The Business Secret No One Talks About

I built a lawn care business that will do over $75 million in revenue this year. We showed up in the Landscape 100 and the Franchise 500. And today I'm going to be sharing with you the secret that really unlocks growth for every entrepreneur, whether you're trying to go from $0 to $1 million, $1 million to $10 million, or from $10 million to $100 million enterprise. The one key that I've learned over the past 20 years of being in business is the ability to get inside of a community. I don't care if it's a Facebook group. I don't care if it's a local meetup. I don't care if it's a franchise like we have at Augusta. Having a community of other people that you can bounce ideas off of. And when you want to quit, when you want to throw in the towel, they pick you back up. And when they want to quit, you pick them back up. That is the real unlock and the real secret that everyone's actually trying to unlock. And I say that so often of the times in my videos, but I've never actually showed you what a great community looks like. And so today, for the first time, I'm going to kind of show you behind the scenes of a daily video call that we do with all the owners inside of Augusta. It's an incredible community of owners, and I want to share with you what this looks like when you have other people that all want you to win and want to see you succeed. And I don't care if you join Augusta Franchise, but find yourself a community. Find people that you can pour into and that they can pour into you when you need help most. So this is an open format that we do every single day at Augusta Lawn Care. Questions get submitted, I answer them, and it's an open format. So Let's go ahead and see what it's all about. From Medicine Hat. Hey Mike, I'm planning on promoting one of my top guys to an operational assistant this season with the long-term goal of moving him to a full ops manager next spring. He's good with the timeline and being under the P4P system for his operational assistant tasks. I am planning on trimming the fat of each task before delegating to him, minus shop equipment vehicle maintenance as he's already gifted in that area and doing things faster and less costly than I would. Could You please look at this doc and provide some feedback. Thanks in advance. Okay, let's open it up. Operational assistant budget hour per responsibility. Okay, so I'm going to guess this is the amount of hours you're taking. That's your current. This is the budget hours per— I'm guessing you're assigning to the assistant and you're saying you're going to like make these more efficient and iron some kinks out before you hand it off to them. That's okay. Just keep in mind, like usually people don't work as fast as you, but if you're gonna like make, iron out the kinks, create better systems, remove complexity, simplify things, then I would be okay with this being the assumption that, hey, he's gonna cut off 25% of budget hours compared to me doing it. So additional pay per week, assuming under BH, so $316. So this would be a payroll bonus in P4P software. You could just make this as a payroll bonus if you'd like. That way it's sticky. It sticks no matter what. Um, I would be fine with that. Just make sure you have— because what I'm assuming you're going to do is like, hey, every week you're going to get $316 extra to make sure it makes up on P2P. Just be careful what happens if they take a week off. What happens if they're 2 days out of the week? So just make sure you iron out what exactly this means. And are you actually putting budget hours on the schedule? I assume not, because this is that would just be a bit of a pain to have to put that every single day. I'm assuming you're just doing a manual adjustment. And so if you're doing the manual adjustment, just have a lot of clarity. What happens if he works 1 day, 2 days, if there's a long weekend, if they're rained out for 3 days, what happens to this bonus? So I would, by the way, be very much in favor of this being sticky so that you don't— this does not become a conversation of, oh, well, I worked 3 days, I worked 4 days, I worked 2 days, and like you're doing division and stuff. I would look at this from my perspective as this is a $300 per week cost, $1,200 a month. That is $14,000 a year to have an operational assistant. Not a bad idea if they're taking all of this stuff off your plate. So I'm okay with this. Just make it really clear. And I would default in the way of don't nickel and dime this person. Just my two cents. I see way too many people offering way too low of base pays. Wait, like they're nickel and diming their leaders. And then they wonder why there's a bunch of churn. Versus giving them stability. Like, the reason that this is looked at as a, a bonus or an increase or a, a good thing for this person is this money gets locked in. It's not like a bonus, it is rather an increase to their base pay. That's how I'd be looking at it. Um, now you're not going to increase the base pay because I know you want them to be 78, 70, 80% of days out in the field still working with the crew. I understand that, keep them on PVP. But personally, I would lock this in as a weekly P4P manual adjustment. It's going on their, their payroll no matter what. That'd be my recommendation. And keep in mind, they've got it like they still, they're still earning revenue for the business. So this is a great position. I think that I would look at this dollar amount because if you divide this by 12, that's about $26 an hour. I would consider moving that up if I was you. Again, I want the delta between what they're if they're a high performer, they're likely making pretty good on P4P. And so again, I see too many people like, I'm gonna offer $50,000 or $60,000 base pay for a GM. It's like, they