this will change the Lawn Care INDUSTRY!

Hey, everyone, it's Mike Andy's.

Well, I can get 10 clients, to be honest. Like, that's what I built Augusta Lawn Care on.

You will be the leader to the culture that you create. Business to be had again.

I'm Mike andes. Check out landscapebusinesscourse.com until next time. Be great because nothing else pays.

This is the business turnaround show.

My name is Mike Andes.

I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn Care. We have over 180 locations around the world. This is actually the five year anniversary.

Of me starting that business when I was 18 years old.

And we're really looking for in September.

Starting with 10 franchisees. Why the 10 joined Augusta, I really don't know. Most of them are still with us today. I still to this day am very thankful and grateful that they put that trust in me because that's all they were really banking on. What do we do as landscapers?

Every single aspect of customer experience must be systematized versus now.

Like us. We have 39 locations, but all in the US and Canada. What does it feel like to go international, deal with different cultures? What is it like to have to be traveling so much? Like, how do you manage that? Because that will probably be me one day, Right.

Today we're in Illinois. Today we're in Utah. Today we're in Pennsylvania. We're in Texas. And I travel the country fixing struggling businesses.

Hitting 180 locations has been nice. We're almost at 200. 250 will be the franchise with the most locations in the green industry, which would be kind of cool.

What's up, YouTube? Welcome to the first vlog.

But ultimately we need to get to a thousand locations. So we're at a pit stop here at 180.

Casual.

You know, we're looking for that casual look.

Wait, hold on, hold on, hold on. We're gonna have to reass.

This is it.

Where is this going?

This is behind the scenes, dude.

All right, Michael, what is something.

If there's one thing that the Augusta.

Owners take away from this event, what.

Do you hope it is?

I don't know if you guys have noticed that, but like, the franchise has settled. Like, people at large are like much more comfortable with path. It's almost like they know what the destination is, so they're comfortable with the journey.

But I think that's because of the changes we've made.

Well, and also because there's a finish line now. Before it was just like grow into eternity.

It's predestinated.

That's what I'm saying dude, it all ties in.

Most importantly I think is just that they feel a part of the community. All these owners have multiple locations or big businesses. And so it's very rare to be able to share your kind of your wins and then also being able to share your lows and things you're struggling with in a vulnerable place without people getting saying stupid stuff.

So I think a lot of times when we get caught up in just the day to day operations of the business, you do that for a few seasons, you get burnt out, you get worn down, you have personal stuff happening in life, stuff's changing all along the way. It's really easy to get disconnected from the why and like the main reason why you even get up and do what you do. And if the leader of the organization gets disconnected from their why, then same with everyone else that they're leading and then the whole organization is just weak at that point.

Even big business owners have problems. And so I've been in rooms where there's a bunch of people with 10, 20, 30 million dollar businesses and they still have troubles and issues and complexes and things they're working on. And a lot of times you don't find people that you can share those with. And so creating just like a safe environment for them to be able to talk with each other and share those wins and losses is important.

So I think that's the main thing that I'm hoping people get away from it is kind of reground themselves and in their purpose for the business, what the path forward looks like, what kind of life they're trying to create for themselves, their family, their team members and get passionate about that again because it's again really easy when you have guys calling out left and right, you have guys quitting on you. It's really easy to kind of like give up on that stuff. So I think that's the thing I would hope for is people kind of get regrounded in what their true core motivation is around the business and then they can use that as rocket fuel kind of going forward.

Welcome everybody.

So we'll get started. The first hour will be a bit.

Of a warmup, so forgive me, it'll.

Be mostly me trying to get in.

The rhythm of a different form of content. Yeah, like the first hour is always like a bit of a icebreaker, especially.

When you're going deeper topics.

You got to break the glass, like break, break the ice and jump in.

The whole theme of today and what we want to talk about hinges on this idea that we are Here to manage resources, relationships, and time. And we are stewards of these things that have been given to us.

There's a finite amount of time, there's.

A finite amount of resources, and there's finite amount of relationships that we can build as individuals. And I would say the people in this room are part of those relationships. Your spouse, your family, the people in your network, people in your community. These are all relationships. These are resources that have been given to you. We all have time. We all woke up this morning, had breath in our lungs. We have the ability to expend this finite resource called time.

