DAY 4 of Building a $1M Business in 1 Yr

I moved across the country to build a $1 million lawn care business in 1 year. All in around $20,000. Oh my word, see this? It's all crunched up. I'm dropping off a van for Augusta Lawn Care. Augusta Lawn Care? Yeah, we just got the ramps installed yesterday and the wrap got installed this morning, but there's a problem because the side's not wrapped and that entire other van all Also not wrapped. Why, you might ask? Well, supposedly their other studio that printed off the graphics shipped it to them and they're the wrong size, so they don't fit the sides. So you think, okay, well, let's get them overnighted and put on. The problem is they already— their schedule's completely booked. They're like, sorry, we can't get this on till next Thursday or Friday, another week from now till we can finish the wraps. Sorry, we can't do that. The studio over there in, um, Pennsylvania shipped it to us, so there's 2 sets. So one says V1 and V2. Got it. But there should be— they should all be there. OK. And the proofs are— In the front. In the seat. Yeah. OK. All right. Sorry about that. That was a headache. Yeah, I know. I apologize. All right, you guys have a good day. We'll see ya. All right. So they said they got the proofs in here. See, this is the crazy part is when we sent it to the company, we sent them the VIN numbers. So what they're saying is that this model has 2 different wheel widths. I'm guessing that has to do with how this looks. But we sent them the VIN number, so I don't really know why, how they could have messed that up. I think they know they made a mistake because they're like, oh, we will overnight this to anyone you want by tomorrow. But I can't just like hijack someone else's schedule. So, oh my word. So these are them. See this? It's all crunched up. I bet they were trying to make it work. But these are all like these, these wraps are done. It's just unfortunate that the sides of both of them are not the right size. Do you think that's redeemable? Oh no, there's no way. Everything's off. That's why, like, literally the only thing they've done is this front part, which kind of looks cool, not gonna lie. Um, but yeah, all the sides I think are completely off. I think what I want to do is these— the, uh, the doors from the back that we took off, uh, the dealership said they'll take them back. So I want to take The— these 2 and put them into the other van, and then that way we can put the Z-Sprayer there this afternoon. Yeah, so like, this is a preferred vendor of Augusta, um, and they do a great job typically. It's just really weird that the, the company printing them off somehow got the wrong model of vehicle because we sent them the VIN numbers. So kind of stinks, but we gotta roll with the punches. Everything else is getting delayed, by the way. Our moving truck is still in Wyoming, and it's not gonna get fixed until the weekend, they said. So we're another week out until I finally get my clothes, my computer, and everything else. So, shout out to Terrell, the video man, because if it wasn't for him, you guys would once again, for the 5th day in a row, be looking at the exact same shirt. But he lent me his medium shirt. Like, man, that is like way too oversized. You're right. 'Cause I'm a shmedium at best. And so when someone gives me a real medium, I still look small in it. Okay, so John's actually out of town today because he went to a tree conference that he's had scheduled for months. He takes his whole family. He is a licensed arborist, so he wanted to go get some certification credits from that. So I'm out here on my own, but I need to send him a video just to keep him in the loop so he knows what's going on, 'cause he's communicating with all the vendors, not me. Hey John, so this is it. This whole van is not completed. We'll get the— all the doors in here. We'll get the Z-Sprayer this afternoon, this bad boy, and we'll get both of these over to the other wrap place. Yep. So I'm going to put that in our chat with, uh, the general manager— that's John— and then Nick, he's the regional manager. And the reason I got to keep Nick in the loop— we have a chat with all 3 of us— is because I'm leaving here in 6 months and this location's still got to grow without my involvement. So Nick will be the direct report for John. So if there's any, they'll have like a weekly call together. And so I'm just trying to keep Nick in the loop of things, even though he's not really hands-on right now. I'm here, but when I leave in 6 months, I'm not going to be here. So I need Nick to be the regional manager and give John support. But for now, let's get these doors and these 2 vans out of here. Okay. So Nick did a little research, said they are telling the truth. The problem is they didn't think to check body length. I guess they are used to wheelbase telling them everything they need to know. Yeah, so you see here, the wheel width might be the same but still changes the width of the siding. Anyways, all right, let's get these out of here. I was expecting significantly heavier, not gonna lie. So we're gonna go take the vans to another decal shop 20 minutes away, and hopefully within the next couple days, hopefully by Monday or Tuesday, these are finally wrapped. Because we have to get them done by next Tuesday. We have new technician orientation and we start mowing