DAY 5 of Building a $1M Business in 1 Yr

I traveled across the country to build a $1 million lawn care business in 1 year. The problem is we got here and everything's delayed and nothing's going according to plan. See, this is the crazy part is when we sent it to the company, we sent them the VIN numbers. 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. There's mold and it's not livable. There is a little bit of an air gap right here. The side's not wrapped and that entire other van also not wrapped. Let's go over the damages. There's no way we're going to be ready for next week's train day with our first employees. So today I'm gonna focus on social media and the posts that I can make in this local area to drive more customers. Let's get into it.

The ramps haven't arrived to TER yet.

All right, well, we were planning to go pick up the other 2 ramps today. They aren't coming in. It is looking super unlikely that by next Tuesday We actually have any one van set up ready for the technician training. Because right now none of them have fully racked out inside, none of them have equipment inside, none of them have a ramp with wrap and equipment. So unless things like randomly come together on Tuesday— on Monday, I don't see any of that happening.

Which is very frustrating.

So today we're gonna focus on social media content. For the local Facebook, Instagram, social media pages for the Augusta Lawn Care location. And I'm also gonna make some posts on Facebook in some local groups just introducing myself.

That's the plan.

Okay, um, I have meetings starting like 11 all the way till 4, but like they're— most of them I can do on the road. Boom.

I'm on an engineering call.

We're talking about how we can add in the ability to restore deleted invoices. So we don't ever hard delete data, but we've always soft deleted it. But how do we actually allow the user to restore it inside HomeWorks? So we're working on it right now. So there's always complications like when you restore it, what's the date say? Things like that. So, all right, so the goal today is for us to record some social media ads as well as just organic social media for the local Facebook pages that I'm running. So for the Augusta Lawn Care location. So we're actually at the city hall right now. And the objective is that when I'm making these local posts, that I'm around local landmarks. So the city hall around here is just beautiful. They have fountains, it's a really nice building. Dude, this is absolutely sick. Yeah, we gotta come back here. This is so stinking cool. And so the objective is just that when people see the ad or they see my post, they know I'm in the local area. So the ads are a little bit more like we're just trying to get a good hook, get them to stop scrolling. And then when it comes to the social media content that's organic, it's a little more on the goofy or funny side. But we're doing it at landmarks in and around Flower Mound, which is the main area for our territory. Okay, so right now we're shooting an advertisement. I'm going to pick up the phone and then behind me will be town hall. So here we go. Hey, homeowners in Flower Mound, are you tired of having phone calls constantly going to your landscaper but no one ever getting back to you? Use Augusta Lawn Care where we answer our phones 24/7.

3—

no, it's not 24/7. We now have 3 hours a day where we don't answer the phones. AI does. All right. Are you a homeowner and you're tired of contacting your lawn care? Are you tired of trying to give your— are you tired of— one day we'll get this.

2 hours later.

Take 500. Are you a homeowner and you're tired of contacting contacting your lawn care or landscaping professional every single week just asking if they're gonna show up? If that's you, give Augusta Lawn Care a call because we're gonna answer 7 days a week with real humans and give you a quote within 2 minutes. Click the button below, get a quote, and we'll see you on your property.

Nice.

Okay, now the blow-up doll thing and then we're good. That'll be one ad. Let me make sure I can actually see Town Hall behind me. Eh, not a great job.

I'm wondering if it would be better to do it over there because then you've got a direct shot of Town Hall.

Oh yeah.

Hopefully we're not on the property and you can kind of see what it is instead of just the fence.

All right, let's do it. Let's do it.

You got this.

I thought you could actually see it, but you can't. You're right, it's so small in my background. Are you tired— are you triered? Are you triered? Have you ever had a dream that you had—

you could— you'd—

Are you tired of contacting your lawn care guy and every single week he has another excuse as to why he can't show up and you can never get a hold of him? If that's you, contact Augusta Lawn Care. Where we answer our phones seven days a week, and we'll give you a quote within two minutes. You don't even have to give us a call. Click the button below, and we'll give you a quote within two minutes.

That's better.

Okay, go.

Oh man!

Have a look.

