The Offseason Book: Chapter 1: My Road to $50M

My family moved more than 20 times before I turned 18. But I had amazing parents and two siblings. Money was the only source of stress I saw in my family. I had an awesome childhood. We lost our house in the 20072008 housing collapse with my father working as a preacher. Finances were always a painful subject in our household. I wanted to build wealth. I thought education was my way out of living. Paycheck to paycheck. I wanted to be a surgeon, focusing on cardiac or neurological procedures. To speed up this journey, I arranged to start college early. I skipped seventh grade. I also compressed several grades at home. By 13, I was attending college classes. Two years earlier, my brother and I had launched Andy's Lawn care. I was 11 years old. He was studying to become a teacher. Our business began with a fortunate opportunity. A family friend with a vacation home needed landscaping work as payment. They contributed $1,000 towards getting our lawn care business started. We purchased a lawnmower trimmer and blower from Lowe's. In our first year, Andy's Lawn Care made $3,000 in revenue. This was a big achievement for us. Over several years, we expanded to approximately $30,000 each year. This income funded my education completely. Starting at 13, I earned enough from lawn care to pay for my tuition and expenses. This helped me graduate without any debt. I completed my pre med studies at Western Washington University at 18 years old. During my final undergraduate term, I traveled to Kenya. I volunteered at orphanages, clinics and hospitals in Nairobi, Calangguari and surrounding communities. As a medical volunteer in Africa, I received incredible clinical opportunities. I assisted with surgeries, administered injections and participated in birth deliveries. The pediatric burn unit became my primary station at Tigoni Hospital. The orphans transformed my perspective on happiness. Their joy from simple gifts like bubbles or a soccer ball was amazing. It would keep them preoccupied for hours. This changed the threshold I had for contentment. These kids had nothing of this world's goods. Many of their parents abandoned or abused them. Yet they found joy despite having so little. While there, I worked to improve the orphanage's self sufficiency. We purchased equipment to train the older orphans in welding and and practical trades. We constructed a chicken coop housing 150 birds providing eggs and meat. This replaced their previous system of daily prayer for donated food. Now they had a more dependable food source. My time in Africa wasn't without challenges. Robbers stole from me twice. I lost my iPhone both times. Later I found out I had been in very dangerous areas around Kikuyu. Upon returning home at 18, I began shadowing various medical specialists in the U.S. i prepared for medical school applications targeting LSU or the University of Washington. While studying for the MCAT Medical College Admissions test, I had a realization. From my clinical observations, the medical career I envisioned had significant drawbacks. Surgical specialization would limit me to a few procedures I'd repeat often in my career. I did not like the amount of paperwork that US Doctors had to complete for insurance and pharmaceutical companies. This would come with massive student debt. Continuing Andy's Lawn Care while attending medical school would be impossible. I decided to withdraw from the application process and pursue a different path. Mowing grass was all I knew. At 18, I founded Augusta Lawn Care. I paid for an evening MBA program at the university. I would attend from 6pm to 10pm for two years I worked part time as a personal trainer at Anytime Fitness in Blaine, Washington. Later, I bought the gym and became a franchisee. A few years later, Augusta Lawn Care had grown and neared $1 million in yearly revenue. I worked hard, putting in over 80 hours a week in the field. At the same time, I tried to handle all the sales tasks. I hired help for the office functions to support our continued expansion. We moved from a storage facility to a larger shop space on a one acre parcel of land. Despite this growth, I had implemented no systems or procedures. Revenue grew, but profits stayed thin and cash reserves were low. Growth sucks cash I focused on my role as an estimator. Each morning I directed crews to their job sites and got them rolling. Then, during the day, I met with potential clients. On August 4, 2016, everything changed. That morning I visited a job site to show the crew their project. It was a small landscaping job. Install bark mulch and river rock. My plan was simple. Show the crew the job, then dump the rock on the customer's property. After that, returned the truck to our shop. Finally, I would get back to estimating. For the rest of the day, I needed to engage the PTO power takeo on our dump truck by hand. Because the cable connected to the cab lever had broken, the PTO powers the dumping mechanism for the bed. Anyone who knows these systems understands their risks. A quick YouTube search for PTO accidents shows