Starting 4 New Businesses, Reoccurring Work, Mike's Story

Welcome back to the Mike Andies podcast, where we discuss the ins and outs of owning a small business. If you're new here, the Mike Andy's podcast is all about taking your businesses to the next level. First off, today Mike is going to be starting four more lawn care businesses this year, all outside his state. He's going to walk us through the hard math behind what makes him confident that this is possible. Next, attention home service business owners. You need to have a source of recurring revenue, and as we enter the recession, it might just save your business. And lastly, we're sure that if you're here, you're pretty familiar with Mike Candies, but maybe you haven't heard his entire story. As always, you can find Aldous and more over at the Mike Candies YouTube channel. But let's get into it. Here's how Mike is going to be able to start four new lawn care businesses this year.

I'm going to be starting four more businesses. They're all lawn care businesses and they're locations outside of my state. Then I'm going to walk you through the math behind them, how I'm spending $340,000 in cash and to get these started off the ground, and how they're going to be better than if I just started one location instead of the four. So let's go ahead and break down my investment. So my investment's going to be a total of $340,000. That's four locations. I'm spending $85,000. Originally I was planning to spend $80,000, but once we brought all the managers for training and had to do accommodations and travel and everything was just getting a little more expensive in terms of like the trucks and things. So we're spending about $85,000 to get those started. Now I'm gonna be making a video in just a couple weeks showing us buying all this stuff. The whole process of hiring the managers, bringing them the training, it's gonna be a great video. It was shot by my regional manager, Chuck, and I'm really looking forward to sharing that with you. But that's my investment. Everything was done with cash. We aren't going to any sort of debt for this at all. Three year plan. The goal with these is to get them all above 500,000. They're incentivized. The general managers that we're hiring to get above 500,000. But assuming they get 500,000 to 600,000, the goal within three years is to be at that spot and have 10% of distributions, not 10% of profits. But actually the money that I take out of the business is 10% because we do a significant amount of profit sharing. Up to 35% of my profits. Actually a little bit more than that is shared with the general manager, the frontline team, and the regional manager.

So.

So I guess all in all, up to 40% of my profits could be shared with the team. That's why I'm only assuming 10% distribution. But if that happens. And the reason, by the way, if you think that's crazy that I'm giving that much profit away is I literally have not bought anything, hired anybody, et cetera. So I'm okay when I'm completely removed. And it's basically passive to be giving a good chunk of the profits away. But if this is happening, I'd be getting $50,000 in distributions per location. That would equal $200,000 in distributions after year three. If we can get there, that would be great. That would be the goal. That would be approximately.

$4,000 per month in distributions per location, $200,000 total. Now the big question is, why do I own eight locations of Augusta Lawn Care? Because I already have four. We've added four just recently. Why would I have eight locations instead of one massive location? So because my very first location, we've just kept between 1.5 to 1.7 million in revenue for the past three or four years. It's been really profitable and we haven't tried to continue growing it. Why would we not just take that 1.5, $1.7 million business and make it 3, 4, 5, $6 million in annual revenue? Because theoretically, by having these four new locations, I'll be adding about $2 million in annual revenue. Plus the other four locations I have adding another about $3 million in revenue. It's like, well, why wouldn't you just have a $5 million location?

Great point.

