What Makes Augusta Lawn Care Different

Hey, what's up? It's Zach. I'm the head of operations for the Mike Andes media team and we had this seven figures club the other day. It was a collection of owners within Augusta Nation that are over seven figures in annual revenue or multi location owners. So we did a bunch of interviews on the back end that never really made it to the main channel. But they talk about why the leadership at Augusta has stayed for years, 4 years, 3 years, 5 years, 7 years, 10 years with Mike and what he has done in the meantime to retain that talent and then help other owners find similar talent for general managers, especially as they're looking to start new locations along the way. So definitely worth listening to long form interviews here, just kind of on the background of Augusta. So I hope you guys enjoy that kind of like a departure from our regular content.

Most importantly, I think is just that they feel a part of the community. 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. The reason you join Augusta Lawn Care is because of the community. I hope people get the feeling that I get when I'm around Augusta Nation. You're part of something bigger. There's people you can trust, there's people you can share with, and you're not alone. For a lot of entrepreneurs and small business owners, they feel very alone and.

It'S lonely at the top. They have a lot of the burden of command. Really nice to be able to have them come away and just be with like minded people and be refreshed and encouraged. Gonna do tours of the dash in the middle.

Fair enough.

I would say like tighten it. These people truly care about each other. If one of them is having a hard day or is struggling, someone else can be like, oh yeah, I've gone through the same thing. Here's what I did to help me through this. Seeing such a community, knowing that they have each other to rely. One of the most attractive things to an outsider. Looking into Augusta, I only ever heard about it, right? And I only ever heard him talk about these people and like only ever talk about Lee and Nick and Liz. Seeing you guys in action and seeing the faces and being able to put the names to the faces, this is who he works hard for. The more that I see these people and the more that I can like.

Just see him in action, the more and more I respect and I'm able to like put A finger on what he's doing. And I don't just hear about it. I see him in action.

So I know our CEO and founder personally. I've worked with him for almost eight years now. He actually cares about the owners of Augusta. He actually cares that they succeed and that they hit their goals and that they can provide opportunities for their family, for their community, for their employees. And I think I can think of countless stories of Nick actually caring about owners and, like, taking that extra call, doing something on the weekend. For an owner going the extra mile, like buying something fun or whatever it may be. Liz, Other people on our team, there's genuine care to want to see other people win. And there's something like, magnetic about that. It really is a different culture. Obviously, there are lots of companies out there with great cultures, and they all say their culture is different. But I truly believe that the quality of the people inside of Augusta Nation and the direction we're all heading in, which is constant improvement, that is our number one core value. We practice what we preach, and we operate on a different level.

Stewardship. You are a steward of your time. You're a. Your resources and your relationships. Those are the things that we focus on. Many times the thing that keeps them from A million and 10 million is not 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 four 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. 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. It all has to do with our relationships, the best and worst days of our life. So, like, if I want to index towards good and I want to avoid bad, it's probably a good thing. I know how to deal with the relationships in my life. And so allocating time and resources more towards your relationships could potentially lead to a much happier outcome. And ultimately, like, yes, I want them to be wealthy. I want them to make a lot of money. I also would like them to enjoy life.

So 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 and the whole organization is just weak at that point, 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. That's the thing I would hope for is people kind of get re grounded in, like, you know, what their true core motivation is around the business, and then they can use that as rocket fuel.

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. Being a steward of your time, your resources, and the relationships that you have while building a business, I think that's extremely important to realize how hard it actually is to do that. It's not giving a compliment. It's not giving your employees a tip every once in a while. It's not buying them coffee every once in a while.

It's.

It's so much more deeper on a relational level with the employees. We just want to see them all crush it. That's really our goal.

And we always have said we want to get them the next stage of their career, but we've never created definitions for that.

If you knew me before Augusta, it's heading nowhere fast.

If we're gonna take extreme ownership of the struggles that they're having with retaining general managers, like, well, then what do we do to fix it?

So all of 2020, I just drank energy drinks, lived in my van, saved money, and then by the end of the year, I decided that I was gonna take advantage of the 3F program. So the franchise fee forgiveness program, and.

A lot of it is they feel like they're doing the same thing every day, and they're not seeing any progress.

Gave me the purpose I was looking for in life. Just a cause to kind of dedicate myself to. I had no one with expectations of me. Yeah, you come into Augusta, and Mike's got this vision and changed my life, changed the way, I think 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. It's also the same reason why entrepreneurs quit. And that's why we created the seven stages of wealth. So that as you're growing the business, you feel like you're making progress, even though you're doing them mundane. And so we just need to do the same thing for a general manager so they can feel like they're winning the games, but now, like, know that these are the steps and the stages and each of those, in and of themselves, the steps don't seem so bad. There's people that have done all 21 steps.

