State of the Home Service Industry 2026 (My Letter to Owners)

Today I want to talk about the state of the home service industry. Not hype, not headlines, not fear. Just what's actually happening. Customer acquisition cost is getting more expensive. Labor is shifting. AI is changing search. Consumers are more cautious. And the operators who win in 2026 won't be the busiest. They'll be the most disciplined. The businesses that grow without breaking this year will fill capacity, protect margins, increase revenue quality, and install real systems. So I wrote two letters. One is the HomeWorks community and the other is to Augusta Nation. Both are really about the same thing: how to operate professionally in a tightening market. I'm going to read the HomeWorks letter first and then the Augusta letter. Let's begin. Home service businesses are entering a different era, not because the trades themselves are changing, but because the environment around them is shifting. Customer acquisition cost is getting more expensive. Consumers are more cautious. The real estate market is softening. The operators who grow without breaking in 2026 will be the ones who stay calm and disciplined while others get distracted by headlines. If I had to name the villain in 2026, it would be hesitation. Hesitation around raising prices, hesitation around selling, hesitation driven by negative economic news. Consumer sentiment feels softer. Headlines include record levels of consumer credit card debt. Media cycles amplify every downturn. It becomes tempting to respond by discounting or shrinking back. That is a mistake. If you do not have at least 1 month of cash in the bank, Go into profit mode. I do not care what economics are saying. I don't care about what politicians are forecasting. Your job is not to predict GDP, gross domestic product. Your job is to build a business that can ignore the noise. Fill to capacity. Make sure every truck and every employee is used full time. Raise prices when your capacity is full. Improve your revenue quality. Move from one-time revenue to recurring revenue. That progression is how you build stability. The operators who commit to that discipline will not feel fragile, even if the headlines feel chaotic. Another economic shift is unfolding, one worth addressing directly. If you started your business in 2020, 2021, 2022, you likely experienced a very specific constraint. Demand was abundant. Leads poured in. The phone was ringing off the hook. The primary bottleneck was labor. The hardest part was not getting work. It was finding people to keep up with it. We were supply constrained. We could not find employees. I believe 2026 begins to flip that dynamic. As the labor market softens and unemployment ticks upward, the constraint will not be, can I find anyone at all? The constraint will become, can I filter effectively? Instead of struggling to get 3 applicants, you might get 50 or 60 in a few days. The game becomes screening, not searching. This is where systems matter. HomeWorks already includes automations that many members are underutilizing. Hex Reminders dramatically increase interview show-up rates. You can create an applicant customer type and set up automated reminders. Structured application questions filter candidates before you waste time on in-person interviews. Use video submissions. Screen for professionalism and communication before you even schedule an in-person meeting. When applicant volume rises, interviewing more people is not the solution. Filtering faster and selecting better is the solution. The operators who install hiring systems now will move more quickly while others drown in applicant noise. Hiring becomes a numbers game if you have no system. Quality drops when you blindly invite 50 people to an interview. Show rate drops. At the same time, as labor becomes more available, demand does not automatically increase. Demand becomes competitive. For many local markets with real estate prices down or softened, consumers feel less inclined to spend on home renovations or improvements. For many home service businesses, we will become demand-constrained. The leads constraint in the 4L framework will keep many businesses from growth, which brings us to marketing. Across the industry, advertising platforms are layering in more AI-driven settings. Many of these features are optimized to increase spend. They promise efficiency, but without proper tracking and configuration, they often dilute lead quality while increasing your budget. If you're running Meta or Google Ads without proper tracking installed, you are not marketing. You are guessing. Install the Facebook pixel on your website. Get Google tracking codes configured properly. You need real conversion tracking tied to booked jobs. Not just clicks or estimate request forms. You need disciplined negative keyword management. You need geographic filtering. You need to understand where every marketing dollar is going. It is a general industry reality. Most operators are still flying blind when it comes to paid traffic. In 2026, it will become more expensive. The gap will widen between those who track precisely and those who rely on default AI settings. Professional advertisers who understand these systems are becoming more valuable, not less. If you are, one, spending over $1,000 per month in ads, or two, in growth mode, hire a professional. But I also want to address something I see consistently across home services that is even more painful than poor tracking. I see people wasting money on advertising when they have not exhausted the leads and revenue already sitting inside their business. Before I spend a single dollar on ads, I will do several things first. The first