Running a $350K Lawn Care Business Out of a Storage Unit, Day in the Life of a CEO

Welcome back to the Mike Candies podcast where we discuss the ins and outs of owning a small business. If you're new here, the mikeandys podcast is all about taking your business to the next level. So remember when Mike went out and started four new Augusta locations? Well, we have some new updates on that. Using Augusta's executive franchise model, Chuck Fought is going to show you why copy and paste is the name of the game. After that, Mike is going to let you walk a mile in his shoes. This is the day in the life of a CEO of 125 businesses. As always, you can find Aldous and more over at the MyCandy's YouTube channel. Let's jump right into it. Here's Chuck with how to run a 350k lawn care business out of a storage unit.

Today we're gonna get some shop tours of several Augusta lawn care locations. Now you've already seen Chuck in the past. He showed the entire process of getting four brand new locations off the ground in a matter of just 30 days. However, we're gonna actually give you a more in depth tour of all the facilities in the storage units as well as using storage containers out in the shop space. Now there's gon four locations and it's going to seem like a lot of the same. And that's kind of the goal. The goal is that when we create these multiple locations, it's copy and paste, copy and paste. So if you watch this, you're like, man, it seems like you're seeing the same thing. That's a good thing. We're using systems and procedures instead of just making things up or customizing the processes on every single location. Doing this is what allows you to scale, have multiple locations and have a business that runs without you. Whether it's your shop space that we're showing today or every single process and system inside your business, it should be replicatable, duplicatable, and eventually become boring.

So we're here at Concord. This is our fourth location. Again, we have four different locations. We're kind of opening them all together. All of the territories butt up against each other. They're all centrally located, really close, really tight and dense. So again, you're going to see the exact same setup as at this location as all the other locations. So we'll start here. We got P1 is always what we classify our landscape truck. So you got P1 here, V6. Both of these trucks are V6 average about 15, 15, 5. And you'll see everything is going to be identical from here. To all the other locations. So we have this again, V6 long bed. And then we have the dump trailer here, which is again, six by ten. Nothing fancy. Three foot sides, tarp. It'll do the job. It's going to cut. It's going to carry everything we do. We don't do a crazy amount of hauling because we do simple services. So you're not going to get a whole lot of rock or any of that stuff. Like, we don't do that. Five yards of mulch fits in there just fine. I can get 60 bales of pine straw in there. And that's just stack, you know, height. I could probably go higher. We want to bungee and all that mess. But from a weight standpoint, I'm not really pressed about it. Mowing setup, same exact thing. Blower rack, weed eater, trimmer rack, tool rack in the middle, gas cans, trimmer string and sprayer rack on the driver's side. This would be your curb side. So we put all of this stuff here. These are. We have two parking spots here at this location. The only parking spots available in the entire service area. You'll see a little bit of. Not an ideal setup. When you come to the storage unit side of it. They don't like. They don't let you make keys to these things. So we run a. This one has a fence. We find somewhere to put it, Whether it's on the door handle, a fence. But we put one of these lock boxes right here like this. And then we just. It's just a code, combo code, all that good stuff. The key to the unit is right here. So the guys can come here, Grab the key to the unit when they park the truck, unload everything, put the key back in there. And now there's a key for the facility. Now we're going to drive up to the actual storage unit. Again, exact same setups everywhere. $6,700 for the dump trailer. 15,5 for each of the trucks. 15 to 15,5 for each of the trucks. All of this was done in 30 days. So you don't have to get hung up on finding the perfect place the first time. Making it, you know, this massive shop space. And any of that, you just don't need it. Like, get what works to get you started. And we'll run $300,000 on all these setups. So. And if they really hustle and crush it, we could do 350 with exactly the setups that you guys are seeing. As you see, we're coming around. Very nice facility. The door access there's no garage doors, right? So all you've seen is interior access. They do exterior access up here, but they're man doors, they're oversized man doors. So we're running 36 inch rights.

Our average turn space is only about 8,000 square feet in these. But as you can see, it's just an oversized man door. This is the part I'm not a huge fan of, but again, the only parking we could find in this area I haven't seen in this one. So we'll see what it looks like.

