The Blueprint to Go from 1-Man Show to 2 Full Crews

Hey, everyone, it's Mike Andes. And today we're actually going to be touring a family owned business that is part of Augusta Lawn Care. And this is a really special family. The wife does all the admin and then the son, who's 19 years old, just started the business, came to training last year with his dad, but he really runs it. Ryan's 19. This year they're on pace to do $250,000 in annual revenue, which is double what they did last year. Really the constraint from 250 to 500,000 is going to be can he learn how to manage and retain great employees. They've had a struggle with that and right now they have some good part timers. But can he get some full timers? Right now, one truck's always sitting at home. And so he has the asset capacity he'll get to 500,000. But it really will come down to can he hire, train and retain employees in the future. I really look forward to seeing Ryan grow as a manager and a leader. Here we go. So when was it originally that you started? I was forgetting the exact month.

So we started in October, like late last year when we joined Last year. Oh, yeah.

So when you got back from training, it was basically right into leaf season.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

And then that's the mowing truck.

I'm assuming that's the treatment truck.

Yeah, we do more treatments and estimates with that truck. So we got one mowing crew and then we have.

Rhino mow sometimes than that, or I'll jump in and go fertilize. It's got. That's a tilt top trailer.

Yep.

And then sometimes we'll grab.

You know, mower and just go mow a few lots to help guys out.

So you have the two trucks right now, is that right?

Yeah, yeah. So that truck, that trailer is 18 foot. And then we got three mowers on it. A 36, 252s and then a 21 inch mower, and then all the blowers and all that kind of stuff. And so that green trailer is the trailer we've used for the last six years. Five years.

Five years.

Five years. And so we still use that but.

Not so much anymore.

Is it just because it's bigger?

Well, we started taking two trailers because we have some commercial properties and so it just makes it easier to put everything on one trailer now. We may experiment next year. You want to flip the lights on, Ron? We may experiment next year with.

You know, getting a ramp rack or something. But that may be, well I shouldn't say next year, probably in two years just because of expense and not wanting to spend the money. We want to get another truck, like a three quarter ton truck or a one ton truck so we can put a big spraying tank in the back of it.

Okay, cool.

And stuff.

How many chem and spray kites do you have now?

80.

Yeah, 80 plus.

And then how many for mowing?

80 plus or what would you say?

Yeah, probably almost 90.

Okay, nice.

Yeah. And then so like six of those are commercial, so three for just the school district, two for K State and then one commercial storage unit property.

Yeah.

Very cool. And how, how far do you go do all in Manhattan?

Yeah.

Yes.

What's the population of Manhattan exactly?

Of students? It's. What do you think it is, Debbie? A little over 50,000. But students or is it 70 some? Thousand. Yeah, 70 some thousand.

More of a college. A lot of the college kids. Yeah, got it. That's cool. So then this is where. This is where it all happens.

Yeah. So those are. None of those boats are ours. We rent that space out. So there's usually another boat in there. There's either four to five boats squeezed in. In here. And so they pay us rent.

Cool.

And then, you know, we just kind of spray our fertilizer. We've got. This is a little like 4,500 square feet or something like that. So we've got this out here that's covered storage that we put all of our fertilizer and that kind of stuff.

And then when did you all get this? This year?

No, I've had that still green for three years at least. Yeah, three years. Yeah.

Three years.

Yeah.

Cool. And so are you kind of using the chemistry, moving more and more into the chem. Is that where you're kind of going?

Ever since like three years ago, we kind of did both at the same time. Because I've got so much experience doing that and it just made sense to go ahead and do it. My philosophy was make small mistakes and when you get bigger you don't make those mistakes. So it just. That's kind of my philosophy. So. Especially spraying because you can kill a lot of lungs, lawns really quickly and a lot of liability there.

So do you mostly do spraying or the granular or kind of?

Yeah. So really you have to do both if you're going to spray. If you're going to take care of broadleaves. Right. Weed and feed is not going to get you. Yeah, it just doesn't do a very good job. So we're Always spraying. We spray some of our pre emergent. We put a granular pre emergent combination of fertilizer and then we spray another pre emergent with the broad leaves. And then we got three or four rounds. We got three different options. A par. Birdie, eagle. So just offer that to people. Yeah, it's awesome.

