Should I Become an Augusta Lawn Care Franchisee? (Live Webinar)

Right. All right, so we're going to go ahead and get started. It's 4pm Pacific time. Welcome Jesse from Kansas. So if you're just joining in right now, I am going to go ahead and step out of the chat room for just a second while I'm presenting, but then I will answer all your questions at the end. So as you have questions, as I'm talking about stuff today on the webinar, just chat, put it in the chat box and I will go through all of them at the very end of today's webinar. And and like I said, I'm just gonna talk about 20, 30 minutes, go through some slides, do a bit of a presentation and then all questions I can answer at the end. So I am gonna step out of the chat room if you're just getting in. A couple just joined us now. Feel free to introduce yourself, tell us where you're coming from. But I'm gonna go ahead and hop into our slide presentation here and just kind of get rolling. So let's go ahead and jump in start. Alright, so you should be able to see me down in the right hand corner still. But we will have the slides up here and going through this, probably about 10 or 12 slides here. So first of all, kind of what we're going to discuss Today, the next 20, 30 minutes is number one, why would you want to get a franchise instead of just starting your own landscaping business? And I'm going to talk about not just lawn care landscaping, but franchising in general, what the concept is and why you would want to franchise. And you know, the biggest brands that you can think of, usually customer centric ones, are franchise. You're thinking about Subway, McDonald's, Burger King, pizza Hut. All of those are franchises that you can buy into and become an owner. So we're gonna talk about why franchising. Number two, what you get as being a part of the franchise, Augusta Lawn Care specifically, but franchising in general, what you're kind of looking at getting in in comparison to just starting your own independent store. We're going to go over some of the competitive advantages of Augusta Lawn Care versus a lot of our other competitors like the Grounds guys, us Lawns, Spring Green and a few other landscaping companies in our space that are also franchise talking about some of those competitive advantages, what makes us different. And we're also going to talk about some of the common apprehensions to people getting started with Augusta Lawn Care. So I've talked to people for the past week, week and a half, probably 5060 people that are interested in the franchise. But today we're going to talk about some of the things that I've noticed over the past week of our apprehensions and just kind of walk you through explaining those and explain some of the things that maybe aren't the best about Augusta Lawn Care and why you might not want to join part of the franchise. So we're just going to be open, honest, talk about all those things and see if it's something that you would, as number five says, want to convert your landscaping business to becoming an Augusta lawn care franchise. So this webinar is really for someone that already has a landscaping business and is wanting to convert or add on to their existing business with a franchise. That being said, there's going to be lots of information in general about the franchise. So I know a couple of you do not have an existing landscaping business, so there'll be plenty of information for you. But this webinar is going to be more geared towards someone that already has a landscaping business, already does lawn care, and is looking to really scale their company up and use the systems and things that the franchise provides in order to scale their business. So we're really going to be talking about that whole transfer process, converting, adding on to your business and talking about that whole process today. And then number six, we'll talk about next steps if you're interested in kind of going to next step talking to me about more your individualized case and whether or not Augusta is going to be good for you. Go ahead. Next slide. So again, this is gonna be a little more general just to get started. Why would you franchise a business? So I'm not just talking about Gusta Lawn Care, I'm talking about like these are kind of the three main reasons why you would want to franchise any business. So let's just take Subway for example. Subway has over 40,000 locations, one of the most well known brands that franchise. It's scaled up massively since just one shop now, not too long ago. And so the power of franchising is really reflected in Subway. The reason you buy a Subway is because traditionally if you're going to have Joe's Sub Shop versus Subway, most people realize what Subway is, what it provides, and exactly what the brand is all about. So the branding, the image, just those six letters of Subway with the yellow and the green, it says a lot to consumers. There's a lot of recognition and brand recognition that comes with buying a Subway franchise. And so again, I'm just gonna use Subway as an example on these but this is in general why you would want a franchise. So it's the branding, and then number two is the systems. So when you go to a Subway, you expect to have your sandwich made a certain way every single time. You expect certain procedures to be the same. You expect the layout to be the same systems in terms of billing and the way that they do everything inside that store, their sandwich artists, the way they've been trained, the way they lay the pickles, the way they cut the bread, the way they bake the bread, all of that should have systems and procedures. The third reason why you have a franchise is for the support. So when you come into hard time as a business owner, if you're just running your own shop, it's sometimes lonely. You don't know what to do. You don't know what the best practices are. You don't know what percentage people have gone a certain way and failed or succeeded. Being part of that group, that collective group, just gives you a lot of power. Not just from the franchisor as, because, like, so I'm a franchisee of Anytime Fitness. They have over 4,500 locations around the world. And a lot of what we're doing at Augusta is actually picking and choosing some of the big highlights of Anytime Fitness. And the support that I've got, yes, I get support from the franchisor and they do training and I have a consultant and things like that. But even more so is having other franchisees that are all using the same systems and have the same brand and using the same marketing and have the same business model. And I'm able to pick and choose and pick their brain and see what's working and what's not working and see what works in certain markets and what doesn't work and get a really good understanding of the whole business model because there's so many people using the exact same systems. So when you start doing using the systems, all these people using the same system over and over and over, you get very good data in terms of what is good to do, what is bad to do. And when you come into an issue, whether it be a hiring issue or a marketing issue or a customer problem, you have a lot of data to fall back on because everyone is using the same model and using the same system. So, for example, if you're at Subways and you own a Subway franchise and all of a sudden your sales are dipping on Tuesdays.