Let me break down why that is and why it's important to me that I have locations that are between 500,000 and 800,000 in annual revenue, instead of one or two locations all doing 5, $10 million in annual revenue. So first and foremost is that for each of these locations, I only need one overhead person. And so I've seen that once a location gets above $800,000, you need at least two non revenue producing people at the top. You need a general manager, and you typically need an office manager estimator. Now, these positions, when you're doing a million million and a half in revenue, don't make any money. They're overhead Positions. And not to say that they're meaningless positions. It's just harder to make more profit from the business once you get above that level. Because if I have someone that I have to pay $50,000 in, in salary, well, $50,000 multiplied by a 20% profit margin means that I actually have to generate $250,000 of revenue to get the $50,000 of profit that I am giving to that overhead person. So I've got to grow the business by a quarter million in revenue just to cover their wages. So instead of trying to grow, grow, grow past 800,000, I'm more inclined to keep my locations around 500,000 to 800,000. Now at Augusta you can grow a larger location. My very first one, very profitable, I usually take away 2 to $300,000 in distributions every year from that location and it does 1.5 to 1.7 million. And I don't have any plans of making it massive. Alright, but this is the deal. Why would I do these eight instead of the one number one, one overhead person? Now what's really cool is we have what we call the working GM model at Augusta Lawn Care, where this one overhead person is a general manager. Now above all, eight of my locations is what I call a regional manager. That's Chuck, you'll get to meet Chuck here in just a couple weeks. But this one overhead person is a general manager. Now we call them a working GM because at 5, $600,000 in annual revenue, I expect them to be working out in the field two to four days a week producing more money. And I say two to four because during the spring there's gonna be a lot more estimates and hiring. So there are going to be less hours out in the field. Whereas during there's gonna be some periods of time, like in the winter, they're gonna be working four to five days out in the field. But the bottom line is they're producing revenue, they're a working gm. They're not just doing estimates, not driving around in an AC vehicle all day long. They are actually producing revenue. That's how you're able to be ultra efficient. Because this is the deal, this is how we do at Augusta Lawn Care. These general managers, they have to take care of the estimating and the hiring and keeping the team together. They don't have to manage is the marketing, the answering the phones, the emails, pay for performance, payroll, none of that because command center handles all the backend admin stuff. And you're like, well, it's going to cost a lot of money. It's a whole lot cheaper than hiring some overhead person full time when I don't need them full time. At $500,000 to $800,000 in annual revenue, they're usually going to spend $1,000 to $2,000 at Command center to get all these things done throughout the year. And it'll go up during the spring and it'll go down during the summer. And so that one overhead position, that general manager, is actually producing some revenues. I don't even really consider them an overhead position because they are producing revenue and they should at least be able to cover their wages and their salary for the revenue that they create in the field. Now, by the way, a lot of big companies get bloated by having a whole bunch of overhead people. And I've seen some locations and I've seen some businesses have one person in the office for every person in the field, bloated, very difficult to make a high profit margin. And I've just seen them, companies get bigger, somehow the profits start slipping away because they keep adding more overhead people. An estimator, then they need a foreman, then we need a general manager, then they need an office person, they need an office assistant. If you have five people in overhead positions, you might literally need to create $1.5 million in revenue just to break even. Okay, so skill level required for general manager position.

Okay.

This is the main reason why I want to have these smaller locations is because to find a person that can run a 2, 3, 4, 5 million dollar business is extremely hard to find. Two reasons, very hard to find, very hard to replace them, and very expensive. It's very expensive. If I'm gonna go try to find someone that has the experience to be able to and the leadership to be able to run a business that has 20, 30, 40 employees, very, very difficult to find them. So what happens is, is because it's so hard to replace them, you start just paying them more and more and more money because it's so hard to replace them. You can't go and find someone that can immediately run a landscaping business that has 20, 30 people. However, what I can do is I can take someone that's entry level, understand the way that we operate, been in the field for maybe one or two years, and I can groom them into becoming a Leader and managing four or five employees in this model of 500,000 to eight, $800,000 in annual revenue. So it's much, much easier to find my general managers as well as being able to pay them a much more Reasonable overhead salary. Because if I have to find someone that's gonna run a 40 person business and has the experience and has done that before and is okay with managing multiple millions in revenue, I'm gonna have to probably spend 150 to $200,000 just on their salary. Which means if I'm running a 15, 10, 15% profit margin, that's my distributions. And that's literally going to mean I'm going to have to grow a million dollar business just to pay that one person. I'm going to have to produce a million dollars in revenue just to pay the overhead required for 150 to $200,000 salary. And furthermore, that person's not coming from internally. They're going to be. I'm going to have to find them somewhere. I'm going to probably move them across the country. Very, very difficult to find them and they're expensive. And what happens when they leave? Now I'm left with this black hole. Guess what's going to happen? I'm gonna have to step in as a CEO and take over that location and manage it. I don't want to be doing that. I want to be able to step away from the business because I don't want to own a job. I want to work on the business and allow other people to grow up inside the organization and take these leadership positions. But I can't do that if I've built this behemoth that it's very difficult to bring in managers for. And that leads me to my third point and that is upward mobility for future frontline team members. It's very important to me that my general managers have experience out in the field and they've come up inside of the organization. Now when we're starting these four brand new locations, a couple of them we did have to hire outside of the existing team because we only had one location. I'm adding four more around it. And so yeah, a couple of the team members were frontline mowing team members. They literally started a year, two years ago mowing grass and now they're becoming general managers or why can I do that? Because they don't need a ton of experience, they don't need leadership experience and have 20 years of running a lawn care and landscaping business and a whole bunch of years under their belt. They don't need that, they just need to understand the systems, understand how we operate in our culture, understand pay for performance and they can run a four, five, six person operation. And I want the upward mobility. I want the ability for my frontline team members to be able to look at people, people in the organization be like, oh, they worked here for a year and they got promoted to being a manager. Oh, they worked here a couple years and they went and started their own location. We have what we call the 3F program at Augusta Franchise fee forgiveness that allows them to go actually start their own location. After working in a location for two years, they can go start their own franchise for no initial fee. And we do that to allow upward mobility. It's very important to me that we don't create dead end jobs in the lawn care and landscaping industry. And so by having this 500 to $800,000 location, it creates a nice opportunity to hire someone into a general management position. And I don't need them to have all these years of experience.