Good stuff. And then do you mostly take care of all the mowing then? Is that kind of where you. Ryan.

Yeah, I manage the mowing and mow when I need to. But I've pretty much taken care of doing all the lawn treatment stuff now. So I work under his pesticide license.

Okay, nice. And then how many team members do you have now? Like one. One other employee or how many?

We have two part time employees to do the commercial stuff right now. It's been our struggle this year is having employees.

Really?

Yeah, we can't keep a guy for very much time at all.

So we normally have two guys, full time regulars for full time seasons, I guess Vermont. But right now we've got a couple college students and we just kind of keep rolling through seasonals. I remember taking small business management in college and what was the number one problem? Hiring good employees, you know, so hasn't changed any. I think in Manhattan's a little bit different dynamic just because, you know, metropolitan areas. I think you have a little larger.

Dynamic. You have a lot larger pool to choose from, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Yeah.

And so is it mostly just them coming on and then within a matter of few weeks they're gone or is it just like transient population or.

It's more. It's funny, I never thought it'd be so difficult to trim grass in my life. Like in my previous career, you know, if guys couldn't run a trimmer or mow really well, we just put them on something else. And this is so specific, man. You can't run it if you can't edge and trim without scalping the grass or, you know, we have a number of high end lawns so they expect their lawns to be really nice.

If guys are scalping them or you know, making a trench instead of, you know, vertical edge that's nice and thin, then you can tell that in a couple days. Normally, I mean.

So it's. It's kind of boom or bust for us. The college students we've had have been like all stars. Some of the other guys we had one guy that was pretty good, but he took off to go to Alaska to take a job up there doing something that was his career dream. And so he did that. And then we've had a few other guys that we just went through and stuff and you know, just.

Corrective or.

Criticism. Taking criticism nowadays is, I don't know, a little more challenging, I guess maybe for people than what it was for corrective criticism criticism compared to what it was for me, I guess maybe 24 years ago. So I don't know.

So what like last year, what was revenue versus this year? Is there like growth mostly just on the recurring side or are you doing projects or what's like the revenue side?

Interesting enough.

Seems like a lot of Augusta guys get a lot of small projects. We hardly get any of those really. It's mostly people calling for mowing and treatments.

So we. Last year we were 135, I think. I've struggled to sit down with my budget and look at the P and L and compare that. Do the comparison to see where we're at and project things. But my educated guests were going to be around right at double from what we were last year. So we're going to be 250 to 270. 275.

Okay.

I'm guessing. Kind of depends on how many projects we can get right now with airfying and seeding and we could really just leave.

Season's pretty big too here, right?

Yeah, yeah. Air frying and seeding, you can just make quite a bit just because it's, you know, there's a big demand for it. So being in the transition zone.

No grass really does very good. And so fescue just gets smoked about towards the end of August. Just both the humidity and the heat. So you get a lot of lawns that thin out a lot. Got it.

Oh, that's cool. Very cool. So this is where you store all the fertilizer?

Yeah, you can look out there if you want. I mean, it's not anything special.

Nice. And this was all built. This came with the house then this whole building?

Yeah, pretty much. It was kind of a. It was just kind of a blessing. I mean, we just kind of fell into it being able to get this building because they wanted part our property. And so we traded a triangle of our property for their triangle and they gave us this building to use and until they developed the rest of the property. Because we don't own the other 29 acres, we just own one acre. And so we maintain the property right around the building, one of their open lots here and. And then the rest is just past year. And so eventually there'll be a Bunch of houses back there.

That's cool.

But, you know, who knows when that'll be. Five, ten years, maybe less.

Pretty big neighborhood, though. Like, we are driving through houses for days. I believe we came this. I guess we came from.

Yeah, you came from. You came from the east. Sound like.

Got it. Yeah. Okay.

So yeah, we're on the. You're on the very edge of town right here.

Okay. And then like for next year, what's sort of your plan? Is it like really the constraint, just like getting. Getting one or two really solid people? Is that what you think gets you to kind of the 400,000 level or what are you thinking?