can make pretty much the same amount on P4P. Um, like, well, they can make profit sharing. Yeah, but like, an employee isn't an entrepreneur. They want the stability and they want the reliability of a pay that pays them no matter what. That's why they're an employee. That's why they're not a business owner. And so I'm, I'm a huge advocate of locking in these dollar amounts. Is it, is it fixed? Yes, a fixed expense. Is it overhead? Yes, it's extra $1,200 a month, a fixed expense that you're— but the thing is, if you're actually delegating all of this, you likely could get 30% of your day back and be able to grow the business by, by double. And so I would not nickel and dime someone, and I would, I would, I would personally increase this dollar amount. I'll just be to be perfectly honest. I think that this is worth well more than $26 an hour. And what you don't want to happen is they start skimping because they want to go out and get P2P where they can make $28, $29, $30 an hour, but you're locking them into this basically set $26 an hour to do these tasks. I would want this person to look forward to doing these tasks, be happy that you gave this to me and see it as a big bump in pay. Personally, I don't think the difference between them making $26 and $30 an hour is going to break the bank. That's going to be— you're literally going to be paying $380. So personally, I would just move this to $400. $400 every week, that's $1,600 per month. We're looking at, uh, something like less, less than $20 grand a year to make sure all this is taken off your plate. But I want this person to feel motivated. And if the difference between $316 and $380 is going to be the difference between having the conversation around, hey, I could basically make more than this on P2P, versus just being excited that they're able to take on these new tasks, learn these new skills, I would just recommend doing it. I understand that the inclination to pinch pennies when you've come from nothing, I understand that a lot. And I had to get over this in order to be able to attract great talent into management level because a great manager that's really great, they can go start a business. And the reason they don't is 'cause they want the reliability, they want the stability, and they want to buy into a vision that's bigger than theirs. And so a lot of us have the vision of what we wanna build, but we're not giving them the stability for them to be like motivated to sacrifice the desire to go start their own thing and just do it inside of your organization. And so this requires really understanding what the team member wants and incentivizing to that. But for the vast majority, I see of us, see too many of us nickel and diming base pays for any level of management above our technicians. And so I genuinely believe they're high performers. They're probably making $26 an hour on P4P. This is going to become an issue when in the season they know they can make more on PvP than doing these tasks for you. And now no longer does it seem like a, a bonus or a good thing. It seems actually is holding them back. And in a world where everyone is skeptical of their boss, that's going to come up. So I would just— that'd be my caveat, which you have added some here. Operation Assistant should be more efficient than me at these tasks as he is more skilled and has less complexity on his plate. Again, I'm making this as points for all of us to learn from, not specifically this at you. So just to be clear, because someone is more efficient, that is a skill in and of itself and I want to compensate them for it. So I say, hey, because they're so great, they're going to do the job faster than me. Because they're going to do it faster than me, I can pay them less. Like, I would just flip that mindset. You're going to get burned when you start trying to retain really, really great people. Average people stick around for a few dollars more per hour, but like really amazing people, You want to increase base pay and you want to give them a lot of reasons as to why they stay with you. And so because someone is more efficient and they have these skills and they're better than you at the job, you got to ask yourself, like, is it worth more than $26 per hour to you for you to be able to work on higher leverage tasks? Yes. Is it $30? Yes. Is it $32? Like, I really want to ask myself that question to be able to come to a compensation agreement where I feel good about it and they're thrilled about it. And I understand that that can really grate you if you come from the place of always pinching pennies and you've been rewarded for that in the past. But like every single time I have, it has made me uncomfortable around someone's compensation. I have been able to attract the best talent that in the 12-24 month window unlocks the business to be able to grow. And most of the time we will never be able to overcome that $2-3 million marker because we are, we are unable to attract leadership that stay with us. And I would just Put that as a caveat. Again, I'm not talking at you here. This is mostly just for the community, for everyone to learn. I should not have to follow up on a task more than twice a week. Okay. I will say this following, like, I wouldn't even make this a thing because if you tell someone that they basically know that, you know, 4 tasks, that means 4 times a week, you're going to follow up on something. That means every day you're going to ask them about, hey, did you do this? Hey, did you do the scheduling? Hey, did you do the routing? Hey, did you shop, you know, do the shop maintenance? That's every single day and still falling within, like, the standard, like, falling within the SLA, standard level of service. So, like, I would rather have this be something that is tracked, and then you're doing a