That's good. Oh, it's good. You got the shadow too. My social anxiety is slowly. Just a little bit. If you go next to a main road and you just look like an idiot, eventually you won't feel so self-conscious about yourself.

Yeah, I got bit in the butt by a goose when I was younger.

So, um, I've already ordered all the parts for the relay. Um, I've ordered 4 of them.

So John, John just leaving me a WhatsApp, and right now we are, we are shooting for Tuesday to get all the employees, get them all set up, get them all onboarded, but our best technicians can't be there on Tuesday, 2 of them. And then a couple others that can, like, they're going to need more training. And so I'm thinking about moving the tech training day a couple more days off just so we have a full group of 4 or 5 people and then we will hire them throughout October, November. So if you're looking for employees, you don't need to get them all to start the day after training. You can say, hey, look, come for training day and then you're going to start 2 weeks, you're going to start 4 weeks, you start 6 weeks. And then that way, as we get a bunch of customers, we'll have the labor supply But they'll all be trained up and ready to go. So don't ever feel like you have to get everyone tomorrow, the day after training, they have to start work. If they have another job, they can give their 2 weeks notice in 3 weeks from now and start with you 5 weeks from today. But he's getting— we're also trying to make sure we order all the company cards for them so that way when they start, they already have a company card for gas and stuff like that. So people in the comments are saying that you would gain more respect if you did the challenge Without using the Augusta brand? Okay, well, first off, thank you very much. Yes, joining Augusta does make it easier to grow and scale. I think in general, you've got to use whatever advantage you have in life, whether it be the fact that you have money, whether it be the fact that you have a brand like Augusta Lawn Care, whether it be that you have 100 hours a week because you're single and you don't have any responsibilities. You just got to use whatever you got and take advantage of it. So yes, having Augusta Lawn Care— helicopter— having Augusta Lawn Care, we have discounts. We've saved tens of thousands of dollars on our equipment and our And our vans. We also are able to get trainings. Like my general manager, John, went out to training for a whole week and they trained him up. I have Command Center answering phones today, doing my QuickBooks, doing my payroll. All that's taking off my plate. And someone in the comments the other day was like, to run my ads cost me like $9,000 a month to get it managed and you're paying $7,000 for the whole year. Yeah, that's Augusta Leads and it's a huge advantage of joining Augusta. And so I think this is the probably— this comment is probably the best advertisement for why you should join Augusta. And it's just a decision of like, do you spend the $35,000 to join, or do you take longer to figure things out for yourself, hire other agencies, vet them, or just take the baked-in discounts, systems in place, the training, and scale faster? And the objective here is to grow quickly. So yes, I could do this and try to figure it all out by myself using my own Mike's Lawn Care, but joining Augusta allows me to just go faster. Ready to go? Hi everyone, I just want to introduce myself. My name is Mike. My wife and I moved down here recently. Her name is Brianna, and I just want to say thank you so much for welcoming us to the community. Uh, we— I've been doing lawn care for 20+ years, and we moved here to start a business for Augusta Lawn Care in the Southlake and Flower Mound area. Really appreciate all the community we've had so far and look forward to getting to know more of you. So that's going to be for a local Facebook group. So I'll probably join like 3 or 4 different Facebook groups for Southlake and Flower Mound and just introduce myself. I'm not pitching my services. So like, notice I didn't like, go to Augusta Lawn Care today and get a quote. I just said, hey, I've been doing lawn care for 20 years. They can obviously see my shirt, they'll obviously see my profile. And so just making that connection with the local community is free. Just gotta post on the Facebook groups. Okay, the other one, the ads one here, is estimate without a phone call. I'm gonna change my spot just for the sake of you. If you're a homeowner and you need lawn care, landscaping— nope, we don't do landscaping. I'm just gonna get this in the background. There you go. If you're a local homeowner in Southlake or Flower Mound and you need lawn care and you're tired of getting 5 contractors to show up at your house or calling 5 people and no one answering, give Augusta Lawn Care a shot. You don't even have to give us a call. If you do, it'll take 2 minutes, we'll do it over the phone. But otherwise, just click the button down below and within 30 seconds you'll get a quote Exactly for your property. Sign up for service and we'll be there next week. All right. So that's going to be an ad. And again, I'm just trying to shoot it in local areas that are landmarks so they'll know this Riverwalk. And I'm trying to hit on certain pain points. Right now, we don't have the van. Once we have the van, like ads, they write themselves. But right now I don't have a van. And so if you're getting started before you even get your equipment, you can run ads in your local area Just show the landmarks because anyone that's scrolling on Facebook immediately is like, oh, I know that place. And so hopefully it'll get them to stop scrolling. Okay, so I'm on the call with engineers, but Lee from the leadership team is like, mental wellness check, Mike. They just saw the post that we just made. All right, we're at our 3rd site now. This is one of the kind of common historical landmarks of the Flower Mound community. So I'm gonna make another post. This one's gonna be an ad, but more of an introduction style, and introduce myself to this specific area. So here we go. Hi homeowners in Flower Mound, my name is Mike. I've been doing lawn care for 20 years. Yes, since I was 11 years old. And in your area, if you need lawn care, mowing, treatments, any fertilization or weed control, we're the people for you. You can click the button down below and get a quote immediately for your property, or give us a call and in 2 minutes We'll give you your exact quote and get you set up on the schedule. We'll see you soon. Okay, so that's going to be more of an ad style. This is going to be— I'm going to make another introduction post so I can use it for Facebook groups in the future. Hi everyone, my name is Mike. My wife and I recently just moved into Flower Mound in the area here, and we have a lawn care business. We service Southlake as well. I just want to say thank you all for all your hospitality and welcoming us to the local area. We love it here and are really looking forward to growing our business over the next several months. Again, those are just things I can pop into a Facebook group in the local community. But now let's create a hook for the slide-in one. So this is going to be an ad and probably a social— like, a lot of times anything you make for an ad that's kind of funny or like something like that, it can also go on your main social page because the objective of your social media page— think YouTube, Facebook, Instagram— is not necessarily to sell people. It is to just engage them, get them to comment, get them to like it, get them to share it, and get them to stop scrolling. And so in order for that to happen, usually it's funny, it's engaging, it's not salesy, but you can usually use your best organic content and then just put it on your ads if it's doing well. So this one specifically, I saw this hook where someone's doing a pole vault and they mess up and then they slide back. So it'll cut back to me sliding here on the ground.

