Why I Hired a 19 Year-Old to Run My $1.5M Business

My name is Dylan Garcia. I work at Augusta Lawn Care Services for the Bellingham location. And I'm going to be the new general manager.

This is the very first Augusta truck ever in history. It's still with us today. I bought it for $6500. I still remember that Dodge 1500. We've painted it yellow. It's had a little bit of cosmetic surgery done on it, but it's still in the sleet today and now has a ramp rack on it. But today we are talking about general managers because this is the Bellingham location. It's our very first location. And at this location, we kind of use it as the guinea pig for everything. Augusta Nation, we test out systems here. We see what works, what doesn't before we implement it across all of the locations across North America. And so it's really important for me that this location I have a general manager that is flexible to really constant improvement, constantly changing and evolving and testing new systems out. Recently, we've had to look for a new general manager because Marcus, our current general manager, is moving down south about two hours and starting his own franchise location for Augusta Lawn Care, which is fantastic. Using the 3F program, franchisee forgiveness. That's fantastic. But the problem is I've got to find a new general manager. So we've been looking, we've been trying to find someone. Today you're going to be hearing from who's going to be coming the general manager next month. His name is Dylan. And what's crazy is the fact that Marcus, when he started as general manager here at Augusta Lawn care, he was 19 years old. Now Dylan is also 19 years old, and both of them had less than one year of experience. Today I'm going to be talking about how when you look for leaders, when you look for management and you're hiring from inside the organization, it's not necessarily the most experienced, the highest paid, or the person that's the oldest that you need to be looking for. You're looking for someone who's going to be a great leader for you, the company, and for the team.

A lot of people on YouTube, as you guys tend to do, you think we're crazy for putting a guy that's 19 years old, no landscape experience, only really six months experience with us doing landscaping in the general manager role. You guys will say you were crazy. Guys will say we're bound for failure. But our systems, our procedures, the past of Augusta and our profit and loss statement says otherwise.

I'm Marcus.

I moved from Montana when I was about 18 years old to this location in Washington. I'd worked at a nursery before, but no landscape experience. I started with Augusta about a year later. I learned to become the estimator full time, pretty much estimator for a year. And then after that year I moved into the general manager role that Lee, Mike and Liz at the local shop appointed me. So there's a lot of things I've learned in this time. It was definitely once I got into the general manager role, I felt the weight of the entire team on my shoulders. And at first, I must say, it was painful, extremely painful. We did not have a team culture. Things were very sideways very often and I found myself trying to drown a basketball when it came to running a business.

When Marcus first got started, I still remember his first few team meetings were a complete disaster in the fact that he was like literally shaking, sweating, very nervous. And so when you're looking for a leader, it's not necessarily the person who is going to be the most polished from the beginning. I'm not looking at the beginning. I'm looking at where are they going to be headed over the next year, two years? Are they going to be willing to put in the constant work on themselves, listening to audible programs, listening to podcasts to make themselves better as leaders, working.

On themselves, starting with Augusta. For about the first couple months I didn't read any books. I was not any anyone to talk or anything. And now we have a whole audiobook program. We have a lot of systems inside the organization in which you can build up. So I've really used those to the full extent and I think it's really, really very lucky to have this opportunity and to work under these systems that are just now changing the lawn care landscaping industry.

I'm also looking for somebody that is interested in the business, watching the content, interested in what the business is going to, trying to figure out things outside of even just business. Like when Marcus first got started, he was actually really interested in real estate. And I just was really impressed with a young man that is diligently trying to work on himself, improve his skillset, get ahead in life and after work, go work on more things that he was interested and passionate about and just wanting more out of life.

Now I'm moving on to start my own franchise with Augusta Lawn Care Services in Redmond, Washington. I'll service sort of the Redmond Kirkland area and I'm not gonna do that until later this year. But a lot of systems and procedures that we have here, not only in running a sustainable business, but also building one up from the ground, because that's what Mike believes in here, is upward mobility and starting things from scratch. So I believe that's sort of the final frontier for me. I've done everything but this is a very successful, great culture business. Now. I gotta start from the bottom and be really scrappy with it. I look forward to the horrible days, the days I don't know if I'm gonna make payroll for the team. Things I don't experience here. I feel like I need to experience that pain for me to grow even more as an owner. And then possibly years later, I'll have multiple franchises looking to get into real estate and a couple other ventures in mind.

Just wanting more out of life alone is going to be enough for someone to put the hard work and the hours required to work on themselves as leaders. Because just becoming a leader and putting it in the position of a leader does not make you a leader. You're going to have to constantly be improving and listening to information, learning from other people, and becoming a better leader yourself.

My name is Dylan Garcia. I work at Augusta Lawn Care Services, and I'm going to be the new general manager. The only experience I had was just, you know, like doing my own lawn, string trimming and stuff. There's never really much of a school type, didn't perform that well in school. But luckily I found something that interests me, put my efforts towards that.

I started at Augusta in the beginning of March this year, six months ago. After about a couple months, I started training people, doing estimates, taking on some leadership roles. It's a lot of responsibility. So I guess what I would be afraid of is laying the team down, making a lot of mistakes, not being able to learn fast enough. My goal is just work with the team. Hopefully they understand my mistakes. We have a really good culture here. Everyone gets along well. They're all really good guys. They all like to have a good time.