is building automations and homeworks that send text and email to customers multiple times in the first couple of weeks after an estimate is sent. If you send an estimate and hope the customer just gets back to you, you are choosing a silent loss. The second is a phone call follow-up on every pending estimate. So text, emails, and phone calls together ensure that we do not have customers ghosting us and estimates left pending consistently across the board. Inside HomeWorks, more than 20% of customers open an estimate and we never hear back from that customer. That is not because those customers were never interested. It's usually because there was no automation and no follow-up phone call to answer questions, overcome objections, and schedule the job. If you want more work, stop losing the work you already earned the right to close. The third is upselling your existing customer base through text and email blasts. Until July, text will remain free and unlimited inside HomeWorks. No other platform allows unfettered, unlimited texting without payment. In the future, we will have to meter this and pass along the hard cost that Twilio charges us for every text message. The same way that Stripe charges for processing fees. We've incurred the cost for years to serve early adopters of HomeWorks. Starting in July, we'll have to charge for those and pass that cost along based on what Twilio charges us. But for now, texts are free. Mass emails do not cost you anything extra also. Use them. Once a month, send a season-specific offer to your customer list. These customers are already in your database. They already know, like, and trust you. Many of you also have payment information on file. This is the cheapest customer acquisition cost you will ever earn. The fourth thing I would do is to optimize my website for conversion. If you want examples of websites that convert well and are optimized for mobile devices, Google ranking, and AI search ranking, check out homeservicewebdesign.com and click the Our Work tab. The best way to triple the amount of leads you get is not to triple your ad budget. It is to increase your conversion rate. We've developed over 1,000 websites at Home Service Web Design, and I have seen proper design and conversion rate optimization take a webpage from 1 out of 400 visitors submitting an estimate request form to 1 out of 50. Realize what that means. This is an 8x improvement for the same 400 visitors. One company would get 1 lead, another would get 8. This is why web design with the advent of AI is becoming much more human. It's not just about keywords. It's not about tricking the system or spamming backlinks. It's about whether the customer solves their problem on your website. Do they stop searching because your website gave them confidence, clarity, and a clear next step? Or do they bounce to your next competitor because they're confused by the design? Because they can't find the estimate request form or they do not understand your service area or what you actually offer. When ad costs are rising and leads are harder to come by, conversion becomes a moat. In 2020, we saw an explosion of the chuck in a truck in home services. AI and the push to online will reverse that trend and consolidate a limited supply of leads to the top contractors in your local market. When you ask ChatGPT or Gemini for contractors in your area, it does not give you pages of options and blue links. It gives you 2 to 3 recommendations. Those businesses will win. Only after you have done all 4 of these would I then spend money on Facebook ads, Google ads, door hangers, yard signs, or any other paid marketing channel to drive traffic to your website. There are a few features inside HomeWorks that I consistently see underutilized, and in an environment where ad costs are rising and margins matter more, these features represent immediate leverage. The first is upsells. When you toggle on upsells inside the Field Force mobile app and train your crews to use it consistently, average revenue per member at HomeWorks increases by over 25%. Most businesses are leaving thousands of dollars in additional revenue on the table each month simply because they're not systematically offering additional services to customers who already trust them. The upsell feature now works offline, so there's no excuse for not spending an hour setting up your top service upsells. The second is mass texting, another underutilized feature. Text messages have open rates between 98% and 99%. Email might sit between 30% and 40% open rates. Send seasonal offers. Reactivate dormant customers. Promote recurring services. Fill slow weeks. Upsell enhancements. Sell during your off-season. Your contact database is one of your most valuable assets, so use it. The third underutilized feature is video inside the Field Force mobile app. Crews can now record high-definition video, compress it automatically inside the app, and attach it directly to the property or the visit. That video becomes institutional memory. It prevents drive-backs. It improves communication between the crews and the office. It reduces the estimator visits and the estimator going back to the property. It improves professionalism with customers when shared inside the customer portal. This single feature eliminates friction that many owners simply accept as normal. HomeWorks exists to bring clarity to chaos. That clarity is part of why the results across the platform are encouraging. In 2025, the average business in its first year on HomeWorks grew 38.4% in gross top-line revenue. Over 1,000 businesses use the platform every day. That growth is not hype. It is what happens when operators get visibility into their numbers, enforce