There's just no way I'm going to hire someone from mowing and a year later they're going to run a $4 million operation or a $5 million operation. The likelihood of that is very, very slim. Whereas if I can take someone and they get to know the systems, I how we operate inside the software, how we operate in our culture at Augusta Nation, how command center works and what they do for us, if they can understand in 6, 12, 18 months, there's absolutely no reason why someone with a good personality that's driven, wants to be able to sell, wants to be able to control their own destiny with profit sharing, that they can't run four, five, six, seven employees and be able to run a 500 to $800,000 annual revenue business. And I want that upward mobility. I want the opportunity. But for frontline team members, we say they did it and they did it and they moved up to general management position and they were promoted and they went and started their own location. And that's what I'm really interested in. So we're gonna follow this story and over the next couple weeks, I'm gonna show you exactly what's happening as we spent the $340,000. I'm gonna show you all the general managers that are getting started at the new locations. And currently I have eight locations from Augusta Lawn Care that I personally own. And what's crazy is a lot of people online think that I make all my money on YouTube, I or on courses and all the rest of it. Let me be very clear. In one day, my eight locations make me more in profit than the entire year of 2022 did on the media and the web design and the videos and all the content I make and the courses everything combined for the whole year of 2022. I make more money and profit in one day on these eight locations than I do in all the media stuff that I do. I love boring businesses. I love lawn care and landscaping, and I truly believe you can make them extremely profitable if you follow systems and you put people in places to succeed and they take ownership of their position. That's how Augusta Lawn Care will change the level of professionalism in the landscaping industry. I'm Mike Andes. Check out the links in the description if you want more information and I appreciate all of your attention.

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For the past four or five years.

I've been pounding the drum and telling home service business owners to ensure they have recurring revenue coming into their business. Because one time jobs and projects are great when everything is good in the economy, but when things turn when we go into a recession, those are the companies that get wiped out. Now, sure enough, let's go ahead and use a different analogy and a different industry because everyone's like oh no, contracting different and my service business is different and I do lawn care, I do landscaping. Okay, let's use an example outside of that industry so you don't get wrapped up in the industry and you knowing type of mowers you use and tires you have and customers and all the rest of it. Let's use Peloton as an example. Peloton's CEO doesn't care the equipment is losing money. Sees a path forward in the app. Peloton CEO Barry McCarthy told investors he.

Isn'T concerned that it, that it's, it's.

Bikes, treads and rows. These are, you know, workout equipment. That's what Peloton builds treadmills, rowing machines.

They do fitness bikes.

They those lost money. During its holiday quarter, McCarthy touted the company's mobile app, which features on demand fitness Classes from peloton instructors. The pricey exercise machines posted a negative gross margin for the holiday quarter with a fitness equipment makers overall profit margin was positive. Okay, so if you don't know what peloton is, they were the ones that a few years ago their stock price was literally 30 to 40. What, let me see here, let me.

Make sure I'm correct.

It was about 15 times, 15 to 20 times what it is currently today. And what it has been, that was their share price in the height of 2021. Now why? Well, everyone was working out from home. It was all the rage. People like me, gym owners, we're freaked out of our mind.

Let's all just be honest. We thought it was going to wipe us all out.

Now what happened is demand for their very expensive bikes, treadmills and rowing machines came collapsing down when gyms opened back up and COVID lockdowns ended. And what kept them alive, what kept them alive was not the fact that they made the best equipment or made these great very expensive machines, it was their subscription revenue, it was the recurring revenue they built from their app. Because recurring revenue is sticky. Recurring revenue allows you to get through hard economic times. And despite the fact that what they are known for selling these really expensive.

Pieces of connected equipment for fitness, like.

