Secrets to Running a Successful Lawn Care Business WITHOUT EMPLOYEES! (Solo Operator)

Hey, everyone, it's Mike Andes. And today I'm gonna be talking about how you can run a profitable lawn care landscaping business without any employees. And stick around to the end of the video because I have a big announcement that's gonna change a lot. So let's jump into it first and foremost, and that is I've been wrong in the past. I made videos a few years ago about running a solo operation and how it was a bad idea that you couldn't make money, that it was just.

All around a bad idea.

And I think I did not add enough context. And I believe I was wrong on some of. And I wanna make those clear today. I don't think that everybody needs to.

Run a big business.

I don't think running a big business with a bunch of employees is for everybody. And it will run some people emotionally and mentally into the ground because they're just not built for it. Not to say that they're any less of an entrepreneur or any less of a business owner, but they simply do not wanna deal with having a bunch of employees. With having a bunch of employees, comes.

A lot of responsibility, a lot of.

Pressure, financially, mentally, et cetera. And for some people, they'd rather just work hard all day long and have the physical pressure of working outside, doing the work, mowing lawns, trimming bushes, installing mulch, and doing the hard work themselves instead of the mental pressure and financial pressure caused by having employees that might not show up, employees that might disappoint. Create callbacks to a customer's property. That's a lot of stress. So I don't believe that building a big business is for everybody. I do believe it's the way to go. If you want to create a business.

That runs without you, if you want.

To have systems in place, if you.

Want to scale it, grow it, and.

Make it really big, obviously, it's a completely different mindset. So today, though, I'm going to talk about the five or six different things that I would share with someone who's just starting their lawn care business or wants to run a very profitable business without employees. Number one is fill the schedule completely, fill it full as much as you want, and then diligently raise prices and reduce your service area. So once you've filled up your schedule, which can be done very quickly as.

A solo operator by yourself, you literally.

Only need 30 to 50 customers, typically. And typically, you can fill that within a few months of starting your business if you have a good website and good branding. And so the goal is fill your schedule and then keep raising your prices. Even if every year you're like, hey, I'm just gonna raise my prices by.

$5 an hour, I'm going to raise the cost of an estimate, I'm going.

To raise the price for my debris removal. Just constantly keep raising your prices and that going to be how you can do 100,000 revenue and a really, really healthy 60 to 70% profit margin. Even when you're solo, without any employees and keep reducing your service area. You do not need a big driving 20 minutes this direction if you're solo. You need to be ultra efficient. You need to try to get to 90% or more of your day being spent actually mowing lawns, actually doing services.

Because that's when you're actually making money.

Number two, the next tip I would share if someone doesn't want employees is don't. Do not spend money on branding. Type marketing. Focus on direct response. And the type of ads are what I call where there's intent to buy.

Alright?

So instead of spending money on Facebook ads or YouTube ads, or big banners outside, where it's mostly a branding play, you're not getting direct response. You're not getting someone to pick up the phone and call you or fill out their estimate request form. You do not want to focus on branding because you're not trying to get 20 estimates a day. You can't even do them. You want to focus on how can I for the lowest customer acquisition cost, get the leads and get their direct information. So you're going to be focusing on things like door hangers, flyers, maybe every door, direct mail to very, very specific neighborhoods. Not a big billboard that's going to advertise to a 20 mile radius. And you're going to focus on the ad platforms where there's intent to buy. Which means people search on Google lawn care business near me or landscaping service in Bellingham, Washington. They search their area, they have intent to buy your product and service lawn care and landscaping. So why would I go advertise on places like Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat and just hope to get in front of somebody and that they happen to need lawn care? Where I'm casting a big net and hoping for a few fish, I'd rather focus on casting in with a fishing pole and going off that one big fish. It's much more efficient. So you've got to have an extremely efficient marketing and direct response. When you get started, you don't have 10, 15, $20,000 to spend on marketing. Maybe a few thousand, but that's going.

To be spent on direct marketing like.

Door hangers, every door, direct mail, and places like Google and Google Local services for direct marketing. One on one, just great customer acquisition costs.

You've got to have that when it comes to your advertising.