lawns. All right, we made it to the wrap place. I should say the second wrap place. So let's hope that the second time is a charm and this is not a third time charm situation. Hi, how's it going? Good, can I help you? I'm dropping off a van for Augusta Lawn Care. For Augusta Lawn Care? Yeah, from Speed Pro, Pennsylvania. Oh, from Speed Pro. Yeah. She told me to let her know when you got here. Oh really? Yeah. Okay. Hi Shannon, how you doing? Good, good. So I left all the proofs in the front seat and then all the wraps that they still hadn't put on, I just left them in the back of the van. Okay, okay, perfect. Cool. Anything else you need from me? Uh, no, that's it. Awesome. I really appreciate it. Is it fine when they install it, whenever it gets here, that we video like them installing it? Is that fine if we came over while they're installing, or— Let me go get one of the guys so you can So you can ask, because I don't know that. Okay. I'd say in general, even if you're doing this in a local— in your local area, getting video of other local businesses, posting it on your social media, and tagging them is actually really useful because then you get all their audience that likes their page to see the post. So it's not like you're necessarily promoting them or sponsored by them, but it's for a local community. I highly recommend it. Like, I'm giving publicity to other people. No, you're getting all of their audience to to see the post. How's it going? How y'all doing? Good. We were just wondering for our social media, when we do get the wraps installed, would it be possible if we video you guys installing a little bit? I would just give my boss a ring, ask him. He'd be the one that'd be able to give you clearance on that. Yeah, I think they're getting tomorrow, so whenever they get started, maybe we'll just drop by for a few minutes. All right, yeah, you're cool. And then, um, she said you might be dropping off a van later. Second one, yep. When you do, just make sure to park it up front. Up front. And then put the e-brake on, and then just put the, uh, there's a drop box. Key in the drop box. Yes, sir. You got it. Thank you, appreciate it. All right, so we're on a bit of a time crunch because everything closes at 4 around here. We gotta get back in time to get the Z sprayer, then get back here. Fortunately, they're allowing us to drop the key though. But right now with traffic, we got to get back as soon as possible to site 1 and pick up the Z sprayer. All right, we made it to site 1. You guys picking up a spreader? Yes. Awesome. It's right here if you want to take a look at it. Yeah, that's your guys' sales rep. Dude, let's go! I have never been on one of these. I have talked about these. I have looked at them. I know how they generally work. I've never actually rode one. That's pretty dope, dude. So you got these because this is what John wanted? This is what John wanted. He said if we're gonna go pro, we gotta get one of these bad boys. So we're going pro. What's nice is these tanks are large enough to do most lawns, so we won't have to have tanks on the van or have trucks that have like 300-gallon tanks. We'll just have these and we'll fill up with water At the, uh, client site or at their property. My name's Chad, by the way. Good, I'm Mike. Nice to meet you, Mike. Great to meet you. Is it fine if— because we gotta go pick up a van to get this thing, but I knew you guys were closing, so I was like, oh, let's go pick it up and then we'll pick it up within like an hour. Is that fine? We'll have people here. Oh, you will? Okay, cool. All right, cool. Hey. Hi. Hey, I'm Josh. Oh, okay. I'm Mike. Mike. This is it. So it's funny, I've never actually drove one. No? No. John, he's the GM I think you guys were working with. Like a Z-turn mower. Oh, a zero-turn mower. Yes. Yeah, same thing. Very similar. A little bit more touchier. Yeah, which makes it a little bit more funner. You have to do a little more at the same time though. Yeah, yeah, way more multitasking than zero-turner for sure. But yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, these ones I know. So I think he asked for 4. Okay, 1, 2, 3, 4. Um, he just wasn't sure if y'all were gonna add more. I don't know. No, no, I think— is that what he's paid for is 4? I believe so. He didn't specify. I asked him. He hasn't answered. Okay. No worries. He said not today. Not today picking them up? He said he was gonna pick them up. Got it. Okay. All right. Has he paid for any of them yet? Or not? He's not really sure. Okay. All right. We'll just take the big guy then. Here's all the card info. All right. We'll be back in a little bit then. Thanks guys. What? Oh, let's go. Oh, we're in business now. Let's go. Thank you. Appreciate it, man. If you need more, let me know. We have a few more. Okay, good stuff. Thank you. Now we can survive the heat. See you guys. Back with the nude version of the ProMaster, you know. Got some scars of the journey, and we're gonna try this again. Let's hope it works because we are now lucky to get one of these vans done by Monday, and on Tuesday we have technicians starting. That's a problem. All right, let's go. All right, Charles, this is gonna be the most Could be the most embarrassing thing I do all day. Try to drive the Z-Spray when I've never drove it before. The very first time I drove a zero-turn stand-on, I went and