I'm kind of go for it type of guy. I mean, you know, I don't want to go into much debt, so that's where Ryan and me gotta talk and not go in debt a lot or more than we think we can take on reasonably. I work another full time job and then do probably about 20 hours a week with Augusta. Ryan works full time and so how old are you gonna Ryan?

19.

Let's go. And you graduated last year, right? Yeah. Let's go.

Good stuff. Yeah. So we'd like to have two mowing. I like to have two mowing crews and double mowing, double lawn care. And so I think that put us around, you know, depending on projects and stuff. Around 500. Yes.

Has it been difficult? A little bit. In terms of like, just like management of employees, like with him being full time on his other thing and then you're kind of. Are you the manager?

Like, yeah, I'm the manager.

Okay.

Yeah. Just managing them as. There's been some learning curves with that because it's been different because previously I just had some friends that worked for me part time during high school and stuff like that. So it's definitely been different.

Yeah. And what struggles have you had on your end? Just more or less like them being older, not being. Trying to hold them accountable, things like that?

Yeah, a little bit. And just having. Yeah, holding them accountable. I've had to have a lot more hard conversations than I thought I was going to. So as far as like quality and stuff like that goes back in the.

Day, it was like your friends, like, you know what, you can just take this time off, like, get out of here now. It's like, you know, they have a full time employee that's different. Right. So it's tough.

Yeah. One of my friends is very detail oriented, so he did really good. So I never had to worry about screwing up quality. Yeah.

Got it.

Yeah. There's a bunch of homeschool kids is what we were using before.

Oh, yeah.

And so it's great because it's flexible, but when you only have less than 50 lawns, that's pretty easy to manage. But trying to have a lot more, it makes it a lot more challenging. My biggest challenge with Ryan and me is I spend a lot of time training just on mowing, but when it comes to doing a lot of other parts of the job, it's. It's hard to. I can't leave my job to come show him, or. So it's working on the weekend, show him stuff and working with him, and, you know, all the spraying and fertilizing, he's done excellent at that. But, you know, we spent two seasons really honing that in and working on it, because you got to be just right on with that.

Yeah. And so. So, like, when. When the employees come out, they basically looking to you as the owner, basically.

Or do they know Ryan is part of the ownership?

Got it, got it. And so, like, they fully like you there. You're.

You're.

You're their employer.

Yeah.

Okay, Cool. Cool. That's a tough thing to learn. So that's good, man. That's really gonna be the constraint, though, right? Like next year, if you can get one or two. Cause even with the two trucks that you have and the equipment that you have, if you're able to get one employee and two employees and one, and then you with the weakest of the two, two solid trucks with four people, that could double the business almost there without having to get more trucks or more employees or more equipment, et cetera. Right. Yeah. So, yeah.

Yeah. I'd really like to almost over hire by one person and just do have one person that can mow. And then when he's not mowing, he does projects. Kind of be able to do both. If I could find someone that likes, you know, to be well rounded.

Yeah.

And then, you know, someone's sick, you know, whatever. We just keep bouncing back and forth, and then we're not always just scrambling. Yeah. And then when you're really small, as you well know, that, you know, when you only have two or three guys mauling, it's. Man, you lose one guy or two guys, gosh, it's just like the world is caving in on you type of thing.

Do the guys come here in the morning, then they park back here? Just swap out.

They just park up by our house.

Have you. Where have you been getting the employees so far from, like. Indeed. Or Are they coming? Okay. Really? Yeah, maybe go back to the homeschool group. Like, hey, guys, after your graduation, you come over here, do a little internship shoot situation?

Yeah, maybe we should do that.

Yeah, I'm hoping it pays off where we get some guys that are really into Augusta and want to come.

When you hired the current two that are part timers, was it on like already? You knew it was gonna be part time or like, do they want full time work or.

Not really, no, they. They only want to be part time. They can't work full time with all their classes and stuff like that.

Oh, they're both college students.

Yeah, they're. And they're both in ROTC too. So right now they're gone this weekend, so I'm mowing all their.

Oh, really? Oh, man. Brutal.