You can go ask thousands of other franchisees what they've done to spark sales on a certain day when it's really slow. And so all of these are advantages to franchising. And this next slide is from the SBA that kind of shows the success rates of a franchise business, which is the blue one, the blue bar, versus the red bar, which is independent shops. So for example, in this case, the blue might be a franchise business like a Subway. The red might be Mike sub shop that I just start up for no reason. The chances of me Succeeding after five years is about 30 to 40%. If I start Mike Sub shop, if I start a Subway franchise or a franchise in general, using this chart, on average, the franchise is going to be open about 85% of the time after five years. So you can see the reason for this. And this is one thing that this chart doesn't. This just gives straight data. The reason that this is the case is for the reason is because these three things that we just talked about. A franchise business is going to have a better brand. It's going to have better marketing material generally, it's going to have a co op where they are thinking about ways to promote the brand in terms of getting new customers. They have systems, they have procedures and they're able to test them all the time and see what works and what doesn't. So for like instance at Anytime Fitness, they will test out a certain training model for the trainers in like 10 or 15 locations before they roll it out across the entire system of 4,500 locations. And so having those systems in place, making sure that when they roll things out, it's actually going to succeed, having those that support from all the other franchisees and the franchisor is what leads to this graph being so different, especially over the course of the first five years of the success rate of being a franchise. This is not to say that all franchises are perfect or good. I've learned a lot about the whole franchise process in the past couple years as we've got Augusta ready and especially the past few months. And one of the reasons why there's so much lawyers involved in attorneys and paperwork and a lot, a lot of red tape is because there are people out there that are selling franchises that are not good. So just because it's a franchise does not mean it's going to be successful. That's not what I'm saying. That is not what this graph, this is what this graph is kind of hiding. However, it is reflecting the fact that, you know, Subway is actually have a better rate of success rate than even this blue bar. But as an average, as an average, all franchises included These are the stats that come in in terms of success, percentage of a franchise versus versus an independent shop. So in Anytime Fitness location.

We do gym, we do training, we have a 24.7Gym. The chances of someone succeeding as an in time fitness franchisee is so much more, so much higher than it would be if you go out and start Mike's 24.7Gym or you just made up some name about a gym or Blaine Gym. Like there is just no comparison. And as a franchisee, yes, there's a lot of cost involved with being a part of the franchise. I paid a lot of money to become part of the franchise. Every single month, I pay 4 to $5,000 in fees to Anytime Fitness, all fees included, but 100%. I do not know how anyone could run a gym, especially a gym, without being part of a franchise. I just, I would never want to do it. It freaked me out of my mind just because the advantages I've seen at Anytime Fitness.

All right, so one of the biggest things now we're going to kind of switch more to Augusta is like, just think in yourself. Think for yourself. If you have a landscaping business, if you could start it all over again, what would you do differently and how much more money would you make? How much faster would you get to the place you are now? If you could do it all over again and you had like a second chance and you knew everything that you know now, but you were able to go back in time and redo it, you were able to start the business again. You were able to do an LLC instead of a sole proprietorship. You were able to have the hiring manual in place so you didn't get burned with a bad employee. You were able to get the marketing material right from the get go. You had the imaging done right from the get go. You could save yourself years of time, hundreds of thousands of dollars and get to where you are now much faster and much quicker. And that's the idea behind a franchise and is the fact that you're literally when I open my first franchise, as someone else opens their first franchise, I should say underneath Augusta Lawn Care, basically, it's my chance to start another Augusta Lawn Care doing it all over again. Everything I've learned, everything I've learned from landscape business course, you know, now we have several hundred members in the course. We have thousands of landscapers that listen to the, to the podcast every day. All of that information, as well as everything I've done with at Augusta Lawn Care, I'm able to pick and choose. Okay, this worked. This did not. This work. This did not. And then in the, on my second chance, I get to take just the things that work, cut out all the stuff that didn't work, and just start with the things that were doing well. We're making money that saved me time, that saved me money, that got good hires, that got good leads in. And so, you know, that's the advantage of having a franchise is in the third one you get like another chance and a fourth and a fifth. And so over time you really begin to refine and get a very set business model. So literally, if you just had two chances, if you just started, if Augusta Lanka started one franchise, that second franchise would have all the positive aspects that I've had to learn and I'd be able to cut a lot of time and money and waste out of what I've done. I know right off the bat, like if someone wonders what would you do differently then compared to what you've done the past five years? Number one thing, stronger branding online and in the marketing aspect of things, the past few years been really good. But it took me a couple years to figure that out. You know, what else would I have done differently? I would've had really good hiring systems right from the get go and a really good training system because I got burnt really bad in my second year on like my sixth or seventh hire by someone that went to L and I made a false claim based upon a previous injury like that burnt me bad. I settled outside of court because I had like, it was a bunch of pain that I didn't have to go through. If I would have had a system in place that someone could have said, hey, look, do this, don't do that, make sure you avoid that. Or I could have called someone, be like, hey, what do I do in this situation? And so those are some of the things I would have changed. Next thing I would have changed. I would not have gotten big. Big trucks, big trucks cost a lot to maintain. You have to have special, like really good drivers. And I would always be thinking about scalability right from day one. I'd be thinking about how can I make this process so easy that I can get someone that's getting paid $10 an hour, 11, $12 an hour, instead of having to pay someone 40 bucks an hour because specialized labor and it's hard to drive the trucks and I need them to drive excavators. I need to drive, you know, a 550 diesel truck and I need them to operate a dump trailer, like all this big equipment. I wouldn't have started with that. I might have added it down the road as we got bigger. But to start with those things is not the right avenue. You want to start with things that are scalable, things that are. Don't take a lot of labor skill, so that way you can hire. It's easier to hire people out in the field. In this labor market, it's very difficult to find people. If you add another layer of complexity to that of saying, look, not only do you need to be a good worker, you need to also be skilled, be able to drive a big truck, be able to have lots of skill in retaining walls and ponds, and you need to be doing all these things. That's not what I would have started with. Now, maybe I could not send more people, but I would have started very basic. I would have started without trailers. With a trailerless setup, I would have started very lean, very, very cheap. And I would have focused on scalability. Like how many times can I repeat that one truck, that's a trailer that set up, can I get 10 of those and then maybe add some landscaping? Like, I would have focused much more on the scalability of the company than I would have just on the growth and size and revenue increase of the business.