The next thing, number three when it comes to not having any employees and running a very profitable business is do not answer your phone.

And you're like, what?

I thought you were supposed to answer.

Your phone when your customer calls.

You are, but you're not supposed to answer the phone. Get an answering service. Because if you just have no employees and you're relatively small, you have 30 to 50 customers, you don't need having hundreds of calls a day. So it's relatively cheap. If you have a low call volume to go get an answering service, get someone remotely to answer your phone calls, and they maybe charge you a couple bucks a minute. But you might only have one or two calls a day. Especially once you've got a really solid route of customers that you've established. It's not like they're calling you every single service.

They shouldn't be.

You're going to let them go as you begin to harvest your best customers. So you're going to have a low call volume, only several calls a day. You might pay a few hundred dollars a month, but at least you don't have to stop 100 times a day looking at your phone. And every time the phone does ring. Now you're out in the field and you're like sweaty and hot and you're trying to pull up your laptop or now the data isn't working on my cell phone. If you want a professional service, get an answering service that can pick up the phone, charge you a couple bucks a minute, and you're not gonna have a huge amount of call volume. So it's not Gonna cost you $10,000.

A month just to get your phones answered.

So number three is don't answer your.

Phone, have an answering service.

Number four is you need your website to really bring in 100% of your leads organically by year two. So you really need to have a great website that has SEO search engine optimization to where you rank well in Google. Because by year two, I don't want you spending any, any money on ads. I want 100% of your leads to be coming from everything on your website. SEO. Just ranking well, getting good Google reviews, having great SEO and backlinks and all of that. So you're ranking well in Google. And then secondarily you're getting word of mouth you should have good customer base by year two to where people are.

Actually talking about you, they're sharing about you.

So if you're trying to stay silly, you don't need to keep advertising, you're not going to keep growing, you're take what you got in that first year and then you're going to keep harvesting, getting in new customers from your website, 100% organic, no spend on money, no money spent on more advertising after year one. So by year two your website better be good so it can rank and it can actually bring in all the leads required to keep refilling spots as people move or they sell their house or whatever might happen that you're able to keep good leads coming in that are high quality, high premium service, high premium profit type customers. All right, number five is you've gotta have automations running for follow up billing and collections so you can schedule time off.

Alright?

So a lot of times what happens.

Is solo operators when they get their.

One day off where they can actually take some time off, recuperate, refresh their body, they spend all their time following up with estimates, going after invoices that are overdue or sending people to collections that are way overdue. You've got to automate that process, you've got to have automations, you've got to have a CRM that can do this. Most CRMs now, especially on those follow up process of an estimate, asking the customer if they want, you know, if they want to ask if they have any questions or just following up with them on the estimate is in most CRMs now. And so you should be able to build that in. But collections, billing, having credit cards on.

File that are automatically charged, all of.

This should be done by automations so that you can schedule time off to actually recuperate and refresh your body because you're gonna get worn out otherwise. And I see it time and time again these solo operators will burn out and it leads to really, really bad news because they can't get any time off because when they do get time.

Off they're spent doing all this office work.

Try to get rid of that as much as possible through automations and having a virtual staff. Alright sixth and final thing that I believe you need if you're gonna run your business solo and have a long term landscaping business without employees is get support, be part of a community. It can be very lonely being a solo operator because everything falls on your shoulders, all the physical stress of working.

Outside falls on your shoulders.

There's no one else to delegate or give things off to if you're not feeling well. So it can be very, very lonely. I recommend locally and online. Get part of a community and get support. Get someone else that's willing to jump in and help you with when you don't feel well, when you need help on a project, that's gonna be a huge thing for you online, join Landscape business course, the Facebook group. It's completely free. Join there locally, go talk to some other landscapers. Stop with the whole like, oh, it's competition. There's so much work out there. Go get support, go talk to other people, help them. And if you do that, be part of that local community of landscapers in your area, it's not gonna feel as lonely. You'll be able to beep and wave at people.

And if you need help on a.