I'm so lonely.

Yeah, like four or five. My main guy, he was in the reserves and he would leave once every like six to eight weeks for three or four days. And then I'm like, man, I gotta step right back in and do this all again. So that's cool. But then those guys are local, go to the college as well, right?

Yep. K State.

So it's usually a couple days a week. Or they like doing the evenings.

They're working Saturday and Sundays typically.

Oh, really?

They'll work like a half day Wednesday and Friday.

So you're basically almost like solo throughout the week. And then they kind of come in and help out.

Yep. I have an overkill mowing set up for solo.

Is that the one up front? Yeah.

My most reliable employees.

So we had another guy and he quit just this week. He was full time broker, so. Yeah, Ryan's doing everything right now. So, Ryan, what's your record on how many lawns you mowed in a day?

I think 24 or 25. Let's go.

We average over 7,000 square feet alone, so.

Yeah, so that'll be the skill. Like, that's gonna be the unlock. Right. Because I'm assuming this year with the double, if you even did the exact same thing next year, not double, but just even added that extra 125, 130,000 revenue, you're right up against 400, right?

Yeah.

And so possible with the trucks and equipment you have. It's just a function of can you find that you need two solid people. And like you said, a third would be awesome. Last year at Augusta Lawn Care, the average location grew revenue by more than 27%. And we're on track to beat that this year. If you want to see why go to augustalawncareservices.com franchise and watch over 50 videos and case studies of different owners that took their independent lawn care business and turned it into Augusta Lawn Care.

Yeah, that's the bottleneck. I mean, if we found an all star that, you know, wanted to eventually be a gm, that kind of thing, you know, that'd be really awesome.

So, yeah, you gotta just get out there, talk to everyone that's graduating, coming out of the program.

Oh, yeah.

Was like a smaller group that you were part of before, the homeschooling group, or pretty local. Like, it's all local, right? Yeah, that's cool.

I'll just go to chief graduation and start recruiting all of them 100%.

Just hold a sign out there like, hey, do you want to go get debt at college or just come over here and work for me? That's good, man. Good stuff. So cool. Maybe. Maybe show us the trucks real quick. The mowing stuff be great. We're kind of. We were coming through. I'm like, hey, we gotta at least.

Stop and say, yeah, I'm glad you did. I mean, obviously it's kind of crazy for us right now, but yeah, anytime we can get to meet the team and. And get to know you better and everything, you know, we wanted to be a part of that.

So now with this property, you had like three. Three quarters of an acre.

You said, this is so about where, you know, this door is, and over all the way up to the street is an acre. And then we mow this back here. Normally we're a little behind where all that tall grass is. We don't mow that. And then this is a lot for a home at some point in time. So really, the guy that owned this property, he was a residential developer how for whatever reason, he platted the road to go right through the middle of this building. So that he always planned for this building to come down, which seems kind of strange, but that's how he had it planned. And so it was like an easement.

Well, we just get to use this property because of a trade we did with. Interesting. So I actually own a third of the building. It's kind of strange.

That's hilarious.

My property line goes right through a third of the building.

Oh, that's awesome. Well, you gotta show us this killer setup. I saw it walking out. Like, I gotta check that it out. Did you have to put. Did you have to put leafs in the springs or anything for that? For to get the both mowers on the back of that truck?

No, that it's a half ton with a tow package and it does just fine. It can tow the dump trailer too.

There you go.

Yeah, it might almost be considered, like, a heavy half. Yeah. So, yeah, we don't have airbags or nothing under it, and it seems to do just fine. Very cool.

So with the gentleman that left last or this past week, he was full time. Yeah, Got it. Was that more you had to let him go or he just had.

We didn't actually let him go. He chose to leave. It's one of those things where, you know, when someone doesn't follow through and.

Mow the entire lawn, you know, you gotta have a hard conversation. Not disrespectful, you know, or anything like that, but you just gotta say, hey, why were these lawns skipped and not mowed all the way? And. And, you know, I guess that upset him, I guess more.

Okay.

Okay.

And how old was he?

Probably mid-20s.

Okay, so he's not super old, but.

