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here with Mike Andes welcome to 10 clients to be honest that's what I built Augusta Longcare on you will be the leader to the culture that you create a business to be had again I'm Mike Andes check out landscapegoodnesscourse.com until next time be great because nothing else pays
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This is the Business Turnaround Show.
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My name is Mike Andes, the founder of Augusta Lawn Care.
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We have over 180 locations around the world.
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This is actually the five year anniversary of me starting that business when I was 18 years old.
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And we're really looking for in September, starting with 10 franchisees.
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Why the first 10 joined Augusta, I really don't know.
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Most of them are still with us today.
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I still to this day am very thankful and grateful that they put that trust in me because that's all they were really banking on.
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What do we do as landscapers?
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Every single aspect of customer experience must be systematized.
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Versus now like us, we have 39 locations, but all in the U.S. and Canada.
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What does it feel like to go international, deal with different cultures?
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What is it like to have to be traveling so much?
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Like, how do you manage that?
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Because that will probably be me one day, right?
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Today, we're in Illinois.
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Today, we're in Utah.
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Today, we're in Pennsylvania.
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Today, we're in Texas.
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And I travel the country fixing struggling businesses.
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Hitting 180 locations has been nice.
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We're almost at 200.
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250 will be the friends with the most locations in the green industry, which will be kind of cool.
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What's up, YouTube?
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Welcome to the first vlog.
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But ultimately, we need to reach 1,000 locations.
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So we're at a pit stop here at 180.
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Casual, you know, we're looking for that casual look.
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Wait, hold on, hold on.
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We're gonna have to re-ask this.
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Where is this going?
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This is behind the scenes, dude.
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All right, Michael.
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What is something, if there's one thing that the Augusta owners take away from this event, what do you hope it is?
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I don't know if you guys have noticed that, but like the franchise has settled.
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People at large are like much more comfortable with the path.
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It's almost like they know what the destination is, so they're comfortable with the journey.
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I think that's because of the changes we made.
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Well, and also because there's a finish line now, before it was just like growing to eternity.
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It's predestinated.
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That's what I'm saying.
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Dude, it all ties in.
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Most importantly, I think, is just that they feel a part of the community.
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All these owners have multiple locations or big businesses, and so it's very rare to be able to share your kind of your wins.
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And then also being able to share your loads and things you're struggling with in a vulnerable place without people against any stupid stuff.
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I think a lot of times when we get caught up in just the day-to-day operations of the business, you do that for a few seasons, you get burnt out, you get worn down, you have personal stuff happening in life.
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Stuff's changing all along the way.
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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.
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And if the leader of the organization gets disconnected from their why...
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Then same with everyone else that they're leading.
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And then the whole organization is just weak at that point.
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Even big business owners have problems.
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And so I've been in rooms where there's a bunch of people with 10, 20, 30 million dollar businesses.
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And they still have troubles and issues and complexes and things they're working on.
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And a lot of times you don't find people that you can share those with.
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And so creating a safe environment for them to be able to talk with each other and share those wins and losses is important.
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So I think that's the main thing that I'm hoping people get away from it is kind of reground themselves and their purpose for the business, what the path forward looks like, what kind of life they're trying to create for themselves, their family, their team members, and get passionate about that again.
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Because it's, again, really easy when you have guys calling out left and right, you have guys quitting on you.
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It's really easy to kind of like give up on that stuff.
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So I think that's the thing I would hope for is people kind of get regrounded in like, you know, what their true core motivation is around the business.
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And then they can use that as rocket fuel kind of going forward.
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Welcome, everybody.
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So we'll get started.
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The first hour will be a bit of a warm up.
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So...
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Forgive me, it'll be mostly me trying to get in the rhythm of a different form of content.
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Yeah, like the first hour is always like a bit of a icebreaker, especially when you're going deeper topics.
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You gotta break the glass, like break the ice and jump in.
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The whole theme of today and what we want to talk about hinges on this idea that we are here to manage resources, relationships, and time.
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And we are stewards of these things that have been given to us.
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There's a finite amount of time.
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There's a finite amount of resources and there's finite amount of relationships that we can build as individuals.
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And I would say the people in this room are part of those relationships.
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Your spouse, your family, the people in your network, the people in your community, these are all relationships.
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These are resources that have been given to you.
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We all have time.
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We all woke up this morning, had breath in our lungs.
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We have the ability to expend this finite resource called time.
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This audience of larger business owners, people have multiple locations that have general managers is a very different audience than I have on YouTube.
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Or I have, even when I talk to the public, August Nation.
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There's different problems they're having.
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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.
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It is extremely, extremely hard to build teams.
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It's so much more...
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deeper on a relational level with the employees.
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And I think, I hope that we can reinvigorate them to buy back into their mission and to sell that mission and vision to their employees every day.
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And just crush it, honestly.
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Like we just wanna see them all crush it.
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That's really our goal.
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The quote is often used, we are stronger together.
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If you have only one bond, if you only have one connection and it's broken, you are severed from the body.
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But if you have many connections and many relationships and you've done a good job of allocating time and energy towards fostering those relationships, it's very difficult to quit.
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It's very difficult to fail.
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Because when you're low, other people will pick you back up.
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So I encourage you today, invest in those relationships.
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Take 20 minutes to do that.
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And we'll be back at 1025.
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I think just like the power of community.
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Like everyone...
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logically joins Augusta Nation because of like the discounts that you get from GM on your trucks and Gravely and Wright and all these discounts and like you get software for free and you get command center and you get a website like the reason you join Augusta Lawn Care
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is because of the community.
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Like the theme of the whole event next couple days is stewardship.
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And it's like you are a steward of your time, your resources and your relationships.
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And those are the things that we focus on with these sides of business owner because many times the thing that keeps them from a million and 10 million is not like,
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What truck do I get?
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It is, how do I take limited amount of time, limited amount of resources, and limited time that I have for relationships and allow this to be a cohesive relationship with altogether my life and be able to build a business that other people wanna follow me, that leaders want to be led from me.
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And regardless of whether or not you're religious, and you know that that is the parable of the talents, the fact of the matter is that we will all eventually give back our resources.
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The money in your bank account, if you died tomorrow, would go to somebody else.
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The relationships that you would have would go to somebody else.
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The time that you have would no longer, it would be extinguished, it would be gone.
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And so for this period of time,
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This small window of time that you've been given these things.
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The question is, what return will you have on these resources?
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How do we inspire this group of people to lead their team better?
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And I think being a steward of what God has given you in the form of resources, time and relationships is very important.
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And by getting those things to work harmoniously together, your business does better because you as a human, you as a person are more whole being.
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The reason people follow you is because you are a leader.
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But the first step to being a leader is knowing where you're going, having a destination.
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Otherwise it's exercise in futility.
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It is burnt out days that have a loss of meaning and that's when people quit.