This audience of larger business owners who have multiple locations that have general managers is a very different audience than I have on YouTube or I have. Even when I talk to the public, August Nation. There's different problems they're having.

The path to business ownership and the path to building great teams and the path to being a steward of all the resources that you gain along the way is not easily traveled. It is extremely, extremely hard to build teams. It's so much more deeper on a relational level with the employees. And I think, I hope that we can reinvigorate them to buy back into their mission and to sell that mission and vision to their employees every day and just crush it. Honestly, like, we just want to see.

Them all crush it.

That's really our goal.

The quote is often used. We are stronger together. If you have only one bond, if you only have one connection and is broken, you are severed from the body. But if you have many connections and many relationships and you've done a good job of allocating time and energy towards fostering those relationships, it's very difficult to quit. It's very difficult to fail, because when you're low, other people will pick you back up. So I encourage you today, invest in those relationships. Take 20 minutes to do that, and we'll be back at 10:25.

I think just like the power of community, like, everyone logically joins Augusta Nation because of, like, the discounts that you get from GM on your trucks and gravely and write and all these discounts. And, like, you get software for free and you get command center and you get a website. Like, the reason you join Augusta Lawn Care is because the community, like, the. Like the theme of the whole event next couple days is stewardship. And it's like you are a steward of your time, your resources, and your relationships. And those are the things that we focus on with these. This size of business owner, because many times the thing that keeps them from A million and 10 million is not like what truck do I get. It is how do I take limited amount of time, limited amount of resources and limited time that I have for relationships and allow this to be a cohesive relationship with altogether my life and be able to build a business that other people want to follow me, that leaders want to be led from me.

And regardless of whether or not you're religious and you know that that is the parable of the talents, the fact of the matter is that we will all eventually give back our resources. The money in your bank account, if you d would go to somebody else, the relationships that you would have would go to somebody else. The time that you have would no longer, it would be extinguished, it would be gone. And so for this period of time, this small window of time that you've been given these things, the question is, what return will you have on these resources?

How do we inspire this group of people to lead their team better? And I think being a steward of what God has given you in the form of resources, time and relationships is very important. And by getting those things to work harmoniously together, your business does better. Because you as a human, you as a person are a more whole being.

The reason people follow you is because you are a leader. But the first step to being a leader is knowing where you're going, having a destination, otherwise it's exercise in futility. It is burnt out days that have a loss of meaning. And that's when people quit. It's because they lose sight of the vision. And having a vision and a clear destination of where you're trying to go for the business, for your community, for your family and what you're trying to achieve, most important, importantly, will keep you from quitting. And if you don't mind, I wanted to ask someone here what their vision was, more importantly, from a more micro perspective, why they quote, joined Augusta. And the reason is because I wanted to make a point about leadership, our vision and our stewardship. Paul, if you don't mind.

We'Ll kind.

Of bounce around a little bit, make it a little easier. So we started a family business a few years, you know, back in 23, we started a parking lot maintenance company. And the goal is to kind of grow that. And we've seen in that the scalability is a little bit harder and trying to bounce within a certain market. So we've shifted into this. But the, the underlying why is our son was killed three years ago and his goal was always to be enough doing. And after his death, we found his book, his journal, and in There, all he ever talked about was to be the entrepreneur, build a legacy for his daughter, who's 2 years old at the time. So we taken that on as our responsibility. And that was the big push into Augusta is the systems, the community, everything to help us driving his home and fulfill his dream.

Thank you.

I think that's the strongest point of joining a franchise or community of any sort. I think it's so powerful. I hope people get the feeling that I get when I'm around Augusta Nation, which is like, you're part of something bigger. There's people you can trust, there's people you can share with, and you're not alone. And I think for a lot of entrepreneurs and small business owners, they feel very alone.

Because the reason that Paul will be successful is not because he has industry experience, not because he has all of these firing in all cylinders. For him to be successful, it'll be simply by the fact as to why he started this business and the vision that he has to accomplish. And it goes beyond him. There was no mention of Paul in his vision. Honestly, like, seeing how it affected the.