No, all of my employees this year have been older than me by at least a few years.

I know. I think it was until I was 22 or 23. I hadn't hired anyone younger.

All right.

Older than me. Sorry, Younger. Everyone was older. So it's just one of those things you'll get, like, you just gotta get in your mind, like, does that. That did not matter. And so I think, like, even the fact, like, you doing, like 24 lawns in a day, that is like such evidence to them that, like, he knows what he's doing, he can work hard, and that, like, that's a level of respect that they kind of start to accrue for you, and then the age thing becomes less important. Yeah, but it's certainly an obstacle at the beginning, especially when you in your. In your own self, like, your own skills, you might not have the confidence. It's just a function of, like, you will gain the skill, but it will require, like, educating yourself on that thing.

Yeah.

So, like, I would really recommend, like, this off season too, like, trying to absorb whether it be leadership books or, like, hiring. So, like, anything you can so that, like, to them, you feel more confident and competent. Right. Yeah.

So, yeah, that definitely makes sense because.

You'Ve done, you know, how to do the work. Like, that's the part you. You excel in. And the difference between, like the 250 marker and the 500 is can you figure out that next unlock, which is, I now hire people, train them, and then they want to work with me.

Yeah.

So good stuff. Well, hey, show me around, man. Let's go. Did you just get this? This like looks like brand new.

Yeah, I haven't taken the tag off. I've had it for a few weeks now. Oh yeah, I, we, we got a 36 inch John Deere walk behind. But yeah, we switched to this because guys were having trouble learning how to use the walk behind because the controls are different. So they also hated that mower for whatever reason.

Really?

Yeah. So I just. We bought this because it's the exact same, so it's easy for everyone to learn.

Gets in the back gate.

Yeah. It's not very. It's not the greatest on hills though.

But because of small tires.

Yeah. So since we're figuring out which mower we want to fleet, we got the ZK last year and then we, we're trying the LG out too to decide which one we like better. Then we got tweels on them. Those do excellent on hills.

Yep, yep.

Well, the good thing is you have enough equipment for both trucks to be going out.

Yeah.

Right. So now it's just a function of like you already have the asset capacity for a four or five hundred thousand dollars business.

Yeah.

So it really just comes down to finding the people. Like right now are you advertising at all or is it mostly just like word of mouth? People will come in.

Door hangers were really good earlier in the year.

Yeah. Yeah. And then it. We've been just getting a lot of organic calls, you know, so seems like in our, in our market.

It seems like fall and probably almost winter is the time to market for lawn. Lawn care treatments.

Treatments.

So because most people, they've already made a decision by the time you get to January because they're going to re up with who they. So a lot of people are maybe not sure. They're probably going to think about it right now. So we've been getting a number of calls. I think we will advertise in the spring and we'll probably hit the door hangers really hard.

So lawns kind of seem to pick up in the spring, but like even December, January, February for treatments people are thinking about buying.

Yeah.

Interesting. Interesting. Right now for your treatment packages, how many do you offer? Like two or three options or how do you work that?

Yeah. So there's three different. So par, Birdie, Eagle. So par's the basic package that we recommend mostly for people that don't have an irrigated lawn. Got it.

How many treatments is that usually a year?

Five.

Okay.

Yeah.

And then Birdie is kind of just. Will be A great treatment package. It's comparable, equal, actually better than most of what the competition in town does. And then eagle is.

It gives you just a better color year round. So when you get in August, the grass really wants to not look as good, so we spray a nutrient package on it, and so that's a little bit different. And.

The PAR doesn't have grub control. So anyway, so we're doing a lot of that stuff.

What percentage do you think between those three packages are the customers that have treatment? So say there's 80 treatment customers. How many do you think are roughly in those three categories?

I'd say.

60% and birdie.

Okay.

And then probably 15 and eagle and the rest. And. Okay. Yeah. I think you get too much. It's too much. You know, then they're all confused.

Yeah. Do you do annual or just do. Where it's like when you come for treatment?