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It's because they lose sight of the vision.
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And having a vision and a clear destination of where you're trying to go for the business, for your community, for your family, and what you're trying to achieve, most importantly,
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will keep you from quitting.
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And if you don't mind, I wanted to ask someone here what their vision was.
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More importantly, from a more micro perspective, why they quote, joined Augusta.
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And the reason is because I wanted to make a point about leadership, our vision, and our stewardship.
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Paul, if you don't mind.
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will kind of bounce around a little bit, make it a little easier.
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So we started a family business a few years, you know, back in 23.
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We started the Parking Lot Nance Company.
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And the goal is to kind of grow that.
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And we've seen in that the scalability is a little bit harder in trying to bounce within a certain market.
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So we've shifted into this.
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But the underlying why is our son was killed three years ago.
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And his goal was always to be an entrepreneur.
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And after his death, we found his book, his journal.
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And in there, all he ever talked about was to be an entrepreneur, build a legacy for his daughter, who's two years old at the time.
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So we've taken that on as our responsibility.
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And that was the big push into Augusta, is the systems, the community, everything to help us drive this home and fulfill his dream.
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Thank you.
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I think that's the strongest point of joining a franchise or a community of any sort.
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I think it's so powerful.
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I hope people get the feeling that I get when I'm around Augusta Nation, which is like you're part of something bigger.
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There's people you can trust.
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There's people you can share with.
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And you're not alone.
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And I think for a lot of entrepreneurs and small business owners, they feel very alone.
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Because the reason that Paul will be successful is not because he has industry experience, not because he has all of these firing in all cylinders for him to be successful.
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It will be simply by the fact as to why he started this business and the vision that he has to accomplish.
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And it goes beyond him.
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There was no mention of Paul in his vision.
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Honestly, seeing how it affected the business when I was clear about my vision and then shared that with the team showed how imperative it was to attract the right people, attract the right resources, attract the right relationships.
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You have to have a clear vision.
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And the first step in having that vision is being very, very clear and intentional.
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What's the plan?
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How am I going to get there?
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And actually then executing on that.
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I've actually asked myself this question a lot.
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It's like, what makes this special?
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Well, one is Lee screens everyone that comes in.
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So everyone kind of passes Lee's check.
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So it makes sense why we have so many like-minded owners.
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But I think the main thing is that I feel like everyone in Augusta is much more purpose-driven and has much larger goals and ambitions beyond just running their lawn care business.
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The quality of the people inside of Augusta Nation and the direction we're all heading in, which is constant improvement, like that is our number one core value.
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We practice what we preach and we operate on a different level.
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And if you ever want to be a part of it, just reach out to us.
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I think that's the main thing with all the Augusta owners is everyone holds themselves to a high standard.
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Everyone likes the brand.
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Everyone likes representing the brand, treating the employees well.
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All those things that go with like raising the level of professionalism, people like the identity of what we represent and the identity comes from all of the people inside of Augusta.
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So it's sort of like a self-fulfilling cycle.
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But that's the main thing is people are driven by purpose.
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Yeah, I think they just have bigger goals for themselves and their employees.
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My name is Ryan Payne.
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I have two regions in Texas.
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I have one in Corpus Christi and one around the Austin Metroplex.
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I joined Augusta in 2020.
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I bought into Augusta to be a part of something larger.
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But the biggest hurdle for us, even pre-Augusta getting there, was basically becoming the leader that you need to be to attract the managers that you rely on.
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In the beginning, you don't have the experience
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in the industry or in leadership to attract the quality of leaders that you get down the road.
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And it's tough to get through those first years where you're kind of a new rookie.
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Everyone you bring in can sense you're a rookie like dogs smell fear.
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And it's hard to get that respect or have them to trust you during turbulent times when cash flow is bad or you're running out of money.
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When you're out in the wild, when you're out lost, you need a compass.
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You need something to look at and have some sort of truth as to why you can keep walking.
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Because when all the trees look the same, when all the rocks look the same, I need to look at something and have surety and confidence that this will not change.
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And to me, inside of our businesses, that is the vision.
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That is the vision statement is why are we doing this?
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And where are we trying to go?
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Because if we don't have clarity and the compass is wrong, we will take action, but we will burn out.
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We will exhaust all of our resources, all of our time, and all of our relationships going after something without any final destination.
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Honestly, it's looking at the times when you wanted to quit or you felt like a failure and reverse engineering, how do I fix that?
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And then knowing that it will work for them now without them having to get the failure.
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So like, me not having a vision caused bug hell.
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Because I couldn't attract great talent.
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And so why not just tell them to get the vision clear now so they'll never hit the bottleneck of not being able to attract great leadership.
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A lot of it is like my own pain and issues I went through and trying to find out what the fix was and then just giving that to them now instead of having them out of their own.
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It's easier when you can point back and say, hey, you see the other six locations, look at their profit share, this GM made 100,000 last year, here's his paycheck stub, he doesn't mind if I share.
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There's a lot of evidence to believe you and follow you.
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In my new locations, I get much higher quality talent willing to follow me from the get go because I can say, look at my track record.
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This event here is our seven figure club.
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So it's our multi-unit owners and multi-million dollar revenue generating owners.
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And this event is great because what Mike does, he strips away all the fluff, all the corporate nuance, and it's just people in a room that are trying to win.
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And those people want to get better every single day.
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They want to pay their employees better.
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And ultimately, they want to be better stewards.
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And that was the topic of this event was to be better stewards of the resources that you have.
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And I would define stewardship because it's actually one of the hardest words to define.
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Like if any of you have actually sat and wrestled with that, like how would I define stewardship?
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Not let me Google it.
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Let me look at chat GPT.
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Like how would I personally define stewardship?
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It's an extremely hard word to define.
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But I would define stewardship as partnering in something that is greater than the sum of said parts.
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You have something that is to be stewarded, that is to be expounded on, and that is to be given back to others.
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And I would say an employee is a partner.
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Yes, they don't invest equity in the business or interest.
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Maybe they didn't pay to join the company, but they are your partner in the mission that you've set forth.
221
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And it just shows the growth of Augusta as a whole.
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And, you know, my story, hey, I was hired as a laborer.
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I was hired as a guy to just push mow lawns.
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Like that was it.
225
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Mike didn't know me from anyone else.
226
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And he was like, hey, this guy seems like he can push a mower, so let's hire him.
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I mean, I think it's nice to see it grow.
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It kind of validates that you were right.
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It was real because we joined.
230
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It was so small.
231
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Like there was no command center.
232
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We had an agent assigned to just our location.
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One person took all of our calls.
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Like it's changed so much.
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And I just wanted to do something bigger.
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I saw Mike on YouTube one day and literally in 24 hours, booked a call to talk to him.
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That was back when he would still talk to you.
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I got with him within a week.
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And next thing you know, we were a part of the franchise.
