The Brutal Truth Lawn Care Business Owners Don't Know!

Today, I'm talking about the real reason you're burnt out. You're not burnt out. You're just broke and busy. Burnout isn't emotional, it's mathematical. You're not tired of working hard. You're tired of working for nothing. If your calendar is packed but your bank account is empty, that's not hustle. That's failure disguised as effort. You don't need a break. You need a better business model. My name is Mike Andes. I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn Care. We have over 190 locations around the world. I. You can't outwork a broken model. Every single owner I talk to thinks they can just grind through it. But if your model is broken and you have no profit, no systems, no pricing power, working harder just digs the hole faster. You don't need balance, you need profit. This isn't going to be the advice you get from your therapist. You're calling it burnout, but it's really financial panic. You're trying to meditate your way out of it. It doesn't make any sense, and it doesn't work in the 4L framework. When I go out on turnarounds, we talk about liquidity, leads, labor, and leadership being the key constraints and bottlenecks to growing any home service business, and really any business in general. But the reason I start with the constraint of liquidity or cash is because if you don't have enough money, it doesn't matter how many leads you have. If you don't have enough money, it doesn't matter how many great employees you have. If you don't have enough money, it doesn't matter all the leadership skills that you have in the world because. Because the business will not only fail, it'll cause so much stress on you as the owner, you'll fall apart in the other areas of the business. If you don't have enough liquidity, if you have no cash in the bank, if you make no money, if you make no profit, it is very difficult to think about anything else than that. It's the oxygen. And the same way that if you're being held under the water, the only thing you can think about is gaining more air. How can I think about getting more leads or treating my employees correctly or being a great leader if I don't have enough money to make payroll. There are only two ways to operate your business. You are either in growth mode or you are in profit mode. Profit buys freedom. Growth buys stress. Profit buys sanity. Growth creates chaos. Growth feels good because you feel productive. You Feel like you're growing, you're buying more trucks, you're hiring more employees, you're getting more customers, you're expanding operations, you're getting a new office, and it's what looks good on Instagram. But if profit isn't growing, and if we don't have a clear path and a finish line to get into profit mode, we are simply buying ourselves a larger headache. Every truck, every employee, every customer we get simply increases the stress on us as the business owner. If we don't have a profitable business model in place, or at least a finish line to growth mode where we enter profit mode. Owners do not burn out because they work too hard. They burn out because they work so hard and they see no results. They don't see the compounding nature of their work they're doing. They put a dollar in and they get 90 cents out. They put a dollar in and saw $5. They saw a return for all the extra effort and investment into the business. That would be invigorating, that would give them the courage to keep going. That would give them the strength and the stamina to, despite the pain, to keep putting in the long hours. You can't keep saying yes to every job, every customer, every employee, and expect peace and tranquility. You're gonna be stressed out of your mind. Recently I was talking to an owner and they were thinking about starting a second location. Their first location just became profitable this year after passing $550,000 in annual revenue. And they asked me, try to go start another location. In other words, should I stay in growth mode? And I actually told him, no, wait a year or two, stay in profit mode. Recently, over the past 12 months, he went from divorce to getting back together with his wife. That's a huge personal change that in and of itself creates a huge amount of stress. If your business has been on this constant cycle of grow, grow, hire, get more trucks. And you're also having personal struggles, personal relationship issues. The amount of stress that you're facing prevents you from thinking clearly. It prevents you from making decisions required to run a profitable business. I encourage this owner to take the year and raise prices. Maybe make 650,000 next year at this first location, but make $150,000 or $200,000 in take home profit. By taking that year and putting aside that nice stack of cash, he can focus on his personal relationship as well as make sure that the roots of that first location are very deep before going back into growth mode. And, and a lot of people think like, once I Switch into profit mode. I'll never grow again. You can always go back into growth mode with more cash reserves, a more profitable business model, and money to spend on marketing that will actually fuel your growth to even a higher extent. And the money to spend on marketing to be able to actually grow faster once you enter growth mode again. This is our new command center where over 10,000 phone calls are answered every single week for over 200 locations at Augusta Lawn Care. And we do this so that all of our owners can avoid the rent, all of the utilities, and all the overhead wages that come with having an office staff of their own, including things like Internet. If you want to figure out the systems to be able to grow your office and your admin team and have the systems for phone calls, emails, text messages, and everything else to be able to scale your