a robotic workforce. So when a technician is out in the field doing lawns and they have two robots in the back of their truck and they do the trimming, they do the blowing and the robots do the mowing, great, I will halve the amount of labor on that job. However, I will also not want my technician to need a software degree or an engineering degree to be able to troubleshoot the machine when it has inevitable issues. That's where command center and the software will be very important. And that's going to take us years to build up. That's kind of like the five year plan. To be able to then start testing these robots across the country to make sure that all the little edge cases are really dialed in by the time we go IPO and have the money be able to really scale it. Now in the next one to two years, we're really focusing on multi unit ownership. We're going to focus on several things. Things, multi unit ownership, the Augusta leads program, hiring general managers and technicians for owners and getting everyone to $500,000 in annual revenue as fast as possible and with guarantees. And if you read the copy based millionaire book, I talk a lot about multiple locations, but we really want to make sure that at Augusta Lawn Care, the copy and paste millionaire method is seamless, simple and super easy to run. And that is having three, four, five, six locations. The goal of a thousand locations could absolutely be met with a thousand different owners. Our goal though is to have 200 owners with an average number of five locations per owner. That comes to a thousand locations. To make that happen, we have to make the copy and paste millionaire method so simple for the owners inside of Augusta Lawn Care, using Command center, using Instant Quotes, having the ability to be able to use a guaranteed launch program like Augusta leads to get above profitability. This allows them to copy and paste much easier and allows them to build a business that can truly run without them. Just come running up to the microphone. If you have a question.

I'm just curious what your guess is what a Gus looks like at ipo.

Do you think that billion dollar valuation

would be pre 1000 locations?

Post 1000 locations just when we IPO. I'm not focused on that. Mostly because the location count, full transparency. When you look at the three departments of the whole company, you have a CAC engine, that's the media bringing my customer cost down to almost zero. And then you have the cash engine which is the franchise, and then you have the valuation engine which is the software. And so when you look at those three, those are the three things that make it really a really good IPO in a public market and will be appealing to investors is the fact that I can get customers for near nothing, whereas other startups spend gobs of money. Like jobber will spend $2,000 per customer in acquisition. That's why they spent $200 million last year in advertising. And then you have the cash engine of the franchise where I know that we can improve value. We went through our three to five years of losing money. We can make a lot of solid 30, 35% profit margins, take that cash and then put it in towards hiring the best software engineers. And then those three things combined is the value add. But to do that we have to have way better training. So we've created this copy and paste training system for our owners that allows them to be able to find their great GM using the roster, but then also 30, 60, 90 day checklists for the general manager and for the owner, as well as budgets and projections to make sure we know exactly when they're going to get above break even, exactly when they're going to go into profit mode and exactly when they can copy and paste that method over and over again. All right, so where we're at today, so right now we have about 160 owners inside of Augusta Nation. We have 209, 209, 210 locations that we're at now. 160 owners getting to a thousand locations is not going to be for more owners, the goal is that we have about 200 to 300 owners, but we hit the thousand location marker by having a higher number of average locations per owner. In other words, the people in this room. During the conference. It's also another great opportunity to look back at some of the wins from 2025. Obviously, we're looking forward, trying to always improve, but also celebrating some of the things that went really, really well. For example, with Augusta Lights, leads went up by 39.6% year over year. So 2024 was our first year doing Christmas lights ever. This year, 2025, up almost 40% for the year in terms of the number of leads we got. Another big win this year for Augusta Lawn Care was that we ranked in the top 100 landscaping companies in the world and ranked on the landscape 100 from lawn and Landscape magazine. Now we don't really care about that, and in the past I submitted our revenue numbers to them. However, by doing that this year, we were able to unlock some really big preferred vendors and big discounts for our owners from Ford, gm, Exmark, even Steel, and a host of others. I think there's like 15 different preferred vendors we were able to add. And our goal really in doing that is to be able to save more in just preferred vendors and discounts for the owners every month and what they pay for their franchise fee. So 1600 bucks a month, and we were able to accomplish that this year. Another big win in 2025 was Command Center. We were able to use AI a tremendous amount to really improve the quality control as well as the tracking and coaching of all of our agents. And so we used transcripts from every single phone call to coach the agents, as well as make sure we're doing upsells on every single phone call. This allowed us to turn what used to be a defensive measure or an expense into an actual sales motion to grow the revenue of every location. And we actually tracked what the performance of voicemail versus AI versus human agents are. And traditionally, humans cost the most. However, if you don't answer the phone, only about 37% of people are going leave a voicemail, meaning that more than 60% of leads are lost. If you use AI, we know that number goes up to about 71 to 72% of customers will leave their information with the bot, and you'll be able to follow up with them later and get that job sold. However, with employees, with humans answering the phone, I'm able to get that number up to 100% of phone calls answered. And now we're opening up 24, 7, 365 for human agents to be answering phone calls because the ROI on those upsells is massive. What's up, Mr. Gordon? Another big win in 2025 was that we were able to show on our item 19 all the financial metrics and performance, all the locations at Augusta Lawn Care and the average location, after a couple years, did over $500,000 in annual revenue. And the reason that's important for 2025 is because the same store sales went up big time. Now it's still Christmas. So I'm not 100% sure exactly what those numbers are, but I'll show them on the screen here for you. Now, this is year over year, the same stores that were open in 2024, how much they grew in top line revenue. Whenever Augusta Nation gets together, it's so different because if you get to like an industry event, you're all technically competitors and none of you wear the same brand. No one actually really cares about you, your business, your family, your personal life. They don't because they're not gonna see you. And they rarely ever get anyone that really cares about you and uses the same system so they can speak the same language. By you growing your business, getting more trucks, having a good brand, hiring more people, more people, your organization winning, it elevates the brand. Therefore, I win. Therefore, when I tell you something, I'm not hedging my recommendations. I'm not hedging my best things that are working in my business, because you winning is me winning. And we all wear the same uniform. And so it's a very unique thing and something I've never been able to replicate anywhere else or be part of. And so when we franchise, I knew that eventually the reason for joining would be the community. It wouldn't be because of me or the system. It would be the community. And for everyone here, that's usually the thing they join for is systems and they stay. And they want to keep building here. And they want their team to grow up inside this environment because of the

community that tells me you hate you. You ain't built the same as everybody else. You ain't like the same as everybody else. You are more than you ever been today than you were yesterday. What we gonna do in 2026? Are we gonna be the most professional?

Yes.

So what we gonna do? How do we succeed? How do we be better than we were yesterday?

Good morning, everyone. Whoever wrote the schedule and had me

follow up, Morgan, thank you. I do appreciate that. I don't know if I'd be able to bring that much energy. But I would like to coach by you one day.

Morgan.

If your people know that they that they're cared about, this just isn't a job. It's not just a paycheck. It's somewhere they can come and be safe. They know they're cared for. They know that you care more about them than a lot of times they care about themselves. People will do anything you want for you if you can do that.

All of this is very much like what I teach I am doing in front of business. Right? So yes, we can go get new owners but or we can just double down and spend so much time making this ironclad into more locations. More and better. Also comes down to like we need to get better systems inside of Augusta and we get copy and paste like turnkey to start locations. That's better. More is Augusta Leeds is a very valuable product that we can't offer anyone publicly for the price that we're giving it to the owners. But also like we did a six figure launch last night and within a matter of minutes we are filling the program and we have filled up the 50 locations that are in it at the beginning. And so yes, I am doing more and better in Augusta. Well, that is it for the wins, the announcements and what's coming in 2026. Thank you.