C. Suite Unfiltered: Lawn Boys, BRIC, and Uber

Welcome back to the Mike Andes Podcast, where we discuss the ins and outs of owning a small business. If you're new here, the Mike Andes Podcast is all about taking your business to the next level. We have another C Suite Unfiltered with your hosts, Lee park and Mike Yandes. It's landscapers versus lawn Boys as Mike argues with Teagan Gertz about overhead recovery and transparency on social media. Lee and Mike attempt a breakdown on brics, which is the five leading emerging economies, and world economics. Plus, how did Mike get a higher Uber rating than Lee? Because he got weird about it and watched a tutorial video, of course. As always, you can find all this and more over at the C Suite Unfiltered channel. But let's just jump right into it. Here's Mike and Lee with the show.

Yeah.

Another episode of the C Suite Unfiltered moved it back to Monday nights now, bro.

Yeah, we're on Monday nights, so hopefully you guys will get it earlier in the week. I confirmed with the winner of the bracket challenge, Dustin B. He will be coming on next week. Today is his birthday.

That's so. That would have been perfect. He would have come on today.

Yeah, but I, like, would he want to be here on his birthday? I was just like, hey, let's just do next week. So he'll be joining us.

Oh, man.

Yeah, man. Are we. We're recording. We're recording. Dude, that's great. I love it. Dude. I caught up on your Tigr and Ger drama.

Oh, really? You hadn't seen that before?

I hadn't seen Tigr's response.

Oh, cool.

Yeah, I don't. I don't. I don't subscribe to him, so.

Okay, cool.

Team Andy's. So. No, that's fine.

I need to go actually back in the post and see what people comment to my stuff. Cause I went on his thing, like, right when it came out.

We could just do it right now.

Oh, really? Did you have it.

No, I don't have it pulled up, but it'll take, like, two seconds.

Oh, man. I'm sure people just jumped all over me. But it's great. Like, so when it came out, I knew that what he was doing. He's doing overhead recovery via the second method that I've talked about, which is you. You put it in your hourly rate. And so I knew that. Right. But he never explained it like he said he was going to in the first few minutes. Right. He's like, here's my spreadsheet. I'm going to come Back to that. And what I knew was going to happen is people were going to look at that. Number one, he was putting in gas and overhead, which is wrong. It's a direct cost. But that. That. I didn't really care about that. That's just small potatoes. The thing is, I know people watching that, and they don't know the overheads going into labor. And they just look at. He's making all this money on big projects. Oh, I should do that, too. And it just reinforces the shiny object syndrome in our industry, which is like, bigger projects are better, which is not the truth. And so I knew he was doing that. Like, I'm not an idiot. I take the 560 divided by three guys. Okay. Divide that out. Yeah, he's like charging 60. $60. 60. $65 per hour. And that's obviously always paying his guys. So there's overhead recovery baked in. Right. But I wanted that. I wanted that information. I wanted to actually video about overhead. And we won.

Yeah. To educationally show people how it actually works.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's all.

I don't think he wasn't beef. Right. I just knew if I prodded him a bit, he would make a video and explain it. And so I was happy.

Yeah, I loved it. So he put out a video. Maybe I'll throw the thumbnail up. But what was it? The thumbnail was like, landscaper versus lawn boy. Oh, yeah, you're the lawn boy there.

So it's so funny. People think this is a real beef. Like. Like, I definitely have, like, some moral issues with what he does because, like, some of the things he does. I'm not hugely fan of, like, you know, bragging out, parking, like, handicapped spots and stuff like that. It's not my jam. Right. But, you know, whatever. Teach their own and. But, you know, it's not really a beef. It's like, I just want to make sure that the fact of the matter is, I see so many people get into big projects because of videos like that, and. And they're like, oh, man, I can make $50,000 in profit in just one job. And they don't see all the other stuff that goes into it, and they lose their shirt on it. Like, a lot of franchisees that come to Augusta went through that phase of, like, massive projects, and they get. And it takes a few years to undo all of that debt. And I think for most people, it's just dangerous. And the reason that someone like himself and not saying everyone's this is he can't afford it because of all the income he makes on social media. And so I just think that people need to be aware of that. Not to say that you can't make money on those projects, but you need to be aware of that when you're taking information in.

Yeah, 100%. I even had a conversation with a manager inside of Augusta today doing some cost benefit analysis of treatments. And they were like, well, but it's such a big ticket item. And I'm like, okay, well let's break down the math of getting certified, having the insurance, certifying your employees or tests locally or with the state.

Right.

Then housing the product, then marking the product up, then training. And if you burn one lawn, there's all your profit and more.

Right.

And it's like you break. But in, in his mind he was like, we could make so much money doing treatments. It's like, well, you can make a lot of revenue doing treatments, but you're probably not going to make a massive profit your first year trying how to do it. Right.

If you take 100 landscapers in a local area, maybe two or three of them are certified. So you just cut your labor market mass. At least the cost per hour is going to go up. Now once you get them, you're kind of handcuffed in them because you can't just go get someone out front line right away. You got to have higher skill, higher wages.

So just, it's just a different play. You can absolutely do it. Yes. Higher margin, but you got, you know, different type of labor class that you're tapping into and you're competing against the big boys. Right. You're competing against Trugreen and the likes thereof. Right.

So yeah, yeah. Well you, you replied to Tigran's video which was titled I got called out by a hater.

What did I reply? I'm trying to remember.

So you said.

