Adam Torres and Mike Andes discuss Augusta Lawn Care.
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Show Notes:
The Power of Pay for Performance (P4P) has helped Augusta Lawn Care become a dominant player in the lawn care industry. In this episode, Adam Torres and Mike Andes, Founder of Augusta Lawn Care, explore Mike’s journey as an entrepreneur and Augusta Lawn Care.
About Mike Andes
Mike’s goal is to help home service business owners get rich. He does this through media, software, and franchising. Augusta Lawn Care has 150+ locations in the USA, Canada, and Australia. Copilot CRM helps thousands of home service entrepreneurs run their business more efficiently and win more jobs.
About Augusta Lawn Care
They perform the highest quality landscaping and lawn care for residential properties throughout the United States and Canada. They are a team of professionals offering services that range from lawn mowing to building retaining walls, and everything in between.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of mission matters. My name is Adam Torres. And if you’d like to apply to be a guest of the show, just head on over to mission matters. com and click on, be our guest to apply. All right. So today I have Mike Andes on the line and he is a founder of Augusta lawn care.
Mike, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me on, Adam. I appreciate it. All right, Mike. So we got a lot to go over here today. So I definitely want to get into Augusta Lawn Care and also, you know, how you’ve managed to scale home service businesses. I know you guys are knocking out of the park with that company and you have a lot of experience in this.
So I’m excited to get into that. And just to get us kicked off, we’ll start this episode the way we like to start with our Mission Matters Minute. So, Mike, at Mission Matters, our aim and our goal is to amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That’s what we do. Mike, what mission matters to you?
Yeah, for me, it’s really changing the level of professionalism in the landscape industry and kind of changing what the perception of the customer is in regards to this industry. Because when most people think about landscapers, they think about guys showing up and cut off shorts or, you know, a truck that has leaking oil all over the place and no uniform, no, no branding or professionalism.
So trying to change that is really the goal. Fantastic. And so did you grow up in the industry? Like, how did you get involved? Where did that match for you? Yeah, so I started mowing lawns when I was 11 years old. And I started young because I actually went to college when I was 13. And so that’s how I paid my way through college.
And I love that. I love this story already. You’re not scared to work. Go ahead. Yeah. So, so that was, I kind of saw that as my way out in terms of financially, my parents had never gone to college. And so I figured, hey, I’m a doctor and make a bunch of money. And so you know, after getting my pre med degree, I dropped out of medical school and really the only skill I had was.
Was among grass. Wow. So you got I don’t want to go like past that. So you went pretty far on that, you know, path that maybe didn’t match what you want, you know, what you wanted. Am I off on that? You said you got to a certain point. Yeah. So I basically was in university for five years and I kind of started to realize that like, if I would continue the path I was going in terms of brain surgery or heart surgery, that I’d probably end up doing the same four or five procedures for the rest of my career.
And also, I had gone to Africa for a couple months doing a bunch of volunteer work at orphanages and clinics. And that was super cool. You’re seeing like 40, 60 patients a day. And that was super motivating and doing a whole bunch of different types of procedures. But then realizing that I was going to literally do the same 4 to 5 procedures after doing another 10 years in school was something I wasn’t super attracted to.
What was that like making that decision though? Cause that’s the, I mean, it’s not, you’re going to be a brain surgeon. I just mean in general, the amount of work you done, the dedication, like five years, like what was that like to finally like make that decision to pivot, so to speak? Yeah, it definitely would have been harder if I would have been older.
Because I didn’t have anything to lose. I was 18 years old. I already had my undergraduate degree. And I actually ended up starting doing my master’s in business administration at night, even though I did drop out of medical school. So like I was young, that was a huge advantage and I didn’t have to go into debt to get the pre med degree because I was mowing grass.
And so it’s definitely, that was an advantage, not having dependents or needing a source of income that was super steady. Man, that was some expensive tuition, right? Yeah, exactly. I think, you know, from the perspective of, you know, making that transition, it was definitely difficult, but mostly it’s around the year 2, marker of the business, when you’re not making money, you’re working tons of amounts of hours, and you start to second guess yourself as to whether or not maybe you should have just stayed in that traditional path, and that was probably the most difficult part.