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I think our first location was number 14 or 17.
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It speaks to the growth that Mike has had as a leader and as someone who has pushed the vision of Augusta Forward that other people now buy into that vision and those other people now are working towards that vision in their own communities and in their own businesses to give opportunities like I received from Mike to go from someone who's just a college dropout to now doing sales for one of the fastest growing franchises in the world.
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What I did is I asked some of Mike's most long-tenured employees
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and his top performers to answer two simple questions for me.
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How long have you worked for Mike?
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Why do you work for Mike?
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And it gave me four commonalities.
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The number one commonality from employees that have worked for Mike the longest and are his top performers.
248
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And this is across Augusta.
249
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This is across the media team.
250
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This is across Copilot.
251
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Vision.
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Clarity.
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You must be clear on your vision.
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And that means repeating it over and over and over again.
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One day it clicked for me.
256
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One day the vision became reality.
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Then all of a sudden I saw this guy was making promise after promise after promise.
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And we were hitting the goal and hitting the goal and hitting the goal.
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I was like, oh, this vision actually means something.
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Oh, we can actually make change here.
261
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Oh, I can actually get promoted here.
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Because Mike was always tenacious about making sure his vision was clear.
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If you knew me before, Augusta, I was heading nowhere fast.
264
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Kind of gave me the purpose I was looking for in life, just a cause to kind of dedicate myself to.
265
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My dad kicked me out when I was in high school.
266
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So yeah, I was just kind of drifting around the world aimlessly.
267
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When I first started, I had never had any experience on a tractor or skid steer or anything.
268
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And the next morning coming from the medical field, I was on a tractor for the first time ever.
269
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Yeah, you come into Augusta and Mike's got this vision and it's not often that you come across someone that has a vision to do something so big that involves so many people and changed my life, changed the way I think.
270
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I used to think that you had to like have a certified college degree in order to start a business.
271
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which that's how fixed my mindset was.
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I was just clueless, you know, C's and D's in school, just like never considered myself smart.
273
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But I just learned through Mike and his leadership that I have the capacity to learn and grow.
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And these are some of the things that employees said about it.
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I want to be part of building something great with him.
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He has a clear vision, not only for each individual company, but also the Mike Holdco as a whole.
277
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Mike's passion for changing the professionalism in such a large industry was motivating for me.
278
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I believe deeply in the mission.
279
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I'm committed to dedicating my career to helping realize Mike's vision.
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I think when someone changes your life so fundamentally like that, like, you kind of owe them.
281
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Not that Mike would ever say that, but that's how I feel.
282
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He's the most giving, transparent person I've ever met.
283
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And he has a vision beyond himself and...
284
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his little world, he's thinking always 30 foot.
285
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Mike's always so open to feedback.
286
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Like when he says be humble and teachable, like he leads by example.
287
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And that's why I joined.
288
00:18:21.834 --> 00:18:23.155
So I could be a part of something bigger.
289
00:18:23.195 --> 00:18:28.639
And now I have almost 200 locations doing OTPs that just started from a little shop in South Texas.
290
00:18:28.819 --> 00:18:30.520
I wouldn't have had that impact without Mike.
291
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He can put it to a much bigger community and he basically can give breath to your ideas as a small guy.
292
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The mission has always been the same.
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to help others become better.
294
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I quickly felt I was invested into something bigger.
295
00:18:46.453 --> 00:18:48.114
And the employee added emphasis here, not me.
296
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And wanted, in all caps, wanted to be part of that journey and that mission.
297
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For me, I would say that the reason I work for Mike, the reason I work for Augusta, the reason I sell the product of Augusta,
298
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is because I truly believe it's going to help small business owners.
299
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And I also know the level of care that Mike and his team put into the product.
300
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And that's why I'm so bought in.
301
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Mike gives and gives and gives to these owners.
302
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He gives and gives to his team.
303
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And like, that's someone I'm going to follow.
304
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That's someone I'm going to work hard for.
305
00:19:16.632 --> 00:19:19.734
That's really the main thing to have somebody you can get behind their vision.
306
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If you don't have a vision of your own, get behind somebody who does have one and build something with them.
307
00:19:24.718 --> 00:19:27.620
We could both run separate businesses, but I think we're better together.
308
00:19:27.680 --> 00:19:30.822
And that's the pattern that I've seen working for Mike for all the years that I have.
309
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The vision was clear.
310
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The opportunities were created.
311
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Here's my mission.
312
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Here's my vision.
313
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It's huge.
314
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And I want yours to fit inside that.
315
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Can we do this together?
316
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Can you hit your personal goals while we also hit our professional goals?
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How can we do that?
318
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How can we make sure that that works?
319
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The goal ultimately is to bring the community together.
320
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And in the stages of wealth, we're trying to figure out how do we help these business owners become rich, not just mow grass.
321
00:19:56.097 --> 00:19:58.578
So today is a lot about taxes.
322
00:19:58.598 --> 00:19:59.399
It's about relationships.
323
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It's about your lifestyle.
324
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It's about time management.
325
00:20:01.660 --> 00:20:03.581
It's the next level of business ownership.
326
00:20:04.102 --> 00:20:05.863
And we want to make sure that they have that full capacity.
327
00:20:06.383 --> 00:20:09.946
from stage one all the way to stage seven, which they start diversifying the other stuff.
328
00:20:10.026 --> 00:20:16.271
Okay, so in Augusta Nation, as we talked about earlier, we have the seven stages of wealth for owners, okay?
329
00:20:16.631 --> 00:20:21.515
I believe this should be followed in sequence and doing so outside of sequence increases risk.
330
00:20:21.955 --> 00:20:25.618
But we've never added really the structure or framework for general managers.
331
00:20:25.738 --> 00:20:29.121
How should they look at their stages of success inside of Augusta Nation?
332
00:20:29.541 --> 00:20:31.703
Now this is not locked in stone.
333
00:20:31.843 --> 00:20:34.325
This is more of, I liked your feedback on this.
334
00:20:34.565 --> 00:20:40.387
Yeah, some of it was also workshopping like new systems we're adding to Augusta around general managers, team members.
335
00:20:40.587 --> 00:20:45.588
We always have said we want to get them to the next stage of their career, but we've never created definitions for that.
336
00:20:45.628 --> 00:20:47.829
For technicians on the field, for general managers.
337
00:20:47.889 --> 00:20:55.791
And so we workshopped a lot with them and now we have like very clear seven stages for a technician, seven stages for a general manager, and then seven stages for an owner.
338
00:20:56.171 --> 00:21:01.453
And so now there's technically 21 stages of success instead of Augusta and that's something we've been working towards.
339
00:21:01.753 --> 00:21:08.455
I kind of anticipate this being a two to three year plan because regardless of where you're starting out, you got to get through an off season.
340
00:21:08.735 --> 00:21:10.896
You got to have four straight quarters of distributions.