pricing discipline, and stop operating reactively. The scale of activity inside the system reinforces that maturity. In 2025, over $150 million in credit card payments were processed through Stripe inside of HomeWorks. In 2026, we anticipate that number will more than double, and that is only Stripe credit card volume. It does not include checks, cash, PayPal, or other payment methods. It is strictly the card volume processed directly through the platform. When that level of revenue flows through a system, reliability and infrastructure become non-negotiable. We are not building a hobby tool. We are building operational infrastructure. That is why 2026 includes foundational work that may not always look flashy, but will matter deeply over time. We are continuing the systematic conversion of our legacy PHP codebase into React. We have already rebuilt major sections of the platform in React, including the customer portal, payments, estimates and invoices, unscheduled work, and the waitlist pages. The migration is not cosmetic. It increases performance, reliability, and long-term velocity. And as we migrate each page, we are not just rewriting code, we are rethinking workflows and integrating years of member feedback. The pace of feature development accelerated in 2025. We expect that pace to continue and compound in 2026 and 2027. As the foundation strengthens, here are some of the main focuses we have inside of the product in the next 12 to 24 months. Pricebook is a major priority. Pricebook allows estimates to be built using structured components that are not visible to the customer, but fully accounted for internally. That means no more outside spreadsheets, no more mental math, no more emotional overrides. Pricing becomes a system. Job costing becomes accurate. Margin protection becomes enforceable. In an environment where hesitation is the enemy, Pricebook instills confidence. Instant quote forms are another significant initiative in the next 12 to 24 months. There is a segment of customers that are affluent. They are time-sensitive, often price-insensitive, and technically inclined. They do not want 5 estimates. They do not want to have 3 contractors roaming around their house. They want clarity and speed. Instant Quotes will allow you to build customizable forms inside of HomeWorks, embed them directly on your website, and let customers accept pricing, place a card on file, and automatically enter your CRM. No estimator drive time, no admin overhead for basic sales, no friction. It sells for you 24 hours a day. No office worker, no estimator. It acts as a premium client filter. And it builds on the customer portal infrastructure we completed in 2025, creating a direct path from the website to the CRM to payment. We are also investing heavily in improving chemical tracking applications and snow features for the green industry. While chemical tracking and quick dispatch features exist today, scaling past a few hundred customers for chemicals or snow service can introduce friction. Through ongoing discovery and member feedback, we are redesigning these workflows so operators can grow without outgrowing the system. Multi-location capabilities are another focus. More operators are expanding. Moving customers, jobs, and employees between locations should not feel fragmented. We are prioritizing improvements that make scaling cohesive instead of chaotic. At the same time, we are simplifying how pricing plans work for our members. Every dollar we receive is reinvested into building the product and making it better. In 2025, we received consistent feedback from members frustrated by constant user adjustments. Adding and removing employee users monthly created friction and confusion. In 2026, we are continuing the move towards bundled user tiers. Fewer moving parts. Less administrative noise, more predictability. This aligns with the direction we set during the rebrand and simplifies operations as teams grow. Speaking of the brand, the transition from Copilot to HomeWorks was intentional. Copilot sounded like an AI tool. HomeWorks represents a system that helps home service business owners grow without breaking. This is a community of serious operators. We are not backed by private equity dictating quarterly optics. We can move quickly because we are focused on long-term operator success. What makes HomeWorks inevitable is not hype. It is focus. It is serious operator alignment. It's about understanding owners' needs and creating solutions. It is a team committed to velocity without chaos. If you take anything from this letter, let it be this: block out noise, install systems, fill to capacity, raise prices when the business tells you to. Focus on revenue quality. Track your marketing precisely. Upsell before you advertise. Use the tools fully, not partially. The operators who stay disciplined will win in 2026. This is the first annual letter. Next year, we will look back at what we executed well and where we must improve. Thank you for building with HomeWorks. Mike. Okay, so that was the HomeWorks annual letter. Now I'm going to swap over to the Augusta Nation letter And again, this is specifically for those that are a part of Augusta Lawn Care and more than 200 locations around the world. To everyone in Augusta Nation, this letter is the first of what I intend to become an annual tradition. Each year, I want to write a letter that captures what I'm seeing, what we're changing, what we're building, and why. Not as a recap of everything we announced at the conference and not as a substitute for training. This letter is a clear, durable snapshot of the chessboard, something you can read in one sitting, forward to your spouse, share with your