Yeah. Okay. So now you’re, you’re, you, you decide, okay, wait a minute. This is where the money’s at. This is what I want to do. Or, or what, what, what went into that decision? I should say, let me not put words in your mouth. What, what went into that decision? Finally, to where you’re like, you know, I got this skill.
Like, this is what’s next. Realistically, when I first pivoted and switched and dropped out of medical school, it was not a matter of having a mission. It was more a matter of the only thing I know how to do. And so therefore, I am going to start Augusta Lawn Care and kind of just try to take it bigger, like go full time, essentially.
But there was no mission at the beginning. The mission came a few years later, once I got in a workplace accident and for a couple weeks couldn’t be in the business, and realized that I had built a business that was, you know, large, you know, almost seven figures. However, it was completely dependent on me working 80 hours a week.
In the business, and I was literally on the hospital bed, you know, face timing my crews so they could get through the next job because everything hinged on me. And so from that time is really when the mission of trying to change the industry kind of became a reality because I started to see that. I wasn’t the only one that had a business that was completely built on me working insane amounts of hours and very, very low profit margins.
And so that’s when I started creating content and just like sharing my story of how I turned the business around and what systems I implemented to make sure it became profitable. What do you, what during this time, when you’re making that transition, I know you were young, so that’s a good thing, but to be able to, and you didn’t have debt, but what was it like, what was your peer group around you saying?
Like, cause I’m doing, I’ll just share with myself, just see like when I moved from, you know, corporate to being in media and all that, like people thought I was crazy. So I’m just curious, like you, you obviously had been talking about this, you know, being a brain surgeon, all these things for many years, but.
and just happen, you know, overnight, right? And now you’re going to be in the long term. What were people, like, around you saying? Yeah, I would say, like, my parents and family didn’t say anything. They were very supportive, really from the beginning. They didn’t push me to go to school early. They make sure, okay, this is your decision.
We’re not encouraging or pushing you to do this. Shout out to the parents in your family and support system. , that’s very I feel like that’s progressive of them. Right? Like, most people wouldn’t, don’t always have that luxury. Go ahead, please. Yeah, I think that the part that was more difficult or like that there was some kickback was more the professors and peers from university.
So a lot of, especially in the research department, I did a lot of stuff around multiple sclerosis and a couple of diseases. And it’s like, I got to know a lot of those professors very deeply. And so they were very disappointed, probably mostly because they wanted to kind of see a prodigy of underneath their tutelage.
Really, ultimately, that’s probably what it was. But they were the ones that sent emails and were like, hey, I think you’re throwing away talent, things like that. And, you know, at the beginning, you know, I already made my decision, but definitely three years in, when you have no evidence of success, you feel like you’re working crazy amounts of hours, and you just about got killed because you don’t have systems in your business you certainly start to second guess yourself for sure.
Wow. Okay. So now you’re, you’re building the systems, you’re building the business and what, what happens next? Yeah. So I started sharing my story on YouTube kind of like there’s a different systems and procedures I was making paying people based upon performance instead of by the hour making estimate videos.
So as the estimate, I didn’t have to go back to the projects, all these little things in the business. And I started to realize that people really looked at me as more of a content creator or consultant Instead of someone that actually they would listen to and implement the systems And that hurt because I really did care about them actually seeing changes in their business And that’s when I decided we would franchise the business And that’s when we took the best of lawn care now a little over five years ago and started franchising And so now we have about 170 locations around the world But the reason we did that was because I knew that if I actually had the same brand as the business owner You If I had skin in the game and they’re winning, they’re winning that I would, that they listened to what I was saying.
And so now really we pivoted to a fact where our goal is to get to a thousand locations, mostly due to the fact that if we do that, we think we can change the expectations of the customer. Some of the Amazon changed the way that online e commerce looks. And that is, we expect free returns. We expect a wide variety of goods and services.
We expect things to be you know, very good support. And so really to change the level of professionalism now, it is. I will create a thousand locations of Augusta and within that thousand locations, we will compete with the vast majority of landscapers in order for them to be able to compete effectively with us.