It's not ideal. Door stopper will hold this door open. So when you bring the mower in and out, it's just, it's very tight, but it's whatever, you got to make it work sometimes, right? So dry race board, keys for the trucks. Long hedge trimmer, weed eater, edger, blower mower, push mower. This is a residential Honda. That's all it is, just a residential Honda. We're going residential 21 push mowers because we use our standards for everything. 36 inch standard ladder. All the tools are in there that you would need. Two blowers, handheld hedge trimmer. All your mixed fuels, your gases, all those things. You got another bucket with some more tools in it, shovels, things like that and wheelbarrow. Again, there would be no problem fitting another mower, another push mower and a couple extra weed eaters. And you could, you could run a half a million dollar business out of a 10x20 storage unit. Again, not ideal because of the door access. This does fit. And you got about 3 or 4 inches on each side. You just have to make sure you're doing it right.

All right, so here we are in Huntersville, North Carolina. Again, you're going to see a lot of similarities, all identical. I ordered all the same equip, pretty much bought the same types of trucks. Slight variations, but basically all the same type thing. Long bed, F150, V6. Doesn't matter. Don't have to be fancy, right? Single cab, everything's all single cab. Racks are set up exactly the same. We have the gas on this side, the trimmer, string, spool, sprayer rack on the driver's side. On the passenger side, we have the blower racks and then the trimmer racks. Then we put the tool, again, we put the tools in the middle. Shovels, all that stuff keeps them kind of out of the way for the crew with the ramp rack. Collectively, the trucks all averaged about 15k. Like I was kind of stating. We had again some 17, 18, some that were 12. Like this one was 12. This one is the only one you'll see that is different. It is a short bed, very similar to Mooresville V6 pulls. A dump trailer has no problems, right? So if you have a trailer truck, everybody wants to get big shiny F350s diesel. All this what I would say stupidness and crazy. This does just fine. We've had it Mooresville for two years. No issues. Dump trailers again, $6,700, six by tens with a tarp, three foot sides. Does everything we needed to do. We're not doing concrete, we're not doing hardscaping, none of that. So this works just fine. Again, two trucks, one mowing, one landscape and we'll do. We can easily do 350 with this setup. And again, this is just a storage unit, right? So at this facility we were able to get both of the parking spaces side by side, which is kind of nice. And then we'll hop in and we'll drive over to the storage.

Now we'll head over there and you guys will kind of see like we did all of this in 30 days. So in 30 days we bought trucks, we got them painted, we got decals. So every morning the guys can come in here, they'll get their trucks, they'll drive over here and they'll load up all the trucks with, you know, whatever equipment they have. Now you will see some different setups across everybody, but they're very similar. Get a storage unit, get a UPS box and just go to work. You don't have to have this ginormous facility to run a business.

This is a 10x20.

What you'll notice is the exact same equipment at all locations. There is absolutely no difference on this side. Same thing that you've kind of seen. Dry erase board, key hooks here for all the different trucks labeled P1, P2 bears. I mean you kind of got everything right. Dry race board to put stuff on here. Everything is nice organized in a good system. Push mower labeled. Stand on mower labeled.

You.

Have you got tailgates? Just kind of say, but trash bins. Trash bins. Connor's got himself a nice little kind of desk set up that he found. It was, I think he said it was like 10 bucks, right? He can come in here, do his work, hit the WI fi off the office hotspot and do whatever little estimate, follow ups, things like that. He's got a, a little workstation, all his door hangers. Everything is just organized and tiny. And that's kind of what we want all of his tools are together. Here's his wheelbarrow, blowers, hedge trimmers. What you guys will see is we bought exactly the same for everybody, right? Two weed eaters, edger hand hedge trimmers, two blowers, gas cans, all of these things. Mower, 36 inch stand on rights. I just went in about four of them, just got four. Four push mowers and then we gave one to each. So every single location has exactly, exactly the same thing. No deviations other than he got a short bed. But equipment is the same. Storage units, all of this, 30 days, just go in, get them and get to work. Like you don't have to get everything right away as far as shop space or anything like that. It's literally get in and you'll see recurring theme with all of these same equipment, all you do is get in, get out, get started.