So that's one of the biggest advantages of franchising, is that you get the opportunity to do a business that someone has refined after doing it many, many, many times. And so literally, if I start Augusta Lawn Care right now from zero, I guarantee you I'd be at half a million in a year just because all the things that I've learned, all the things I've learned, I shouldn't do. And so that's the power of buying into a franchise.

Alright? So as an Augusta Lawn Care franchisee, before we talk about converting your existing business or adding a franchise onto your existing business, let's talk about what you get as part of being an Augusta Lawn Care franchisee. So these are just four things, four of the major things. Number one is systems training. All right, so the systems and procedures that we make for estimating, you know, and this is really micro on this, like give systems for answering the phone for, you know, getting that lead scheduled for an estimate, things like there's systems in place for all of that, but then even the estimating process in terms of dollars per man hour, profitability, markup on materials, all of those things, that's what we've created systems for. We create a system for hiring, what should be done, what paperwork should be signed to make sure you're covered as the employer and that they're going to get a really good experience and know that this business is different because they have things buttoned down, they have systems in place and they're not just coming to you and like, yeah, I think I like you. Let's start you out Monday. That's not going to be a relationship with that employee of one of trust and accountability and a professionalism. Having a system in place where you know exactly what to do, when to do it and how to attract the best talent is going to set you apart. This is by far hiring. The systems behind hiring is by far the thing that's going to separate landscaping businesses that are in business now versus landscaping businesses that will be in business in five years. Because the labor market is only going to get harder and harder and the businesses that are just hiring people on a whim don't have a system, don't have a procedure, aren't doing career fairs, don't know where to market, do not have systems in place to attract the best talent. Things like pay by performance, another system there below. If you don't have those things in place, you're not going to be able to get great workers out of this labor market. It's very difficult. Construction is calling them, trades are calling them and oil and gas. Depending where you're at, those things are what's going to have more money than we have to provide. Creating a workplace culture again, you know, team culture system that we provide, having that culture in place, having the pay by performance, having the hiring and the training system, that's what's going to keep your guys with you for a long time and retain them. We don't have a big turnover at Augusta. We have a lot of people wanting to get in. We have the massive advantage of when we put an add up, we get a lot of applicants, we put an ad up, we get a lot of good app and we can weed through a lot of them instead of having to just take the next person that has a heartbeat. And so this is one of the advantages of a franchise like Augusta. We have those systems in place, you know, have. In terms of getting leads in, it's the same way as the sales process you get leads in, in terms of people applying on your website to work at your facility, then you're going to have a, you know, a funnel. You're going to go take them through a, say through a career fair, how to do that career fair. That's a system we have. Then what's the next process? The interviewing process, how are you going to really make sure that there's someone you want to be working with and they want to be working with you? Again, the payport process, the training process, once they are hired. These are all things that come as part of being in the franchise. And you know, big one is pay for performance. I feel like that is going to be the wave that is the future of this industry is paying people by performance and not by the hour. I truly believe that a landscaper, business owner that is paying someone by the hour, they're doing it more because they're lazy. And I don't mean this as a slam. I just mean it's very easy to pay by the hour because everyone knows that scale. Everyone's used to that scale and it's easy to measure. It takes a. You have to have a system in place if you're going to make pay performance. You got to have rules, you got to have regulations, you got to have how much they get paid when they don't get paid, when they get penalized. All of that system. That's what we've been working on. That's what we give you as a franchisee. That the spreadsheets and exactly how to present it to your guys, how to make sure that they realize that you're actually in it. It's better for them. You're. They're going to have to work. They're going to be, they're going to be able to work with better people because it's going to force all those slackers away from your company. You're going to attract better talent because now they have the opportunity to make more money and there's no ceiling. So again that system already figured out for you so you don't have to go try to figure out yourself Marketing and lead gen. So just following here down on the page, the second one, what you get. So we just create a brand new website for the franchisees. If you go to augusta lawn care services.com it currently has the headquarters, our main shop as the main front of the website. You would get your own website that look very similar. It would not look the same. We would customize exactly for you your market. So for example, if you were getting one in Jacksonville, Florida for example, we would have augustalongareservices.com Jacksonville that would be your URL. The power of that website is that when we have hundreds of franchisees and there's all this traffic going through Augusta longcare services.com and then branching off to the different franchisees, there's A massive amount of credibility that Google gives towards that because all of this flow of web traffic is coming through it. And so you get a piggyback on that and get to Google's front page much faster because there's all of that traffic. And so the brand new website's been built as being part of the franchise. You get your own website customized to you. So we would, for instance, you don't have to use our services. If you look@Augustalonkerservices.com right now, you can see the services that we provide, but if you offer some other service, you can add those in there. And we have systems for each type of service, but it's up to you which ones you want to present on your website and which ones you want to offer to your customers. And that's going to really depend on your demographics, what your skills are, what you've done