Two $3,000 pieces of equipment that are just not worth that, let's be honest, it's literally like a nordic track bike with a iPad smacked on the front of it and it's like oh, we'll mark it up to like three grand. That's what they were selling for. They've come down way in price. And that's what happens during a recession when demand consumer comes down. Now your projects, those one time jobs don't sell for what they used to. Your margins aren't as big and juicy as they used to be. And because that has now been revealed and been unveiled, their stock price has come down like 80 and 90% because of this fact. And that is why traditionally project based Jobs one time jobs are sold to customers they don't have as good of a valuation and they just don't have the longevity of a recurring based model for business. When you look at any great business, they always are trying to get into recurring revenue. You look at Apple, what they've done over the past five years and why their stock price has done so well and Tim Cook is a, is acclaimed by everyone as a great CEO is because he made sure that the revenue that they got no longer was just dependent on iPads, iPhones, Apple watches, and computers. Now a massive chunk of their revenue comes from services I.e. iCloud, the app store, other things that you would buy as a consumer on a subscription base. That is where the money really is at. And if iPhone sales goes to zero tomorrow, yes it'll hurt the company. If they stop selling computers and laptops tomorrow, yes it will hurt the company. But what will keep going and printing money for them is their recurring services. Just let's keep reading here in this article. Peloton CEO told investors Wednesday he doesn't care the company is losing money on its bike tread and row equipment. The businesses path to the promised land, he said, is in its mobile app. Literally. That's where all the recurring revenue is at. Peloton posted negative margins during the holiday quarter for its pricey connected fitness products, but McCarthy said he's more concerned with aggregate margins, which were positive thanks to the company's subscription revenue. Subscription equals recurring revenue. And notice that despite the fact that all of their sales are down on their pricey fitness equipment because no one wants to shell out $2,000 for a fitness bike in a recession, what doesn't go down and over the past three quarters has been stable is their rec recurring subscription model business. And that's where they're building their company around. And that's why their stock price has somewhat recovered over the past few months is because it's realized that this is a really sticky something. When people get into this recurring subscription, they don't leave. And that to me is why I encourage every business owner. Whether you're in home services products like Apple or you're trying to sell things on the Internet like cloud services.

Guess what?

No one's selling discs with software anymore. They're not selling an app that you download for $10,000. They're trying to sell you QuickBooks online for example. They're not going to sell you QuickBooks desktop, they want to sell you cookbooks online on a subscription basis. That's why the stock price for Intuit has gone through the roof the past five to 10 years is because they've switched to a subscription model. No longer trying to sell you a one time piece of software for thousands of dollars. But for a subscription based recurring revenue model is where the money is at. And if you are blind to see it in your own industry, look at every other industry that is trying to diversify their business out of project based work. Hey, there's still a massive chunk of revenue at Apple that comes from selling one time things. A computer, a phone, hardware. But those Things are lower margin. Look here in this, in this, in this article here. If we scroll down, you can see here they had, they lost $42 million in the year.

Great business, right?

Negative margins of 11.2%. But let's check this out here. Peloton made so the company's overall gross margin of 29.7% was kept afloat by the 277 million peloton made from its subscription basis business at a margin of 67%. Because in a recession, one time jobs, one time pieces of hardware decline in price. Whereas the sticky service that has great customer service has a great product that people love and enjoy that's only 20, 30, $40 dec, that's much more sticky and is going to keep you through a recession. And I don't care. Like man, I'm not really passionate about doing recurring services and let's just use landscaping. For example. Maybe you're not passionate about mowing, you're not passionate about trimming bushes, but those things have to be done during a recession and they will not be cut out before someone prior to that cuts out the paver patio, the infinity pool that they were going to install and the deck on their back porch. Why are they going to cut those things out? Because they no longer have a whole bunch of equity in their house. They can't get cheap debt on a home equity line of credit and now they're upside down in their house and they owe more on the house than they do in equity.

The actual house is worth.

These are the type of things that will happen in a recession and that's when people get caught with their pants down. If you look at the landscaping issue, just for example, you look at the companies that are doing over $100 million in annual revenue, the vast majority of them, I would say that 90 plus percent of them do some form of recurring service. Even if they're project based. They are also making it up 30, 40, 50% of their revenue is coming from recurring work and maintenance. And I don't care if you're an H Vac or roofing or fencing or carpet cleaning or home cleaning or whatever service you're for the home services. You've got to figure out a way to create some sort of stream of revenue that is recurring, that is coming back to the client over and over and over. That maintenance package will sell a whole lot better. When you're selling them for a 50 or $100 a month. That will sell a whole lot better than a $5,000 install in the middle of a recession. And the reason why these companies don't get massive is because they don't survive the recessions. Big project based companies that only sell one off jobs in any industry typically in a recession are the ones that have been massive cuts. They have to go from, you know, making 200 million, they go down to 40 million, they have to cut everything out, get really lean again. Whereas recurring revenue is able to sustain itself through the recession because the consumer's much more likely to cut out one time big purchases than subscription based recurring revenue and maintenance on things instead of new installation of new products that cost them more and more money.