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Is actually a V8. It's the only one we have in the fleet that is a V8. Otherwise they're V6s. Again, when you're buying eight trucks, it doesn't matter. You just kind of buy whatever is available. And we bought eight trucks within 30 days. Really, I had them all bought within probably two weeks. Just have an open mind, got them painted, decal, all that good stuff. Now we're hop back in the car and drive to the other parking spot. At this location, it is three separate areas. We're at the very front of the storage unit. Now we're going to go to the very back of the storage unit.

This is not an ideal sitting as well pouring. Not an ideal situation. Obviously you'll kind of see not far, I mean, but it's a storage unit, right? So one truck has to be parked at the very front. They have a little parking unit where we were at. And now we're going to drive all the way to the back side. And this is where they park like trailers, RVs, things like that. Ultimately, I would like to park this truck back here. But for again, for now, parking is very hard to find in this area because we have a few lakes, some pretty large lakes. So a lot of boats, things like that. And then it's just space is expensive in the Charlotte area. But we see, as you can tell, kind of it opens up into this big wide area, which is great, but there's limited spacing. So. And again we have to drive to this back lot here. So we'll hop out, kind of show you this setup where he's parked at. Here again, this is Pilot Creek, so it is a little bit different here. So this is his long spot, 40 foot spot. This is where the truck that goes with the dump trailer. This is where he parks at. As you can see, again, long bed. This one's a GMC. We got 11 all. Again, all these trucks on average are about 15, 15, five for each one of the truck. All eight of them. That's kind of the average pricing we got on them. And then you see we have the dump trailer. Same thing, 6x10. This is a V6 as well. His other one is the only one that is not a V6 to be a standard 6x10 dump trailer, three foot sides. Carp sorted for them. $6,700 on all of the trailers plus, plus tax and title. We're gonna end up making like 72 or 73. This is it, man. Nothing fancy, just V6. Everybody asked, why are we getting these sixes? Why? We just get what's available, right? So like if I can find all V6s, I'm not going to discriminate against the V6 because we're also not, we're not pulling, you know, 15,000 pounds of rock at most. We will probably pull five yards. Like that'll hold. I know those will hold five yards. That's what Mooresville has is a 6 by 10. Almost identical. It's just yellow and it's just fine. It does everything we need it to do and it does it well. Now here he actually has water spigots that he's able to get water from. And he also has electric. So like every so often they've got electrical outlets we don't know if we're allowed to use, but we're just going to use until they tell us no. But as you can see, front of the lot, very back. And now we're driving up towards the gate is in front of us. So then we'll get out and we'll look at the storage unit real quick. I don't know what this looks like yet. I haven't been here since I bought and stuffed all the equipment. I unlocked it. I purposefully did not want to see in it yet. So it has been unlocked. I don't know what it's going to look like. So you guys are going to see it for the first time. Just like.

Awesome. Pretty organized, right? So we run the same setups everywhere. Same exact equipment, same exact mowers. Like mowers. The same weed either. The same. Everything's identical. So you can see he's got everything labeled. He's got the dry erase board. His handwriting is just like mine. Like a child. I love it. So there's, you know, he's. He's got little motivational things. Like he's just got all kinds of different things. When you kind of run through this, you've got different. He's got his service area up. He's got his P for P explanation. Like he's kind of got certain things up here, which is great. All his tools, the blower rack. He's got all his equipment. I mean, he's got everything kind of out and organized into the things. And then he's got his blower, wheelbarrow mower. This thing only gives up like 12ft. We're not trimming massive trees. So as you can see, it's. It's very bare bones. But there's absolutely no reason this setup will do. Probably can handle 3 to 350 before we have to buy another truck. The. The good thing about this is in these storage units we can add. We have plenty of room to add another mower to come in here and another push mower that may go another three or four feet back. And that'll get us to 450 and 500 and very easily do it out of a storage unit. So now we'll move on to the next one. So here's kind of the setup for Mooresville. It is an existing location.

