Which Lawn Care & Landscape Franchise is Best?

Hey everyone, it's Mike Andes. And today we are going to be going over an analysis, a competitive analysis of the different available franchises in the lawn care industry. And so here we got the grounds guys, the US Lawns, Spring Green, Natural Lawn of America, Lawn Doctor, and then Augusta Lawn Care. So let me start off by saying, obviously I'm very biased here. I am the founder and CEO of Augusta Lawn Care, but. But I wanted to kind of give a very balanced look at all different options in the industry. The Grounds guys is really the closest competition to us in terms of being the closest analysis to us because they do residential mowing, landscaping, et cetera. US Lawns is focused more on commercial Spring Green, Natural Lawn of America, Lawn Doctor are all focused on the treatment side. So spraying, chemical applications, weed control, things like that. So the grounds guys is really the best comparison. I have a whole video just about the differences between us and the grounds guys on our website, augustalongcareservices.com franchise whole video on that. But today, this is the document you're going to see. This is the document you're going to see. If you get an fdd, a franchise disclosure document from any of these franchises, including Augusta Lawn Care, you're going to see their specific information. So instead of you having to go all their FDDs and see what is all behind the scenes, I wanted to kind of just show them all here and compare it and do a comparative analysis focusing on why Augusta Lawn Care is different and why we did that. So there are obviously reasons why you would not want to become an Augusta Lawn Care franchise. One of them is the fact that we just are starting in 2019. So again, if you go to the website, the videos are going to show the pros and the cons very.

Transparently why we'd be the best option for you and why we might not be the best option for you. But here we're going to kind of take a look at some of the initial fees and the way that Augusta Longhead is so different in terms of royalties. So if you look at the franchise fee here, this column right here, these are all shows the initial franchise fee for, for these franchisors. So let me explain to you what that's going to cover.

As a franchisor. We are going to set up you with a brand new website. We're going to do search engine optimization for that website around your specific territory. And as part of that initial franchise fee, you also get an exclusive territory of size around your target demographic. And so that initial franchise fee is Also going to cover your cost cost to get trained at the franchisor. So between three and five days you're going to be at the franchisor, they're going to train you on all their systems, their procedures, how to do, estimating, how to do the reporting, knowing your numbers, the way that they do their sales process, things like that, all of that training is included as well as getting you set up on their back end system. So for example, at Augusta we have what we call dashboard and that includes the store and the academy, where the academy is where there's ongoing training about different marketing techniques, different ways of dealing with customers, employees, etc. The store part is where you can buy uniforms, you can order door hangers, or you can download PDFs so you can print flyers like all that stuff that's all in the back end. So we get you set up with that as part of that initial franchise fee. As part of the initial franchise fee too. At Augusta we cover all your attorney fees. So we do all the signing and things. We cover that all for you. It's included in that initial franchise fee. Some of these other franchisors, they will make you get your own lawyer. We don't make you do that. We use a third party attorney group out of New York. But anyways, that franchise fee across the board you can see for grounds guy, it's $32,000, $34,000 for us, 40, 35, et cetera. For these different franchises. For GUSA Longcare it's 25,000. The big reason why we're so much less is that we don't use a brokerage to, to sell our franchises. So we don't use an outside sales company to go out and represent us. We sell them in house. And I currently talk to every single prospect of the franchise and so we save a lot of money there. We don't. So therefore we don't have to charge you as much upfront initially on the initial franchise fee. You can see here the cost, the total investment cost here of starting up a franchise really does range depending on which franchise you choose. Augusta Lawn Care is so low simply due to the fact that.

You can really get started with just one truck, a trailerless setup and make 100,000 in revenue. That's the goal for that first year by yourself. If you've never done it before, you can also Augusta Lawn Care. At Augusta we allow you to transition or convert your existing brand. If you have a landscaping business, you're able to convert it and it actually is going to Be a whole lot less than that. 38,000 to 60,000, simply due to the fact that you're not going to need to buy trucks or equipment. You're just going to need to rebrand your trucks, rebrand some of your stationary. We do all the website stuff and all the legal stuff. So like it's even way less than this if you already have an existing landscaping business. Obviously there's vehicle expenses, the franchise term here. So again, this is what you're going to see in an fdd, which is kind of, this is like a summarization of a lot of those things in the FDD on all these franchises. The biggest thing we want to talk about today is the royalty. This is the biggest reason why Augusta Lawn Care Services is so much different than any other, any other franchise in the lawn care space. So if you see here, you got 7%, 6%, 10%, 9% and 10% royalty fees on top line revenues for all of these businesses. For Augusta Lawn Care, we have a set monthly fee for the first year of $600 and a set monthly fee of $1,200 for, for year two and beyond. It never changes. So how we play this out is this. Let's assume that you have a million dollar business making a million dollars in revenue and you have a 15% profit margin, which in this industry is really pretty good. 5% profit margin in this industry is very risky. You're running a very low profitable operation. Many times it's in a commercial space. 10% is pretty average. 10% net profit margin on a million dollar business. Obviously that margin is going to be higher on a very small business. But on a million dollar business, 10% is fairly average. 15%, you're doing really good. Like you got systems in place, you're doing really well. 20% is like incredibly off the charts, really fantastic in terms of margin when it comes to a million dollar business focusing on residential lawn care and landscaping. And so the problem, for example, the grounds guys and these other companies that have 7 to 10% of the gross revenue going to the franchisor in terms of a fee. The problem with that is this. If you have a 15% margin, net profit margin business and you take 10% off the top, like off the top, you take $100,000, you're basically going from 150,000 in net profit, that's 15% of a million down to $50,000. You're essentially two thirds of your profit is going towards a royalty fee.