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Today. I made a post on Facebook and Instagram and YouTube talking a little bit about my story and I realized that not a lot of people actually know or I should say there's a lot of people have joined in the past couple years that that don't really know my story. And I want to walk today through why I do what I do and what led me on my entrepreneurial journey to get to where I am today.

I didn't have a lot of money. My family didn't growing up. My dad was a minister, he still is. And we moved like 26, 27 times by the time I was moving out and we moving all over the country. I was actually born in Kentucky, Louisville. And then we moved to Tennessee. Then we moved to.

Arizona. And then when I was like three or four years old, we moved up to Washington State where to this day I still live. And I was really young, I was ahead in school and so I actually started with my brother at home. He started kindergarten when he was 5. I started, I was at, I was 3. So I just like sat there and Learned because there was nothing else to do. I just played with my brother all day long. So when we moved, I was four years old, we moved to come up to Washington State. He started school in grade one. And I was like, forget this. I'm not gonna live without my brother at home all day long by myself, so I'm gonna go to school too. So I started kindergarten officially when I was four years old. But it was always pretty easy for me because I always had that year up. Like when I was three, I was learning how to write and all the rest of it. I get into kindergarten, I was already ahead of the game. Well, I was still a year ahead even at that time in terms of being four years old in kindergarten. So I was really small. Still am really small to this day. Surprise, surprise. And so my mom held me back a year, and so I did kindergarten again. So although it was the second time, technically I'd kind of done it three times by now. And so it really gave me a good foothold and kind of set the precedent that, like, hey, you're gonna be the one that is ahead in class. You're gonna be the one that teaches your. Your other classmates on how to do work. Once you're finished your project, you help other people. Very helpful. For me, I learn really well when I teach people. I learn myself. Concepts come together really well when I'm teaching others. And I didn't know it obviously back then, but like, something that. Throughout all my primary years of school, that was happening. So I was in grade seven. I skipped grade seven. After a week or two into the school year, they finally let me skip. I was just bored out of my brain. And I told my mom and dad. I was like, I want to skip grade. It has nothing to do with anything other than just like, I'm bored of my brain. I feel like most of my day is a waste. So they let me skip grade seven. That was a really good move. Definitely put me in a different challenging environment. Did grade eight, and then that's when I realized that I could go do homeschool, do grade 9 and 10 in one year, and then start grade 11 and 12. But while doing grade 11 and 12, also go to college and get my undergraduate degree. Start working on that. So that's what I did. I basically started going to college when I was 13 years old, going to Whatcom Community College. Got my first two years, my associate's degree, and then transferred over to Western Washington University. Now, in that time, I believed that I was going to go to medical School, I wanted to become a heart surgeon or a brain surgeon, and either of those I wanted to go extremely specialized. And I wanted to focus on emergency. I really, like, definitely wanted. I just knew from the beginning I loved high stress situations. And I wanted it to be where when someone came in, their life was literally in my hands and that was the adrenaline I wanted to have. And so I prepared and I worked hard. And literally nothing besides an A in college was the standard. Like my standard was, if it's not an A, I failed. It was either literally fail or an A. And I still remember getting my first A minus in my second year of college and literally going to the professor and be like, I will do whatever it takes to get that change to an A. And it was crazy. She had me do an extra paper and a little bit of research is in a nutrition class and I got my A. And so anyways, fast forward a little bit more. And by the way, like, I started college when I was really young, but my parents had no pressure on me whatsoever. They never cared about my grades. They didn't ever push me to go to college early. In fact, they actually said, like, hey, like, we're not pushing you. You don't need to start early. You can take some time off, like, things like that. But ultimately, when I knew that I was going to go to college, I want to get over kind of sorry. When