About 450 to 500 this year in 2023, straight profit mode. As you can see, we're. We do have two trucks here that are set up for mowing. These are. This is an F150, 1500 Silverado. Exactly the same ramp racks. Racks are set up exactly the same. Blower trimmer racks, gas cans on both sides, spool, right? And then the spray racks, tool rack. We put in the middle, we like to have it off the tail. Put it up behind the window. It kind of keeps things out of the way when you. You're only grabbing what you need when you need it. And then this one here, this is again short bed F150 V6. These are all V6s. It pulls our dump trailer. Luckily, this dump trailer is a nice yellow. So it kind of matches. Goes with the Augusta Gold six by ten. Every location corporately. And you'll see it the other videos to the other locations. Everyone has a 6x10. The only difference is theirs are black. Because it's about availability and cost. And we were able to get those. The newer location go over prices. But they were. They were pretty cheap compared to a yellow one. Now with the prices the way they are, all these. Everything here was bought in 2021. This is again an existing location. And if you look over here to our right at Mooresville, we get to put all of our debris on site. And the guy we rent from takes care of it. So we pay 600 bucks, dump all the debris right here. And then this is, you know, this side over here is obviously ours. Ours is just this gravel plot here. The red gas can right there. We have mixed fuel right there. It's a 15 gallon. So that the guy. I fill it up maybe once a week. Once every two weeks. When the guys come in and fill up their mixed cans and they go on down the road. We have access. You can see the electric cord or the extension cord over there. We have access to electric and water on site plus debris removal for the $600. This 8 foot wide by 40 foot container here. You can see we have everything kind of lined up right inside the door. We always put the keys. P1, P2, P3, extra dump trailer keys. And these are just extra keys to the locks on the trucks. Have a blower set up. 1, 2, 3, 4. It coincides with the truck that they go with. That goes to P1 2, P3. And we have a fourth one, which we don't have a fourth truck. But that goes with the second guy that works the landscaping truck. Dry race board. I have all the vehicle service here. Equipment service when it's needed. And then our audible password. I always put right there as well. Guys put their days off here in the corners. Then you can see here's all of our two. I said all of them. But the two stand on mowers. We have those lined up here. All the handhelds again, B1 stuff, which is landscaping. So they get the Long hedge trimmer, storehead trimmer. A weed eater or it is a combi system. So they can't put an edger if they need that. E2v3. And then we do have an extra set here as well as a weed eater on the floor that we've. That's the oldest one we have, not the greatest, but it's a good backup. There's no reason to throw it away. We just service it more than I like. So we keep it as an extra wheelbarrows here. They've been repaired, push mowers here. Everything always has a place and it's nice and tidy. Then we have the buckets. We do not bag clippings, but we go ahead and we leave a bucket there. The guys have sticks, things like that. We put all the tools into one bucket ladder, any landscape attachments, things up there that we do, which we don't do a lot of extra service anymore. So some of those will honestly probably never get used again. Blade sharpener, tools, kind of the miscellaneous stuff goes back there. We do use a chain hoist, puts it on the front and that's how we lift up the front of the motors. We do have an aerator. An aerator. But we don't use it anymore unfortunately that we don't do core aerations anymore. So we did in the first and second year. The third year we just funneled it down so much that it's honestly we're gonna end up selling it and replacing it. So trayers and this is what our container looks like every day. From Morse.

Whether you're looking to start your own lawn care business or looking to take yours to the next level. Landscape business course is the perfect place to become an expert. This is Mike's personal lawn care oriented course. Directly from his experience growing Augusta into the successful business it is today. It's a step by step resource showing you how to grow your monthly revenue by over $100,000 in just three years, including over 30 plus lectures and tons of bonuses to dive into. If you want the full picture of how to run a growing lawn care business, you can find out more@landscapebusinesscourse.com okay, so Mike is the CEO of 125 businesses and counting and still has time to pump out content for you all. But you might be wondering what do the in between moments look like? Well, find out now.