cadence of a meeting where you go over the data. That way it's not about following up. It's a matter of, like, are we doing these tasks? Yes or no? That's already a dashboard. It's a checklist. You could create a visit form instead of homeworks. You could create a Google Form. You could create where there's a WhatsApp group, they send a daily recap video or report. So you watch your report at the end of the day, they go over these 4 tasks. It's like, hey, every day I just want you to recap what was the vehicle maintenance, how did the routing go, any issues with scheduling, and anything with PPP I should know about. Send me a quick 1-minute video at the end of the day on WhatsApp. Like, you could do that, for example. I would rather it be where instead of you, because if you say you should not have to follow up, that means you are constantly looking over their shoulder. Which is not a great place to be from an employee, and it, it wastes your time. And so instead of you saving 16 hours, you're going to save 4 hours because you're still going to be looking over their shoulder for every single thing and then following up on it. I would rather be more of a passive either reports or dashboard, and then on a, let's just call it weekly basis, you meet, you talk about the data that has come in from that report or from that dashboard and refine it over time. Good question. Very good question. Next up is from Framework. I know offering more services doesn't fix your issues and doing more of the same thing is has better outcomes. However, when a friction point threatens retention, do we launch an internal add-on service to capture the revenue, or do we refer it out to a third-party specialist to protect our operational focus? Context: our biggest friction point between the crew and the customer is dog poop on the backyard. We probably have 30 repeat offenders every week out of approximately 250. It is in our welcome and thank you and our weekly reminders that dog poop needs to be dealt with or we may skip or charge a $25 fee. Let's be honest, people don't read, nor do they take responsibility. That results in the customer just being upset, the crew returning after skipping if picked up, or some people just flat out canceling our services to prevent people from skipping or finding a solution to the issue. Is it worth offering scooping as a service? I feel that means they have no excuse to not have the issue taken care of if they do not do it since we offer the service. My main thought is I do not want to add another service. However, if this reduces friction and cancellations, It seems like a solution to the problem and adds to top line revenue without much cost. We have to quantify this. Right now we are talking about 12% of your, of your customer base. So 88% of your customers do not have this problem. 12% do. And so if we look at $30 or sorry, 30 repeat offenders and let's say we charge, I don't know, $20, let's just say you make $30 a month. Like we are talking about $1,000 or less a month that you'd make in more revenue. So we are definitely not doing it because of revenue capture. Because if you look at $1,000 of revenue, we're talking about probably Connor, I'm guessing 1% or less of your revenue. So I would not be doing it for adding revenue. I would be doing it to prevent P4P disruptions for my crew. I would do it to prevent churn. If customers freak out over this, I would look at all my churn customers and see, are they actually leaving because of this? So before I go jump to the conclusion, I need to add the service to protect churn, I want to actually measure, are people leaving, actually leaving and citing the fact that we don't do poop removal as a reason why, or they canceled after we charged them the $25 fee, or we skipped their service. Are they actually canceling? So there might be 30 repeat offenders, but if you're charging them a $25 fee and not picking up the poop and then coming back, like, is that worth it to you? That would be on you. Or do you just skip them all together? Like, hey, if you don't pick up the poop, we're charging you for the mow and we're not doing the service. Would you lose some people? Yes. But I would like to know how many, because how many offenders versus how many people actually cancel might surprise you. But again, there's non-dollar drag, like just having to deal with people complaining or rerouting people's jobs back in after they do the poop-up pickup. Even if you charge the whole price, it's like, I've got to go back into their market when I'm not supposed to be and mow their lawn. So I understand there's other things, but don't do it because of added revenue. Definitely not. The reason I say that is because if people do it for like the extra $1,000, like, well, then I can add this as additional service. And now they start diluting their marketing spend and the brain space in the mind of the customer that would otherwise be with emails or texts about their core services. They dilute that marketing message with other services. And again, we're talking about 1% of revenue now. Let's say it got up to 5% of revenue. Okay, that's $5,000 a month, $4,000 a month. Spending all of your marketing energy, advertising energy, training your team, your upsells, all that energy towards the 95% is probably gonna lead to a better outcome. And so I'm not opposed to what you're saying here. I agree with you, especially if it's like— that's a high percentage, honestly, from what I've seen. 12% of people that are repeat offenders, that's pretty high. So I would first, before I add this complexity to the business, and I would also be gauging like my crew, like, do they— are they gung-ho about adding this? Would they prefer doing this instead of coming back to the property later or charging the fee and getting free P4P