Right?

Okay, you're really going for it. Oh yeah, dude, we're going for it. Okay, phone 1 and phone 2 need to come out, and then you can video him videoing me. It's great, very meta. I'm sliding in like this, and you want to be close. And then what my thought is, is almost to try to like— if you want to, once I do my shtick, just tilt it up so you can see the flower mound thing. Okay, ready? 3, 3, 2, 1. Click the button below, and before the ambulance gets to this pole vaulter, you'll have a quote for your lawn care or fertilization weed control. Click the button down below. Let's try it again.

Ready?

3, 2, uh, this would be if we did a call now action. So this one, this ad, we could do a CTA as a phone call.

Okay, let's give it a shot.

Ready?

1, 1, 2, 3. If you need lawn care or landscaping services, give us a call, and by the time the ambulance gets to this pole vaulter, you'll have your quote. In fact, we'll beat it within 2 minutes. So some people are asking, like, what's the point of this challenge? Like, why are you doing this? The main reason is really for Augusta. A few years ago when I did the other challenge, I started with a lower budget, and I did like tons of door hangers, ran a half marathon in one day just doing Door hangers, hundreds in it every day, and that's useful and helpful. But as Augusta owners have grown, and there's a lot of owners that are doing million, two million, three million dollar locations, they need other examples to point back to. And still to this day, when people are in Augusta, they're they point back to my other challenge because I've documented all the systems of like getting your first thirty, forty customers.

Welcome to my helpful commode.

If I can get more leads holding a sign next to the side of a road looking like a I'll do that. Hey South Charlotte, it's Mike here with Adjust the Lawn Care. Instead of doing door knocking in the yard and, uh, doing door hangers. Almost 3 miles in and, uh, it's just really hot. Just when you think you had it all done, flat tire. That's sorcery. Just the light that I ran out of power. You have in this corner right here?