Business when I was clear about my vision and then shared that with the team, showed how imperative it was to attract the right people, attract the right resources, attract the right relationships. Like, you have to have a clear vision. And like, the first step in having that vision is being very, very clear and intentional. What's the plan? How am I going to get there? And actually then executing on that.

I've actually asked myself this question a lot. It's like, what makes this special?

Well, one is Lee screens everyone that comes in, so everyone kind of passes Lee's check. So it makes sense why we have so many like minded owners. But I think the main thing is that I feel like everyone in Augusta is much more purpose driven and has much larger goals and ambitions beyond just running their lawn care business.

The quality of the people inside of Augusta Nation and the direction we're all heading in, which is constant improvement, like that is our number one core value. We practice what we preach and we operate on a different level. And if you ever want to be a part of it, just reach out to us.

Obviously, I think that's the main thing with all the Augusta owners, is everyone holds themselves to a high standard. Everyone likes the brand, everyone likes representing the brand, treating the employees well, all those things that go with raising the level of professionalism. People like the identity of what we represent, and the identity comes from all of the people inside of Augusta. So it's sort of like A self fulfilling cycle. But that's the main thing is people are driven by purpose.

Yeah.

I think they just have bigger goals for themselves and their employees.

My name is Ryan Payne. I have two regions in Texas. I have one in Corpus Christi and one around the Austin Metroplex. I joined Augusta in 2020. I bought into Augusta to be a part of something larger. But the biggest hurdle for us, even pre Augusta, getting there was basically becoming the leader that you need to be to attract the managers that you rely on. In the beginning. You don't have the experience in the industry or in leadership to attract the quality of leaders that you get down the road. And it's tough to get through those first years where you're kind of a new rookie. Everyone you bring in can sense you're a rookie, like dog smell fear. And it's hard to get that respect or have them to trust you during turbulent times when cash flow is bad or you're running out of money.

When you're out in the wild, when you're out lost, you need a compass. You need something to look at and have some sort of truth as to why you can keep walking. Because when all the trees look the same, when all the rocks look the same, I need to look at something and have surety and confidence that this will not change. And to me, inside of our businesses, that is the vision, that is the vision statement, is why are we doing this and where are we trying to go? Because if we don't have clarity and the compass is wrong, we will take action, but we will burn out. We will exhaust all of our resources, all of our time and all of our relationships going after something without any final destination.

Honestly, it's looking at the times when you wanted to quit or you felt like a failure and reverse engineering how do I fix that? And then knowing that it will work for them now without them having to get the failure. Like me, not having a vision caused Bug hell because I couldn't attract great talent. And so why not just tell them to go get the vision clear now so they'll never hit the bottleneck of not being able to attract great leadership. A lot of it is like my own pain and issues I went through and trying to find out what the fix was and then just giving that to them now instead of having been able to figure on their own.

It's easier when you can point back and say, hey, you see the other six locations? Look at their profit share. This GM made 100,000 last year. Here's his paycheck's Tub, he doesn't mind if I share. There's a lot of evidence to believe you and follow you. In my new locations, I get much higher quality talent willing to follow me from the get go because I can say, look at my track record.

This event here is our seven figure club. So it's our multi unit owners and multi million dollar revenue generating owners. And this event is great because what Mike does is he strips away all the fluff, all the corporate nuance. And it's just people in a room that are trying to win. And those people want to get better every single day. They want to pay their employees better. And ultimately they want to be better stewards. And that was the topic of this, of this event was to be better stewards of the resources that you have. And I would define stewardship because it's actually one of the hardest words to define. Like, if any of you have actually sat and wrestled with that, like, how would I define stewardship? Not let me Google it, let me look at ChatGPT. Like, how would I personally define stewardship? It's an extremely hard word to define, but I would define stewardship as partnering in something that is greater than the sum of said parts. You have something that is to be stewarded, that is to be expounded on, and that is to be given back to others. And I would say an employee is a partner. Yes, they don't invest in equity in the business or interest. Maybe they didn't pay to join the company, but they are your partner in the mission that you've set forth. And it just shows the growth of Augusta as a whole. And you know my story. Hey, I was hired as a laborer. I was hired as a guy to just, just push mow lawns. Like that was it. Mike didn't know me from anyone else and he was like, hey, this guy seems like he can push a mower, so let's hire him.