I knew that I was going to go to medical school, I kind of want to get over as soon as possible because, like, I knew I was going to be in School for 10 or 12 years. Seeing that I wanted to become a surgeon and really go deep into the medical field. And when we knew we were going to go to college early, my brother and I both started mowing lawns. At the time, we called it Andy's Lawn Care. That's my last name, Andy's Lawn care. I was 11, he was 13. We started getting a bunch of lawns in our local neighborhood. And then basically once he got his driver's permit at 15, we were able to start getting lawns outside of our neighborhood and really kind of expand. So when I turned 18 years old, I was fully anticipating to go to medical school. I probably was going to go to lsu, but it wasn't confirmed yet. I ended up my last quarter of school going to Nairobi, Kenya and around Nairobi, so Tagoni, Calanguari, to different hospitals and orphanages, doing a lot of medical kind of stuff. So I did everything from the birthing to the burn unit. We did some minor surgeries did lots of injections, and there's a lot of viruses over there and things like that. So that was my life. It was literally the coolest thing in my whole. Like, everything I had dreamed of and worked for four years in college had now become, like, I was able to do it. I was literally in a. In a doctor's jacket. I was being called doctor. Like, that was like the dream. It was literally like playing house as a kid. This is now playing doctor. And I was able to do all this stuff because obviously over there, there's not as much rules and regulation, and it was like we were just helping people. It was a nonprofit, and so if someone came in, it was like, whatever you can do to help this person is gonna be better than them having nothing. And so it was a phenomenal, a phenomenal experience. And I came back to the US and decided that I didn't want to do medicine in the US Mostly due to the fact that I didn't want to go really deep into a profession and a specialty and then be stuck in doing the same four or five, six procedures. That's what happens when you get really, really specialized. I didn't want to do that for the next 40 years of my life. That was not interesting. And furthermore, I didn't want to deal with paperwork and insurance and the bureaucracy that comes along with the medical system. And so that was a really weird time for me. I came back. I was 18 years old. I graduated, and I kind of walked the aisle. And this is where the picture came from. If you check out my Instagram or Facebook, from the day, you know, very happy time for most people, like, graduating. I was the youngest graduate from Western Washington University ever. And it was weird, though, because for the first time in my life, I didn't really know what was next. And it was a little bit scary. I was supposed to be the Doogie Howser young kid going to college and becoming a doctor really young. And here I was, 18 with a graduate degree and had no idea what I was gonna do. So I started lawn care. I was like, you know what? I'm gonna take this thing, make it bigger. So that's when I started Augusta Lawn Care. Fast forward. A couple years later, I got in an accident underneath the dump truck. And in the pto, the power takeoff of the dump truck, it sucked up my hoodie, grabbed every my shirt, my hoodie up around my neck, and almost killed me. And by the grace of God, I was able to fall out of the pto and it ran it miraculously Kind of just like split down the middle with it being bunched around my neck, split. There was no seam, there was no zipper. And I still very distinctly looking up as it was trying to suck me underneath, looking out from underneath the dump truck and thinking, this is how it's going to end. And it wasn't like I was afraid, it was like, oh, like this is how it's going to end. And I'm a religious person and I was ready to go. And I try to live my life that way. And so I wasn't like fearful. It was just like, oh, like this is just happens immediately. Because like I was underneath there trying to fix the PTO and engage it, engaged, caught my hoodie and within a second I was like, oh, this is how it's going to end. I dropped out, ended up going to the hospital and there were some pictures that I shared today from IT online. But yeah, it took a couple weeks of me being out. They didn't want me doing much work. And I still have scars on my inside of my arm. Most of my chest doesn't grow hair because of all the impacts and the amount of compression that happened, all the hair follicles and stuff. So it messed me up a little bit. But I was fine after a couple weeks. But during that time I realized that my business wasn't built on systems and it couldn't run without me. Even though it was a good business, by that time we were doing probably 7, 800,000 annual revenue.