It is 6:11am this morning, woke up at 4:57am, did a bunch of email, did devotions, was looking at my calendar and I thought today would be A good day to just walk you through my day as I do it without any further delay. A day in life. Here we go.

See, the vast majority of my day is usually spent on Augusta and Augusta stuff and meetings has a lot of more confidential type things. For example, the other day one of our franchisees unfortunately lost their father to a heart attack and so command center was stepping in to help run the business. And I'm not going to show that on a video. We're about three weeks into the spring rush for Augusta Lawn Care and Command center, so things are really ramped up, but everything's being handled fantastically. We're not missing a single call and I'm really proud of the team over for their work over the past 12 months to departmentalize and just really systematize the entire command center operation. Now, recently I've been trying to improve on my sleep schedule. Instead of going to bed at 3 and 4 o', clock, I've been trying my best go to bed for one and two o' clock and usually I wake up between five and six pretty much all the time. Basically what I've tried to do is flip my morning schedule. I used to work out in the evening all the time, but the problem with that is that I would eat a big meal and then stay up most of the night. And sometimes my day randomly gets stopped like I just did there or I have to take a call. Me and Matt's always on the case.

45 minutes, pushing your slide back and forth. Technically, this is rest day on dope business. Check it out.

I really enjoy workouts where I can just put a podcast, put an audiobook, put a sermon on in my ears and just for 20 or 30 minutes kind of blank out. It's very enjoyable. One zoom call today that I'm not going to share is a venture capital firm that I'm having a call with. I have one of these probably every month, maybe every other month. Why do I do this? Because I have no intention of selling the majority stake ownership of Augusta. The reason I do is because it's a little bit of 40 chess and that is talking. Your competition is very difficult to get in for numbers, metrics and data about them. However, their financiers, they're a little more loose lipped because they like to use that as information to try to woo me into becoming one of their companies. And so I can ask them specific questions about my competition and they're pretty loose lipped. So just helpful to talk to. People have literally billions of dollars and they can spend and have a good pulse in the market. I'll add just businesses that are in that 10 to 20 million dollar range.

And then I don't know if we've seen this bug yet. George, in terms of the close ratio being way off on the KPIs, did we already. Basically our close ratio was like showing 200% or whatever which is obviously impossible. Yeah. Anything else I wanted to go over?

One of the things I'm working on today that is a little bit sensitive is when you're working with team members and with technology coming out that's new or improved or you're trying to make things more efficient. What you don't want to do is for them to think that we're not going to outsource their jobs or like that technology is going to make them unemployment employed and so it's command center. Obviously it's a position that as technology improves and there's resources that we can make things cheaper. Thing you want to be careful of is like we will never lay someone off because of technology. There always be more. And the goal is to make you become more efficient so that way we can handle more. And so when we go from 125 locations to a thousand, I'm not going to need to lay anyone off. We're going to get other things to do for the people that do have jobs here and make sure that everyone's just more efficient and that's the goal. So today I'm making some videos and just kind of sharing my thoughts on some of the leaders that come in and then also with the entire team. So everyone's on the same page and no one's concerned about their job in the future as we try to make things more and more efficient. Okay, so this is for Liz and Brian just kind of making this about the whole virtual side of things. This document here I'm going to share there experience at their resumes. This is actually the zoom call interview that we had with them. Kind of get a feel for them if you'd like. Even if it's just a minute or two.

Hello destinations. We're building super well. Yes, I need you to do X, Y and Z but that is like half the amount of importance as you know, A, B and C that I want you to do. So might just be also clearing your expectations.

Well, 460. I need a breakdown of what they charging me 450 for.

I need it, I need it cash by cash. I don't understand.

They gave me 460 and they told me what all they gonna do but.

They didn't give me a breakdown. What do you think? Storyline.

That's the funny part. What's cash by cash? I don't really know. Maybe we should be like case by case. Like line items on my hand. I could use it as a teaching moment.

Like what?