team, and reference later when decisions get noisy. I'm writing this because scattered communication creates scattered execution. Conference sessions get missed, videos get skimmed, updates get consumed out of order. A letter forces a coherent narrative. It also forces me to explain the why in plain language. Without hiding behind slides, edits, or momentum. The simplest way to summarize what I see happening is this. The moat around Augusta is becoming real, and 2026 is the year it becomes undeniable. The moat is forming, and you can see it in the lead flow. 2 years ago, many new locations waited a long time for organic traction to develop. Today, locations are getting roughly 2 times as many leads in their first month as they did 24 months ago. This increase is from organic search traffic. We are seeing new owners receive leads before they even arrive at new owner training. In many markets, we are ranking on page 2 of Google almost immediately, moving to page 1 within weeks, and depending on the market, pushing into the top spots within 3 to 6 months instead of the old 6 to 12 month ramp. This is not a small improvement. It is compounding. This is what happens when you combine hundreds of locations, thousands of reviews, and an enormous volume of traffic flowing through a single national brand. It's what happens when the system stays consistent long enough that the internet treats the brand as the default answer. And it is what happens when the industry moves slowly enough that most competitors are not even trying to play this game yet. Moats widen slowly and then all at once. We are in the widening phase. In 2026, approximately half of Augusta locations will be in profit mode. That means a majority of owners are no longer optimizing for top-line growth at any cost. They have raised prices. They have learned that revenue is not the goal and that complexity is a tax. They're actively simplifying. They're shifting away from one-time work and towards recurring work. They are prioritizing gross margin, cash flow, and capacity. As that happens, I expect same-store sales growth to trend downward towards 12 to 15% over time. That is not weakness. That is maturity. When a location goes into profit mode, the revenue might grow only 10 to 12%, but the quality of that revenue increases dramatically. This is one of the most important mental shifts in the entire Augusta operating system. Not all revenue is equal. One-time jobs can look impressive on a revenue chart while quietly consuming your calendar, your attention, and your sanity. They create a project management burden that most operators underestimate until it is too late. Recurring work, especially scheduled recurring work, is different. It is predictable, easier to staff, easier to route, easier to delegate, easier to grow without breaking. That is why in the stages of owner success, stage 2 is profit mode and stage 3 is simplify and focus on recurring revenue. Stage 2 is where you stop bleeding. Stage 3 is where the business becomes durable. The fact that more than half of the system will be in stage 2 in stage 3 in 2026 is a structural shift in what Augusta is. It changes our brand. It changes the customer mix. It changes our ability to recruit leadership. Treatments, instant quotes, and over-the-phone support are about shortening the project trap. A lot of owners get stuck in the same pattern. The business grows and the growth shows up as bigger and bigger projects and commercial contracts. Those projects feel like progress because they are big tickets, but they also stretch the time spent in stage 3 of success because projects are where complexity multiplies. The goal is not to eliminate projects. The goal is to stop using projects as your primary path to growth. Treatments are one of the cleanest paths to higher quality revenue. They are higher margin, naturally recurring, and an easy upsell for mowing. A large number of visitors already come to our website simply because the words lawn care are in our name, and many of them are coming specifically for treatments. In 2026, we are starting the infrastructure to enable treatments to scale within Augusta without chaos. That means marketing material and print material. It means instant quotes. It means command center over-the-phone estimates. It means preferred vendors. It means training, certification, and making sure rolling this out is actually viable in real markets with real regulations. And it means HomeWorks needs to properly support treatments. We know there are holes today that must be plugged before treatments can be scaled efficiently and in compliance with local chemical regulations. This is top of mind for Josh Kale and the product team and is top of mind for me. Treatments are not a random add-on. We are building as a system and laying the foundation in 2026. This is also why we are adding over-the-phone and instant quote support in spring 2026. The goal is to help owners move towards higher quality revenue sooner instead of spending years trapped in complex project work that steals time and creates scheduling fragility. HomeWorks is becoming the multi-location operating system. 