in the past. If you already have a landscaping business, so that is going to be ongoing support for that website. We do it all in house, so you don't have to worry about any of that. If you want a picture change, if you want a video change, all of that we do. We're going to make sure the SEO is right with the keywords, with your towns, your zip codes, everything will be in there. And so with your protected territory that you get 100,000 people as part of being the franchise, we're going to be zeroing our SEO just on that area and you're going to have your own separate website for that. And we're always looking at SEO differently. As you know from listening to the podcast, I'm always trying to look for the edge, what's coming up next in Google's algorithm and traffic web traffic behavior in general. Having your quote, your estimate request form high above the fold on your webpage, your front page is very important. You know, there's things that pop up like that and as I learn about those, as I'm always absorbing, as we're researching and figuring out what works and we're testing as we do, that those will be added to your site to constantly be updating it, increasing the speed, making it better, you don't have to worry about any of that as a franchisee. As part of the, you know, we're following along here templates and done for you marketing materials. So all the flyers, door hangers, you know, all the different print media that you have, everything from like this informational packet, for example, that we give out to people for their, on their estimates, the estimator gives to them. That's all done for you. You can, you can get it from us, we can actually ship them to you, or you can just download and print at your local printer. We don't make money on that stuff. We're not trying to make money on that stuff. It's. If you want, you can get ordered right from us, we ship it to you, and we warehouse it here. Or you can just download it, download the PDF and print them off yourself. Download all of the files and print them yourself. We're not trying to make a printing company or, you know, make a bunch of money on T shirts and uniforms, but we have it all there. So it's very simple. And for a lot of people, it's actually gonna be cheaper because we order in massive bulk, warehouse it here, and then can ship it to you at usually at or below the same price that you would get locally. So, again, just all of that's done for you, all the marketing material and same thing like Anytime Fitness. Every single month they're giving us new marketing material. And based upon the time of year, what the weather's like, things like that, same thing as what's going to happen with Augusta. We are constantly updating different types of templates, different types of caption and ad campaigns that you can use. So, you know, you don't have to guess what type of text you should use in a Facebook ad. You don't have to guess what type of video you should use for that ad. You will be able to use the template like, okay, I should. I should target this age demographic, I should target this income demographic. And I'll show them this picture with this text. We will have that all done for you. It's very much. It's all tested and made sure that it's actually working and it's done for you. Again, you can download it and you can adjust it. We are not going to say you have to print the flyer just like this. We're going to give you the flyer, say, hey, this is why it works. This is what we've tested, but here's the PDF. You can go change that. You can edit in Canva or Photoshop. You can do what you want with it. As part of being a franchisee, you get rights. That's what the main part of a franchise. You get rights to, like, the mascot and all these, like, you know, on your screen you're seeing all the mascots, different things he's doing. You get to use that wherever you want. If you want to make your own business cards or Mark, you mature, that's fine. But we have the stuff that's done for you already ready. So you don't have to spend time figuring that stuff out as well as same with digital ads, Google, Facebook and graphics. Graphics for your truck. Don't think about that. You just order it from the website. The dashboard, the backend dashboard that you get as a franchisee, you order those comes to you, you don't have to send it to a printer. Just, you know, find someone locally that can put them on for you. All of this stuff is done for you with a video on the, what we call the academy for franchisees that will walk you through a lot of these things. So that's the marketing and lead gen part. We're reporting in numbers. So there's daily, weekly and monthly reporting. We call them Max Metrics. And Max Metrics are based upon our masc. That's Max right there, that's his name. And so we call it Max Metrics. That's the daily, weekly and monthly reporting that you as a franchisee do on the monthly one. We're going to actually have a coaching call that follows in the next part here to discuss your performance, what your goals are, where do you want the business to go, how are we tracking towards that goal, Looking for areas of improvement based upon averages within the franchise. So again, we know like, okay, if you're, if your labor percentage or if your cost of goods sold is a, is too high or too low or where are you falling in and you're able to actually benchmark your Success, benchmark your KPIs, your key performance indicators, your profit margins, all of that you can have in the coaching call, looking at your max metrics, know exactly where you're at. And so for a lot of landscapers, the ones that are interested in the franchise is, look, you do great landscaping, you're fantastic at what you do, you're great with people. And the people that right now I'm accepting in as the first 10 is the people that are seeing business the same way as me in terms of people first. They're in it for the long run and they, they think about people and the employees the same way I do. That's what I'm looking for right now. Because on the back end, that's where we as the franchise give you all the support. The website, numbers reporting. If you don't know your numbers, we're going to make sure you know your numbers. Daily reporting on every single job, every single guy. And it's not going to take a Lot of time because we created the systems in place so you can quickly know where you're at every single day. How much money did you make? Were you profitable? Were you profitable on a single job? Were you profitable on a single route? That's the systems you get as part of being in the franchise.

Let's make sure everything's good here. Everyone can hear me. Okay, good. All right, so again if you guys have questions, I go ahead and put them in the chat room. I have a couple more slides here, go ahead and put them in the chat and I will answer all of them at the end. But let's go ahead here and continue on with our slides.