By 2021, I was running my own business. I ran that business for four years. I sold that last year. It's also when I joined the leadership team again as the owner, success manager. It's been a wild ride.

I think all these owners, once given the system, will give it to their GMs, they'll give it to their frontline team. Because we built it all together, we workshopped, we put holes in it. And so I feel really good about that.

I think that the thing that draws people to Augusta is that they understand and they can feel and sense that the intentions are pure and it's built for the owner. Obviously I'm biased, but probably the most pro owner franchise that exists out there, because we do even just the one thing, which is the flat fee model, nobody does that. Our only incentive is to earn your business day after day. We wouldn't have it any other way. If people don't like us, they can leave any time with no penalty, take their customers. We'd have no perverse incentives to get them to blow up top line revenues. Why would people not join? Like, like really spell it out logically why they wouldn't. And it always comes down to ego, pride in their own brand, want to do it on their own, and that's fine. But we know what we do. We, we know, like the product that we're creating and managing. I think it's apparent in our actions.

The culture of Augusta, I would say, is unrelenting. We are unsatisfied all of the time.

These guys work hard. Like, it is not easy. The physical stress, the psychological stress, scaling the business, all of that. I think that's one trait that everyone shares in common, is like, these guys can work hard. That's every facet of Augusta. It's from the field team members to the general managers, to the owners, to.

Us here at corporate, when, when we hit a new achievement, it's like, hey, everyone acknowledge that we hit this achievement. High fives. Cool. Thanks for all your hard work. What's the next one? And some people might hate that. And like, that's fine. Like, if you want to be in a culture where you celebrate every tiny little win, like, did totally fine. But our culture is just unrelenting that we will seek win after win after win after win, and we really aren't satisfied.

Everyone is working extremely hard to make Augusta better, to hit a thousand locations, to change the level of professionalism in the landscaping industry.

And I love that, and I think that's why I've worked for Mike for so many years, is that there is no mountaintop. The mountain will just get bigger. And that's scary, but extremely fun. And so I think what really embodies a lot of our culture is just an unrelenting spirit.

When I look at my five happiest days, it's around people. And so to think that I'm gonna have more of those days would mean I would need to invest more of the time and resources I do have into relationships. By having relationships in check, like, that is not checked off, but it is fulfilled in your life. You actually deploy a lot more energy now towards other areas of life. Like, I can spend more time in the business because that is taken care of.

Like, everyone in Augusta is much more purpose driven and has much larger goals and ambitions beyond just running their lawn care business. There's a lot of people that can do that outside of Augusta to lots of success, and they can do a great job, great job for their team, all that stuff. Goal for Augusta has changed the level of professionalism in the landscaping industry. Not that the franchise owners are getting into it to do that, but everyone believes in that goal and rallies around it, and they can accomplish their own goals under that umbrella. So I think that's it. It's like 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.

And that's the power of community. You'll solve bigger problems because you have more angles to attack. The problem with 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 it is right that the. 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, unusable. And then the technicians laugh 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.

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. We actually care about the users. We actually care about them getting the chance to win, getting the chance to better their life, their employees lives, and everyone around them. 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 gonna follow. That's someone I'm gonna work hard for.

Everyone can sniff out something that's fake or not real. If we were doing that, if we were selling a bill of goods or the franchise was built to take advantage of people, that would become very apparent. I really believe it's impossible to hide a true lie.

I have complete confidence in him. I know that he knows what he's doing. He's perfected this craft.

Take out all the fluff, we take out all the corporate nuance. And it's just people trying to win. That's really what it comes down to. It's just people that are trying to better themselves every day and win in the great game of business.

I believe in him because he is very authentic, genuine. 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 view.

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 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.

Check out Augusta and see for yourself.

If you don't have a vision of your own, get behind somebody who does have one and build something with them. We're better together.

I would love to be able to have a roster of general managers that have passed the test and ready for stage two. And then we can create hundreds of those that our owners can then choose the best tested scores and general managers from across the country. That'd be great. And then down the road, if I can keep growing on social media, I'd love to do the same thing for team members on the field we have thousands of people applying passing the first stage and they're on the board like if you want to play this game here's the stages here's how you get ahead and I think it's appealing to the person that wants to work hard that doesn't know what maybe they have their somewhat aimless in life like if you look at all the 3F program members those of you who started in the field worked a couple of years and then became owners using the franchisee forgiveness program almost every single one wandered into lawn care without any direction and so if we can figure out how to take that person and then give them a very systematic way of becoming an owner and then investing into real estate etc. And it's all in those steps then I feel like it's a manageable process because 21 steps over the course of 10 years well that means every six to five to six months I'm making another step.