I hope to learn a lot of good leadership traits. I want to learn how to lead the team well and get them to perform well. And not only that, but for them to improve themselves.

Dylan again? Yeah. 19 years old, comes into Augusta, no landscape experience. And really, it's a testament to Mike's systems and how he thinks business should operate. We're very lucky that we're really the guinea pig for Mike. So he's always having us try new systems and procedures and things, finding out what doesn't work, finding out what does work. So a really special place to be here. And with Augusta in general, the whole franchise. It's very much a community. There's a lot of groups where we talk amongst each other and you know, what works on the east coast might not work necessarily on the west coast. But again, we're developing systems to make it more self sufficient. So you take a guy like Dylan, again, he's the youngest person on our team. We have about 17 people on our team. He's the youngest one, no experience coming in. You think you need 5, 10 years experience maybe to be a general manager of any sort of for any business in landscaping. But we have the systems, we have the procedures, we have P4P, we have profit sharing, we have open book management, things of that nature. Keep the culture high. And that's what I'm telling Dylan is that's the biggest pain point for him to be in that role is to keep the team culture high because at times things go way wrong and you have to be the one that steps up in those times. So he's learning a lot. He learns very quickly. That's part of the reason he's in that role and he's very excited to learn and he's really good at managing others, being a leader in the field, learning about the estimate sales side of things, even just four months into working here. So that's part of what led him into that role. Basically it was an easy decision for us.

So first and foremost, if you're an employee looking to become promoted, become a manager, maybe become a crew lead, get promoted inside of your current company. Let me talk to you for a second, then I'm going to talk to the owner that's looking for to hire a manager. Now if you're an employee, here's a couple things that I'd recommend you do if you're trying to get promoted. Number one, make sure you get as close to the sun as possible. Whether the owner, the manager you're currently working for, get around them, ask them. If you can't steal five minutes and ask them how you can improve. Make it very clear to them that you are constantly working on yourself. You're not afraid of criticism and making sure that it's constructive. That is the type of thing that a manager is looking for to kind of foster someone's talent and skill and make them better. So number one, get close to the sun. Whoever your manager is, your owner, get close to them, how can you support them, how can you do extra work for them, how can you work a little bit longer in the day to make sure that you make their life a little bit easier? Getting close to the sun and then learning from them is probably going to be the thing that when they need a replacement, they're looking for, okay, who did I pass that information and and that education down to? That's the person they're gonna want as their replacement. The second thing you can do is just constantly improve on yourself. Make it very clear to your managers that you are here for the long term, not just from out of like staying at the business for a long time, but you are willing to improve on yourself, learn skills, watch YouTube videos to become more efficient. Watch YouTube videos in order to make your skill and hone your craft and educate yourself.

I've learned a lot of things. I think a lot of it just comes with experience and managing people. And so I think Dylan will get that over time that he just learns the certain scenarios and one off things that happen. Managing, you know, crew emotions with client emotions and trying to juggle it all at once. What I told him it was very straightforward, is there's a lot of pain that's going to come with it. Very, very painful to start out. But once you are in this role, he already knows the sales side of things. So once he's in this role, he'll know how to run the whole business and how the whole machine, how the whole wheel turns and operates. Him getting that experience I think is very crucial whether he wants to start his own franchise one day or stay here long term. And it's also a good sign for upward mobility. Other than Dylan, we have a lot of leaders in the field here that really bring each other up. It's a self fulfilling cycle in which everybody helps each other out. And that's what I'm trying to train Dylan on is there's a book called Culture Wins. So if the culture's poor, that's still gonna win out and you're never gonna get anywhere. The culture's high like it is right now, and we try to keep it high, then that's gonna win and then that'll lift up the whole company and I think that experience is invaluable. I would do this for free.

And then furthermore, if you're a manager and you're looking to hire someone, I beg of you, don't look at how long they've been with you. Don't give them a management position because they're good at telling people what to do. Because when they're put in that position, they're going to fall flat in their face when the team no longer reacts to them like they would a Coworker, a great coworker, a great team player is fantastic. But just because they're a great team player, because they tell everyone what to do, they keep everyone else accountable in the field, does not necessarily mean they're gonna translate to becoming a great manager. Cause that same intrapreneur type spirit that tells people what to do, keeps everyone safe, tells them, don't do this, do this, and make sure this is better. That's a great team player. But you put that person in a leadership position and now they're looked at as a dictator. No one likes to even listen to them. So you've gotta be very aware as a leader and as an owner, as a manager, if you're looking to hire within your company, make sure that that position you're hiring because their leadership ability, not because they can just tell people what they've been around for a long time. They're the ones asking you for the most money and they have the most experience. That, in my mind, is not what makes a great leader. So I look forward to seeing how Dylan is going to move in this new role. The transformation in Marcus's life over the past year has been phenomenal. Just the change of his caliber of character, the way he deals with the team, his care for the business, his aptitude and education and skills he's acquired this past year is incredible. I look forward to seeing what that's going to do with Dylan's life. And I encourage you, if you have a business, try to create that type of culture in your business where you hire from within, you take raw talent and you work on perfecting it, making it better, and improving the lives of your employees. I'm Mike Andes. See you tomorrow.