All right, so this is just some examples of the office system. So again this is one very narrow silo of the office where we have some systems that we've implemented Augusta that you'd get become part of as a franchisee. So like on the far left here I'm going to see actually if I can open up my whiteboard, turn my whiteboard on, bring this down for you guys, see if I can't draw in here so you can see what I'm talking about. Very good. So over here we got, this is a template. This is our. There we go. This is our invoice template. You get all this stuff, you can edit it, you can revise it, but as a franchisee you get all this stuff loaded into your software. Again down here you got like, this is your email signature, you can adjust that, you can change it. This right here is our automation process for estimate follow up. So when an estimate goes out, this is the automated sequence we built out to send emails, send phone calls, send text messages that are going to make sure that estimate actually converts into a paying customer. And this is just one of the automations we've built. I think we have about 15 or 18, 15 or so automation that we built. Everything from making sure the customers pick up the poop from the dogs the day before you show up. All those things are built already. The automations are built. Yes, you could figure this out again, you could do all of these things yourself. You're just cutting out the time and you're cutting out the mistakes that you would take and the years it's going to take to figure out what works and what doesn't and build these yourself. Again up here, this is some of the reporting functions that we have in terms of your sales pipeline and you know, your closing ratios and different reporting that's going to be in the automation aspect of the CRM. This up here is our scoreboard that we have in our office. Again, tracking, making it very visible to the team where we're at, if we're doing good, bad, ugly, et cetera. Over here, again, this is another one of the many office systems that we have is having Macs. And what we do is we send this email like this with this little blurb. And again we use. I'm just gonna turn the whiteboard off. We use this system to send voice notes instead of long emails. Save yourself a massive amount of time by sending out voice notes and just using this simple picture in the email and then below it attaching a voice note. Little things like this, this is an example of some of them. But just like every single thing about Augusta, we create a system around so you can cut out all the time it takes to try to develop and design a dog like this, develop your email signature, develop a scoreboard for your team, develop automations for your estimate system. You don't have to figure out how, what you should be track and recording and reporting every single day. You don't have to figure out a design, a good looking estimate and which one closes the best and have different options. That's what you get as part of being a part of the franchise. And this is just one. This is office systems, right? Like you go into pricing, we could go into team culture, we go into hiring, we can go to marketing. There's systems for all of these things that are designed to help the franchise eat. So let's talk about some of the pros and the cons of becoming a franchisee for Augusta and then we'll kind of wrap things up here real quick. So answer any, ask any question you might have in the chat box, and I'll get to them here in just a few minutes. So competitive advantage. Why is Augusta better than anyone else, in my opinion, in this area in landscaping? So our biggest kind of comparative analysis is the grounds guys. They used to be part of what's called the Dwyer Group. Now they're part of Neighborly. All right, if you had a landscaping business, you've probably been contacted by them. They have a pretty aggressive cold calling strategy to get people when they're in their early years of business, flat fleet. So compared to them and us lawns and every other franchise in this market, Spring Green and all this stuff, we have a flat fee structure. The biggest difference is that as you grow with Augusta, you are not going to get penalized. I know a lot of you have listened to this in the podcast and video that I made, but it's a huge differentiation I've talked to literally, probably, I don't want to say a dozen, because probably eight or nine, eight or nine, probably grounds guys, franchisees that are either unhappy or canceled and out of their franchise term and or didn't renew be simply due the fact that as they grew and became more successful, they ended up paying more and more and more fees. The franchisor, because 8 to 10% of their revenue was going to the franchisor. So if they're making $100,000 a month in revenue and 8 to $10,000 was going to the Grounds Guys or US Lawns, and that's very hard to.