It couldn't run without me. It depended on me being there every day, selling the jobs, getting the crews to do the work, showing them the projects, and just did not run on systems. And so during those couple weeks, it was again a kind of a punch in the gut because here I was the person that everyone expected to become a doctor. And my parents put no pressure on me, didn't have a lot of expectations on me at all. But like, definitely everyone else did. All my peers, the.

Professors that I was going through, I did a lot of research, I spent a lot of time in the lab, physiology, kinesiology, biomechanics, all those classes you're getting to meet these professors that are very invested in seeing someone so young coming through their program and succeeding. And I still remember when I made the decision to not go after the medical field and getting emails from professors, and I wish I would have kept them. I think I deleted them because I was not happy at the time. But I remember very specifically getting those emails from them saying, like, you're making a massive Mistake. You're wasting talent. That was the one that stuck in my head. And so now flash forward now to a couple years later. I now realize that the business that I've built and I've poured myself into for the past couple years is basically worthless because it can't run without me. And I basically have a job, and that is working 80, 90 hours a week trying to get this. To keep this thing afloat. And now without me, it can't keep growing and expanding, and it doesn't have a team and systems in place that run without me. And yeah, sitting in your bed and just like, oh, yeah, great. So I've. I've really wasted all this expectation and skill. And even a few years away from medicine, you get rusty, like, in terms of knowing the anatomy and physiology and all the different biomechanics and things that I had studied. And I did so much work on Ms. And multiple sclerosis and did a lot of research on that specifically. And yeah, it was just like, oh, like, maybe I. Maybe I was supposed to go do something else. Maybe I was supposed to go keep working on Ms. Stuff, and I would have been able to find some sort of drug or some sort of therapy that could help with that. And you just question everything that you've been doing. Like, here I'm mowing grass and I was supposed to be the child prodigy. So you question yourself. And the reason I share this story is because I think a lot of us come to these places in life, whether it be college and not knowing what you should do next, or whether it be working for years in your business and realizing that you really don't have a business and it's basically just a job and you don't have systems and you can get really low during that point. And I know it's like. And so when I talk to business owners or I talk on stage and people like, man, you're, like, really passionate. You're like, I know exactly what people are feeling like. And every time I talk to people on stage or in a video, I try to convey the passion I have for that person that's in that low, low moment. And I know it's like, it's not fun. And especially when expectations of other people were so high and you feel like a failure, I know what it's like to be there. And so those are two very pivotal moments. And we always talk about change and transition as such a positive thing. And typically, in the long run, they are, however, going through it. It's not fun. It's not something that I would wish on my worst enemy to feel that way. And honestly, as time goes on in your entrepreneurial journey, things are always going to be a challenge. There's never going to be a moment when you break through and there's a everything just gets easier. The only way that happens if you start to plateau and you stop growing. But a true entrepreneur to actually really succeed typically doesn't have the mindset of I'm going to achieve a certain level and then just going to stop. I would rather die than have an organization or be the leader of an organization that reaches some sort of level of success and then plateaus and never really changes or grows or continues to give back or improve. And I just have no interest whatsoever in doing that. But by having that sort of mentality and by pushing yourself and always growing the business and growing and expanding and making your company bigger and having more team members, you're always going to be putting yourself in positions where you feel uncomfortable and nervous. And that doesn't change. By the way, don't ever think that a certain size business or if you look up to someone, that somehow they get to a certain level, they're just immune to stress and anxiety and depression. That doesn't happen. So don't think it does. You're putting a false mirage in front of yourself. That's. That's not how it is. Even as I speak to talking to you right now, it's in the middle of the night and I'm just kind of recording this raw because right now I feel the same way. That is, we're launching Copilot in just a matter of a couple weeks and we're going to roll it out to hundreds of business owners and.

There'S a big part of it that I can't control and that's the technical aspect. I control a lot of elements, but I don't know how know the back end code. I know some little bits of code. I did some apps and things like that when I was in college, couple iOS and Android apps. But there's elements I can't control. I'm definitely nervous about the rollout. Having that many new people into a new software so close to the spring rush, it's crazy. We've only really been working on the project for about four months and getting the code base ready and I'm confident, but I'm still very, very afraid and scared and it keeps me up. And I know that it'll be the most public humiliation in the world if it flops. And the last Thing I want to do is put anyone's business in jeopardy by having them switch to my CRM that I've promoted, and then it not do well. And.

