this LIE kills so many small service businesses

Today I'm gonna be putting my neck out there. I'm gonna be giving actual monthly revenue numbers that I believe your small business should be hitting before you start working on the business or you get out of the field.

So let's go ahead and break it down. My name is Mike Andes, I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn Care. We have almost 100 locations around North America. But today I'm focused on one thing and that is saving someone's business that has gone and read some management book, seen some inspirational Instagram quote, went to a conference, read a book, whatever it might be, and now they're thinking, I gotta work on instead of in my business. I need to make sure that I am having a few hours a day on strategy and focusing on bigger picture things in my business. And it puts so many small companies out of business because they read these books that are built for businesses that are doing tens of millions of dollars in revenue and they somehow try to apply that to their company that just has one or two employees and it doesn't work. And today I'm going to give you actual numbers, realizing full well that every single business in the home improvement industry, every single service is different. I understand that, but I'm going to give you actual numbers today because I'm sick and tired seeing people go out of business and having no business to work on because they too quickly get out of the field and become overhead for the business instead of a revenue producing team member. So there's two different stages I wanna talk about today. The first stage is when you get out of the field. That is, you are still working in the business, but you're just not working doing the actual work itself. You're doing sales, you're doing admin, you're doing hiring, you're doing marketing, all that other stuff. That's the first level I want you to be looking at. And I truly believe until you hit $30,000 in monthly revenue, you should be focused on just doing the work, being productive, profitable team member out in the field and actually generating revenue for the business. This is why so many businesses are really profitable. Around 150,000 to 250,000 revenue is because the owner's still out in the field working and getting revenue and being profitable. And by the way, you are the most profitable employee you'll probably ever have. So when you stop thinking that you can do the work and you're like, oh, I'm gonna focus on marketing strategy and having a little whiteboard session for three hours every morning and then I'M gonna go drink coffee and do yoga until 2pm Then I'm gonna check in on the crew and then I'm go, you know, take lunch with my family. Like those things are all fine and dandy. I understand that. I understand that some people get into business for lifestyle, but I don't want you to lose all lifestyle because your business goes out of business. So stop trying to think that at 15, 20,000 in monthly revenue, you're just not going to have to do the work. If you're in the home improvement industry, building fences, trimming trees, mowing lawns, whatever it is, expect to be working and getting your hands dirty until you're doing at least $30,000 in monthly revenue. Now that's when you start focusing on sales. That's when you start maybe driving around doing the estimates and focusing on things outside of doing the work itself. But until that point, that should be most of your day. 80, 90% of your day should just be doing work. And if you have one or two employees, you can absolutely get to $30,000 in monthly revenue. Three employees maybe, depending on the services that you're offering. But at the end of the day, you should be focusing on just producing revenue and being a income producing team member instead of overhead. Because that's what you become once you start doing estimates. Once you start working on admin. When you start doing office work, you are an expense to the business and you're no longer bringing in revenue. So up until 30, just stay focused on doing the work. Then you can start focusing on getting out of the field, which is I'm not doing the work itself, but I'm still working at the business. I still show up every single day, but I'm focusing on selling, I'm focusing on marketing, I'm focusing on growth because that's what's gonna get me to $100,000 in monthly revenue. I literally talk about this on landscapebusinesscourse.com and that is get to $100,000 in monthly Revenue. Until that point, you are still working in the business. You're just working on sales and marketing and, and all the other elements of the business besides the work itself. And until you pass a $100,000 in monthly revenue, in my opinion, you should still be working in the business. You should still be doing the sales. You should still be the one that's hiring and firing and training and managing the team. When you get above $100,000 in monthly revenue, that's when I give you license to go and start trying to work on the business and hiring a manager, hiring a salesperson, hiring an office manager to do other overhead tasks in the business, and you don't have to show up to work every day. You, you can literally be on the other side of the world, and for a week or two, everything just runs just fine without you. But if you're not doing 100,000 in monthly revenue, there's not enough money to cover the overhead expense of all those people that you need to hire to replace you as the operator, as the person that's actually doing payroll, the person that's answering the phones, doing emails, sending out estimates, meeting customers, doing walkthroughs of properties and job sites, handling unhappy customers, hiring, firing, making sure the website is good, doing your marketing ads. All that stuff has to be done. And until you do pass 100,000 in month monthly revenue, in my opinion, you probably should just stay focused on your business. And this is why people at 60, 70, 80,000 revenue doing maybe 5, 6, 700,000 in annual revenue, all of a sudden get this disillusionment like, oh, the business can run without me. And what do they do? They go get managers or they train a bunch of people on how to do estimates and how to do a bunch of office stuff. And what are they doing? They're building the business in a way that's very top heavy, with a lot of management and a lot of overhead expense before the business is sizable enough to actually be able to bear the burden of that overhead. Because hiring a general manager is great. Yeah, you get to travel and do whatever you want and don't have to worry about coming into the office. That's fine, but the business can't afford it if you're not generating enough revenue. And so I highly recommend this. And I know people will disagree with me on these numbers, but these are the numbers I want to give, because I think that people just jump into the conclusion that you can work on the business and just travel. And the whole goal of entrepreneurship is within a couple of years to be out of the field. And then all of a sudden, you don't have to do sales and just give it over to someone else and just let them run it. You could do that, but you're probably not going to be very profitable and you're running the risk being actually losing money. And that's what I don't want. I don't want people to buy into this notion because they see one post or they see someone on a cruise and they're like, oh man, if I could go on A cruise for two weeks. My business would run without me. It will, but you've got to grow it to the size in terms of gross revenue, where you can afford a general manager, where you can afford to be overhead for the business, even if you're just the estimator. And so those are the two stages I recommend. Work in the business until you're doing 30,000amonth in revenue, actually making the work happen, producing revenue for the business and then switch over to more of a sales oriented role in the business, which is completely the only thing you should be focusing on sales and hiring to be able to get it to 100,000 revenue. Once you get there, that's when you can switch to become kind of CEO. And if you don't show up to work every day, it's fine because you have the revenue to be able to pay someone else to do the sales, pay someone else to do the office management. That's when you can start thinking about those things. But until those points, you should be focusing on selling. You should be the one out doing estimates, driving the sales forward for the business. And then I'll give you license to start focusing on working on your business. Is this grand illusion that we can just somehow do that and we're small business owners and we're reading books that are written by people and about businesses. There are tens of millions and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and somehow think that it works for small business and it doesn't. So roll up your sleeves, get dirty and start doing the work until you hit those benchmarks. That's just my opinion. Comment below if you disagree or if you agree with me. Also, if you're just trying to get started and you're just trying to get to that 30,000amonth in revenue and this video will really help you. It's going to walk you through the one thing you need to know to get to 250,000 in annual revenue.