2 HomeWorks efforts in 2026 matter a lot for Augusta specifically. First is treatment support, because scaling treatments without the right workflows is how you create mess and mistakes. Second is multi-location operations. One of the most important capability upgrades we are building is the ability to manage multiple locations inside a single HomeWorks account in a way that is actually clean. Customers, employees, and jobs need to move between locations easily. Multi-location management should not feel cumbersome. If Augusta is to produce more location operators, then HomeWorks must become the operating system for disciplined multi-location growth. We built technology this past year to capture leads when someone starts an instant quote but does not submit the entire form or abandons the page after seeing the price. Those are not random website visitors. They are high-intent prospects. But we also do not want garbage data dumped into your HomeWorks account. Bad data leads to bad follow-up, bad reporting, and poor email and SMS deliverability. So we built a gate. We collect what we can, send it to Command Center, validate whether it's a legitimate person, and if it is, we follow up and put that lead into your HomeWorks system so you can market to them in the future. This is one of those invisible advantages that becomes massive at scale. At one location, it feels small, 15 to 20% more leads. Across hundreds of locations, it becomes a meaningful engine for recovered opportunity and dramatically reduces customer acquisition cost. The abandoned cart technology would not be possible without the vertical integration we have with HomeWorks and internal engineering and web design teams. AI search is going to concentrate demand and we are building for that world now. More than 9 out of 10 visits to our site still come from Google today. AI platforms still account for a single-digit percentage of traffic. That is exactly why we are taking it seriously now. The lawn care industry moves slowly. Most contractors will not adjust their websites or online strategy for AI until AI accounts for 30 to 50% of their traffic. By then, the leaderboard will be established. Google is a crowded shelf. AI is a curated recommendation. On Google, you might see 15 competitors between ads, local service ads, and organic results. On AI, you might see 2 or 3, and the interface pushes you hard towards one. That creates a rich-get-richer dynamic. Not exactly winner takes all, but winner takes most. AI's incentive is to give the most accurate and safest answer to the user. If an AI platform recommends low credibility contractors and customers have a bad outcome, the AI platform takes the reputational hit. So AI will rely heavily on signals such as brand reputation, review volume, domain authority, traffic patterns, and consistency. As a national brand with hundreds of locations, thousands of reviews, and massive customer traffic flowing through one domain, we have a structural advantage. That is why we reorganized the website design around AI-first consumption, including adding FAQs on each location website. In the future, those FAQs will be customizable at the location level. We are already seeing early signs of an uptick in AI search traffic sources, and we will keep iterating. We are not building our entire strategy around AI today because Google Search still dominates the market. We are absolutely building the moat for the world that is coming. Corporate investment in Gemini Pro is about making AI usable at every level of the organization. To support the shift and accelerate practical adoption, we invested at the corporate level to upgrade every Augusta Lawn Care email account to the professional version of Gemini. That upgrade gives access to AI tools such as NotebookLMN and Nanobanana. This has already unlocked use cases, projections, budgeting, planning, scenario modeling, and even image generation for media and marketing. It's not just AI for fun, it is AI as leverage. The reason we did this now is simple. It's the first step to get everyone onto the upgraded platform. Once the entire organization is on the same toolset, we can build on top of it. In 2026, especially in media, image generation, custom marketing, and internal analysis, we will continue exploring and systematizing how these tools deliver speed and quality. More on that will come throughout 2026, but the foundational move was making sure the whole network had access to the same upgraded capabilities. Command Center. Built as a long-term advantage, not a cost center. Over the past few years, we made deliberate investments to retain our team at CommandCenter. We increased wages, added benefits including 401(k), health plans, vision, and dental. We work to stay above market on compensation. This has led to very low voluntary churn at the agent level. Continuity improves quality. Quality reduces mistakes. Reduced mistakes protects the brand. That is the compounding chain. This winter, we increased the team size significantly, and we can do so without compromising quality because of the tooling upgrades we have implemented, including screen recordings, AI transcripts, and coaching on every single phone call. We also increased quality control and efficiency reporting and reinforced what constitutes a 10 out of 10 call. The 10 out of 10 call is not vague. It comes down to 3 trackable behaviors. Do they ask the 10 out of 10 question? Thoughtful upselling and an upbeat tone, all tracked automatically by AI on every phone call. Starting in March 2026, we will be staffed 24/7 with human agents, all US-based, answering the phones. We have used Max AI in the past, and it will still exist as a backup for overflow. AI captured about 72 to 75% of callers leaving their information, which is far better than voicemail, typically around 37%. We are continuing to improve MaxAI and want to get that capture rate above 80%, but we are willing to invest in humans because the ceiling is even higher. If we can capture close to 100% with human agents, we will. We have also learned that upsells do not work the same with AI. Customers interpret AI upsells as salesy because they know it is a program. A thoughtful human upsell feels like care, like solving an additional problem the customer