So you put a lot of pressure on yourself. I think anyone that builds great products and services and builds great teams is going to have that level of pressure on themselves, and you're going to feel that way. And there's going to be times in your entrepreneurial journey when you question yourself. You don't know what the next step is. Like in my college days, there's times when you question yourself. You're like, did I make a mistake? Like I was feeling sitting in a hospital, realizing that my business potentially was worth nothing, and I had nothing to show for the years that I'd spent on it. And so, you know, I got out of the hospital and kind of repaired myself physically, and then determined like, hey, you know what? We're going to build systems, we're going to build procedures. And so basically I started a landscape business course not too far after to basically just chronologically look at how I rebuilt the business and the systems and procedures and the things that I believe really worked. And it was great, and it was fine. And I made lots of videos, hundreds of videos to help landscapers and business owners in the lawn care industry hopefully improve their business. And I realized that literally 1% of people were actually taking what I was I was talking about and implementing it. And it was very hurtful and hard because I saw them going through the same painful realizations, the painful, painful realizations. Their business could not run without them. It didn't run on systems ran. Their personality and their ability to sell, their ability to lead. It did not run on. There was no systems for sales. There was no systems for hiring. There's no systems for onboarding. There's nothing. And they made sure they had to make sure they had someone to answer the phone. They had to have. They had to make sure that there was someone to do payroll. There was no system and process for scaling in the organization or doing multiple locations or let alone bringing people that were starting out at the bottom of the organization and bringing them up and having upper mobility and allowing people to become managers or start their own location. There was none of that. And I kept seeing that. And while I was teaching a landscape business course I truly believe would help them, but it was not getting through. And so that's when I started Augusta Lawn Care, the franchise. And the main objective in doing that was that I could have skin in the game with these other owners. That when I said something, they would know that what I'm saying is exactly what I believe. And I have skin in the game, and their brand is my brand, so why would I tell them something that is not good for them? And I wanted to prove that the systems work. And I knew that if I could do that and scale it up and we could be in hundreds and potentially thousands of locations down the road, that all the competition in the lawn care landscape industry that were competing with us at a local level inside of each of those markets would eventually have to adopt the systems. Not because they thought I was good or because they heard about me, but because they had to in order to stay competitive with Augusta Lawn Care. And that's why we started the franchise three years ago. And back then I said, give me five years and I'll make Augusta Lawn Care have a unique and competitive advantage that it cannot be duplicated. So we still have two more years to do that. And I've been very clear to the franchisees for the past few years that our play over the next five to 15 years will be software. And then after 15 years to 20 years, it'll be robotics and my energy, my time will be spent over the next few years focusing on software. And last year we went ahead and cemented the partnership where I own 60% of copilot CRM.com and that's just the beginning of what I believe is so important, because with software, I can duplicate the systems, I can duplicate what I'm teaching and put it into a software that people are using every single day. It's so connected and integral to their business and integrated to their business that I can not just. Someone doesn't have to watch a video to understand their numbers. They don't have to watch a video to understand close ratio and the importance of it in their business. Thinking the software can tell them what to do. It can use AI to actually predictively tell them when to hire people instead of just having to watch a video, know who I am. You don't need to know who I am to improve your business. And so these are things I'm passionate about. This is what we're trying to build. And regardless of whether or not you're in that first stage where you just don't know what's next. Stage two. That was when I realized that the business I had built and put my. Put my blood, sweat and tears into was worth absolutely nothing and had no systems, had no procedures, and it all ran on me. Or whether or not you're in Growth phase. And you have gone through a lot of the phase. And there's millions of dollars in revenue that I make every year and probably 100 plus employees that work directly for me. And now I have eight locations that are Augusta Lanka that I own, North Carolina, Connecticut, Washington State. Those are all fine and good.

But the entrepreneurial journey is not easy. It's not fun. It's not one that I would wish on someone that should not be in that position. I wouldn't. It's hard, it's difficult. There's a lot of sleepless nights, times where you will feel anxious, especially in the first three to five years. It's extremely difficult because growth sucks cash. So you have the financial pressure of trying to grow and expand into something that you've never done before. And so it's testing your physical, mental, emotional leadership abilities. And it's very, very difficult. It's lonely. And discipline is extremely hard to mold and craft your character. And I was talking to the franchisees today. It is really deprivation. Like you're depriving yourself of what feels good and what feels comfortable and what feels average and what would make you feel nice. That's what discipline is, and that's what was required as an entrepreneur. And that's why I'm so against and why people ask me like, why are you so against what entrepreneurship has become? Online and social media is because it's encouraging people and it is tantalizing people to become entrepreneurs and business owners. That should not be. And I truly believe that it'll push people to mental places they should not go and depression if they try to become an entrepreneur and a business owner when they should not be one. Most people should not be. And I don't say that because by saying that, it makes me better. It's not that most people should not be an entrepreneur and it's okay to realize that you've potentially gone into becoming a business owner or entrepreneur and you're not one. It's not for everybody. You can really hurt yourself. The mental strain that comes along with it when you're really pushing yourself, when you're really going for when you really want to cause change, when you're really trying to grow fast and create more jobs for your community and create wealth for you and your family. There's a lot of struggles, there's a lot of pain, and there's a lot of anxiety that comes along with that. And so I know I'm sometimes somewhat painting a dark picture of what entrepreneurship is, but I feel like I have to balance out the other side that says so often the times that it's fast cars and making money quickly and easily and working a few hours a week and traveling the world and posting pictures on Instagram, it has absolutely nothing to do with that. One percent of my day is social media. One percent of my day is fun and exciting and strategy and in the clouds. Most of it's in the dirt. Most of it is very hard. Most of his worry, most of it is financially trying to make sure the business stays afloat, make sure your strategy, making sure the team is taken care of, making sure the people that depend on me are taken care of. That's very stressful. So that's kind of my story in a very small nutshell. I hope the videos I make.

Hope.

This story clarifies why I make the videos and why I do them the way that I do them. And I truly believe that one day the things I talk about, whether it be software, what I want to do with the landscape industry and raising this level of professionalism will become true. I have no doubt about that whatsoever. So maybe this video will be inspiring to someone in five or 10 years when they watch it then. But anyways, thank you so much. I appreciate all of your support. Mikeandys.com has more information about all the other stuff I do, but very passionate about these things and hope you have a great day. Take care.

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

Sam.