Turn 2021 MISTAKES into 2022 SUCCESS | Year in Review 2021

Let's go. Drive for show. Putt for dough, baby.

Oh.

There we go.

Yeah, buddy.

Still don't see why we couldn't do this in the office.

Don't look at that. You don't know what that is. This is your last video, Mike.

Let's go.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to A Year in Review with Mike Andes. Mike, why don't you tell everyone where we are right now?

This is the five acres of our new shop.

Right on. Yeah.

So hopefully it looks better than this when we get here.

Five acres, new shop. Augusta Nation is where headquarters is going to be. So we thought, hey, what the heck? Let's drag Mike out here. Let's get a fire pit. Let's do a year in review video. Talk about last year. Talk about. Lot of things happen. You can warm your hands by the fire. Nice cup of joe. Anyways, yeah, so we thought, let's do a little year in review. A lot of things happened. Covid Part 2 happened. We're already working on our way into Covid Part 3. That's exciting. But really just want to get maybe some thoughts from the Mike Andes about, you know, the year that happened for Augusta, for the industry, and for him personally as well. So first off, maybe let's just start with just generally this year, we. What was maybe one of your biggest challenges for you in your business this year or personally, relationally, spiritually, whatever it may have been, what was that in the year of 2021 for you?

Yeah, I think from a business standpoint, it was just a matter of scaling up Augusta from last year. This time, 25 or so locations, and now tripling that. But the amount of operational kind of stress that put on so command center having to really figure out our systems there. And what I've always said, we know what worked at 100,000 doesn't work at 500,000. What works at 500,000 doesn't work at a million. So what worked at 5, 10 franchisees does not work at 30 or 40. And then what worked at 30 and 40 does not work at 100. So as we kind of start prepping for 500, the biggest thing is just creating those operational kind of systems to make sure that we get there. And we failed a few times this past spring, and we had to do all sorts of new changes this year. So that was kind of the biggest hurdle.

Yeah, definitely understandable. So biggest hurdle was not getting sued by the city of Blaine or.

No, that was only a threat.

Oh, it was only a threat. Okay.

Filed suit. But that was interesting. That Was this year. Yeah, you're right. That was. When was that?

Like June early this year. It was a long year.

Yeah. So that ended up basically they withdrew.

Was pretty brutal. That was a joke.

Yeah. You know, you had some drama this year with some other YouTubers, you know, Tigran, Gertz maybe. We love Tigran. We saw him at Gie. Who would win in a fight? Tiger and Gertz or one of the Paul brothers, Logan or Jake. Does it. You pick Logan or Jake? No, no, no.

Jake or Logan.

Paul.

Either one would beat Tigr.

All right. I think I put my money on Tigger.

They would also beat me and Tigrin to combine together up.

All right.

Tigr and I are both pretty weak. Let's just be honest.

Let's see other things that were big this year. Some big phrases caught on this year. You know, that's cap, spill the tea, let's go. Brandon, which of those phrases is your favorite?

I actually only know one of them.

Oh really? Let's go, Brandon. Maybe switching gears a little bit, talking more about the content side of things. It is real fire.

It's beautiful.

It does sizzle. It's actually keeping us very warm. Switching gears, YouTube channel. Right. Lot of, lot of big increases on the YouTube channel. Right. We went from starting the year, what, 9K subscribers to just finishing out the year at 31K. Right. And some other metrics there. Let's see. Daily vlog. 4 out of 365 days. Are we shooting for 5 days next year on the Daily vlog? Are we going to try to up the daily Vlog numbers or.

No, the Daily Vlog isn't really there yet. I'd have a pretty boring life. We figured out pretty fast it's just meetings and zoom calls. So it was not very number enhancing and it came to the YouTube channel. Yeah.

So Daily vlog maybe not on the table, not on the cards for 2022.

No, probably not. One of these days I think I would like to bring on people like yourself. Internal meetings kind of. Again, those would be very low video count, but it'd be very cool. I feel. See a company as they grow and see all their internal meetings and you know, us talking about employees or franchisees that are struggling and how we're trying to problem solve for them. Obviously we need to bleep out names and things but I feel like that'd be like the deeper valuable content that would not get views again. But like just be really, really, really cool to watch, I think.

Yeah.

Speaking of, you know, we're talking about T grid and gie. What was, you know, your biggest takeaway from gie? You. It was obviously your first year with the booth. You brought myself and Liz had the pleasure of going with you, but, you know, you weren't expecting, I don't think, the amount of people that were going to come up to the booth or talk to us or want to interact with us. So what did that mean to you and what was kind of your takeaway from being at gie?