Account for when you've grown to a hundred thousand a month and you kind of have figured things out, like, you know, the systems, you know, it works, you know, it doesn't. You don't need a lot of support. You know, they obviously have ongoing support and they give you a website and things, and that's all really good, but it's not worth 10,000, $15,000 a month. And so what happens is as those companies grow, they cap out where they can't grow anymore. And simply due to the fact that this tax, this franchise fee that is continually rising every month as they grow their business. And you already know if you're in the landscaping industry, that a 20% profit margin is really good in our industry, like really, really good. Well, if you're taking 10% of your gross revenue, that means you're taking half of your profit. So if you profited $100,000 last year as a franchisee and say the grounds guys system, you're gonna pay $50,000 of that, half of your profit is gonna go to the Dwyer Group. And so that's the biggest differentiating factor. What I've learned from Anytime Fitness and talking with a lot of not just grounds guys, but like the Mosquito, what's called the Mosquito Squad, the Ruderman, all these other home services franchises that I've been talking to, this is the biggest beef. And so that's why we change it to a flat fee structure. You cannot imagine how many times I have been warned and told not to go this route because no one else in the industry has. But if you look at the successful franchises in other industries right now, you look at Anytime Fitness, they have a flat fee structure. You look at Jimmy John's flat fee structure, this is where it's very, very transparent in terms of what your fees are going to be. And there's not a bunch of hidden fees anymore. And that's the franchise that I want to build and that I feel is going to be successful in any industry. So what we've done is really looked at what works in other industries. Jimmy John's doing great. You know, anytime fitness is was number one ranked franchise a few years ago. It's still in the top 20, like fantastic models, fantastic way of doing business. That's, it's a very. It puts a lot of trust with the franchisee and the franchisor. Because if I am the franchise or I'm like, you should market and you should go out and get more business and you should increase the revenue, increase the size of your business, but you know that by doing that I'm gonna make more money. There's a conflict of interest there because, you know, you shouldn't be growing. You know, you should actually stay at where you're at in order to become more profitable and more efficient. And so there's that conflict of interest because the franchisor just wants you to grow revenue wise, but does not care about your profit margin. All right. Because they're getting paid based upon a percentage of revenue. And so what we've done is the first year, it's a set fee structure. First year, $600 a month. Second year and beyond, $1,200 a month will not change. So year two to 10, you are only paying $1,200 a month. Doesn't matter how much you make every single month. At the beginning, that might be a higher percentage if you actually did the percentage of the math. But when you're making 100, 150, which is the goal for franchisees, if we're going to make that per month, I don't not want you to have to be paying more and more revenue. I want you to have a set fee model where you can go sell that franchise in 10, 15 years and you can actually sell as an asset that's producing income and profit and that you've been able to get really efficient on and not just been bloated in terms of revenue. So that's why we have the flat fee structure. I believe in it. It's the only way I would be a franchisee. Thus that's what we use at Augusta. Another competitive advantage is that we don't charge marketing fees because we want you to spend that money on local marketing. I've learned this from Anytime Fitness as a big beef that their franchisees have with them is that we have to pay $600 a month for a franchise fee or sorry, for a marketing fee. Now that marketing fee is going into a national campaign. And that's great because they get millions of dollars to do TV ads and things. However, I guarantee you if I spent that same $600 in my local market on Facebook ads, I would double or triple the amount of leads that their campaigns drive to our gym. And so one of the biggest issues with Anytime Fitness right now is that so many people are complaining that these marketing dollars are being spent stupid ways, inefficient ways, and they're not getting to the actual customers that would actually drive traffic and revenue to the business. And so we don't take any marketing fee. That twelve hundred dollars is completely not being used for that. And it's all that money that you would be spending on marketing is going to go towards your local marketing. And so, you know, grounds guys, for example, you're looking at between 6 and 8% for a franchise royalty fee. And then you're looking at 2% more for a national ad campaign that you're going to be paying into as well. You're looking at about 10% in terms of gross revenue going out the door to the franchisor. That's the biggest difference with Augusta versus other franchises. This industry. This is not a different thing when it comes to franchising in general. Jimmy John's and Anytime Fitness are two of the leaders in this movement of franchises that are set fee model and it's the way of the future in my opinion. The third thing, competitive advantage, is that just the forward thinking leadership. I am the driving force behind what we're doing at Augusta long here and I will be for the quite a long time. And so regardless of what we're doing in Augusta, I will be the driving, kind of like what's going on. And I'm not going to be the type that sits back and lets things happen to us as franchisees. I'm going to always be thinking about what industries are ahead of the curve and how can we adapt those things. If you look at this landscaping industry in general, we're far behind the curve in technology. We're always behind in labor tactics, figuring out ways to train our people. And so how can we stay on the cutting edge of that? How can we learn from Anytime Fitness? How can we learn from Jimmy John's, how can we learn from Apple and Google and Facebook who have tons of money to spend an R and D and figure out what works for their people and for their culture? How can we learn from those things and implement them in the boring business? Of landscaping and lawn care. And I don't say boring being negative. I think it's a very profitable, some of the best people in this industry and we deserve to make more money. And so, you know, I'm very focused on where the economic, whether it be macroeconomic. Like I said, baby boomer focus. We're focused on the baby boomer generation, the residential market. Do some of the franchisees want to go commercial? That's fine, that's totally fine. But our focus and the core of the business will be about around that residential baby boomer market. The reason you want to do that is because all of your marketing, the way your website is laid out, the way your estimates are set up, the way you email and phone calls, all of that should be channeled around that demographic. If you're going after commercial customer, the way you market is going to be completely different. The way you answer the phone, the way your website looks is completely different. And so we really focus on this baby boomer generation that for the next 20 years is where the money of this nation is at in the United States. And so that's the focus. So those are some of the advantages of Augusta lawn care. Right. The baby boomers and the residential market is underserved in my opinion. There is lots of of commercial landscaping franchises out there. And for that reason the price and the margins are going down, down, down in those residential markets in that baby boomer generation where they value trust, they value professionalism, they value people knowing English, they value a good website and they value great customer service. That's where we can charge higher prices, higher premiums and have much better retention than a commercial customer that just needs a cut going to the next guy and next guy and five other bids and driving that price down, down, down. You're not gonna pay your people very well if that's constantly happening. And that's what's going to happen with robots coming in with bigger mowers coming in. The commercial market will just continue to get cheaper and cheaper. Whereas the residential market, it's going to get harder and harder to find great people and it's going to become harder and harder had that professional level of service. And it's going to come easier and easier to charge for it when you have it. So that's our focus. Alright, so now common apprehensions. These are just blatant facts. I'm just going to tell you the way it is. There's reasons why you do not want to be an Augusta long your franchise or things that would be a drawback Or a negative number one thing, I put as three here, but really it's the cost and the fees up front. Know it's $25,000 as a franchise. Just get started. That $25,000 until November. When we get our first 10 people, that's half. So right now it's 12,500. But there is that initial franchise fee, ongoing, like I said, $600 a month for the first year. After that it's $1200 a month. Never changes. But there are costs, there are fees to becoming part of a franchise. But on here, the list, number one there, new franchise, no track record. Guess what? We don't have any franchisees right now. In terms of operating. We've sold some, but like they are in operation. Not going to be in operation until November. So you don't have any track record. On our fdd, we show every. It's required in our FDD to show all the information, the contact information of our franchisees. Guess what? Right now there's none. You don't have any because it's going back to 2018. We didn't have any franchisees. It's zero. Only thing we have right now is to prove our one local store that we have here and we show our revenue, we show our numbers from this one store. That's all we got. I can't show you anything else. I can't show you all the knowledge that we've got from the course and the landscape business course and the podcast that doesn't do anything on paper. So from a track record perspective, we don't have it. All right, so if you're looking for that grounds guide is going to be the better option. They have 230 used to be 260. Now it's like 230 franchisees. They have a track record. They have a lot of people doing it. You can call them and ask them how it's going. So we don't have that. We don't have any name recognition. When I said Subway, everyone here knew what I was talking about. When you tell the average consumer Augusta Lawn Care, they do not know what you're talking about. The good news is that we're here to change that and that you're going to be getting in early before it costs a lot to become part of that brand name. And so I know that for Anytime Fitness, I was late on the train. There was already 4,000 locations. The guys that I know that were in it when there was like 3, 4, 500 locations, they're the ones that are killing it. Because they got in when there was no name recognition, things were a lot cheaper for them. They got a lot better deals. Franchise fee was about a third of what it is today because now their franchise fee is 40,42,500. So like no name recognition right now. No one knows who Augusta Lawn cares. The average Joe on the market does not know. They're not going to look at Augusta and say that, you know, your name only is better than Joe's Lawn Care. Now if they look at your website, they're going to tell a whole lot different. And if they have you up for an estimate, they're going to tell a whole lot different because you have systems and procedures and professionalism and a truck that looks good and all those. But from name recognition only. We don't got Subway's brand power right now. Alright, so our mission, my mission and almost everyone here has listened to my podcast or you know, a little bit about me, my mission is to change the level of professionalism in the landscaping industry. And I want to become the standard. And that's what I've seen in our local market where when we came into the market and we started to grow, we pushed other people out, people that were not paying their employees enough. Why? Because those employees came to us and so now they that put them out of business. Now the customers begin to expect a certain level of professionalism. They expected credit cards to be accepted. They expected that the trucks be cleaned and be logoed and have the contact information readily available. They expected proof of insurance and a bond being presented with the estimate. And so that pushed out a lot of the bad, the unprofessional, the under the table workers, under table.