I mean, I think it's nice to see it grow. It kind of validates that you were right. It was real because we joined. It was so small, like there was no command center. We had an agent assigned to just our location. One person took all of our calls. Like, it's changed so much and I just wanted to do something bigger. I saw Mike on YouTube one day and literally in 24 hours booked a call to talk to him. That was back when he would still talk to you. I got with him within a week and next thing you know, we were a part of the franchise. I think our first location was number 14 or 17.

It speaks to the growth that Mike has had as a leader and as someone who has pushed the vision of Augusta forward. That other people now buy into that vision. And those other people now are working towards that vision in their own communities and in their own businesses to give opportunities like I received from Mike. To go from someone who's just, you know, a college dropout to now doing sales for one of the fastest growing franchises in the world. What I did is I asked Mike's some of Mike's most long tenured employees and his top performers to answer two simple questions for me. How long have you worked for Mike? Why do you work for Mike? And it gave me four commonalities. The number one commonality from the employees that have worked for Mike the longest and are his top performers. And this is across Augusta, this is across the media team. This is across copilot vision clarity. You must be clear on your vision and that means repeating it over and over and over again. One day it clicked for me. One day the vision became reality. Then all of a sudden I saw this guy was making promise after promise after promise. And we were hitting the goal and hitting the goal and hitting the goal. I was like, oh, this vision actually means something. We can actually make change here. Oh, I can actually get promoted here. Because Mike was always tenacious about making sure his vision was clear.

If you knew me before, Augusta was heading nowhere fast. Kind of gave me the purpose I was looking for in life. Just a cause to kind of dedicate myself to. My dad kicked me out when I was in high school, so, yeah, just kind of drifting around the world aimlessly.

When I first started, I had never had any experience on a tractor or skid steer or anything. And the next morning, coming from the medical field, I was on a tractor for the first time ever.

Yeah, you come into Augusta and Mike's got this vision. And it's not often that you come across someone that has a vision to do something so big that involves so many people and changed my life, changed the way I think. I used to think that you had to like have a certified college degree in order to start a business, which that's how fixed my mindset was. I was just clueless, you know, C's and D's in school, just like never considered myself smart. But I just learned through Mike and his leadership that I have the capacity to learn and grow.

And these are some of the things that employees said about it. I want to be part of building something great with him. He has a clear vision, not Only for each individual company, but also the Microsoft Holdco as a whole. Mike's passion for changing the professionalism in such a large industry was motivating for me. I believe deeply in the mission. I'm committed to dedicating my career to helping realize Mike's vision.

I think when someone changes your life so fundamentally like that, like, you kind of owe them. Not that Mike would ever say that, but that's how I feel.

He's the most giving, transparent person I've ever met, and he has a vision beyond himself and his little world. He's thinking, always 30 foot.

Mike's always so open to feedback. Like when he says, be humble and teachable, he leads by example. And that's why I joined, so I could be a part of something bigger. And now I have almost 200 locations doing OTPs that just started from a little shop in South Texas. I wouldn't have had that impact without Mike. He can put it to a much bigger community, and he basically can give breath to your ideas.

As a small guy, the mission has always been the same, to help others become better. I quickly felt I was invested into something bigger. And the employee added emphasis here, not me. And wanted in all caps, wanted to be part of that journey and that mission for me, I would say that the reason I work for Mike, the reason I work for Augusta, the reason I sell the product of Augusta, is because I truly believe it's gonna help small business owners. And I also know the level of care that Mike and his team put into the product. And that's why I'm so bought in. Mike gives and gives and gives to these owners. He gives and gives to his team. And, like, that's someone I'm follow. That's someone I'm work hard for.

That's really the main thing, to have somebody you can get behind their vision. If you don't have a vision of your own, get behind somebody who does have one and build something with them. We could both run separate businesses, but I think we're better together.

And that's the pattern that I've seen working for Mike for all the years that I have. The vision was clear. The opportunities were created. Here's my mission. Here's my vision. It's huge, and I want yours to fit inside that. Can we do this together? Can you hit your personal goals while we also hit our professional goals? How can we do that? How can we make sure that that works?