Project, they will help you. If you. If your mower goes down, you'll have someone that can lend you equipment. We recently had one of our franchisees that got really sick from the pandemic and everything, and we were able to get help to him from another owner that was nearby. That's all because he's part of a community. He's part of getting support. And you don't have to be necessarily.

A franchisee to do that.

You can get that from your local landscaping and business owners that can absolutely create that support network for you. Now I want to jump in and give a massive announcement that I'm very excited to share with you, and that is that Augusta Lawn Care is now going to be offering, offering what we call the solo operator franchise model.

And what this is, is now a.

Different, a second option to become a.

Franchisee and an owner at Augusta Nation.

Without having to spend $15,000 on your initial fee and being able to get started, just get started out. It's much cheaper. So let's go ahead and jump into the website. You can get more information on this@AugustAlongerServices.com franchise. But let me actually show you what this option is. To be able to get started without a bunch of employees, without a $15,000 fee at a much much.

So you can grow your business up to $20,000 in monthly revenue without a big, big initial fee. Let's go ahead and jump into it.

All right, so we're here on the website augustalongareservices.com franchise. Most of you have probably seen this before. It's where you can book a call directly with Lee, who will walk you through all the options and talk to you. More personal founders guarantee for the franchise. If you come to our three day new owner training and are not willing to swim through shark infested waters to stay with Augusta Nation, I will personally refund your initial franchise fee. Also, unlike any franchisor, if you at any point in your franchise term feel that you would be better off working without Augusta Lawn Care, you may terminate your franchise contract with no penalty. You can read more information here. Watch this video and this has always been what we've offered in terms of offering a exclusive territory 5 mile radius where no one else can advertise. Inside of that radius, it's $15,000 for initial fee and it's really built to scale and grow very quickly. You know you want to be at 30, $40,000 a month in revenue within year one. It's possible to use this method and these, this kind of goes over all the different things that you get as part of being an owner at Augusta Nation and what you're saving as part of being part of Augusta. So whether it be the P4P software, the brand discounts, access to command center like they talk about, where they answer the phone for you and do all the backend work, all your website, the ads, all the rest of it's done for you. This is what we've always offered, but this is the part that's different. If you scroll down to the bot bottom here, now you'll see on the initial investment chart that there's this option for 399 and that is what we are calling the Solo Operator franchise model. Just scroll down a little bit more. You can see this button here. Learn more about the Solo franchise model. Click on that. And this is the part that's brand new and this is what I want to share with you today because I feel like if you're getting started brand new and you're like man, I want to join Augusta, but that $15,000 fee, I just can't afford that. Or I have 20,000, I don't want to spend 50. Like I've told many of you, don't join Augusta if you have 20 grand and you can't have access to any more capital because you're going to spend 15 on the initial fee and then you're at five grand and you're not going to have that's not enough to scale very quickly. There's no point in doing that.

So what this is going to allow.

People to do using the Solo Operator model, as it says here, I'm going to zoom in a little bit. As it says here, the Solo operator franchise model is built for two people. First, the owner doesn't want to grow into a massive company and just wants.

Like maybe one employee because you can.

Do up to 20,000amonth in revenue using this model. Second, the second person that might want to get this is the owner that can't afford the initial franchise fee for the growth model that has the five mile radius that comes with a protected territory. The solo operator model allows you to get started, learn the systems of Augusta Lawn Care and then grow your cash flow. Then have the choice to grow beyond $20,000 per month in revenue. You'll make sure you're comfortable, make sure you like doing lawn care. It's a big kind of thing you want to make sure you do before you jump into a franchise. Like, is this going to work for me? Am I good at it? Do I want to actually scale? Do I hand? Can I handle the pressure of having employees and growing a bigger business? Make sure to see the differences between the growth model and solo operator model in the charts below. All the training and resources you have as a solo operator are exactly the same and you legally receive all the benefits of a franchisee. This lower price point allows you to have the firepower of the Augusta brand and get your business off the ground at a very low upfront cost of just $3,999. So basically, for $4,000, you can now join and build your business up to $20,000 per month in revenue. And so watch this video here on your own time. It explains it even in more detail. And this is the part I want to zero on today.

What's the difference between what we've always.

