Mike Andes recounts his journey from starting Andy's Lawn Care at age 11 (with his brother) through accelerated college (starting at 13, bachelor's by 18), a formative six-week medical volunteer trip to Nairobi, and a decision to pivot away from medicine toward entrepreneurship. He completed an MBA at night while launching Augusta Lawn Care and producing media (Business Boot Camp podcast, landscapebusinesscourse.com). Throughout, he offers candid, motivational advice to small-business owners: avoid unhealthy comparisons on social media, focus on actionable steps (marketing, systems), accept sacrifice, and persist through setbacks.
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We moved a lot when I was a kid. I think we moved about 22 times.
There was one time we were renting a house from our landlord and they had a landscape project and they basically told my brother and I that they would pay us, which for a 10, 11 year old sounded great. But what they ended up doing was paying for our first mower and our first blower and our first weed eater, which got us started with Andy's Lawn care. I was 11 years old, my brother was 13, and we basically would walk around the neighborhood mowing people's lawns.
We started Andy's Lawn Care as really a way for us to pay our way through college. My brother and I both knew our parents would not be able to be able to pay for it. They had never been to college. So we kind of looked at college. College is our way out. So starting College at age 13, graduated with my bachelor's degree when I was 18. I really wanted to become a physician and more specifically a surgeon. After I got my degree, I took an unexpected trip to Nairobi and spent six weeks as a medical volunteer at orphanages and clinics, really helping a lot of the pediatric sides. And it was so rewarding, so fulfilling, and I was very inspired when I came back to the US I was somewhat disappointed by the fact that when I started to shadow these physicians and these specialties that I so looked up to and wanted to become, just how much of the bureaucracy, the insurance, the paperwork and the business side that started to merge with the healthcare side that I did not enjoy. That's when I decided, you know what, forget this medical school thing. I'm going to go start my own lawn care business and I'm going to take this Andy's lawn care thing. I'm going to make this a lot bigger. And I went and did my MBA at night, master's in Business administration at night while starting Augusta Lawn Care. At the same time I was starting Business Bootcamp podcast and starting to kind of create some media that I could share with other business owners.
Hey everyone, my name is mike andes, landscapebusinesscourse.com and you're listening to the Business Boot Camp podcast. Alright, we got the lawn care God in the room. We're creating a facility here in Bellingham, Washington. Welcome to Anytime Fitness. Blaine got this franchise a few years ago. Those blue chip companies, when they take a tank like that, I'm going all in.
The content I create is for that person, the person that feels like they're trying to build their business and they're trying to push something up a hill that they cannot get over. And you might feel like you don't have the ability to build the business and grow it into something that's special.
You're looking at social media and you see all of the lights and all the glamour and the fame, and that's not what entrepreneurship is for most of us. Don't compare yourself to them. Don't compare yourself to the Jeff Bezos and the Steve Jobs of this world. You're gonna get depressed. All you can do today is pick yourself up. When you do feel down, when you do feel discouraged that you can't grow your business, that your best employees left you, that now your personal life is starting to interact and destroy your business because of a divorce or something going on in your family or a health issue. And you literally feel like you have no shot in the world of growing your business. Don't compare yourself to the people at the finish line. Here's what you don't see. You don't see the hours of grind and the sacrifice, the long nights, the early mornings, the times when people really did not think they were going to make it through, when they didn't believe they had another dollar in their bank account to pay for payroll. And I've been there. I've been there borrowing money from friends and family, trying to next pay. Period. That's the reality of owning a small business. Take action on what you can change tomorrow. What can you do now to make your business better? What system, what tactic, when it comes to marketing can you implement today that gets you one step closer to that finish line? Stop comparing yourself to people at the end of the race when you're just beginning.
But the end goal, the ambition, the mission is so great and so lofty. You have to be willing to put in the sacrifice. You have to be willing to spend the time and the money and the energy and years of your life getting to a place where you can look back and you can be proud of the journey that you took.