dollars because they showed up there? But I would really want to know how many people are actually canceling over this before I start adding an additional service. It is a simple service, but you do have to start thinking about where do you store the waste? How do you train your team members on this? How do you ensure that there's not cross-contamination? There are a little, a few little things you're going to add. And then for me, it's like, where's that waste staying throughout the day? And is it going to cause a horror, you know, a big problem for my crew? But the alternative is they step all over it and they got it on their shoes all day, right? So I don't think there's any like right answer here. I think I would just want to know from your perspective, exactly how many customers are actually canceling over this before I add it to be a churn solve. I got to first determine like, what is the churn? Mr. Anonymous, your podcast with Jonathan shows how good you are at listening. How can I improve in this area? I find myself thinking about what I am going to say instead of actively listening. You seem to have worked on this a lot. Thank you for the compliment. I don't consider myself a great listener. It has improved a lot. And it is definitely something I've been working on. It is very difficult to think, to not think about what you're going to say and listen to someone, especially when you don't want to look stupid. Because the whole reason that you think about what you're going to say while they're talking is because you don't have dead space after they talk. And so becoming a little more comfortable with silence has honestly been the biggest thing. I'm still not great at this, but just like cutting all of your filler words and just being quiet. And letting that be okay is something I'm still working on. Once you do that, then you're not as afraid of silence. If someone asks you a question or they say something and you don't have anything like loaded up and ready to go, I have found for people like Jonathan that I'm— my whole goal is to extract information for him and make it palatable to my audience so they can learn. Like, that's my whole mission. And so if I'm not a good listener, that will not occur. I might look smart I might say something funny, I might say something even valuable, but my whole goal of trying to take his knowledge and extract it diminishes if I'm not a good listener. And so this has served me well, whether it be with Dr. Kashi or other mentors. And that is you got to learn how to listen and then you're going to make mistakes. Like I've made mistakes before when there are specific mentors and I've just said dumb stuff that you kick yourself over and over and over again. It's like if I would have just kept my mouth shut, I've never regretted keeping my mouth shut. And so sometimes when you're just trying to build a relationship, build rapport, make sure that they trust you, sometimes listening is the best thing, especially when they have a lot to say. Jonathan has not made content for years. He knows so much. He started making recently on Five for $50, but like, he has a lot to share. And so me getting in the way of that is doing my audience a disservice. So out of the desire to serve my audience, I shut my mouth. And that's not easy because I do have ideas like throughout even today's podcast, he probably talks 80% of it, 85% of the way. Like the whole time I have ideas, things I want to interject. And you just cap it, you cap it, you cap it while they're talking. And by the time they end talking, a lot of times I forget everything I've been thinking because I am actually trying to think about what they are saying. I'm reacting to what they're saying. And usually it's only once there's a little bit of silence that I'm able to come up with something that usually pulls out the next level of content from that person or learning or education. And so many people are so fast to talk, they fail to ever learn the lessons from the people that would completely transform their business or their life because they're so busy and interested in what they're saying or what they're going to say instead of the person that has the answer giving it to them. And so a lot of times that comes in the follow-up question. That's like, what's the secondary thing after someone gives you information? What's the second thing you say? And that second thing you say doesn't ever pop up in your brain if you're thinking about what you're going to respond to them versus just responding to what they said and getting to like the second degree of learning. Mr. Anonymous, how do you balance patience with ambition when you know you're on the right path? We're planning to open location number 2 next year, but it's hard not to want to move faster right now. What should we be focused on during the waiting season? So we're actually better prepared instead of just feeling stuck. That's great. So I had some notes I was taking the other day about what patience means to me, because patience, like, you know, like Alex always talks about, is figuring out what to do in the meantime. For me, it's high pain tolerance for boring execution and thinking in terms of years and not months. How do I balance patience with ambition is I realize that in order to achieve the ambitions that I have, I need a patience. Like, patience is a skill, and I need that skill in order to be able to get to where I want to go. And so just thinking about the finish line and glamorizing the finish line— I want to get the finish line— you have 26 miles in a marathon before you get there. And so you will need a lot of patience in doing the same thing, steps and running, for hours on end before you get there. And so most people have plenty of ambition, they love the finish line, That's why the finish