They will have to adopt the systems and way of thinking that we think about business. Well, we answer our phone 24 7. we have credit cards on file. We have automations. We show up in professional trucks and uniforms. And so that’s really the, you know, how do we operationalize the mission is we change what the customer expects to happen when a landscaper shows up to their house.
And so what has been some of the I guess I’d like to take it from kind of from the franchisee standpoint for a moment, because you’ve grown pretty very successfully in that case. Like, are your franchisees? Are they do they normally have experience in landscaping? Are they looking to get a new business?
Like, give us a little bit of the demographic of like, who makes who’s a good fit for for being a franchisee. Yeah. About half of them come from actually an existing long care business. So a lot of these, these are owners that are wanting two things, either a systems to be able to scale the business up or two, they are wanting community to be able to take an existing business they’re in that they feel kind of alone in.
And they want to tap into the coaching, the community the ability, the admin. So there’s a lot of reasons why people join, but I’d say about half of them have existing businesses already in the long care industry. Okay. And what about the other half? Yeah. So most of those are, you know, they’re leaving corporate America, especially after COVID.
We had a lot of police officers, teachers, emergency response folks that wanted to join. Also people that have retired, they have, you know, 80, 100. 1, 000 to be able to spend on creating a business. If they have more, they might have a general manager, start the location from the beginning. And so that’s kind of the demographic coming in.
You wanting at least a hundred thousand dollars. If you’re willing to scale quickly, if you’re willing to kind of be in the business, actually doing the work yourself from day one and kind of grinding, you can get away with definitely more like 000, but we really encourage a hundred thousand dollar kind of investment upfront.
If you’re starting from nothing, so you get a few truck, a few employees, and really hit the ground running fast. Yeah, and what you said, you had, you had, you said a term earlier, and you said something about pay for performance. And I want to, I want to go the power pay for performance. I want to go back to that.
Like, what did you mean by that? Like, is this and also is that is that like, one of these defining things that have helped you fill in some of the success? Yeah, so like, when I first implemented pay for performance, the year prior. I was lucky to break even in the business is that the year within 1 year, I took 280, 000 in distributions and also my very 1st location.
And so pay for performance or what we call P for P is sort of cornerstone of the systems of Augusta lawn care. But we also share that with anyone else. So, P for P software. com is a software we built to actually calculate it. But ultimately, all P4P is, is the harder you work, the more money you make. And it’s for the frontline team members out in the field that are producing labor in any home service business.
And it’s essentially, you get a percentage of the labor revenue that you earn for the company. And so it’s not based upon penner, it’s not based upon who knows the boss, it’s not, you know, it doesn’t matter, you know, who works hard in front of the boss to get the raise or who asks for a raise. It is simply what is your production and how effective are you?
And paying someone by performance is the ultimate meritocracy and gets everyone aligned on creating, getting the work done efficiently. Instead of when you pay someone by the hour, the longer the job takes, the more money they make. And the shorter the job takes, the more the business owner makes. And so by aligning those both in the same direction, there’s also a lot of inherent benefits when it comes to leadership, accountability, quality control, as well as just not having to micromanage your team, because you know their best interest is that of the company.
I, I’m sure just based on, it sounds like you are pretty analytical dude here. Does this help with turnover? Yeah, certainly. Like, well, I would say actually spikes at the beginning because what happened in the first three to six weeks, someone starts to work. If they’re a low performer, they’ll get sniffed out.
It’s like very, very quickly. And traditionally when they kind of weed themselves out, huh? They kind of weed themselves out just because it’s like, if you were, wow. And then you must get a lift pretty quickly then go ahead. That’s interesting. Yeah. And more importantly, it’s actually the crew members on their team that will actually report them for lack of commitment slacking off, et cetera.
Because now when you’re making a percentage of labor revenue, if you have someone on your crew that’s slacking off, it actually affects your paycheck. Yeah, I don’t need to record them. I don’t need to track their trucks because internally there’s a system and a mechanism that’s going to weed out the low performers and the people who crush it, who just absolutely dominate a players.