I think from a media standpoint, it's just really staying focused on the deeper content in a way, because even though there was stuff like the city project or, you know, when customers came out and screamed at us that do really well on social media, they don't necessarily translate to changing people's businesses and therefore having that deeper impact on their life. So kind of, you know, revisiting the fact that that's why they came up to the booth, that's why they cared so much, is because they felt like that I actually helped them do something and not just entertain. Entertainment is great. I think entertainment is fantastic. But I think, you know, being able to help someone in their business, helping them be able to provide for their family, helping them be able to provide for, you know, their goals and their future, is a very deep connection. So just kind of revisiting the fact that that's what I love to do, and that's why so many of them cared to even come say hi.

Yeah, yeah. It was cool, too, to be there and watch, because you saw, you know, literally kids that were, you know, 12, and they go and walk their HOA streets with the push mower and mow, and then you had guys that were, you know, close to retirement that have consumed your content. What does that mean to you? Like, seeing that broad range of viewers that watch and support the channel? Like, what does that mean to you?

I think the only thing that's really required to get ahead in business is the ability to learn and be humble enough to know that you don't know everything. And so whether you're 12 years old and that's very apparent, or you're 56 years old, and you realize, hey, like, my business is not doing well. I need to restructure things. And I'm always humbled by the humility that people have when they are 50, 60 years old to listen to a little kid like me and actually make the changes necessary in the business to turn it around. And so I think it just reinforces the fact that, hey, you can succeed. You can make your business better. You can make a lot of money. You just have to be willing to learn because there's always someone else that is ahead of you that you can learn from.

You know, Augusto, we're really big into audible. You like the audiobooks. You just recently recorded your audiobook P4P. But for you personally, what was your favorite book that you listened to the year of 2021?

Made in America. Sam Walton. Okay, I think it's Made in America. I forget the exact name of it, but I love that book. Just his thought process around growing Walmart and just how out of the box he was and just how old fashioned he was in terms of like not thinking about a lot of the stock market stuff or other metrics. He really just cared about the customer and he cared about his employees and just his out of the box way of thinking when it came to scaling it from, you know, a few locations. That's just thousands and kind of his big think so.

Oh, yeah.

Now, content creators, not necessarily from our industry, all content creators out there, business sales, whoever it may be. Who's your favorite content creator for the year that you watched or you listen to or you subscribe to?

You know who it is?

Yeah.

The people want to know. Mike.

It's only been the past few months. Alex Hormozi, he wrote a book called $100 million offer. And then since then, just kind of gobbling up his YouTube content. The way he thinks about business and thinking big, I think there's some different. I always like to kind of see, hey, what do I love about someone? What do I disagree with them on some things. And so kind of picking and choosing, but really loving the way he thinks about sales and just thinking big and expansion is pretty inspiring. So yeah, I'd say definitely Alex Hormozi.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Alex Hormozzi's. Check him out, free plug. He has more viewers than us. What? Anyways, he doesn't need the plug from us, we need the plug from him. But yeah, great business mind. My favorite content creator this year as well. Mike and I have really been consuming his content, switching to our industry. Who's maybe one of your favorite content creators from our industry? Not necessarily personal favorite, maybe. You know, you did a lot of interviews this year. You did the roundups, you did Q and A's. You had, you know, Florida turf pros on. You had lots of other people, Lots of other people trying to think who else? Tons of guys.

But I would say probably, honestly, like, unfortunately in my mind, like lawn care millionaire was someone that just about everyone watched when they were getting started seven, eight, ten years ago. But obviously he doesn't create any more content, so it kind of stinks. I really like the deeper content. I don't watch any of the kind of vlog style content typically just because I don't have the time. But someone like Florida Turf Pros, honestly, in our industry is still probably one of my favorites. Even though he makes the video occasionally, just because it is about business. It is about, like, hey, what's working for you, how to make the business grow and what's improving it. So to me, that's still the only thing I like to watch. So the entertainment stuff is great. I know it gets a lot more views and ad revenue, but I just don't enjoy. I don't have the time, honestly, to watch it.

Fair enough. Speaking of content creators within our industry, if someone from our industry were to be interviewed on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, who would be? Who would be.

I know everyone has in their mind.

Exactly who would be the best interview on the Joe Rogan stream?

That's so easy. Keith Kalfa's.

The amount of deep knowledge that would come out of his mouth during a Joe Rogan and the long periods of awkward silence peering into each other's eyes would be worth watching.