line is packed out. And then most people do not want to do the same thing for hours on end in a marathon. And in life, most people do not want to do things for years on end and just constantly feel beat up and just doing it over and over and over and over. Everyone's looking for novelty instead of staying committed to the outcome. And so many people can say that with words. So easy to say that. But when you're halfway through a marathon, you can't feel your feet, your heart is beating out of your chest, and you're starting to get dizzy, you start to really question whether or not your ambition is worth staying in the race. And when it comes to entrepreneurship, the same thing is true. When you lose a big deal, you get in a lawsuit, a manager leaves, an employee says something bad about you that you know isn't true, people say bad stuff, customers online, and all of those things at the exact same moment that you're losing money because you just invested a bunch in the business. And now all of a sudden the market's turned or the weather's turned and you're not getting any leads. That moment, getting through that level of pain comes from the perspective of passing the point of no return. And so there's a certain point in a race where it's like, oh, we're not going to quit. And everyone— for everyone, that's different. For some people, the first step they take in a marathon, they're not quitting. Like, hey, we started. If we start, we finish. For other people, they need to get to a certain level of achievement or revenue, let's say, in business or in a race. How many miles before, like, oh, like, there's— it's not going to stop, it's not going to go back. And so, like, the point of no return in a flight is if you're flying from point A to point B, it's like, where do we actually pass the point of no return where we keep continue to the destination? And versus if I have a problem with takeoff, I'm going to just turn around and go right back to the airport. And so point of no return when it comes to like marathon or business is what point of revenue does someone need to achieve before they don't even think about quitting anymore? And once someone gets there, I feel like there's a mental shift that happens that yes, your heart is beating out of your chest. Yes, your feet are numb. Yes, you feel dizzy, but there's no option of like stopping. It's not there anymore. And so I do find that sometimes putting yourself in positions where it becomes very hard to stop or quit is a really good scenario. For me, this is for me personally. So for example, I'll just use this example. Don't anyone read into this. There are times that I want to quit, or I am— I should say there are times I want to feel— I am down or feel discouraged about how I lead Augusta. And there are times I question whether or not I'm the right person, whether or not I am capable of it, whether or not it's worth the pain that it takes to do that. I question that. But like, I'm so far past the mentality of like, should I be quitting? Should I should I stop? Like, it's not happening. We're all in. And so a lot of that has to do with people that I love, all of you, being invested into it and knowing that I would have a negative— like, me quitting, me throwing in the towel, me giving up would have a negative impact on all of you. And this is the same reason why many times for entrepreneurs, it's like your family. It's the reason why the business needs to make money is so that I can do X, Y, and Z, whether it be giving or providing for your family or getting someone through school or giving to your family back home that doesn't have money. These are all things that when you feel like you want to quit, patience steps in and says, hey, hey, like quitting is not an option. During the waiting season, to answer your question more directly, having more cash will always give you options and will allow you to be able to A, accelerate in the future, and B, absorb the pain that you're currently going through without adding more pain of growth. And this is why when you're, you know, when you're focused on the waiting season, just stack cash. Like, I understand, like, I want to start the second location now. I totally understand where you're coming from. There are plenty of things I want to do, and I know that's going to take— it's— I'm going to do it for 6 months, I'm going to do it for 2 years. Like, you start— the bigger the business gets, it starts being where you actually just put few and fewer and fewer things, and they're further and further away. And so I understand the desire, like, hey, I got all this cash to the side, I want to be like dive into location number 2 now. Okay, what if you had an extra $100 grand when you start location 2? You could probably increase how many leads you get by twice as much because you'd have plenty of cash to be able to accelerate very quickly. Also thinking about all the things that are not starting the location that would support the next location. For example, becoming a better leader, finding a great general manager, understanding the copy and paste training system, like going through all of it, making sure your website is like I would be making sure I get reviews. I would be making sure I build up the SEO of that location. I'd build up the Facebook page, I'd build up the Instagram page, and I go get a shop space or get a general manager. I expand my service area. I've been doing everything possible in the meantime. That's patience without actually pulling the trigger on location number 2 is open. And this is why we started the ghosting location in Santa Augusta this year or last year is because the ability to feel, hey, I know I'm going to start this location. But I want to like get the website up and running. I want to get the phone number going. I want