Offered at Augusta Lawn Care and the Solo operator model? So let me zoom in here and show you this chart. So this is the difference between the growth model, which is what is. We have a five mile radius, a protected territory. There we go. A five mile radius protected territory. It's a $15,000 initial fee though. It's $1,200 per month. In terms of your monthly fees, your first year is 600. Under this model, we want to make sure you do have that money to grow and expand that first year. But it's $1,200 per month.

You get a monthly coaching call.

That's going to be where we fill out a scorecard for you. We look at your numbers, talk about strategy, where you're spending your money in marketing, hiring issues that you're going through, all the rest of it. Access to full service at command center. So at Command center is kind of like our virtual, you know, call service, you might say. But with, with the growth model, you get full service, which means, like, they'll help you with payroll, they'll do all of your email management, they'll help you with billing and everything on the back end, they'll help you with basically all a full service office. For solo operators, they're going to only pay $3,999 for the initial fee. So 4,000 bucks and then 699 per month for the monthly fee. That's going to start right away. There is no protected territory. So what's going to happen, our goal is, is to be able to have three or four of these operators in one city where they're going to be like harvesting, getting their best customers in a very centralized area, but then have a few other owners to give that support and that network ability too. All right? They're not going to be competing because there's so much work, and it's a matter of just getting your customer, filling your schedule, and maybe one other truck, and then that's about it, right?

And so someone can always start as.

A solo operator and then become a growth franchisee where they actually lock in a territory and they're able to upgrade into using all the services at full service at command center.

So you still get a bi monthly, so every other month, coaching call.

And you get access to basic service, which is all the phone calls and your estimates being sent by command center. So still a massive help. At least all your phone calls are being answered, all your estimates are being sent out. You just don't have access to the full service like payroll, QuickBooks, they do all the accounts for that. They can do a bunch of stuff for full service.

But again, if you're really small, you.

Could probably handle that yourself, or you can have your spouse handle it, or you can handle on the weekends because.

You don't have a bunch of employees.

To run payroll on or run P4P every single day for them. So it's, it's manageable now. Both of the franchise models include brand discounts, the phone number and email address it commands in a week. Set that all up for you. We set up your CRM, your P4P software. We have on the back end access to that. We've built that. We build your website. You come today, come to three days of training as well as all of your marketing material. So, you know, door hangers and postcards and flyers, all of that, along with Facebook ads and Google Ads. Everything that we have as templates for you as part of being a part of Augusta Nation is all, all included as part of the Solar Solo Operator model. So definitely feel free if this is of interest to you. Go check this out. Definitely sign up for a call with Lee. Let me just zoom out here. Lee is the franchise business consultant that is going to. You can schedule a call with him directly here. Just click on a day that works for you, schedule a time and you're good to go. He'll answer any of your questions, make sure it's a good fit for you and it's a great way to get started. And then maybe down the road you actually do become a growth franchisee, tap into full service, get a guaranteed protected territory and really focus on going past $20,000 per month revenue and really scaling up.

So I hope that answered some of your questions and I hope that even for solo operators, I truly believe that.

They can become extremely efficient using this model and they can do 10 to $15,000 a month in revenue and easily be taking home 5 to $10,000 per month in profits. It's absolutely possible, especially after year one and in year two and three when you start harvesting your customers, raising the prices, cutting down your service area. And so we want to make this available. We want to make being part of Augusta Nation not something that's too expensive, an entry point for those who want to stay small or just get started and then grow and do actually locking up a location, having a protected territory. And we truly believe this is going.

To be what allows us to really.

Plant our flag and grow substantially throughout the nation is by offering this lower model that we truly believe is extremely profitable. It's a great step for an employee or someone that's very small to get started with because they get all the brand power that we can offer. And we really, really do look forward to this. Creating that network of support that people can lean on is being solo can be lonely. Just, just downright lonely. Having someone to call and get support from and get help and understand your numbers. That's the value of this solo operator model you consider joining. I'm Mike Andes.

Check out the links below if you're.

For that link to the website and get more information on the Solo Operator model. Thanks so much and we'll see you tomorrow.