We break down our essence. Like we only will do it by labor and supplies. Just use the first part. She's like, I need to break down cash by cash. And then I just go right into a teaching moment of like all for that or not. A lot of times the customer will ask for a breakdown specifically of the estimate. And we're willing to break that into labor and then materials. But when you start going too much deeper than that and breaking apart in really, really fine detail, customers usually get confused and honestly leads to more questions and insurance and all these other things that go into operating a business.

All right, so now we're going to take that to Terrell. Give it up for the short.

Look at this guy. Co pilot support printer intact. Let's go.

Next up is Anytime fitness painting. I'm late or once you would week. We have a community.

Not for playoffs.

Good news.

We're very close to 15 parts. 15,000.

Whoa. Our club break is 101. Let's go. And we're 61 for the month. It's 2400 in the U.S. that's what we're in. So we're 51 for the month because of our attrition job.

You need to go on vacation?

No.

But.

Yeah, this is. They're having me test this thing the day out.

Okay. Now happen on a Zoom call with P4P software development side of things.

First interview went pretty good. Pretty good about three more. The interviews for the developers and software engineers take a little bit longer because there's actual technical things we need to go over. These interviews can take 30 to 60 minutes. Honestly if we have any interest or that they're going to be a good.

Fit for the team.

It's honestly the bigger part, not just the technical fit and whether or not they have the skills. So three more to go.

And she said, well, I've always been.

Able to work at every job and work around.

It hasn't been a problem. And then the other lady said she was struggling too. And I talked to her this morning. I said I heard a couple people tell me that you were thinking about not staying and you know, if you don't want to stay, then I don't want you to keep working. I said, well, they feel like if you put the reps in, you will get this.

She wanted to keep crying.

I thought you'd been here for like.

Three or four weeks.

3.

Busy day.

On this final one.

At.

The very front of command center here is where we have the metrics up on the board. Goes over how many calls are coming in, average hold time, etc. So like, for example, today it's 11 o' clock or so. Call the luck. And 100% of calls have been answered and there's been 357 inbound call. Average speed of answer is four seconds. Pretty good day. All right. Interview two, pass the vibe check. Unfortunately, I don't know if he has enough experience. We really need someone with quite a bit of experience in this position because we have what's called a full stack developer, which means you do everything from front end, back end, ui, ux. Don't know if he'll work out, even though I think be a good fit for the team. And then third individual is no. So one more interview to go, but so far looks like we'll still be looking. And was the fourth one had a lot more experience than was shown on his resume. Just talking about life, about, you know, friends, about women, about change he wants. He's like, mike changed my life this and that. He's like, when does Mike work out? What time does Mike work out? When does Mike wake up? I said, hey, brother, I don't know. You know, I reckon pretty early. I don't know if he sleeps much.

Well, the fourth person interview did not show up. Headed out to go record the C suite unfiltered, but 516 calls, 100% answered. Average speed of answer, 4 seconds.

All right, so I am late. Gotta head over and record this C Suite Unfiltered with Lee park right. A little bit behind. If you haven't subscribed, you should definitely check out the C Suite Unfiltered podcast. We need the thousand subscribers by conference. So hit it up.

Busy day. Good dude. You know what's funny is today I think I'm vlogging my day. Oh, cool. How's that gonna incorporate into this? Or are we just gonna take. Well, I'll probably have Kramer, like grab a piece of this.

Nice.

Dude, this is a long story. I'm getting there, is make the mundane. If you're in a relationship, you got to make the mundane fun. And you got to pick little things to make special in your marriage, in your daily life. Right? And so this is a piece of advice I got from a family friend because he and his wife love baseball. Every opening day, when he comes home from work, he grills hot dogs, she makes an apple pie, and they watch Opening Day together. And so that's what my wife and I are gonna do on Thursday. She's gonna make an apple pie, I'm gonna come home and grill hot dogs. And that is what makes America so awesome. All right, that's a long pod, dude. That's like, over an hour. Yeah, like. And subscribe.

This has been the My Candies podcast. Now you have some ideas on how to take your business to the next level. And if you like what you heard, we have tons of lectures, interviews, and more over at the MikeAndYs YouTube channel. That'll be right up your alley. But that's all we have for you today. We'll see you next time.