I would pay good money, honestly, to watch Keith Kalfus and Joe Rogan. Just hash it out. All right? People forget, you know, when a year goes by, we forget, you know, something happened five months ago or five years ago, especially a year with a pandemic, whatever you want to call it, was going on. The Ever Given. Does that ring a bell?

I know. Evergrande.

The Ever Given was the name of the boat. Oh, that's the Suez Canal. In the Suez Canal. That happened in 2021. People forget. And do you think. Serious question. If the Captain was on P4P, would they have gotten stuck in the Suez Canal?

Oh, I still think he would have, honestly, just based upon knowing what happened. But I think he would have thought twice about some of the things he did. But on the flip side, you could also argue that people would actually have. He would have gotten into. Into trouble because of P4P, because he was rushing.

Yeah.

But if he was actually getting docked pay for having his ship hit aground, maybe you would have thought twice.

Yeah, fair enough. Mike, if I were to. We're sitting. You know, it's cold, right? Winter months here. If I were to sit like this.

Bernie Sanders.

That happened this year. That happened this year. I feel like I'm Bernie Sanders out here interviewing you. So fun. So one thing I wanted to ask, I guess a little more serious. We had two employees from your original location, the Wacom Bellingham location, actually start officially their franchises this year. Nick Reed down in Marysville, Washington, started in spring of 2021. And then Austin and Tyler, who kind of paired up. Austin's been with Augusta for over three years. Tyler joined recently. They went and started running Burleson, Texas, fall of 2021. Talk about them together individually. But what does that mean to you, you know, as business owner, mentor to those guys, to see them starting their own businesses and ultimately having success? What's that look like to you?

Yeah, like, I figure, like, man, if I could do that, you know, several times a year, I'd be pretty thrilled. The thing about, like, going on the stock market, running a publicly traded company, what stinks is most of. Most of the value you're bringing to investors is just people who already have plenty of money not really making a difference in their financial life or their future. But to be able to take someone that is, you know, minimum wage, they work for us for a couple years making 20, 25 bucks an hour, working hard, and then now they're owning their own business. You know, Nick Reed making really good money and having a couple new trucks he bought and all the rest of it. So that's the most rewarding thing ever. Obviously, it's because of their hard work and their dedication, but to say that I did a little part of that and at least got them started on their way is extremely rewarding. Probably the thing that keeps me going with Augusta when we're losing money and it's not always the funnest thing to do, but, yeah, it's very, very inspiring.

Yeah. And generally for, I guess, all the franchisees, what would maybe be like a word, you know, to surmise, like, the year of 2021 or a word of encouragement going into 2022 for all the franchisees or just, like, general highlights, Something you'd want to say to kind of all the franchisees in summation, I guess, for the year.

Yeah. Like, last year at the Franchise Conference is obviously virtual, but our kind of theme or, you know.

Motto for that, that. That that conference was change is hard. Change is necessary. And that's what I'd say. Like, this year, we had to change phone systems at Command Center. We had to completely revamp the way we trained at Command Center. We had to redo teams at the Command center, rethinking all sorts of Stuff that we had to build in terms of operationally. So change is hard. Change is necessary.

For you personally, what is maybe one skill you learned in 2021 that. That you think will be the most beneficial for you in 2022?

Oh, man, that's tough. Probably from a personal finance standpoint, I really dug in this year in terms of learning more and more about macroeconomics and, like, the stock market, real estate, and how that actually is going to affect our industry. It's one thing to, like, working head down in your business all day, but if you step back and realize that, like the tide of the economy that is worth trillions and trillions of dollars in gdp, you working harder is not going to change that too much. And so how can I align Augusta, our businesses, what we're trying to do with macroeconomic trends that are going to push us and be wind at our back instead of just like, oh, I'm just putting my head down and working hard. Well, that's great. But how can we do things that are actually going to be a trend for the entire economy and therefore allow us to get ahead further and faster.

And then trying to get that knowledge to ultimately trickle down to, like, your employees and the franchisees and maybe sharing that knowledge more just like, for everyone that you come into contact with as well.

Yeah, hopefully through the content.

Yeah. Sort of thing. Through the. Through the separate YouTube page. If you guys don't know, subscribe to.

The other YouTube page.

And speaking of YouTube, I would like to throw a couple metrics out. You know, YouTube. We went, myself and the media guys, thank you to the media team for getting this info for me. How many views do you think you had in the year 2021 views? I don't know what constitutes a view on YouTube. I don't know if it's like 5 seconds, 10 seconds a minute. How many views?