Companies that we run. And that's what I want to do. This whole industry and how we're going to do it is one franchisee at a time in your local market pushing out the bad and making sure our standards become the standard in this industry. And so, you know, I could, I could easily run landscape business course and a podcast and make really good money and just continue to grow it the way it's going now and it's getting very popular and just make more money like that. But I don't see that actually making physical changes in each market, making it where employees get treated better, they get paid more, pay by performance becomes the standard in this industry because what we have to do to evolve with the times. And so I really believe it's the best way for me to make the impact on the industry is being able to have my Hand in each franchisees markets and help them raise the standard in those individual cities, towns and counties.

Alright, so this is one of the biggest questions for everyone on this webinar is can you start the franchise in conjunction with an existing brand?

I think I got one or two more slides after this. Basically the answer to this question is yes. So far the franchisees that we've sold that are doing this, they're either doing it as a service expansion or an area expansion or they're going to gradually switch from their existing company to a new to Augusta. And so the service expansion is like, hey, you know, they might do landscaping right now, but they're going to add on lawn care using the franchise, right? So Augusta Lawn Care Services and then Joe's Landscaping. And they do the landscaping through Joe's Landscaping and they would do the lawn care through Augusta Lawn Care. And the reason I don't care if you do that is because we're only get, we're getting a set fee. So I don't care if you want to know, go do your landscaping on one and then lawn care on the other because we're not getting a percentage of revenue. You know, the grounds guys is never going to let you do that because they're getting a cut of revenue and they don't want you to divert revenue through the other entity that is not affiliation with them. I don't care about that. I'm going to give you all the systems, the procedures and you can decide if you want to go through Joe's Landscaping or Gusta Lawn Care. So service expansion or area expansion. So we have one franchisee that has bought a franchise below a certain city. And because he already has, you know, quite a bit of business in one part of the one township, but he wanted to expand and grow in this other one. He's going to do Augusta Lawn Care franchise in this new area to expand his business and that's totally fine. The third way, and this is what he's also doing, that second guy just mentioned is he's going to gradually convert it from his existing business name and everything to Augusta. But he wants to do it gradually because he's built up a bit of a name in his local market. Note fuel on the fire. And that is if you only have certain amount of marketing dollars and you're trying to go two different directions, it is a little more difficult. You're not going to get as much if you're making a fire, you want to make a big fire. Putting all the gas in one thing is going to make it go bigger. So I'm not necessarily saying it's the best thing that you should do. Two. One for landscaping, one for Augusta lawn care. I prefer, and I would really think it's better to go just with Augusta. But if you feel like you want to get started at least with two, that's totally fine. If you have questions, we can answer those at the end. So I'm just gonna flip through these last couple. These are basically some of the next steps. So you can see next to, on the offer side there, if you want to book a call with me, you can do that. Basically. There's also@AugustAlongerServices.com franchise, there's like 20 plus videos, about an hour's worth of content of just asking, answering a bunch of frequently asked questions. And so that would be really helpful for you. I do a video about like literally comparing grounds guys versus us. I do one about like, you know, whether or not I'm going to help you, like all this other stuff. That's all there. The phone call. We can go over your individual case, the legal documents. Basically we cover all the legal fees, but you sign the fdd, which is the franchise disclosure document, doesn't obligate you at all. It just discloses everything about us, everything about me, everything that you get, everything that you don't get, all that stuff. You have to wait two weeks. During that time, we can talk, we can make sure you understand everything. And then that two weeks after that, you can sign the franchise agreement. So right now, when you convert to Augusta and you have your existing business and you convert over to Augusta, there's a massive discount on the fee side, so 50% off up front. So you save $12,500. And right now we're looking for our first 10 franchisees. And they're going to be trained like you see on the screen there, November 14th to 16th, those first 10 people, and only those first 10 people are going to get $0 for fees all the way to next June. So it's going to allow them to grow their business over the winter. We're going to build the website from you right from November, so you'll be able to get SEO all winter long. Be on the front of Google by spring. That's the goal. You'll be able to convert your trucks over this winter, all of that. And so when you come for training in that middle school section there, you can see it's three days long. We do it Thursday, Friday and Saturday. We do that so that you don't have to like miss a bunch of work if you have a job or leave your business all week long. We decided to do it over the weekend, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, so that way you can continue business as usual. And when you come.

