🏆 The Best Lawn Care Business in the World! 🐶🥇

World of music.

Hey everyone, it's Mike Andes. And today I'm going to be sharing the annual awards ceremony for Augusta Lawn Care. So I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn Care. We've been doing this for a little over two years now. And each year we do an awards ceremony and this is actually our first one live and in person because last year was virtual because of COVID So really looking forward to this. I'm going to go ahead and walk you through what happened. Who the award winners are for both the Rookie of the Year, the top annual grossing location for the year, as well as our franchisee of the year, which won a all expense paid trip to Hawaii.

All right, so the rookie of the year has to start their location in the prior year. So 2021. This franchisee got started in January of 2021. And what's really cool is he's actually the first participant of the 3F program. That stands for Franchise Fee Forgiveness Program. It's where if anyone works at a location for two years, they are then enrolled in the program and are able to start with no initial franchise fee. And so leading up to becoming a franchisee, this individual lived in their van for about eight to 10 months in order to save up money and be able to afford starting their own business. So I'm very, very proud of this individual. He came to work for us at our local shop about a few years ago and he was 19 years old and he's just grown so much, just as a human being, as a leader. And I'm very, very proud of this individual. And this year's rookie of the year for 2021 is Nick Reed, Foreign.

Next up on the awards is the top grossing in revenue for the year of 2021. And this location is really special to me because they're actually located in Augusta, Georgia, which is where Augusta national is at, which is kind of why we are named. Augusta Lawn Care is because of the original kind of golf of our entire franchise. So it's kind of a special thing. And what's really cool about this location is a couple years ago the owners came to the conference live and in person. And I remember meeting them. Liz was talking to them quite a bit and just knew that they'd be a great match for the franchise and could really be part of what we were trying to build. And so at the time, though they had quite a bit of debt, they were growing very quickly and they had already been doing it well over 700 or $800,000 in annual revenue. And so I'M very proud of them because over the past year, they've literally paid almost all of their debt off. They've been able to implement P4P pay for performance, and they're taking their business to the next level. They've grown over 50% in the past year and are continuing to do great things and potentially starting further more locations of Augusta Lawn Care in the coming years. So I'm very, very happy to announce that the top grossing revenue location for 2021 is Brian Connor and Jeremy Owens out in Augusta, Georgia.

Now, the Franchisee of the Year award goes to someone that I personally choose and feel they really embody the values of Augusta Nation and what we're trying to do in terms of raising the level of professionalism in this industry. And so for the Franchisee of the Year this year, I was really looking for someone that followed the systems and they really made changes in their business because last year our motto was, change is hard, change is necessary. And so this individual demonstrating a great ability to make changes in their business, I still remember on a monthly coaching call telling them, hey, we need to raise prices. And just you do a flat raise across everybody and you need it right now. Literally, that evening he texts me and is like, yep, everyone's done. Everyone's raised their prices. And I think a couple people canceled out of all of his customers. And so I'm very, very proud of him and his ability to follow the systems, follow the processes. And I understand that's difficult sometimes because as entrepreneurs, we want to try things out and kind of adopt new strategies and test things. When it comes to a franchise like Augusta Lawn Care, it's like, look, follow the systems. We've tried it out a bunch of times, just like, trust us on some of these things. And for someone like Kevin, not only does he do that and apply and actually execute on his goals and ambitions, but also he's just a great ambassador of everything we stand for at Augusta Lawn Care. His family, his business, and just the way he carries himself is something that I personally feel is exactly what we want at Augusta Nation, and I'm very proud. Franchisee of the Year award at Augusta Lawn Care goes to Kevin Cohen.

It was a great event, and I appreciate everyone for being there. I want to say a special thank you to all of the franchisees at Augusta Lawn Care that is part of Augusta Nation, whether it be just the command center reps that answer calls every single day and do all the office and admin work, to the franchisees themselves and all of their employees and as we've grown, I've had to grow myself as a leader and sometimes I have to learn things, I make mistakes, and they have to be part of that learning process. And so I genuinely want to appreciate and thank so many of them, especially the first 10, 15 when they joined and we had no idea what we were doing and. And they really were the ones that learned with us. I wanna say a special thank you to them and for every single owner at Augusta Nation that is trying to accomplish the goal of changing the level of professionalism in this industry. And internally, we share what we're doing in the future, what our goals are, how we're going to change this level of professionalism in the industry. And so every single day that when we go to work, it's not a matter of just the day to day, it's how do we change this industry long term when it comes to technology and what is in the upcoming years. So. So I'm very excited and I just want to say thank you to all the franchisees that have trusted myself, trusted our team here locally, and I look forward to great years ahead for Augusta Nation.