business from zero to $3 million in annual revenue, go to mikeandys.com black Friday and sign up for a free event where I'm going to show you all of it completely free. The question becomes how? How do I actually create a business model that is profitable? And when it comes to home services, pricing is your medicine. I recently joked with a bunch of owners from Augusta Lawn Care that when I go on these turnarounds, I should just have a forehead tattoo that says raise your prices. Because the vast majority of us that care for our customers, care for our employees, care for our community, and try to do a very high level of service to our customers should simply raise our prices. If your crew is full and super busy and you're stressed financially, that is not a capacity capacity problem. That is a pricing problem. You can't fill your schedule with unprofitable work and then somehow blame exhaustion. You did that. You sold the jobs, you hired the employees, you decided to stay in growth mode. And so you've caused the stress that now you're experiencing. The cure to that is profit per hour. I need to make more money for every hour that I put into the business. As the business owner, every one of my employees, I need to make more profit. That extra profit per hour per employee for every hour I put into the business. That extra money that I make is the cure to the stress you're experiencing. Burnout is what happens when you're busy being cheap. Because if you were super profitable and your customers pay you two or three times more than what they're currently paying you, you'd probably be able to hire the right employees a completely different caliber. You'd be able to buy the right trucks, you'd Be able to spend money on marketing to attract the right customers. Last month I was at a turnaround where a business owner had acquired a massive business which basically took them from $400,000 in annual revenue to $1.2 million in annual revenue. So they added $800,000 of revenue by acquiring this other business. What they didn't know is that although there was $800,000 of revenue that got added, all of that revenue was extremely unprofitable. $40 to $50 per hour on these massive commercial contracts. And, and once they got those contracts, people stopped paying. They were servicing a bunch of Walmarts doing maintenance, sweeping, lawn care. And those bills, those overdue invoices got up to over $200,000. The amount of stress on this business owner and his relationships and everyone inside the office and the entire team was tremendous. Why? Because they didn't have any money. And the reason they didn't have the money was not only the 40 to $50 per hour rate. It was also they lacked the systems to collect and be able to make sure their cash flow was in a positive place. There's no way you're able to have a $1.2 million business but have $200,000 that you've earned, invoiced but not collected on. In this example, the business owner went to the contract and I was going over it with them of the acquisition and they were looking at the sellers who had moved out of state and they were paying them $7,000 a month on this acquisition that honestly it was a to the business they purchased was so low priced, customers they were serving were so horrible at paying that it was actually worth nothing. But yet they had paid $350,000 in this acquisition. So now they were facing a lawsuit. A seller that was not backing down on the original deal and the fact they were owed over $200,000 of invoices to Walmart and massive companies that were not paying their bills. That's a huge amount of stress. All caused by a lack of pricing and poor management of cash flow. In other words, not collecting on the invoices once they've been sent. So the question is, what if you're like this owner, you're in a huge amount of stress financially. The business is underpriced, there's a huge amount of overdue invoices. What do you do in the situation when you are experiencing burnout? I believe that there are a lot of false fixes. People think that burnout is cured by taking time off. No, it's Cured by having systems that run when you're off. Everyone talks about self care and taking care of yourself, and I believe those things are important. But I believe for the business owner, when it comes to burnout, systems carry much more weight than self care. Instead of your hobbies, think about fixing the business and creating systems in place so that when you actually do your hobby, you can relax, you can de stress, and you know that the business is being taken care of. A vacation won't fix your business. It will only delay your next panic attack. You don't need a week off. You need a business that runs without you. In order for that to happen, you're going to have to find great people. You're going to have to delegate. But you can't delegate chaos. You can't delegate without systems. You can only delegate a profitable business model that has clarity and processes that are in place. Stop hiring admin to manage the symptoms, fix the root of the problem, fix the disease. And that disease is unprofitability. Last week I was at a turnaround for a demolition company. It was being ran by a couple and they're doing over $800,000 in annual revenue. However, just a few months prior, the husband had tried to take his life and was very, very depressed. This was caused from a business that was so low on cash they couldn't make payroll. There was hardly any money in the bank. They had credit cards and a whole bunch of loans. And the common belief might be that, oh well, you should take a vacation because now all of the stress had caused a whole bunch of relationship problems with the couple. And now they had actually separated from each other momentarily. And so we should go on a vacation. But what's going to happen when you get back on the vacation? What's