I'm gonna guess 2.5 million.

3.2 million. Yep. 3,261,000 views.

That's like almost 80% of our views total.

Ever.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Cool.

I know you're a numbers guy. And then minutes watched. What do you think? Give me like a ballpark on minutes watched.

Well, we can do the math. So three million. I'd say the average view is three minutes to four minutes. So I'm gonna go with.

Eight million. Way off. What?

Way off?

Eight million minutes.

Wait, keep going. Wait.

Three. Three times. Wait, sorry. 12 million. What?

Keep going.

Mercy. 24 million.

Just under. Yeah, just under 21 million. So 20.7 million minutes. Watch. So that's not only touching it to the content you're putting out the media guys here, but to everyone that does watch and engage. We do appreciate you watching the content and following, but, like, what does that mean to you, to have, like, 20 million minutes of your face in front of people?

Sorry, I didn't really mean. The views don't really mean a whole lot. Obviously, we try to focus. We've been trying to focus more on top. Top of the funnel, what we call content, to try to bring on a wider audience. But I look at metrics, like, you know, two. Two locations this year were started by our local guys, plus one of our managers bought out their own location. We got a couple more going to be doing the same thing this coming year. 2022. Like, those are the metrics that, in my mind, like, even though it's, like, only a few, it's, like, at the bottom of the funnel that actually moves the needle. Right.

So this property, five acres, future headquarters of Augusta. We bought this. We own this, correct?

We do.

And there will be a building on it at some point and, like, parking and all that, but we're technically outside of the city limits.

Sure, we'll go with that. Great.

Well, I was thinking we could hit some balls. Oh, let's do it. People have heard that Mike Andes used to be a golf guy. So maybe we'll just hit some balls, you know, Augusta, and just. Let's try it out. Let's do it just to be safe.

It's okay. Make a styrofoam ball and still hit further than you.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, mercy. There's not. There's no way. This is. Stick to the ground, dude.

Compact down a little bit. Where there's a will, there's a way. There it is, baby.

All right, here we go. Okay, so we're gonna put money on this or what?

Okay, see, actually, I think a wedge would actually go further.

If you want a wedge, I'll get you a wedge.

We're really gonna do this? Let's make it serious.

Oh, man, here we go. This guy mocking my ability to play golf. We can do best wedge shot after. Because that's what people pay to see. Wedge shots.

Drive for show, putt for dough, baby. We're gonna putt. All right, here we go. This is bad news.

It's so stiff in the cold.

Wider stance. Get a little traction here. All right, between the two trees. Here we go.

Stinger just too low.

Sick Lee collects golf balls on the range.

You can see in the newspaper. Children, pull out. AR15. And they hit golf balls.

Oh, beauty. Ah.

250, 260 or somewhere in there. All right. Is that a stiff shaft?

Yeah.

Okay.

You know, you swing it hard enough, you can get a stiff. Hey, hey. You know how that works, right? Oh, cold hands. Perfect conditions, this beautiful day for a great round out here with the boys.

All right, Mr. Flirty.

We're christening. We're christening the new.

The new shop here.

Next time you guys watch us hitting golf balls on this property, we're gonna set up. Did you talk, bro?

You better hit that golf ball now.

You got the snow all compact now. It's too slick for me. Yeah.

All right.

Let'S go.

That's what I'm talking about. That's for the fans. That's for the people.

You were looking over there when you're.

I know.

Backswing already.

That was for the people.

You're just trying to clear out the snow.

I get it actually works out.

Whoa. That's a little far right, bro.

Oh, I thought we were playing that way. I thought we were playing that way. I thought that was the fairway. It was dog leg, right?

Dude. Almost hit that thing, dude.

I was okay. I was worried about getting up because of this, so I thought I was gonna hit here. So I, like, had a super steep angle. It was dumb. Let the record show, first week of December, I did play nine. I shot a 44.

So first week of December.

Yeah, it was actually. There were a couple warm days. It was like. I mean, it was like. It was like high 40s, early 50s. Well, thank you, Mike, for your time. I hope you guys enjoyed a year in review with Mike Andes. Please, like, subscribe. Leave a comment below. Year in review questions? I should have asked Mike questions you'd like Mike to answer. We'll try to respond to those in comments. Thank you to everyone that followed the channel this year in 2021. We appreciate you guys. We'll see you next year. Thanks, Mike.

Thanks.

Remote, start the whip.