I don't see that being sustainable. And I've talked to a lot of these franchisees that as their business grows and they're making more and more in monthly revenue, so is their royalty fee. And so eventually they stop growing because they can't afford more trucks and equipment and overhead to sustain the growth that they want to achieve. But they can't do it simply due to the fact that the royalty is growing more and more. So if you're doing a million dollars in revenue, let's say 100,000amonth in revenue, that's $10,000 at 10% royalty fee coming out every single month. That's enormous. And so what it does is it hinders people from growing a sizable business because they stall out at 4 or 500,000 in revenue annually simply due to the fact that they can't afford to keep growing because they can't afford the royalties. What we've done at Augusta is set it so it's a monthly fee. Regardless. If you make 10,000amonth or $300,000 a month, it's going to always be that $1,200 per month fee that's going to cover all these royalty fees. What that covers for the franchisor is going to cover ongoing SEO on your website. So you shouldn't have to worry about any of that sort of thing. They're going to make sure it's optimized, they're going to make sure it's running and all set up on the back end. It's going to be ongoing training. So at Augusta, we give monthly newsletter email templates we give on every season, we're doing a different campaign that will give you new door hangers, flyers, postcards, and different marketing materials, brochures that you can use to promote that campaign. So, for example, we have a thing that we run at Augusta called the Green Jacket Experience, because it goes along with Augusta and the Masters and everything. And so what we do is our slogan, our thing that we say during on that marketing campaign is.

You don't have to win a Masters golf tournament to have a green Jacket experience. And so that green jacket experience is everything that we offer at Augusta. And that's just one slogan, one campaign. But we give you as a franchisee, all of the ad copy, all of the Facebook ad copy and pictures and things that you'll need, and then you can go out and spend the money the way you want. Some of these companies do charge a national advertising campaign fee. So in addition to that royalty, you're going to pay 2 to 5% to basically pay into a national ad campaign. Here at Augusta, we don't believe that's the most efficient use of funds. We don't not collect any money for a national fee for advertising. We expect you to spend money in your local market on marketing. We give you all the tools, the resources and the metrics behind which is gonna be the best and we give you all the designs, we give you everything you need to start. You can edit them, change them if you want, but like we give you the stuff that you can download from the dashboard and go out and be the most efficient with those dollars in your local market, in the neighborhoods, very specific geolocations that you want to target, you can go after them and spend that money in the most efficient manner. And so this is really just a quick overview. I'd love to go more in depth with you, but if you have more questions, you want more information, just go to augustalongcareservices.com franchise and I have like almost 20 videos in there that I break down what you get as a franchisee, who should be a franchisee, who should not be, and some of the pros and the and so on there as well on that website. You can also book a call with me directly and we can schedule 20, 30 minutes to talk and see if converting your existing lawn care business is what is right for you and is going to help you grow your business to that seven figure marker and make it a business actually is a sellable asset. A business that's run on systems and procedures and not just on you as the owner and your job and you always having to be there. The goal is to get you out of the field and out of day to day operations where it's an actual asset that when you can retire with it, you can pass it along to generations and it still continues to grow, run and be healthy. And so you know, I truly believe that a royalty coming off the top line revenue is not conducive to the health of that business because the franchisor is always saying grow, grow, grow and forcing you to grow because they're making a cut of that revenue. Whereas at Augusta Lawn Care you can grow as however fast you want. We're going to focus on making sure it's efficient, has the systems in place to make sure you're profitable at whatever size of business you want to build. And we're going to get the tools and resources to go as big as you want. But we're not going to try to emphasize that simply due to the fact that we're getting incentivized on top line revenue, gross sales, royalties. So that's really the biggest difference with Augusta Lawn Care. And I hope this answers some of your questions. Again, augustalawncareservices.com franchise will have more FAQ videos as well as a chance to talk with me directly one on one on a phone call. And you can book that right from that website. Thank you so much.