They’re going to make 10, 15 more per hour than they could anywhere else because there’s actually a system in place that rewards their high production. And what has this done for culture? Sounds to me like this culture side just would be the offshoot of that ultimately. Originally I thought it would become more of a cutthroat, kind of one, you know, everyone’s looking out for themselves.
When you pair that up with a profit sharing program by which everyone now actually cares about the numbers, they want to see open books of the company. Now everyone’s actually, you know, if one person’s breaking equipment, if one person’s doing a bunch of callbacks and complaints from customers, it actually affects the entire team.
And so that’s kind of been The balance is like, yes, I want to reward production and speed. I also need the not only the quality, or the quantity, but the quality aspect. So if they make mistakes, they have to return back the job site. There’s the merits to the production pay that they’ve been being given if they do low quality work.
But then also having from a cultural perspective, that balance knowing that as a team, if we don’t perform well from the financial perspective, that is not going to be profit sharing makes total sense. And for the and it also seems like to me, the more you’re also over time you have, you just have more a players, so you’re working and then, like, , I’m just kind of going down the continuum of benefits here, and so now, probably, like, the quality of work, when you think about somebody hiring Augusta Lawn Care versus another, another lawn care company, not ragging on anybody, but it would seem, as a whole, over time, it just gets better and better, yeah?
Yeah, and ultimately, the most, you know, degrading or demotivating thing for an A player to do is have to work with people that all throughout the day are dragging their feet, they’re lazy, they don’t work hard, and so it’s certainly a benefit to the top performer. Now, to your point, the low performer will not feel welcome, but we push out very quickly, and ultimately that’s what we want when it comes to the system.
Yeah, it makes total sense. Mike, give me give me some of your vision. What’s next with with Augusta Lawn Care? Like, what’s your vision for the company going forward? Yeah. So, like, in the past couple of years, we really lean on software a lot. I really believe that when it comes to home services and specifically lawn care that, In 10 years or so, robotics will become extremely important and will replace an extremely high cost part of our business, which is the labor itself.
And it’s harder and harder to find good people that want to work. It’s becoming more and more expensive to find that work. Well, at the same time, the technology that can replace that labor is getting cheaper and cheaper every day. And it’s getting better and better every day. So eventually those 2 lines will intersect and they’ll cross.
And I think that’s going to be still 10 years away from now. I don’t think it’s good enough now in terms of cost or effectiveness of the technology. But when that happens, I think the company that will take a lot of market share from a very fragmented marketplace, like right now there’s 600, 000 landscapers in the U.
S. No one owns more than a couple percent of that pie. And so in order to be able to gain that market share, I think whoever takes share of robotics will be the one that takes a big chunk of the market. The thing with like Uber and Lyft take a huge chunk Percentage of the cab market. Once technology and mobile networks really took over.
And so in order to kind of position ourselves for that, we really focus on software for the next 10 years. So we have co op at crm. com, we have p4psoftware. com, we use AI to answer a lot of our phone calls and sell jobs over the phone. And I think, I think that distribution of all our locations paired with the software that we are building over the next 10 years will put us in a good spot that when, the technology of robotics is both economical and efficient enough, we’ll be able to kind of use that to scale the company.
Amazing. And Mike, if somebody’s listening to this or watching this and they want to learn more about Augusta Lawn Care, whether they’re, you know, interested in maybe talk about a franchise or, or just want to know, even if Augusta is in their local area, I mean how do they connect with you and your team?
Yeah, AugustaLongCareServices. com is there, but also if you just want to watch our YouTube videos, I make content there all the time. We have 200, 000 subscribers and I make turnaround videos, so we basically travel out to companies and try to help them turn around the business once they’re in a struggling spot.
And so it’s kind of entertaining it’s pretty cool. And so feel free to just go on YouTube, search MyCandies, you’ll find those, they’re pretty cool. Perfect. And for everybody watching or listening to this, just so you know, we’ll put links to this in the show notes. So you can just click on the link and head right on over.
And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button. This is a daily show each and every day. We’re putting out new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way in your journey as well.
So again, hit that subscribe or follow button and Mike, man, appreciate you coming on the show. Thanks again. Awesome. Thank you, Adam. You take care.