341
00:21:12.636 --> 00:21:13.617
And I've got to mentor someone.
342
00:21:13.717 --> 00:21:14.617
That's going to take me two years.
343
00:21:14.857 --> 00:21:28.561
The ability to walk away from this event and say owners of Augusta Nation created this system is far more powerful than Michael in his bedroom, locked the door and came out with some magic because that can be refuted much easier than as a collective with people with real experience, we created the system together.
344
00:21:28.801 --> 00:21:37.847
The reason I'm doing this is because I feel like by adding clarity around the stages of wealth, what we've allowed to do is create a common language in determining where I'm at.
345
00:21:38.267 --> 00:21:41.069
And if I feel like I'm on a treadmill, at least I know what stage I'm on.
346
00:21:41.329 --> 00:21:42.790
And I know why I'm feeling that way.
347
00:21:43.030 --> 00:21:47.052
And I feel like there's also progress despite the fact I feel like I'm doing the same thing for five years.
348
00:21:47.392 --> 00:21:49.994
But over the course of those five years, I get through stages one through five.
349
00:21:50.134 --> 00:21:57.639
So originally what made me want to buy into Augusta was a lot of it was Mike, like just seeing what he does, like his systems and everything.
350
00:21:57.859 --> 00:22:01.361
I think at the time there was like almost 100 other locations, something like that.
351
00:22:01.621 --> 00:22:03.763
And it's like, it's working for all these guys too.
352
00:22:03.903 --> 00:22:05.704
And they're telling me like, you should do it.
353
00:22:05.744 --> 00:22:08.366
This is one of the best decisions I ever made.
354
00:22:08.866 --> 00:22:12.608
In my head, I'm like, okay, it's working for all these guys too.
355
00:22:12.648 --> 00:22:15.230
So why shouldn't I go learn from him as well?
356
00:22:15.410 --> 00:22:16.110
all wrapped into one.
357
00:22:16.150 --> 00:22:28.696
It's the kind of relationships that we built through Augusta, the other owners, talking with other owners, understanding the industry knowledge, people that are ahead of us are able to kind of show us the way, how to kind of move the business along.
358
00:22:28.736 --> 00:22:39.160
And then the people sort of that are smaller businesses are kind of behind us, they sort of have the motivation and I don't know, it just kind of keeps you on track to kind of get to where, you know, where you're looking to go, I guess.
359
00:22:39.200 --> 00:22:45.684
But also since joining Augusta, like we have increased our growth rate and more importantly, our profitability has really increased.
360
00:22:45.724 --> 00:22:47.305
So that'd be my answer.
361
00:22:47.445 --> 00:22:49.747
I joined because I had an existing company.
362
00:22:50.747 --> 00:22:51.428
It was failing.
363
00:22:52.368 --> 00:22:58.232
We had just done 400,000 in revenue in 2019 and we lost $9,000.
364
00:22:58.472 --> 00:23:04.877
And then I found Mike's content on YouTube, talked about pay for performance, went to his conference in 2020.
365
00:23:04.897 --> 00:23:06.478
I think that was his second one.
366
00:23:06.598 --> 00:23:07.838
Came back, implemented P4P.
367
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It worked.
368
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We grew the business from 400 to 700 and it made me a believer.
369
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And then I made the commitment to join them.
370
00:23:16.501 --> 00:23:20.963
So just knowing I would immediately have that support is if I was like a huge business.
371
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But I'm just like this like tiny one man show.
372
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And now I've got all that support.
373
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That was a lot of it, too.
374
00:23:26.964 --> 00:23:28.485
They're exactly where I want them to be.
375
00:23:28.505 --> 00:23:31.266
800,000 revenue, 200,000 profit around there.
376
00:23:31.906 --> 00:23:36.067
And then figuring out how to repeat that, train GMs and just repeat that.
377
00:23:36.167 --> 00:23:37.928
And the same thing I think is true with GMs.
378
00:23:37.968 --> 00:23:41.649
They get delusioned by the fact they keep doing the same thing every single day.
379
00:23:41.849 --> 00:23:45.650
It's always the same stuff and I don't see any progress in what's going on with my life.
380
00:23:45.870 --> 00:23:50.992
And to be able to have some stages where they can actually talk to each other and be like, I'm in stage three, what stage are you in?
381
00:23:51.372 --> 00:23:53.993
As general managers, it's gonna be valuable in my opinion.
382
00:23:54.153 --> 00:24:01.715
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.
383
00:24:02.664 --> 00:24:09.208
And I don't believe that it is right that the person that taught needs to be doing the lower level tasks.
384
00:24:09.348 --> 00:24:10.668
It's a bad use of time.
385
00:24:11.329 --> 00:24:13.010
It's a bad use of the resources.
386
00:24:13.270 --> 00:24:16.111
It's a bad use of that energy.
387
00:24:16.191 --> 00:24:25.897
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, unuseful, and then the technicians laugh at them.
388
00:24:26.736 --> 00:24:28.399
Yeah, that's hilarious, but that does not work.
389
00:24:28.980 --> 00:24:30.542
And so I've always tried.
390
00:24:30.942 --> 00:24:32.365
It's sometimes difficult.
391
00:24:33.446 --> 00:24:36.651
But a big piece of the day is I need to stay grounded with the owners.
392
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I need to know what they're feeling.
393
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I need to know what their general managers are feeling so we can serve them better.
1
00:00:01.118 --> 00:00:14.017
here with Mike Andes welcome to 10 clients to be honest that's what I built Augusta Longcare on you will be the leader to the culture that you create a business to be had again I'm Mike Andes check out landscapegoodnesscourse.com until next time be great because nothing else pays
2
00:00:15.561 --> 00:00:17.762
This is the Business Turnaround Show.
3
00:00:17.862 --> 00:00:20.423
My name is Mike Andes, the founder of Augusta Lawn Care.
4
00:00:20.443 --> 00:00:22.943
We have over 180 locations around the world.
5
00:00:23.043 --> 00:00:27.885
This is actually the five year anniversary of me starting that business when I was 18 years old.
6
00:00:28.065 --> 00:00:31.006
And we're really looking for in September, starting with 10 franchisees.
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Why the first 10 joined Augusta, I really don't know.
8
00:00:34.747 --> 00:00:36.028
Most of them are still with us today.
9
00:00:36.288 --> 00:00:42.190
I still to this day am very thankful and grateful that they put that trust in me because that's all they were really banking on.
10
00:00:42.230 --> 00:00:43.570
What do we do as landscapers?
11
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Every single aspect of customer experience must be systematized.
12
00:00:46.892 --> 00:00:50.633
Versus now like us, we have 39 locations, but all in the U.S. and Canada.
13
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What does it feel like to go international, deal with different cultures?
14
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What is it like to have to be traveling so much?
15
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Like, how do you manage that?