to, I want to be able to get the Facebook page and the Instagram page and get reviews in that area. I want to slowly move my service. The whole point of doing that is to make the waiting season a little easier. And so I would, I would recommend all of those things. And most of the times we jump to the things that are easy, which is like starting the Facebook page, going out and getting the Google Business Profile set up, etc., when like the harder thing is like get the education required to be a great leader so that when you start the second location, you don't fall flat on your face or don't spend 5 years trying to figure it out because that's that's usually how long it takes. It's from Stone Oak. I recently raised prices 25% in April. I'm still close, but I'm still close. Ratio is between 76 to 80%. I currently have 111 recurring customers and I'm running solo. Do I just maintain or do I need to raise prices again? This would be a great question for your coach. You still have a little bit of time left in like the season of Rush, so you could potentially go into growth mode and keep growing. Um, what it comes down to is like if you're maxed out, which if you're running solo and you're doing 111 accounts, you're probably maxed out, at which point you just raise prices. You're in profit mode, and I don't think that's a bad idea if you need to stack cash this rest of this year to raise prices now, stack cash the rest of this year, and then next season when know that you can start a second crew, get 1 or 2 employees and really scale. So either of those will work. When you're at capacity, you're always in control of your business. That's why I always want to get to capacity because you have the option of going to profit mode, raising prices again, because if you have a 76 to 80% close rate, yes, you should raise prices. Like, yes, you should. It's what degree should you be raising those really depends on how many leads are coming in because right now you're getting 4 leads a day. And you're getting 3 new jobs, all of a sudden you're going to be overbooked within a matter of next couple of weeks. You have to raise prices or you have to extend capacity and go into growth mode. So definitely talk to a coach. And because they're going to ask for data points like how many leads come in last week, how many of those are recurring, how much of it is project, because you don't want to be like getting all addicted to project work and thinking you're all booked out. And then all of a sudden that drops off during the offseason. Mr. Anonymous, what are the hardest parts of starting a second Augusta location that's about 2 hours away from your home base, especially when it comes to hiring, managing quality, keeping keeping route density, marketing a new city, and not letting location 1 suffer while building location 2. In the Copy and Paste Millionaire book, I generally don't recommend more than an hour away. If you are going to do that, you have to make sure that the incentives are extremely aligned with general managers, because you need someone there that is like so dedicated to what you're doing. And so thinking that you're going to take like an operational GM, give them $60,000 or $70,000 a year, and give them 10% of profit sharing is going to somehow like allow you to be 4 hours away or 2 hours away or whatever it is. 2 hours away is essentially a long ways away because if something happens in the morning, you can't get there by the time the guys show up. If something bad happens in the afternoon, you can't get there by the time they are wrapping up for the day. And 2 hours is a 4-hour round trip. That's why I said 4 hours. Like, that's 4 hours of driving of your time. And so I would never do this unless I was very well capitalized.. And if I was going to all gas, no brakes, my marketing budget, and I had a GM that was incentivized. And when I say incentivized, I'm talking 6 figures, being able to make that relatively soon because they're going to be taking on— they're not operational GM. Like if you're starting a second location, it's 2 hours away from your home base. They likely are going to be taking on new leads and new, new customers every week or two, especially if you're gassing marketing. And so they have to be well incentivized because they're going to need to have these skills. You're not going to be able to do this for them. Like managing quality, managing, hiring, doing quality control, marketing. Like they, they need that skill. If you're not going to be— if it's going to take you 4 hours round trip to solve a problem, if you do this once a month, 4 hours round trip, that's a lot of your time. That's a lot of your energy. And I would just ask myself, what is that worth to me? And I would make sure that before I did this, which I usually don't recommend doing this for your second location, I would say I'd be okay with this like your fourth or fifth location. So you figured out some leadership stuff. I might be okay with this, but let's assume for a moment you're doing this. I would make sure first and foremost you have leadership experience already. I'm hiring someone with leadership experience so that I don't get dragged into hiring, managing quality, etc. They're okay with this week I got 2 new employees, next week I got another employee, the week after I got another employee, I get 20 customers, 50 customers, 80 customers, 120 customers. They have to be okay with that. Because I have to ramp this thing up to be able to afford their compensation. So that would be my two cents. I generally don't recommend it. I don't know who this is, but if it's your actual second location, I would be pretty hard set saying don't do this unless you have a lot of capital. If this is your fifth or sixth location and you figured out GMs, you figured out, and