You'Ll come here for three days and you'll also be able to visit our company owned location which does multi million dollars in revenue.

And you'll be able to see in operation.

What it can become, how big the business can be, what the company. So in your mind you have a visual of how it can look, how it can become, what it can look like, how big your shop can be, how many people can work. And you start to see and build your business to get to that place. And you'll learn all the systems, procedures and all of that sort of information in the fdd. It actually breaks down hour by hour what you learn in that training session and again open for business. You'd come here in November, get the training and then over the winter you can go ahead and get started. Right after training. You get access to the dashboard, you get access to all the print materials, all of the academy, you're able to get started and you can convert your trucks and things. So the big reason why we're giving this massive discount for existing businesses is because you're gonna have to like repaint your trucks and put new logos on and maybe get some uniforms and get new business cards. That's gonna cost money. So that $12,500, that savings can go towards that and cover those things. And we give you the paint colors and all the logos for you. Like it's all done for you. So that's pretty much it. I'm going to go ahead and go into some questions and answers here, if there are any. But please set up a call with me if you have a business now, lawn care, landscaping, Just wanting to get started and you want to know like, would this work for me? Am I good fit for this? Again, those discounts are only for the first 10 people and those first 10 people are going to be here in November to get trained. So if you're watching this video recording in like December or January, there will not be discount like this is. That's not happening. I'm only doing it for the first 10 people because I'm being so selective and I want to make sure they are set up for success so much. So like I'm going to be guarantee those first 10 people I will eventually come to their location because I'm so invested making sure they, they do well, do I think we could sell 20 or 30 franchises by next spring. Yes. Do I think I could do. I could support 30 franchisees right now? Really, really well, no. So that's why we're doing 10. I mean, very selective. And all these calls I'm having the past week and a half, nine out of ten of them, I know they're not a good fit within the first minutes because they just are not going to follow the ethos that Augusta stands for. And so that's what I'm really invested in right now. So please set up a call with me. I'd love to talk with you. I love to go over, you know, your experience, where you're at financially, where you're at in terms of your goals, what you want, and see if you're a good fit. I can't guarantee that just by calling me, you're going to get a franchise like most of you calling right now. There's not a good fit. And that's not like a shame on anyone just to say that, like, it's not going to be a good relationship with us. And that's how I'm looking at all these franchisees, especially these first 10, is that we have a very close relationship, and we got to see business the same way, we got to see employees the same way, we got to see the market the same way in order to really propel this forward. So I'm going to go into the chat room now, and if there's any questions, please do post.

I got a couple questions in here right now, so I'm going to go ahead and answer those. But if you have any questions, do post them here. If you're watching the recording of this, feel free to email me franchisegustalawncareservices.com and for those FAQ videos. And to book a call with me, just go to augustalawncareservices.com franchise. So I'm gonna go ahead and take off my slide presentation. Hi, everyone. Go back into the chat room and I'm gonna go ahead and answer any questions. So there's just a couple here that have popped up, and I will answer those. And so. But before I get into that, thank you. For those of you who have to leave, thank you for spending your evening here about, what, 50 minutes? So thank you for doing that. And again, if you have any questions, let me know, email me or go onto the website. But let's go ahead and jump in a couple questions that have come in here on the chat. So, Giorgio. Hi, Mike. Should I just start landscaping company from the start, or just start my deck and fences first. So again, this is totally up to you. GIORGIO in my opinion, it's easier to find laborers that can do landscaping than it is for fences and decks, just because fences and decks take more skilled labor. And it's very hard market, labor market to find those type of people. So in general, I would say landscaping first. And then if you ever, if you love fences, if you love decks, you can do that as part of the franchise, or you can start, you know, your own brand or whatever you want to do and go into that down the road. Once you have, like, some project managers, you have, like, more people and you can start drawing talent away and doing decks and fences. That's what I would recommend. Just because the labor market is the way it is. Giorgio asked also, will you have franchises in Canada? GIORGIO we do not. Now. It's gonna be at least a year, at least a year before we're able to. We're working on it, but I have just so much to do with just getting academy ready and getting the first 10 set up. So right now we don't. I'm sorry. Brulo asked, can we use our company logo? We already have. Or use Augusta, so you can use either. Again, it's totally up to you. I would.