The goal, like, ultimately is, like, to bring the community together and in the stages of wealth. We're trying to figure out how do we help these business owners become rich, not just mograph. So today is like, a lot about, like, taxes. It's about relationships, about your lifestyle. It's a time management. There's, like, the next level of business ownership, and we want to make sure that there's that full from stage one all the way to stage seven, which they start diversifying the other stuff.

Okay. So in Augusta Nation, as we talked about earlier, we have the seven stages of wealth for owners.

Okay.

I believe this should be followed in sequence. And doing so outside of sequence increases risk. But we've never added, really, the structure or framework for general managers. How should they look at their stages of success inside of Augusta Nation? Now, this is not locked in stone. This is more of. I'd like your feedback on this.

Yeah, some of it was also workshopping, like, new systems we're adding to Augusta around general managers, team members. We always have said we want to get them the next stage of their career, but we've never created definitions for that for technicians on the field, for general managers. And so we workshopped a lot of that with them. And now we have, like, very clear seven stages for a technician, seven stages for a general manager, and then seven stages for an owner. And so now there's technically 21 stages of success inside of Augusta, and that's something we've been working towards.

I kind of anticipate this being a two to three year plan, because regardless of where you're starting out, you gotta get through an off season, you gotta have four straight quarters of distributions, and I've gotta mentor someone. That's gonna take me two years. The ability to walk away from this.

Event and say, owners of Augusta Nation created this system is far more powerful than Michael into his bedroom, locked the door, and came out with some magic. Because that can be refuted much easier than as a collective with people with real experience. We created the system together.

The reason I'm doing this is because I feel like by adding clarity around the stages of wealth, what we've allowed to do is create a common language in determining where I'm at. And if I feel like I'm on a treadmill, at least I know which stage I'm on, and I know why I'm feeling that way. And I feel like there's also progress, despite the fact I feel like I'm doing the same thing for five years. But over the course of those five years, I get through stages one through five.

So originally, what made me want to buy into Augusta was A lot of it was my kids like just seeing, seeing what he does, like his systems and everything. I think at the time there was like almost 100 other locations, something like that. And it's like it's working for all these guys too. And they're telling me like, you should do it. This is one of the best decisions I ever made in my head. I'm like, okay, all these guys. It's working for all these guys too. So why shouldn't I go learn from him as well?

All wrapped into one. It's the kind of relationships that we built through Augusta. The other owners, talking with other owners, understanding the industry knowledge. People that are ahead of us are able to kind of show us the way how to kind of move the business along. And then the people sort of that are smaller businesses are kind of behind us. Like they sort of have the motivation and I don't know, it just kind of keeps you on track to kind of get to where, you know, where you're looking to go, I guess.

But also since joining Augusta, like we have increased our growth rate and more.

Importantly our profitability has really increased.

So that'd be my answer. I joined because I had an existing.

Company, it was failing.

We had just done 400,000 in revenue in 2019 and we lost $9,000. And then I found Mike's content on YouTube, talked about pay for performance, went to his conference in 2020. I think that was his second one. Came back, implemented P4P. It worked. We grew the business from 400 to.

700 and it made me a believer.

And then I made the commitment to join them.

So just knowing I would immediately have that support as if I was like a huge business, but I'm just like this tiny one man show and now I've got all that support. That was a lot of it too. They're exactly where I want them to be. 800,000 revenue, 200,000 profit around there. And then figuring out how to Repeat that, train GMs and just repeat that.

And the same thing I think is true with GMs. They get delusioned by the fact they keep doing the same thing every single day. It's always the same stuff. And I don't see any progress in what's going on with my life and so be able to have some stages where they can actually talk to each other. Like I'm in stage three. What stage are you in as general managers is going to be valuable in my opinion. The hardest part of having multiple layers.

In an organization is that as you move up the layers, you forget what it's like to be at the bottom. And I don't believe that it is right that the. That the person at the top needs to be doing the lower level task. It's a bad use of time, It's a bad use of the resources. It's a bad use of that energy. However, if they lose the ability to be able to relate to them, then when they create systems like we talked about today, they come out half baked, unuseful, and then the technicians laugh at them. Yeah, that's hilarious. But that does not work. And so I've always tried. It's sometimes difficult.

But the big piece of the day is like, I need to stay grounded with the owners. I need to know what they're feeling. I need to know what their general managers are feeling so we can serve them better.