horrific incidents. People often lose limbs or even their lives when caught in the spinning parts. I engaged the manual PTO about 20 times in the past week. I crawled under the 1990 Ford L7000 dump truck. Each time I engaged the PTO like normal. On the way out, my hoodie got caught in a spinning pto. Within a split second, my sweater and T shirt cinched around my neck with crushing force. As the PTO tried to pull me in, my bicep and shoulder hit the gearbox. This stopped me from spinning with the shaft looking up from beneath the truck. As my airways compressed, I experienced a strange calm. I thought to myself, so this is how it ends. In the next instant, my sweater and T shirt shredded completely. I dropped from the PTO's grip as my clothing continued spinning in the mechanism. I lay on the ground unable to speak or catch my breath. The crew discovered me there, winded and injured. They rushed me to a clinic where an ambulance transported me to the hospital. They thought I had broken my neck. That was not the case, but they took every precaution. The experience echoed another childhood near death experience I had at three years old. I almost drowned in a swimming pool and spent time in the hospital. Now again, my family gather around my hospital bed during my recovery. After the accident, a painful truth emerged. My business had no sustainable systems. Everything depended on my personal involvement in sales, operation and admin. Without me, Augusta Lawn Care would collapse. I didn't own a business. I owned a demanding job. A low paying job at that. I recall lying in my hospital bed While I used FaceTime to guide my crew through their next project. This absurd situation inspired the creation of our estimate video system. We started recording videos during client meetings. This way, estimators don't need to go back to the properties with their field teams. With detailed job notes and video walkthroughs, crews can complete projects without help. Had this system existed earlier, I would have never been at that job site beneath that truck. I had no dependents who relied on my income, which was a relief. But had the accident been fatal, the business would have immediately failed. I'm writing this book for home service entrepreneurs in a similar situation. Empty bank accounts, no systems and heavy workloads. Those who can't take vacations without their businesses grinding to a halt. Those exhausted from endless hours of work with minimal returns. Three weeks after leaving the hospital, I launched landscapebusinesscourse.com It's a free online resource that shows the systems I use to transform Augusta lawn care. I started making YouTube videos and podcasts. I focused on estimate videos, pay for performance structures and other systematic methods. These could replace business models that rely too much on the owner working 80 plus hour weeks. I created this resource after searching for a landscape business course on Google. I was looking for help to build a real lawn care business. I found some certificates and diplomas in horticulture from universities. Back then, the lawn care industry had little guidance on marketing, hiring or Other on operational challenges. Even though I attended business school, it was the dump truck accident at 21 that made the disconnect clear. I knew about business systems, but I hadn't used those ideas in my landscaping work. The accident forced me to confront the fact that I had built a pathetic business. When I create content, I picture my 18 year old self. I felt overworked and lost, receiving little in return for all the time I invested. I drained all my profits each off season. I didn't have good strategies for creating winter work. I would assign my crews meaningless tasks to keep them employed. This meant saving almost all profits in the first nine months. We used this to cover losses in the final quarter. The first videos from the Landscape business course shows the cuts on my neck. They are clear signs of my near death experience from weeks before. After years of creating content online, I had hit a frustrating truth. Few people use the systems I shared. Viewers saw me as a content creator or a consultant. They didn't implement the business systems that helped me turn my business around. This particularly bothered me for the P4P pay for performance compensation model. In two years, this method changed Augusta Lawn Care. It went from making no profit to giving me $280,000 in owner distributions. My personal workload dropped from 70 to 80 hours a week to less than 2. I knew these systems could revolutionize other businesses, but owners weren't adopting them. Franchising provided the solution. I built a network of businesses using the same uniform and system. This helped me gain credibility for wider acceptance. The franchisees would know that we had shared values and brand. I wasn't an influencer to them. We shared the same uniform. I had skin in the game. My success was their success. At 23, I started the Augusta Lawn Care franchise. My goal was to reach 1000 locations. This scale would help raise the level of professionalism in the landscape industry. I focused on systems like pay for performance, open book management and uniform standards. We also offered 24. 