No, it's. It's annual, so they don't have to prepay or anything. I mean, we do have clients that our elderly clients want to prepay and just pray for the whole season. We give them a 3% discount, I think. But no. Yeah, most people, we take and divide all the. So say if they're getting seven or eight treatments, we just divide it by the seven or eight treatments, the total amount, and then they just pay that same amount every time.

Oh, every time. Okay. So most of them are still per visit, even though it's an annual price.

Correct.

Got it. Okay. And then what's that usually look like for the three? So an average property size here. What's kind of for the Birdie package per visit, what's the average? Is it like $70?

It's gonna be a little over $400.

Annual, I think. So whatever that is. Divided by five, six, seven treatments. So.

Is it seven treatments for birdie? It's kind of confusing because the way we do it, one of them we don't number, otherwise it confuses everybody. But I think we have seven, and then eight with equal 60.

$70 is probably at least the average application.

Cool.

Yeah. Our small lawns would be like 235, 245 bucks for the season.

Got it.

Yeah. So average is probably between 300 and $450.

That's good. That's super cool. Yeah. Like, as long as you have that, like, kind of those three packages, then you'll be able to instant quotes come December. Yeah, January.

That'd be awesome.

So they can just get the card and it's ready to rock and roll. Yeah. So did you do the door hangers yourself then? Last past spring.

Yeah.

And then you probably grew pretty quickly just to like where you're like, hey, I can't even, I don't have time for the door.

Yep. I, I stopped doing door hangers sometime in April. I'm like, okay, this is too much now.

Yeah.

And then did you get a first employee?

Pretty much right after that. Then we already had a first full time employee and then we, we didn't over hire soon enough, so we should have hired a second full time guy sooner than we did. And then we couldn't get anyone until the summer.

Got it.

Cause the summer is probably when all the students are like, yeah, hire me. Yeah. Yeah.

We had one college student that worked full time that ended up being really good.

Yeah.

Now we just need them to graduate.

Yeah.

And stick around.

So. Good stuff. Well, thanks for letting us drop by. And then Debbie, you do all the, all the admin stuff, right? All the office. Let's go. How's that been.

Learning?

I've learned a lot more than my.

Brain.

Ready for, but yes, that's good.

It's tough with the part timers too at the P4P side because like they, if they only work half a day or like one even they, they don't, they fail to get into the rhythm. Like we always found either like new locations where there's not enough route density or part timers. P4P almost can't work because they, they come after a week of school and then they're here to work for a day and they just don't get in the groove sometimes. Is that kind of what you found? A little bit with the P for P Z.

Now I have all the upper level.

Questions that no one can answer yet. She's talking about us. So she's like, why don't you know this?

Oh, like on the chemical side and stuff?

No, on P4P.

Oh.

Ryan knows P4P.

I hook me up.

Let's do it.

Let's go.

Ryan knows P4P better than I do. He's went through all the video training. I went through some of it. And because I'm, I'm more the budget, you know, forecast stuff and put all the packages together.

But she's got to run on the numbers.

Yeah, she does really. Deb does really good at, you know, sending quick estimates out for mowing and lawn care too because we just have a number for per square foot and she just. And it changes slightly if you have a fenced in yard. So yeah, she's great at doing that. But I just wanted to say, Mike, thanks for doing Augusta. One thing I really appreciate about you so me, I say what I mean. I mean what I say, and I sense you're the same way. And so it's like, that's part of me getting over the hurdle of joining Augusta. Like, is this guy for real or is he fake? You know, because I'm. Both of us are really, like, sincere, and. And so.

You know, when I seen you at conference or not conference, but training and stuff, and just like, yeah, this is a real dude. This is. He's a good guy, you know, and you come across that way in video and on YouTube and stuff, but, you know, you always kind of wonder, you know, So I was always asking Lee and stuff, is he really that he claims to be?

Yeah, that's what he asked on our sales call.

So, yeah. But I think. I mean, what Augusta does for the average guy that doesn't have a lot of experience is.

Awesome. And we've worked for Chick Fil A because we tried to get a store, and it's like, that's gonna take too long. It's like, I'm too old to do that. I don't want to do that. But I seen the power franchise. It's like, man, Augusta's Chick Fil A in the landscape world. It's like, let's go.