got a John Deere, John Deere stand-on zero-turn, and it was like ramped just like this. And I never really felt what it's like to be like this on a ramp, and I was still really touchy. I had literally never drove a zero-turn, and it was like there, like 20 feet away, and I had to drive on. I was like, no problem, I got this, I got this. And then I got hit this And it's a little jerky, and I was like all over this ramp right in front of the sales guy. It worked! I was like, if that scrapes the bottom— Can't be on a hill, you'll be good. Yeah, sideways hill? Oh yeah, no, not a chance. Let us know if there's anything we can do for you guys. Awesome, thanks guys. See ya, take care. See you guys. All right, well, first off, we saved over $3,000 because of Augusta, uh, because they're a preferred vendor, uh, and so they give us a really good discount, over 15%. So, um, that's a good thing. But yeah, like, I think especially when it comes to landscapers, any home service, if you have vendors, they will tell you, you can learn so much from them. Like these guys, they know exactly what to use in terms of chemicals, everything. And like, if you're buying something from someone, they're incentivized for you to do well. Like if we buy 3 more of these over the next few years, they'll be thrilled. Also, the difference between the reason I'm getting this for this one van, for example, Is because when it comes to our model, so 6 to 8 technicians with 1 working general manager that's out in the field doing work throughout the day, the difference is that the general manager will be able to use this on his truck, John, and produce $150,000 to $250,000 in annual revenue while managing the team because they're all going to have their own vans. He'll have this on his. He'll be so efficient with this thing. And so if I can get his revenue by just getting this from, let's call it, $70,000 or $80,000 in revenue that he produces for the business. If I get that to $200,000, it turns him from still like a break-even on the, on the business to profitable. And that's the difference at the $1 million marker, whether it be the owner-operator or the general manager, is how much of their time is spent out in the field producing revenue. Because if you're running a, you know, 6 to 8 technician business and your entire day is spent in the office or running around doing sales, You're making zero for the business and you're 100% overhead. If I can get a machine like this and allow John to make $150,000, $200,000 in revenue and cover his wages, now all of a sudden, like, he's earning money for the business. And that's the difference between a profitable location and an unprofitable location is literally, is there someone that is costing the business 6 figures that is making money or costing the business money? And so for us at Augusta, when it comes to our model, we're not trying to build $5 million locations. We're trying to build a million-dollar location, has 6 to 8 technicians, but the working GM is able to produce revenue out in the field for most of their day. And so to do that, though, we have to simplify services and we have to make sure that the general manager has tools like this bad boy to be as efficient as possible. When it comes to my general manager, I lean on them almost exclusively to determine what equipment they want. They're incentivized on the bottom line. So like, he doesn't want to spend But when he says, if I can get a Z sprayer, I can like double or triple my output and I'll make more money for this business. I trust him 100%. He also knows this area. He knows this dealership. He knows these guys. And so that's a big part of selecting a general manager. Do they have experience? Yes. But do they have the relationships to be able to talk to SiteOne and figure out what our 9-treatment package is going to be and figure out which chemicals we can do during the off-season? For, you know, filling in our winter season around here. So that's the advantage. That's why I'm making this investment is probably 50% of this is investing in John because he wants this and he feels like it's really valuable to have a premium product. And when we have our premium treatment package and we have a 100% guarantee that if they don't have to make sure they don't have weeds, I want to make sure he has all the tools at his disposal to make sure that happens. And so it's not a cheap piece of equipment. Let me Be very clear, like $20,000 for a sprayer is not something I would typically do. But if we can double or triple our output of our chemical applications and John can handle a lot of those himself, he more than covers his wages. It's profitable and we turn an overhead expense into a profit for the business. All right, let's go over the damages. Being part of Agua Salanca, you get what we call preferred discounts or preferred vendor discounts. So $3,400 is what we saved on And that bad boy right there. Let's go. You know, we gotta have it, we gotta have it. We gotta keep the receipts, buddy. We gotta keep the receipts for the peeps. So all in around $20,000, but having it at the most preferred vendor, really appreciate SiteOne. You've been a great vendor for Augusta Lawn Care. Our objective with Augusta Lawn Care— oh, what am I doing wrong? What? Oh, nice. Thank you, sir. Discounts alone from all the preferred vendors cover your monthly