16
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Because that will probably be me one day, right?
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Today, we're in Illinois.
18
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Today, we're in Utah.
19
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Today, we're in Pennsylvania.
20
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Today, we're in Texas.
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And I travel the country fixing struggling businesses.
22
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Hitting 180 locations has been nice.
23
00:01:13.723 --> 00:01:14.644
We're almost at 200.
24
00:01:14.744 --> 00:01:19.865
250 will be the friends with the most locations in the green industry, which will be kind of cool.
25
00:01:19.885 --> 00:01:20.746
What's up, YouTube?
26
00:01:20.926 --> 00:01:23.306
Welcome to the first vlog.
27
00:01:23.366 --> 00:01:25.347
But ultimately, we need to reach 1,000 locations.
28
00:01:25.627 --> 00:01:27.808
So we're at a pit stop here at 180.
29
00:01:37.222 --> 00:01:40.525
Casual, you know, we're looking for that casual look.
30
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Wait, hold on, hold on.
31
00:01:42.246 --> 00:01:43.887
We're gonna have to re-ask this.
32
00:01:43.967 --> 00:01:44.848
Where is this going?
33
00:01:44.868 --> 00:01:45.888
This is behind the scenes, dude.
34
00:01:46.169 --> 00:01:46.949
All right, Michael.
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00:01:48.190 --> 00:01:54.294
What is something, if there's one thing that the Augusta owners take away from this event, what do you hope it is?
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00:01:54.314 --> 00:01:57.937
I don't know if you guys have noticed that, but like the franchise has settled.
37
00:01:58.807 --> 00:02:02.614
People at large are like much more comfortable with the path.
38
00:02:02.694 --> 00:02:05.859
It's almost like they know what the destination is, so they're comfortable with the journey.
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I think that's because of the changes we made.
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Well, and also because there's a finish line now, before it was just like growing to eternity.
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It's predestinated.
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That's what I'm saying.
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Dude, it all ties in.
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Most importantly, I think, is just that they feel a part of the community.
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All these owners have multiple locations or big businesses, and so it's very rare to be able to share your kind of your wins.
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And then also being able to share your loads and things you're struggling with in a vulnerable place without people against any stupid stuff.
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I think a lot of times when we get caught up in just the day-to-day operations of the business, you do that for a few seasons, you get burnt out, you get worn down, you have personal stuff happening in life.
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Stuff's changing all along the way.
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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.
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And if the leader of the organization gets disconnected from their why...
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Then same with everyone else that they're leading.
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And then the whole organization is just weak at that point.
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Even big business owners have problems.
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And so I've been in rooms where there's a bunch of people with 10, 20, 30 million dollar businesses.
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And they still have troubles and issues and complexes and things they're working on.
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And a lot of times you don't find people that you can share those with.
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And so creating a safe environment for them to be able to talk with each other and share those wins and losses is important.
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So I think that's the main thing that I'm hoping people get away from it is kind of reground themselves and their purpose for the business, what the path forward looks like, what kind of life they're trying to create for themselves, their family, their team members, and get passionate about that again.
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Because it's, again, really easy when you have guys calling out left and right, you have guys quitting on you.
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It's really easy to kind of like give up on that stuff.
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So I think that's the thing I would hope for is people kind of get regrounded in like, you know, what their true core motivation is around the business.
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And then they can use that as rocket fuel kind of going forward.
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Welcome, everybody.
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So we'll get started.
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The first hour will be a bit of a warm up.
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So...
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Forgive me, it'll be mostly me trying to get in the rhythm of a different form of content.
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Yeah, like the first hour is always like a bit of a icebreaker, especially when you're going deeper topics.
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You gotta break the glass, like break the ice and jump in.
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The whole theme of today and what we want to talk about hinges on this idea that we are here to manage resources, relationships, and time.
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And we are stewards of these things that have been given to us.
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There's a finite amount of time.
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There's a finite amount of resources and there's finite amount of relationships that we can build as individuals.
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And I would say the people in this room are part of those relationships.
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Your spouse, your family, the people in your network, the people in your community, these are all relationships.
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These are resources that have been given to you.
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We all have time.
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We all woke up this morning, had breath in our lungs.
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We have the ability to expend this finite resource called time.
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This audience of larger business owners, people have multiple locations that have general managers is a very different audience than I have on YouTube.
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Or I have, even when I talk to the public, August Nation.
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There's different problems they're having.
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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.
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It is extremely, extremely hard to build teams.
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It's so much more...
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deeper on a relational level with the employees.
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And I think, I hope that we can reinvigorate them to buy back into their mission and to sell that mission and vision to their employees every day.
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And just crush it, honestly.
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Like we just wanna see them all crush it.
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That's really our goal.
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The quote is often used, we are stronger together.
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If you have only one bond, if you only have one connection and it's broken, you are severed from the body.
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But if you have many connections and many relationships and you've done a good job of allocating time and energy towards fostering those relationships, it's very difficult to quit.
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It's very difficult to fail.
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Because when you're low, other people will pick you back up.
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So I encourage you today, invest in those relationships.
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Take 20 minutes to do that.
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And we'll be back at 1025.
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I think just like the power of community.
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Like everyone...
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logically joins Augusta Nation because of like the discounts that you get from GM on your trucks and Gravely and Wright and all these discounts and like you get software for free and you get command center and you get a website like the reason you join Augusta Lawn Care
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is because of the community.
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Like the theme of the whole event next couple days is stewardship.
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And it's like you are a steward of your time, your resources and your relationships.
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And those are the things that we focus on with these sides of business owner because many times the thing that keeps them from a million and 10 million is not like,
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What truck do I get?
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It is, how do I take limited amount of time, limited amount of resources, and limited time that I have for relationships and allow this to be a cohesive relationship with altogether my life and be able to build a business that other people wanna follow me, that leaders want to be led from me.
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And regardless of whether or not you're religious, and you know that that is the parable of the talents, the fact of the matter is that we will all eventually give back our resources.
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The money in your bank account, if you died tomorrow, would go to somebody else.
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The relationships that you would have would go to somebody else.
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The time that you have would no longer, it would be extinguished, it would be gone.
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And so for this period of time,
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This small window of time that you've been given these things.
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The question is, what return will you have on these resources?
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How do we inspire this group of people to lead their team better?
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And I think being a steward of what God has given you in the form of resources, time and relationships is very important.
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And by getting those things to work harmoniously together, your business does better because you as a human, you as a person are more whole being.
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The reason people follow you is because you are a leader.
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But the first step to being a leader is knowing where you're going, having a destination.
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Otherwise it's exercise in futility.
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It is burnt out days that have a loss of meaning and that's when people quit.
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It's because they lose sight of the vision.
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And having a vision and a clear destination of where you're trying to go for the business, for your community, for your family, and what you're trying to achieve, most importantly,
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will keep you from quitting.