Yeah.

Skills, that grit and that hustle is not necessarily the thing that serves you well when you're trying to find a general manager, delegate, have leadership skills. And so I'm trying to now just document and show what that looks like building a bigger business and going beyond just one location. And so like the long-term goal here in this area is not just one location, we'll have multiple locations and then document the entire process so that the owners in South Augusta, they can see how I hire a general manager, how we Do technician training, how we get a large amount of customers very quickly without just working 80 hours a week. I'm only working 10 hours a week in the business. And so how do I let my capital work for me instead of just my grit, my hustle and the grind, which is necessary if you don't have a big budget. But as you get more capital, you want to deploy it to move faster. And so giving them the tools and systems and the examples and the documented processes now is really important. All right. So we are relenting. I don't think there's really a great Yeah. So we're not gonna be able to get a great shot of us getting the vans, equipment, everything ready for training day that's happening in just 2 business days. So we are pushing it back a couple days, but we're also doing it because some of our best technicians that we've hired, or I should say that we are bringing on, uh, they can't make it to the first date. So we're pushing it off a couple days, and that whole day is gonna be like video training, and then it's also going to be out on the tools in the vans using the equipment. So I'm gonna call the coworking space and just make sure I can move the conference room that we've rented off a couple days.

Offices, coworking space, virtual offices, or on hold.

Oh my goodness, yeah, listen to all of them just to make sure.

I'm just gonna click 2.

Your call is important to us.

Apparently not.

Please continue to hold and the next available agent will be with you shortly.

Your call is so important to us, you're gonna sit here and listen to this pathetic music that we recorded back in 1980. Into the phone. What is this music, bro?

Your call is very important. Very. Unfortunately, we are experiencing a higher than normal call volume.

There's one person at the office.

If you'd like to have your priority call back, please press 1, or please continue to hold for the next available agent.

There's only one.

All right, so thanks for watching the vlog. This is kind of my evening routine is I come here and work a couple hours after Brianna goes to sleep. We have a separate room here in the house, the Airbnb, for my office. And so I'm about to answer some questions on Home Service Boardroom, which is a school community for 7-figure home service entrepreneurs. So how we do it is you can post a question anytime, I respond with a Loom video. For example, this is Matt, he's leaving question about how to get an office person up and running for his $2 million location. You're having them doing other tasks in the business. It's likely it's actually coming down to their level of efficiency and their ability to swap between tasks. And so what I'd be looking for and really questioning is the previous role, were they sitting there for an hour and then doing a couple tasks and then, you know, sitting for 30 minutes and then doing a couple tasks, or was it like fast-paced? And were they required to be accountable for their time spent to be efficient in between tasks?

What are good ways for a business owner to inspire others to have God shine through them, to lead others to Christ, not push them away, to set good examples, and to walk the walk and not just talk the talk?

inspire, I actually look at the root word of that, which is like inspiration, or to actually breathe into. So it actually comes from like when I did— I studied this back in the day, it was like when, when God got inspired, he breathed and created the earth. When you look at the— in Genesis. And so inspiration, you think of inspiration as the thing that allows you to create. You get inspired, you have an idea, and then you And so God got inspired and breathed and created the earth. And so when it comes to inspiring other people, what you're trying to do is breathe into them, allow them to go create. What I try not to do, and this is my personal thing, is I do not try to tell them what to build or what their goal should be. And whether or not it aligns with my philosophy or my religion doesn't really matter. I know a small percentage will. But I want to make sure that for 90% of people that might not have the same goals as me or might not want the same religious beliefs as myself, that I can still help them. The most sacrificial thing is— thing to do besides giving your life for someone is to support their goals. And so my goal is to support other people's goals, whether it be internal inside the organization, people that watch videos, people inside the community. So instead of having a whole bunch of Q&A, They can just see the topic, they can see what's being talked about, and then just watch the video if it's pertinent to their business. And then we will talk about it more in, in depth on the actual live call. And weekly we get on a live call and discuss and go deeper on those questions. Recently, they've just been getting better and better. So I'm trying to make sure that continues and just make it like the special forces of home services. All right, we'll see you tomorrow.