already has. Treatments will be a major upsell pathway, and that is another reason we are prioritizing humans on the phone. We are intentionally leaning into the customer who wants a national brand. Here's a truth that matters for owners and GMs to understand. A large portion of customers, maybe 70%, prefer hiring the local provider. They like the local story. They like neighborhood connection. They like the Chuck in a truck. That is real. But in most markets, 70% of demand is divided among dozens of competitors. There is another segment, maybe 30%, that is willing to pay more, prefers professionalism, wants convenience, and will adapt technology like instant quotes and over-the-phone estimates. This segment often prefers a national brand for its predictability and standards. In many markets, 30% of the pie has very few true national brand options. That creates a blue ocean for us if we execute on it correctly. So when you occasionally receive feedback that a customer doesn't like national brands, do not interpret this as a problem. It is a reminder that we are choosing a lane. It is our unique selling proposition. Our lane is professionalism at scale delivered locally, backed by a national standard. Augusta Leads exists to solve the leads constraint and turn advertising into a system. The 4L framework says businesses stop growing due to one, of 4 constraints: Liquidity, Leads, Labor, or Leadership. This year, we attacked the Leads constraint with Augusta Leads, taking management of Meta Ads, Google Ads, and Local Service Ads, LSA, off the owner's plate so owners can focus on operations and team instead of campaign tinkering. We also attacked the Leadership constraint of the 4L Framework with a national recruiting campaign for general managers, which I'll cover in a moment. Average advertising costs at Google and Facebook continue to rise by about 10 to 15% per year. The online platforms will continue to outperform if ad tracking and budget optimization are in place. That is why Augusta Leads does not charge a percentage of spend. We charge a flat monthly rate. We do not want a perverse incentive to inflate your marketing budget when you do not need to spend it. A major unlock in 2026 will be system-level aggregation of advertising data. When we can see what worked across the network, we can share winners and trends. This info is available to all of Augusta Nation, regardless of whether you're using the Augusta Leads Program or you're running ads yourself. For example, we are currently seeing that roughly 80% of Google Ads clicks are on the "Call Now" or similar button. That observation changes how we build campaigns and tracking strategies. After the Spring 2026 quarter, you will start seeing these regular reports from the Augusta Leads department. Alongside that, we will keep building the Done For You Ads tutorial in the Academy so you can understand the levers, not just outsource them. And one additional initiative tied to Augusta Leads managed a lot for multi-location expansion. In 2026, we intend to launch a program that will guarantee 100 recurring customers for new locations. More details will come in the fall. The objective is to remove guesswork during launches, reduce extended burn, and give owners confidence that new territories can get to profitability within 4 months. That kind of predictability changes expansion behavior. Leadership: Building a GM pipeline that makes copy and paste viable. We recently ran a national campaign to source general managers for new locations. The goal is to support existing owners who want to copy and paste locations and build a business that runs without them. We sourced over 1,700 applicants. We used Spark Hire videos as part of the evaluation and built a roster of more than 50 qualified general managers willing to relocate to serve Augusta Nation. We will continue to do so later in 2026 to meet the ongoing need for qualified GMs willing to relocate. This is one of the first real steps towards solving the leadership constraint of the FOREL Framework at a system level. Multi-location growth cannot remain dependent on luck or personal networks. We need a repeatable pipeline. Labor and liquidity are constraints in the FOREL Framework, and we intend to solve them down the road. Preferred vendors, more value, more leverage, more professionalism. We will continue to add more value through preferred vendors. In 2025, we added preferred vendor relationships, including Exmark, Ford, General Motors, Boss Snowplows, Liberty Insurance, among many others. In 2026, we'll continue to add more, leveraging the leverage that comes from being in the Landscape 100 and becoming a brand that larger manufacturers and insurers want to work with. This matters because the discounts are meaningful, But the credibility is just as important. It reinforces that Augusta is not a random collection of small contractors. It is a professional network with purchasing power and standards. The 21 Stages of Success is a core pillar of our professionalization mission. 21 Stages of Success is not a side idea. It is a mechanism for changing an industry. 