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And if you don't mind, I wanted to ask someone here what their vision was.
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More importantly, from a more micro perspective, why they quote, joined Augusta.
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And the reason is because I wanted to make a point about leadership, our vision, and our stewardship.
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Paul, if you don't mind.
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will kind of bounce around a little bit, make it a little easier.
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So we started a family business a few years, you know, back in 23.
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We started the Parking Lot Nance Company.
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And the goal is to kind of grow that.
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And we've seen in that the scalability is a little bit harder in trying to bounce within a certain market.
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So we've shifted into this.
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But the underlying why is our son was killed three years ago.
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And his goal was always to be an entrepreneur.
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And after his death, we found his book, his journal.
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And in there, all he ever talked about was to be an entrepreneur, build a legacy for his daughter, who's two years old at the time.
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So we've taken that on as our responsibility.
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And that was the big push into Augusta, is the systems, the community, everything to help us drive this home and fulfill his dream.
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Thank you.
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I think that's the strongest point of joining a franchise or a community of any sort.
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I think it's so powerful.
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I hope people get the feeling that I get when I'm around Augusta Nation, which is like you're part of something bigger.
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There's people you can trust.
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There's people you can share with.
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And you're not alone.
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And I think for a lot of entrepreneurs and small business owners, they feel very alone.
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Because the reason that Paul will be successful is not because he has industry experience, not because he has all of these firing in all cylinders for him to be successful.
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It will be simply by the fact as to why he started this business and the vision that he has to accomplish.
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And it goes beyond him.
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There was no mention of Paul in his vision.
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Honestly, seeing how it affected the business when I was clear about my vision and then shared that with the team showed how imperative it was to attract the right people, attract the right resources, attract the right relationships.
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You have to have a clear vision.
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And the first step in having that vision is being very, very clear and intentional.
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What's the plan?
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How am I going to get there?
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And actually then executing on that.
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I've actually asked myself this question a lot.
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It's like, what makes this special?
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Well, one is Lee screens everyone that comes in.
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So everyone kind of passes Lee's check.
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So it makes sense why we have so many like-minded owners.
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But I think the main thing is that I feel like everyone in Augusta is much more purpose-driven and has much larger goals and ambitions beyond just running their lawn care business.
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The quality of the people inside of Augusta Nation and the direction we're all heading in, which is constant improvement, like that is our number one core value.
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We practice what we preach and we operate on a different level.
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And if you ever want to be a part of it, just reach out to us.
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I think that's the main thing with all the Augusta owners is everyone holds themselves to a high standard.
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Everyone likes the brand.
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Everyone likes representing the brand, treating the employees well.
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All those things that go with like raising the level of professionalism, people like the identity of what we represent and the identity comes from all of the people inside of Augusta.
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So it's sort of like a self-fulfilling cycle.
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But that's the main thing is people are driven by purpose.
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Yeah, I think they just have bigger goals for themselves and their employees.
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My name is Ryan Payne.
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I have two regions in Texas.
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I have one in Corpus Christi and one around the Austin Metroplex.
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I joined Augusta in 2020.
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I bought into Augusta to be a part of something larger.
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But the biggest hurdle for us, even pre-Augusta getting there, was basically becoming the leader that you need to be to attract the managers that you rely on.
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In the beginning, you don't have the experience
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in the industry or in leadership to attract the quality of leaders that you get down the road.
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And it's tough to get through those first years where you're kind of a new rookie.
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Everyone you bring in can sense you're a rookie like dogs smell fear.
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And it's hard to get that respect or have them to trust you during turbulent times when cash flow is bad or you're running out of money.
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When you're out in the wild, when you're out lost, you need a compass.
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You need something to look at and have some sort of truth as to why you can keep walking.
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Because when all the trees look the same, when all the rocks look the same, I need to look at something and have surety and confidence that this will not change.
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And to me, inside of our businesses, that is the vision.
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That is the vision statement is why are we doing this?
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And where are we trying to go?
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Because if we don't have clarity and the compass is wrong, we will take action, but we will burn out.
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We will exhaust all of our resources, all of our time, and all of our relationships going after something without any final destination.
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Honestly, it's looking at the times when you wanted to quit or you felt like a failure and reverse engineering, how do I fix that?
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And then knowing that it will work for them now without them having to get the failure.
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So like, me not having a vision caused bug hell.
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Because I couldn't attract great talent.
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And so why not just tell them to get the vision clear now so they'll never hit the bottleneck of not being able to attract great leadership.
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A lot of it is like my own pain and issues I went through and trying to find out what the fix was and then just giving that to them now instead of having them out of their own.
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It's easier when you can point back and say, hey, you see the other six locations, look at their profit share, this GM made 100,000 last year, here's his paycheck stub, he doesn't mind if I share.
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There's a lot of evidence to believe you and follow you.
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In my new locations, I get much higher quality talent willing to follow me from the get go because I can say, look at my track record.
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This event here is our seven figure club.
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So it's our multi-unit owners and multi-million dollar revenue generating owners.
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And this event is great because what Mike does, he strips away all the fluff, all the corporate nuance, and it's just people in a room that are trying to win.
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And those people want to get better every single day.
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They want to pay their employees better.
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And ultimately, they want to be better stewards.
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And that was the topic of this event was to be better stewards of the resources that you have.
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And I would define stewardship because it's actually one of the hardest words to define.
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Like if any of you have actually sat and wrestled with that, like how would I define stewardship?
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Not let me Google it.
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Let me look at chat GPT.
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Like how would I personally define stewardship?
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It's an extremely hard word to define.
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But I would define stewardship as partnering in something that is greater than the sum of said parts.
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You have something that is to be stewarded, that is to be expounded on, and that is to be given back to others.
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And I would say an employee is a partner.
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Yes, they don't invest equity in the business or interest.
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Maybe they didn't pay to join the company, but they are your partner in the mission that you've set forth.
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And it just shows the growth of Augusta as a whole.
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And, you know, my story, hey, I was hired as a laborer.
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I was hired as a guy to just push mow lawns.
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Like that was it.
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Mike didn't know me from anyone else.
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And he was like, hey, this guy seems like he can push a mower, so let's hire him.
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I mean, I think it's nice to see it grow.
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It kind of validates that you were right.
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It was real because we joined.
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It was so small.
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Like there was no command center.
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We had an agent assigned to just our location.
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One person took all of our calls.
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Like it's changed so much.
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And I just wanted to do something bigger.
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I saw Mike on YouTube one day and literally in 24 hours, booked a call to talk to him.
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That was back when he would still talk to you.
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I got with him within a week.
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And next thing you know, we were a part of the franchise.
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I think our first location was number 14 or 17.
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It speaks to the growth that Mike has had as a leader and as someone who has pushed the vision of Augusta Forward that other people now buy into that vision and those other people now are working towards that vision in their own communities and in their own businesses to give opportunities like I received from Mike to go from someone who's just a college dropout to now doing sales for one of the fastest growing franchises in the world.