going to happen is you're still gonna have just as much stress. You're likely to be less profitable now that you've stepped out of the business and it has no systems, there's likely to be chaos with your employees and customers. Probably gonna have vendors that are mad at you because you're gone for a week or two. So advice to step away from the business or take a vacation. Although it might might have good intentions for the person saying it ultimately doesn't fix the root of the problem, which is unprofitability. And you don't have systems. And if you don't address those root causes, trying to slap a band aid on it will do absolutely nothing. It will only make it worse. In this example, I told the husband and wife to plan their vacation, but for six months from now. Because it was going to take six months to create systems for the admin person and and delegate. So the wife wasn't always. Her phone wasn't ringing 24 7. There was going to take more time to delegate operations and create systems inside the field so that the husband wouldn't have to be on the truck all the time. But then it was after those six months. That's when a vacation was necessary to repair the relationship. But I'm not going to slap a band aid on a gaping wound that needs surgery. Overwhelm is just the sound of your system's breaking. When everything depends on you. You're not an entrepreneur, you're the bottleneck. And I don't say that out of spite. I know what it's like to be there and to feel so discouraged, alone and depressed. But realize that if you create systems and you take six months to actually document admin operations and sales and then be able to delegate those things with clarity to great team members, the business will be able to run without you. And if you raise your prices correctly, you'll be able to do so profitably. Decision fatigue isn't mental health. It's poor leadership design in the long term. After five, 10 years of running your business, the business should not need you thinking about it 14 hours a day. It will take time to learn your industry, hire the right people, acquire the right trucks and equipment, find the right customers. But once you've done that, you shouldn't spend decades stressed out of your mind with low profits, no systems and no delegation. The more you automate and delegate, the more energy you get back. Mental health is so important for entrepreneurs and business owners. Many times it's used as a catch all for any problem we have in the business. And instead of just taking ownership of the fact that we have an unprofitable business that is only ran and only goes smoothly if we are working 14 hours a day. These are solvable problems. Let's take ownership of the fact that we've made decisions in the business to spread ourselves too thin. And the number one way to fix that is increase prices, increase profits, and delegate to employees using the systems we've put in place. So here's the hard truth. You're not tired of your business. You're tired of running it. Wrong. You cannot build freedom on low profit margins. The cure for burnout is more profit. I say it a lot of times, and I say it mostly to get attention, but money solves everything. And if you had more Profit in the business. It would solve the fact that you don't have time with your family, that you feel like you're stressed every time a bad review comes in. You'd be able to delegate. You'd spend more time on creating systems. The path to profit is saying no, saying no to growth, saying no to more employees, saying no to the wrong customers. That's what your therapist won't tell you and even your best friend. But it's the truth. For business owners that constantly are stressed out of their mind because there's no money in their bank account. Every time you underprice your services, every time you allow a customer to walk all over you or you don't have a system in place to collect on the money that's owed to you, you are buying more stress. And I'm not so concerned about digits in a bank account. I'm not so concerned about a profit and loss statement or what your QuickBooks account looks like. It's the fact that this stress is in your bank account. And the stress that's causing is breaking your relationships, it's breaking families. And this is why I'm so passionate about the turnaround show. When we go out and we fly out to these companies is the fact that it's not the money, it's the fact that this is taking them away from the thing that they love most, their family. It's taking away from their hobbies that they love doing. It is as if their business is holding them captive. And the way to solve that is to make more money, to be more profitable, to have systems and to be able to delegate those to great people. In closing, let me challenge you on this. If you were to raise your prices by 20% tomorrow, would it make your life harder or easier? That one question tells you everything about your business model. Would it allow you to get off earlier? Would it allow you to be able to spend extra time at the gym? Would it allow you to be able to delegate to your team and be able to give back more to them, Give back to your community, your church? If the answer to that is yes, I encourage you to make the decision to raise your prices, draw more profit at the bottom line. You'll be able to delegate. You'll be able to create more systems in the business using that extra pillow of margin. Stop treating exhaustion like a badge of honor. You're holding onto it. I understand that working 14 hours a day is exhausting, but many times it becomes our identity and we hold onto it too long. You're not burnt out you're underpaid and over committed. Take the challenge today, raise your prices immediately and see the ripple effects it makes in your team, your business and your family. Be great because nothing else pays.