7 customer service and used integrated software solutions. When I was 26 years old, we had reached 100 franchise locations. Despite this growth, we faced significant cash constraints. The flat monthly fee model made it very hard to grow without large losses. At the franchisor level, we poured money into software development and building a command center to handle admin tasks for franchisees. Our expansion consumed every available dollar. I lived in a 6x6 foot closet in our training facility. That is where we would train new owners and managers in Augusta Nation. It was a repurposed Curves women's gym. About 1200 square feet next to my Anytime Fitness location. This space lacked hot water, shower facilities or a kitchen. For three years I left the building, went to Anytime Fitness next door and showered there. My makeshift bedroom shared a wall with the gym's deadlifting station. Many mornings, dropping weights would startle me awake. A train passed within 100 yards of my bed six times every night. Its whistle and rumble became a constant soundtrack. Three years into franchising, signs of success appeared. There were over 100,000 YouTube subscribers and 100 franchise locations. Yet financial stability was still out of reach. Augusta Lawn Care as the franchisor became profitable only after opening 100 locations. We charged no royalties. We did not collect a marketing fund. Also, franchisees could take their customers and leave the franchise without penalties. These owner friendly policies aligned with our values, but they extended the time needed to achieve profitability. Most franchise organizations do not reach 100 locations. They often fizzle out during the expensive growth phase. By the time I was 29, Augusta Lawn Care had expanded to 200 locations. I started lawncarewebdesign.com and homeservicewebdesign.com, which had produced over 1,000 websites. Our software platform Copilot CRM served thousands of businesses. We gained over 400,000 followers on social media. This includes YouTube, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram. My YouTube channel has two unique shows. The Turnaround show offers free help to struggling businesses. Many times these owners have no cash, are deep in debt and have no business systems. The Business Breakthrough show supports successful companies. It helps them break through plateaus, expand to new areas and grow into multimillion dollar businesses. I travel to these companies to provide coaching at no cost. It is free. We record the coaching and then publish the videos on social media. The hope is that other business owners facing the same struggles can learn. Throughout this book I share examples and stories of these businesses. I changed the names of the business owners to protect their identities, but their stories are real and Showcased on my YouTube channel. This brings us to today. My near death experience under a dump truck transformed Augusta Lawn Care and my view of home services. You will hear the passion in my voice because I hate to see poor business owners. I hate to see their pain. I know what it feels like. I know what stressing all night feels like. I know what struggling to make payroll feels like. I know the humility required to ask for help. I know what it's like to have an employee ask for a raise and know I can't afford it. I understand the stress of a looming lawsuit. I know the embarrassment caused by asking for a loan from family. I know what it's like to doubt your decision to go into business. I know what it's like for people to say you wasted talent and made the wrong decision. I understand working 16 hours nonstop. I've sacrificed friendships and some would say I missed out on fun. During my teens and twenties. I have committed my career to solving the root cause of these pain points. At the time of writing this, I do not have children. I recently got married, but I can only imagine the pain and anxiety I would have if I had dependents and my business was struggling. Mouths to feed, tuition to fund, a family to lead, and a mortgage to pay along with a business that is unprofitable. I see this many times on the Turnaround show. It kills me every time. I have not experienced this kind of pain, but I'm sure it is crippling. In this book, I explain concepts designed to take your business to the next level. Home services are a notoriously unprofitable business. In this book, we find out why the off season if the off season cash flow is holding you back. Keep reading. You'll discover systematized ways to boost your revenue and improve your profit. I have been poor. I have been rich. Being rich feels much better. I can give to others. I can think without limits. I can solve problems for my family and those I love. I can dream big. I do not have to be selfish. My cup is full and running over. I have an abundance to give. I am content. My goal with this book, my goal with my career, is to make home service entrepreneurs rich. Let's go.