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What I did is I asked some of Mike's most long-tenured employees
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and his top performers to answer two simple questions for me.
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How long have you worked for Mike?
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Why do you work for Mike?
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And it gave me four commonalities.
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The number one commonality from employees that have worked for Mike the longest and are his top performers.
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And this is across Augusta.
249
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This is across the media team.
250
00:16:15.845 --> 00:16:16.886
This is across Copilot.
251
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Vision.
252
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Clarity.
253
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You must be clear on your vision.
254
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And that means repeating it over and over and over again.
255
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One day it clicked for me.
256
00:16:26.168 --> 00:16:27.569
One day the vision became reality.
257
00:16:27.730 --> 00:16:30.712
Then all of a sudden I saw this guy was making promise after promise after promise.
258
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And we were hitting the goal and hitting the goal and hitting the goal.
259
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I was like, oh, this vision actually means something.
260
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Oh, we can actually make change here.
261
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Oh, I can actually get promoted here.
262
00:16:38.517 --> 00:16:42.179
Because Mike was always tenacious about making sure his vision was clear.
263
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If you knew me before, Augusta, I was heading nowhere fast.
264
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Kind of gave me the purpose I was looking for in life, just a cause to kind of dedicate myself to.
265
00:16:52.365 --> 00:16:53.885
My dad kicked me out when I was in high school.
266
00:16:53.905 --> 00:16:56.887
So yeah, I was just kind of drifting around the world aimlessly.
267
00:16:57.107 --> 00:17:02.689
When I first started, I had never had any experience on a tractor or skid steer or anything.
268
00:17:02.709 --> 00:17:06.771
And the next morning coming from the medical field, I was on a tractor for the first time ever.
269
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Yeah, you come into Augusta and Mike's got this vision and it's not often that you come across someone that has a vision to do something so big that involves so many people and changed my life, changed the way I think.
270
00:17:16.515 --> 00:17:21.397
I used to think that you had to like have a certified college degree in order to start a business.
271
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which that's how fixed my mindset was.
272
00:17:24.359 --> 00:17:29.043
I was just clueless, you know, C's and D's in school, just like never considered myself smart.
273
00:17:29.143 --> 00:17:34.348
But I just learned through Mike and his leadership that I have the capacity to learn and grow.
274
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And these are some of the things that employees said about it.
275
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I want to be part of building something great with him.
276
00:17:39.052 --> 00:17:44.637
He has a clear vision, not only for each individual company, but also the Mike Holdco as a whole.
277
00:17:45.017 --> 00:17:49.898
Mike's passion for changing the professionalism in such a large industry was motivating for me.
278
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I believe deeply in the mission.
279
00:17:52.499 --> 00:17:56.721
I'm committed to dedicating my career to helping realize Mike's vision.
280
00:17:57.061 --> 00:18:01.962
I think when someone changes your life so fundamentally like that, like, you kind of owe them.
281
00:18:02.922 --> 00:18:05.263
Not that Mike would ever say that, but that's how I feel.
282
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He's the most giving, transparent person I've ever met.
283
00:18:09.364 --> 00:18:11.885
And he has a vision beyond himself and...
284
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his little world, he's thinking always 30 foot.
285
00:18:15.190 --> 00:18:16.991
Mike's always so open to feedback.
286
00:18:17.031 --> 00:18:20.173
Like when he says be humble and teachable, like he leads by example.
287
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And that's why I joined.
288
00:18:21.834 --> 00:18:23.155
So I could be a part of something bigger.
289
00:18:23.195 --> 00:18:28.639
And now I have almost 200 locations doing OTPs that just started from a little shop in South Texas.
290
00:18:28.819 --> 00:18:30.520
I wouldn't have had that impact without Mike.
291
00:18:30.560 --> 00:18:36.103
He can put it to a much bigger community and he basically can give breath to your ideas as a small guy.
292
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The mission has always been the same.
293
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to help others become better.
294
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I quickly felt I was invested into something bigger.
295
00:18:46.453 --> 00:18:48.114
And the employee added emphasis here, not me.
296
00:18:48.554 --> 00:18:54.958
And wanted, in all caps, wanted to be part of that journey and that mission.
297
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For me, I would say that the reason I work for Mike, the reason I work for Augusta, the reason I sell the product of Augusta,
298
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is because I truly believe it's going to help small business owners.
299
00:19:05.384 --> 00:19:09.387
And I also know the level of care that Mike and his team put into the product.
300
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And that's why I'm so bought in.
301
00:19:10.968 --> 00:19:12.629
Mike gives and gives and gives to these owners.
302
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He gives and gives to his team.
303
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And like, that's someone I'm going to follow.
304
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That's someone I'm going to work hard for.
305
00:19:16.632 --> 00:19:19.734
That's really the main thing to have somebody you can get behind their vision.
306
00:19:19.754 --> 00:19:24.578
If you don't have a vision of your own, get behind somebody who does have one and build something with them.
307
00:19:24.718 --> 00:19:27.620
We could both run separate businesses, but I think we're better together.
308
00:19:27.680 --> 00:19:30.822
And that's the pattern that I've seen working for Mike for all the years that I have.
309
00:19:31.323 --> 00:19:32.283
The vision was clear.
310
00:19:32.764 --> 00:19:34.185
The opportunities were created.
311
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Here's my mission.
312
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Here's my vision.
313
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It's huge.
314
00:19:37.167 --> 00:19:38.448
And I want yours to fit inside that.
315
00:19:39.327 --> 00:19:40.228
Can we do this together?
316
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Can you hit your personal goals while we also hit our professional goals?
317
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How can we do that?
318
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How can we make sure that that works?
319
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The goal ultimately is to bring the community together.
320
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And in the stages of wealth, we're trying to figure out how do we help these business owners become rich, not just mow grass.
321
00:19:56.097 --> 00:19:58.578
So today is a lot about taxes.
322
00:19:58.598 --> 00:19:59.399
It's about relationships.
323
00:19:59.419 --> 00:20:00.399
It's about your lifestyle.
324
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It's about time management.
325
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It's the next level of business ownership.
326
00:20:04.102 --> 00:20:05.863
And we want to make sure that they have that full capacity.
327
00:20:06.383 --> 00:20:09.946
from stage one all the way to stage seven, which they start diversifying the other stuff.
328
00:20:10.026 --> 00:20:16.271
Okay, so in Augusta Nation, as we talked about earlier, we have the seven stages of wealth for owners, okay?
329
00:20:16.631 --> 00:20:21.515
I believe this should be followed in sequence and doing so outside of sequence increases risk.
330
00:20:21.955 --> 00:20:25.618
But we've never added really the structure or framework for general managers.
331
00:20:25.738 --> 00:20:29.121
How should they look at their stages of success inside of Augusta Nation?