okay, you're like, hey, I can't expand. I have a small city, I've got to go 2 hours away. Then I would say, make sure you have the skill of management and you hire someone with a skill of management. And to think that you're just going to take your best technician from Location 1, put them in Location 2, 2 hours away from you, and they're going to be able to scale that location. You're asking for like the most improbable thing to happen. It's like you're asking for a unicorn employee and all odds of them not quitting within 2 to 3 months. Because usually what happens when you put a location into growth mode, someone that does not have the skill of leadership and you're expecting them to just grow with the location because every time you add a new employee, more stress on them. Every time you add a new customer, more stress on them. There's more tickets from Command Center. You got— you're spending a bunch of money on ads. There's new— every new customer is where you have all the costs from Command Center. You have all the drag of yellow slips and negative feedback from customers. You come in the first 60 to 90 days. So that's just all compounding them while at the same time they have the lowest level skill employees that they're constantly trying to change, train up. No one's been at the location for 6 or 12 or 24 months to offer some level of stability. And that is like chaos for a GM. And so if they have not ran crews before, whether they have 10, 15, they've managed people before, then they're going to fall flat on their face. They just are. I would only do that if I could be their backup. But if you're 2 hours away, you can't do that. Mr. Anonymous on the podcast, Johnson, you said one $10 million location can do more profit than 10 $1 million locations. Can you break it? Down why that is. Yeah. So if you're in a $10 million location, we assume— I can assume that your market can bear it. I will say this. If you look at the businesses that have done this, they're in markets that can do it, but they've also been around for a very long time. If you were starting from scratch and you were going into a massive market, let's just call it Chicago. Okay, I'm going to start a location in Chicago. It is going to be very difficult to displace people that have been in that market for 30 or 40 years. Have 50 trucks, have huge amounts of recruiting, establish relationships and brand power. Traditionally, I'm able to get a location to $1 million in a smaller suburb and get into profit mode much faster. That being said, if I'm able to hold my breath and get that brand penetration and get to $10 million, when I'm there, it is more profitable, mostly because you have economies of scale. You have usually simplified services down to where your management is not bloated. What I see sometimes people will do, like a $3 million location or $2 million, they're like 6 people that are overhead, 7 people that are overhead. And then a $10 million business will have like 10 or 12. The ratio of people that are not producing revenue versus are producing revenue. Once you pass a million, you kind of need that operational manager. You need a mechanic, you need a couple of people in the office. Like it starts to step up all these non-revenue producing people. And that's why I'm a big fan. Like if you're going to cross a million, and you're going to keep growing headcount, 10, 12, 15 employees, that's fine. You just have to grow past $1.5 to $2 million pretty quickly. And I'm not opposed to that. I think the GM+ model totally works, assuming you're in the right market and assuming you're willing to take a little bit longer to grow because you are going to not have brand penetration. Like we know that now. I always, always say almost all of your leads will come from paid ads. Or direct response marketing your first year. We know now from the past 5 months that's switching now because Augusta locations are ranking in the top 3 or 4 spots on Google in the smaller markets within a matter of a few days, if not a week or two. And so we are actually starting to see where even in the first year, 30%, 40% of leads are coming from organic search to people just finding us. ChatGPT, that number is going very, very fast up. And so I can't do that though, in a market where there is 10 people that are running $40, $50 million businesses. Like, it's very hard. I should say it's harder to do that. And so a lot of times you can scale it quicker and win in those smaller markets. But if you're willing to go for the very long term, doing a GM+ model in a big market that can sustain $5, $10 million, absolutely. It's once you get there, the economies of scale are great. Once you get there, you might have 15 people that are non-revenue producing and let's just call it 50 or 60 people out in the field. I'm just making up numbers. That ratio I see skewed when someone's at $1.5, $2 million. They have 3 people in the office, 2 salespeople, an operations manager, a mechanic, and the owner all not doing any revenue. I talked to a business the other day, had 4 owners, same thing. It's like, guys, we're doing $800,000 in revenue. Either we've got to get this thing to $3 million to sustain all 4 of you not wanting to work in the field. We've got to get to $3 million plus, or we've got to like get 3 of you in the field tomorrow. So Mr. Anonymous, we have 2 owners still work in the field, plus 2 full-time guys working about 30 hours a week. We're doing roughly $50K a month at around 50% total profit, and both owners are paying themselves about $50,000 a year. At this size, what would you focus on next? We're profitable, but we're not sure whether the next move should be hiring another field person, getting one owner fully out of the field, pushing sales harder, improving systems, buying equipment, paying