franchise So the monthly franchise fee of $1,600, if I can get that covered just with discounts, like $3,400 is more than 2 months worth of savings because I'm part of Augusta just on this one piece of equipment. So if I have mowers, like when we get the mowers and things, same thing, we're getting usually between 15% and 35% off. So I think we saved right around $19,000 just on the initial equipment setup for being part of Augusta. So I know some people don't like franchises and things, and I get it, but You do get to be part of like the fleet programs because they look at us as one customer. So our volume over the course of the year might be spending hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars with them. And so you get huge discounts. All right, so down here we got the parking. He had mentioned to me this is for the spraying, this is for switching over tanks. So lots of doodads on here that I'm not used to. I do not have my pesticide or applicator's license. In the past, Augusta didn't do a lot of chemicals or treatments. But the thing was, we were getting huge amounts of traffic from our website just organically because of lawn care. People search it and we— they come in. So when I was looking a couple years ago at all the data and the lead traffic coming in through our website, we were turning away hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars worth of treatments and applications. And so in the past 12 months, we've started making a move towards it. And in 2027, we're making a large movement towards treatments, applications, spraying, Treatment packages. And so 2 of the big changes that have to happen is one, our website really focusing on selling treatment packages, and then inside of HomeWorks, making the features where it's a lot easier to be able to set up treatment packages. And that's a big focus over the next few months. So I'm gonna take this bad boy out, see if I can't figure out how to drive it and do some spraying. Comment warriors can tell me everything I'm doing wrong because I'm sure I'm doing all sorts of things wrong. Oh. I've actually never seen this before where you can adjust this handle. I really like that. These knobs just loosen this. One thing I really hated about specific zero turns was how far you have to reach and your hands get pretty tired after a long day. This is nice because you can just crank this thing, move it however you want, tighten it back up. Very cool. Don't worry, it's water. All right, so the dry weight on this bad boy is 698 pounds. If you have the spray and the hopper full with 2 bags of granules, so basically granular full and both spray tanks, 1,148. If this thing is empty, it's got 700— that's 700 pounds, meaning we could put 1,800 pounds of product. So plenty of granular, and then the spray is obviously, you know, a concentrate that you're putting in the spray tank. We're just going to fill up the liquid on the property of the customer. Not ideal, but I'm not going to get a van or a truck of size to where I have a 300, 400, 500-pound or gallon tank that I have to haul around all our water. Like for the sprayer, it'll go right here in the back like it was. It's pretty— it's quite a bit longer. But the objective is that on John's van, he's able to have the Z sprayer and do what he needs for chemicals. But he's also able to have All the equipment for mowing so that if someone goes down and he's out, he can just quickly go out and swap equipment with them. The eventual goal down the road would be that we do have the spreaders and we're gonna get more of those Lesco spreaders in order to be able to have the technicians, if they have their applicator's license, they'll be able to spread while they're also mowing. So mow the lawn, put the fertilizer down or put whatever treatment we're putting down. That would be the objective 'cause there's plenty of room for like— A 32-inch mower, a push mower, and then a spreader with their fertilizer. That's easy. John's setup is gonna be pretty tight because that bad boy comes about to here. So then he's gonna have to put a 32-inch here. Um, it's gonna get a little bit tight, but it allows him to be able to like double or triple his production having the Z-Sprayer over just a regular walk-behind push spreader and then a backpack sprayer. Honestly, I think this kind of just shows just the importance of having aligned incentives with your general manager. Like I said before, it was not in my cards to get a $20,000 sprayer for this location. But because he has aligned incentives with making this location profitable, I can trust him when he says, hey, if you get me this piece of equipment, I'll crush it. And I think the more you give someone the authority and the power to be able to make changes in the organization, And then you give them the incentive, like go crush it. You will make more money. I can trust him when like he says I need this piece of equipment. This is really why the high top is so important. Like I'm short. Yes, I know. I'm aware. But even if you were six foot, you'd be like here. So the ability to not have to crouch down as much is really nice. If you know, you know because. Because I have drove into enclosed trailers before, and you're just focused on the wheels, making sure you don't go off the edges, and bam! Right in the forehead. All right, take the key. Yep. And we're good to go.