332
00:20:29.541 --> 00:20:31.703
Now this is not locked in stone.
333
00:20:31.843 --> 00:20:34.325
This is more of, I liked your feedback on this.
334
00:20:34.565 --> 00:20:40.387
Yeah, some of it was also workshopping like new systems we're adding to Augusta around general managers, team members.
335
00:20:40.587 --> 00:20:45.588
We always have said we want to get them to the next stage of their career, but we've never created definitions for that.
336
00:20:45.628 --> 00:20:47.829
For technicians on the field, for general managers.
337
00:20:47.889 --> 00:20:55.791
And so we workshopped a lot with them and now we have like very clear seven stages for a technician, seven stages for a general manager, and then seven stages for an owner.
338
00:20:56.171 --> 00:21:01.453
And so now there's technically 21 stages of success instead of Augusta and that's something we've been working towards.
339
00:21:01.753 --> 00:21:08.455
I kind of anticipate this being a two to three year plan because regardless of where you're starting out, you got to get through an off season.
340
00:21:08.735 --> 00:21:10.896
You got to have four straight quarters of distributions.
341
00:21:12.636 --> 00:21:13.617
And I've got to mentor someone.
342
00:21:13.717 --> 00:21:14.617
That's going to take me two years.
343
00:21:14.857 --> 00:21:28.561
The ability to walk away from this event and say owners of Augusta Nation created this system is far more powerful than Michael in his bedroom, locked the door and came out with some magic because that can be refuted much easier than as a collective with people with real experience, we created the system together.
344
00:21:28.801 --> 00:21:37.847
The reason I'm doing this is because I feel like by adding clarity around the stages of wealth, what we've allowed to do is create a common language in determining where I'm at.
345
00:21:38.267 --> 00:21:41.069
And if I feel like I'm on a treadmill, at least I know what stage I'm on.
346
00:21:41.329 --> 00:21:42.790
And I know why I'm feeling that way.
347
00:21:43.030 --> 00:21:47.052
And I feel like there's also progress despite the fact I feel like I'm doing the same thing for five years.
348
00:21:47.392 --> 00:21:49.994
But over the course of those five years, I get through stages one through five.
349
00:21:50.134 --> 00:21:57.639
So originally what made me want to buy into Augusta was a lot of it was Mike, like just seeing what he does, like his systems and everything.
350
00:21:57.859 --> 00:22:01.361
I think at the time there was like almost 100 other locations, something like that.
351
00:22:01.621 --> 00:22:03.763
And it's like, it's working for all these guys too.
352
00:22:03.903 --> 00:22:05.704
And they're telling me like, you should do it.
353
00:22:05.744 --> 00:22:08.366
This is one of the best decisions I ever made.
354
00:22:08.866 --> 00:22:12.608
In my head, I'm like, okay, it's working for all these guys too.
355
00:22:12.648 --> 00:22:15.230
So why shouldn't I go learn from him as well?
356
00:22:15.410 --> 00:22:16.110
all wrapped into one.
357
00:22:16.150 --> 00:22:28.696
It's the kind of relationships that we built through Augusta, the other owners, talking with other owners, understanding the industry knowledge, people that are ahead of us are able to kind of show us the way, how to kind of move the business along.
358
00:22:28.736 --> 00:22:39.160
And then the people sort of that are smaller businesses are kind of behind us, they sort of have the motivation and I don't know, it just kind of keeps you on track to kind of get to where, you know, where you're looking to go, I guess.
359
00:22:39.200 --> 00:22:45.684
But also since joining Augusta, like we have increased our growth rate and more importantly, our profitability has really increased.
360
00:22:45.724 --> 00:22:47.305
So that'd be my answer.
361
00:22:47.445 --> 00:22:49.747
I joined because I had an existing company.
362
00:22:50.747 --> 00:22:51.428
It was failing.
363
00:22:52.368 --> 00:22:58.232
We had just done 400,000 in revenue in 2019 and we lost $9,000.
364
00:22:58.472 --> 00:23:04.877
And then I found Mike's content on YouTube, talked about pay for performance, went to his conference in 2020.
365
00:23:04.897 --> 00:23:06.478
I think that was his second one.
366
00:23:06.598 --> 00:23:07.838
Came back, implemented P4P.
367
00:23:08.979 --> 00:23:09.999
It worked.
368
00:23:10.019 --> 00:23:14.101
We grew the business from 400 to 700 and it made me a believer.
369
00:23:14.341 --> 00:23:16.061
And then I made the commitment to join them.
370
00:23:16.501 --> 00:23:20.963
So just knowing I would immediately have that support is if I was like a huge business.
371
00:23:21.463 --> 00:23:24.023
But I'm just like this like tiny one man show.
372
00:23:24.224 --> 00:23:25.504
And now I've got all that support.
373
00:23:25.524 --> 00:23:26.544
That was a lot of it, too.
374
00:23:26.964 --> 00:23:28.485
They're exactly where I want them to be.
375
00:23:28.505 --> 00:23:31.266
800,000 revenue, 200,000 profit around there.
376
00:23:31.906 --> 00:23:36.067
And then figuring out how to repeat that, train GMs and just repeat that.
377
00:23:36.167 --> 00:23:37.928
And the same thing I think is true with GMs.
378
00:23:37.968 --> 00:23:41.649
They get delusioned by the fact they keep doing the same thing every single day.
379
00:23:41.849 --> 00:23:45.650
It's always the same stuff and I don't see any progress in what's going on with my life.
380
00:23:45.870 --> 00:23:50.992
And to be able to have some stages where they can actually talk to each other and be like, I'm in stage three, what stage are you in?
381
00:23:51.372 --> 00:23:53.993
As general managers, it's gonna be valuable in my opinion.
382
00:23:54.153 --> 00:24:01.715
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.
383
00:24:02.664 --> 00:24:09.208
And I don't believe that it is right that the person that taught needs to be doing the lower level tasks.
384
00:24:09.348 --> 00:24:10.668
It's a bad use of time.
385
00:24:11.329 --> 00:24:13.010
It's a bad use of the resources.
386
00:24:13.270 --> 00:24:16.111
It's a bad use of that energy.
387
00:24:16.191 --> 00:24:25.897
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, unuseful, and then the technicians laugh at them.
388
00:24:26.736 --> 00:24:28.399
Yeah, that's hilarious, but that does not work.
389
00:24:28.980 --> 00:24:30.542
And so I've always tried.
390
00:24:30.942 --> 00:24:32.365
It's sometimes difficult.
391
00:24:33.446 --> 00:24:36.651
But a big piece of the day is I need to stay grounded with the owners.
392
00:24:36.671 --> 00:24:37.652
I need to know what they're feeling.
393
00:24:37.672 --> 00:24:41.899
I need to know what their general managers are feeling so we can serve them better.