ourselves more, or preparing for location 2. What would you prioritize first if you were in our spot? So if we look at the stages of success, I would continue in order, which means you probably— you're not yet $800,000 in monthly revenue. Again, Once you're in profit mode, you stay in profit mode for a year or two and then you go get your GM. And then when you get the GM, you're in profit mode, you're very profitable, doing over $800,000 in revenue. Then you think about a second location. And so if you're like, hey, I want to do a second location on the road, great, get this thing into profit mode. What that looks like is right now you have 2 owners and 3 full-time guys or 2 full-time guys. That probably means you need 5 technicians to run this location. And so I want to be able to increase because 2 owners with your 2 field techs, everyone is so efficient, like so efficient, which is great. Just realize that as soon as you move to second location, you don't have eyes on your crew all day long. You're not with them working throughout the day all the time. And so I want to make sure my profit margins don't take a hit. And to do that, I'm going to go in profit mode. If you're at $50,000 a month, I'm also looking at what constitution of that revenue is recurring revenue. Again, that's stage 3 and simplifying services. I'm looking at of that $50,000 per month is $25,000 of it recurring? Is 40% of it or $40,000 of it a month in revenue recurring? Much better. That's going to be an easier business to be able to give to a GM. It's going to be an easier business to scale, and it's going to be a business that doesn't lose money during the offseason. These are all things that would be indicative of a location in profit mode. I would really say building the systems, you could say what— in what environment does systems exist? Simplification and standardization. And that's going to start with your services.. And so I'd be looking at what percentage of this is recurring, and I'd be trying to maximize that percentage. If you do that, you go into profit mode. You can very well have a location that has 5 to 6 technicians doing $850,000 to $900,000 in annual revenue, and you can have one of you stay as the GM and go start a second location. That looks, that looks very interesting to me. When the, the owner stays as the working GM, the second owner hops over the next location. Likely whoever has the most skills with sales, gift of gab, I'd be pulling them out. And then now that first location is up and running with mostly recurring revenue. It's easier for one person to manage, like the owner, uh, because it's mostly recurring revenue, uh, profit margins are high, crew is very incentivized on P4P. Great questions today, that was fun. What is a pet peeve that you have about things Augusta Franchisees do? Be honest. I don't really have a pet peeve. Like, the goal of Augusta is to get I want all of us to— like, from a mission perspective, is to change the level of professionalism in the industry. From an owner's perspective, I want you all to make more money. And I am aware enough to know that what works well in Washington doesn't necessarily translate exactly to how it works in Arizona, and how it works in Arizona is not gonna exactly how it's gonna work in Ontario. All three of those markets, for example, have very different climates, very different service mixes. Recurring revenue looks very different in each of those. Sometimes I think, I think things are, I think people are running the business wrong, but I usually very quickly say, like, why are they doing that way? And like, what can I do to ensure that doesn't happen? Because I don't want to cause pain. I don't want someone to take 3 years to figure out that, like, the way that they're treating people is why they will not scale. I don't want it to be where it takes 3 years for someone to realize that, like, their base pay is too low. They're never going to attract a good GM. I don't like to see people go through that pain. So sometimes, like, man, I just want to do it for them, but you can't. You gotta let people figure things out. It's the best way to learn. And you give all the information you possibly can and training that you possibly can. And then there's other times you got to exemplify it. You guys go do it. And so there's been things I've done in the past. There's some stuff I have planned in the future of like, sometimes you just got to go show it so people do believe you. How would you reach out to someone who has stayed quiet in the franchise to check in on them? This is Mike Andes. Just reach out to them. If someone's been quiet, this is the thing I've found. Sometimes people are quiet. It doesn't necessarily mean that they're doing badly. Some of our best operators, they have their coaching call. They don't operate much in the Facebook group and they're running like 30%+ margin businesses. Even people with multiple locations, like they don't even join the WhatsApp groups. They're just like executing. That's fine. But they'll do their coaching call. I can see they're in Mike AI asking questions and getting coaching from there. So our goal is always to try to meet every owner where they want to be met. Some of you like the Mike Andes masterminds. Some of you are engaged in the Facebook group. Some of you love the WhatsApp groups. Some of you love the AI inside the coaching and the coaching dashboard. Some of you just like using Mike AI. Regardless of whatever meets your needs, like our goal is to try to meet you there. And so, but just reach out to them. Like that's the beauty of being part of Augusta is like, hey, like, haven't heard from you. Let's meet up. In order to be, to have a friend, you must show yourself friendly. So, all right everyone, hope you have a fantastic day. Love you all.