7 stages for technicians, 7 stages for general managers, 7 stages for owners. This framework breaks the dead-end job mentality. It creates upper mobility inside the same ecosystem. It creates a roadmap for the technicians to become leaders, for leaders to become owners, and for owners to become multi-location operators. It also creates something most home service companies never build: a ladder people can climb without leaving. This career progression ties directly to the copy and paste method and the 3F program, Franchise Fee Forgiveness. People can advance inside Augusta Nation, build a career, and create a roadmap for the next person behind them to do the same. This is how professionalism spreads, not through slogans, but through structured advancement and repeatable systems. Copy and Paste, a formulaic template for multi-location growth. We created a template for starting multiple locations called the Copy and Paste Training System. It was developed by Nick Reed, Lee Park, and myself. It is on the dashboard. It is designed to make multi-location expansion formulaic rather than just improvising. It includes two ways of expanding. One is the more conservative approach where you ghost a location and expand with lower financial risk. The second is starting from scratch and growing aggressively for 4 months. The copy and paste training system is a roadmap to open one location per year. The system includes templates for general managers, evaluations, projections, planning documents, and a clear roadmap. So expansion is not guesswork. It also leaves room for the owner to learn the skill of managing managers while still being aggressive and growth-oriented, including being tax efficient in how expansion is structured. Multi-location expansion should feel like disciplined execution, not gambling. Effective March 1st, 2026, New locations will pay $35,000 to secure a franchise license and territory. This move increases the value of existing franchise licenses. Why? We do not charge a franchise renewal fee and we do not increase or update fees to the new owner if you sell your location. Existing owners will have until January 1st, 2030 to secure locations for $20,000. Our goal is to support existing owners in growing and moving up the stages of success. Specifically Stage 6, copy and paste. The $20,000 ensures the franchise covers legal, training, and setup costs. The discount rewards the first 200 Augusta Nation owners on our path to 1,000 locations. We have cut the marketing budget for new franchise ads to $0. This time, resources and attention are now going towards existing owners. EPC calls, or expansion planning calls, with Lee Park We'll ensure that owners have a plan, a budget, and full support as they grow. Brand consistency and compliance are non-negotiable as we scale. As the brand becomes more recognized, the cost of inconsistency rises. By January 1st, 2027, all existing truck wraps must be upgraded to the new designs. This was communicated with plenty of notice 2 years ago. The reason is simple: brand consistency compounds. We are seeing more and more leads from customers who move to another state and call Augusta as their preferred provider without even getting other prices, simply because they are used to our professionalism and our standards. That kind of trust is fragile. It depends on consistent experience and consistent presentation. To maintain brand integrity, we must enforce consistency. Alongside that, we have taken steps to ensure that by summer 2026, all locations comply with the insurance standards outlined in the franchise agreement. This includes at least $1 million in general liability and auto insurance and lists the franchise as an additionally insured. This is not bureaucratic. It is protective. As we scale, we must prevent cross-contamination of liability across locations. One location making poor decisions or having an accident should not create ripple effects for the rest of the network. Compliance protects owners, protects the brand, and protects the system's long-term durability. The economic backdrop supports our shift towards recurring services. In 2026, we are seeing tightening in real estate in some markets. On average, prices have been sideways, but there's a dispersion. Some markets continue to expand. Some markets have seen prices decrease by 10 to 15%. When homeowners feel richer, Project work is easier to sell. When home prices soften and interest rates remain higher than historical averages, customers become more cautious with discretionary spending. They defer one-time improvements and stick to maintenance. That environment pushes the industry towards recurring services, which aligns directly with the shift we are already making. Higher quality revenue, recurring work, scheduled service, and professional delivery. Why all of this matters. Augusta Nation exists to change the level of professionalism in the lawn care and landscape industry. That mission is not abstract. It shows up in specific behaviors and systems. Answering every call, using humans when humans are needed, using AI as leverage, not as a gimmick, providing instant quotes, offering treatments at a professional level, tracking advertising like professionals, raising prices confidently, building multi-location operators, creating career paths through the 21 stages, enforcing compliance that protects the networks, maintaining brand consistency that earns trust. Because consistency is how we build a brand that customers seek out even when they move across the country. Consistency is how we build a network that attracts top talent. Consistency is how we build something that lasts. To every owner who is raising standards and making hard decisions. To every technician who executes in the field when the days are long. To every general manager who carries responsibility with professionalism. To every command center agent who represents the brand in their voice. To every family member who supports someone in Augusta Nation through the spring rush season. Thank you. The moat is forming. The system is maturing. The standards are rising. 2026 is not about flashy growth for its own sake. It's about disciplined execution, higher quality revenue, and building infrastructure that compounds. I'm grateful to build this with you. Mike Andes.