I kind of said. Why? I just. What? I just called out pretty much.

You said great video. Thanks for sharing more of the numbers. Awesome to see them. Like no malice. No, like you're not being sarcastic but it's hard, you know, on, on the screen to know if you're being sarcastic.

Oh, a thing.

I was.

I'm just saying I feel like you could take awesome to see them. Like haha, you know, I'm just saying.

I'm just playing.

I'm just playing the skeptic here.

Okay.

It will help many. I know you did labor based overhead recovery. I made a video on Sunday and specifically mentioned this, dot dot dot. Just wanted you to cover the numbers and Talk about the overhead like you did in the video so people don't misinterpret or lose their shirt going for our 250k job out of the gate. Great work.

I would guess that if you threw 95 to 99 of his audience into a 250000 job, they would lose money on it. And that's what I'm concerned about.

I'd say it's even higher than that.

It's like 90, 95. Let's just say 5, 000 people watch the video. That would mean 50 times. That'd be 250 people out of 5, 000 would make money on it. And those 250 people are probably the ones commenting on mine and saying like, you know, you can make money and you're right, you can. But from a. When you make public information and you tell people to do something, you gotta be very careful of the numbers. Right. And that's why, like I'll say sometimes some things inside of Augusta I will never share on public simply due the fact that I know that 98, 99% of people will do it incorrectly.

Yeah.

So that's what I'm sensitive to.

The first response on my comment on your comment from Hartman Holmes, I'm calling him out. Hey, it's public platform. He said, what color is your Lamborghini? With a clown emoji. So let's see here.

This is what I would respond to that. Mine comes in the form of a 5 acre parcel of land. That's $3.4 million paid in cash. Yeah, Someone headquarter building.

Someone came to your fence, Joe Hustle. It is not a burner account of mine. I'm just gonna be honest. He did say he recently spent $340,000 on starting four more locations. So he probably spent that instead because he's money hungry. But gotta give him props for building a company that created hundreds of jobs. So like that's the thing is like you just released a video where you dropped three. Basically $350,000. It's like, dude, that's cash for a Lamborghini. Like a low end Lamborghini. That's cash.

He didn't pay cash for it.

I know he didn't. That's the thing. He's leasing it for like 5,6000amonth.

Ridiculous. So I just don't think it's. Yeah, whatever. Yeah. I do know some information about his businesses and from him that like I'm not going to share publicly because he told me in confidence. Yeah.

So oh, man, the Internet's a funny place. We also got a hate comment on one of our last video with Trump being indicted. And it wasn't about Trump. It wasn't even Trump, was it? It was because we talked about some of your managers doing their first firings, and someone commented that it was, like, gross that we were happy about firing. And then they called us weak businessmen.

Oh, very good.

And I was like, oh, okay. My first hate comment on YouTube.

Is it your first one versus, like, aggressive?

I mean, it was like, you should.

See some of my comments.

Oh, yeah, One day we'll go through those.

We should go to my flag comments one night. So the flag ones, I don't even typically see them, or if I do, you see them, it's only because I see them when it's on the first, like, 60 minutes when it hasn't been caught by the algorithm yet. Dude. Yeah, like, I'm talking now, like, especially with shorts, where people have no context of who you are. Dude, man, the judgments people cast on you in 30 to 60 seconds of.

Watching a store is pretty phenomenal.

It's insane. Well, let's. Let's dive into.

But what was your response be that then? Because, like, obviously we were, like, saying, like, we were happy that they fired them. I think the context that was would be missed in that case is the fact that we are happy because we don't even know the employees. It's not about making me happy with that. It's that we knew these managers needed that skill and we were happy that they were getting it.

Yep.

Right. Because everyone looks at from the outside as firing as a bad thing. We look at firing as that's what creates the standard. And we know that the standard in that location needed to be set. So that's what we were happy for. And I think every other team member on the team would be also happy that they were firing because it solidifies the standard for the team. And so obviously, from an outsider, like, firing is bad, but yeah, like, basically, I've always said, like, firing creates the standard.

100.

And so that's what we're happy about. We're obviously not happy someone's losing their job.

No.

Now in the same day, we probably hired 10 people inside of Augusta Lawn Care. So, like, let's just take it to.

Yeah, my. My actual response. I thought about going into that, but I was like, it's YouTube. He's not even going to read it. I just said excited for our managers to get the experience. Always a bummer when someone simply can't show up to work on time and is late days in their first two weeks of employment and was given many warnings.

He responded, yeah, I mean that's one.

Of those guys that we fired. Was late five times in his first two weeks. It's like we gave him five chances. Like, I'm sorry, that's a bummer.

That's awesome you responded. Did they respond back to you?

They haven't responded back because I'm a weak businessman.

You're a weak man.

YouTube drama.

All right.

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I want to get into something. So a franchisee sent us Shout Out. Thomas sent us both a video and he was like, you guys should talk about this. And it was a valuetainment. So Patrick Bad David on bricks. So you and I both did a little bit more research. I was trying to get more learned in this subject. I'm not an economist by any means, let alone a global economist. But what do you know about bricks?

So brick stands for Brazil.

What's the R?

Now I got you a cheat sheet right here.

It's Brazil. Oh, Brazil, Russia, India, China and then South Africa recently added. And so basically it's kind of like they had the G7, then they moved the G20. And so then these other like more emerging market companies are.

Countries were like, hey, we should come together and like create an alternative to all of this. And what a lot of people are concerned about and what's being proposed right now is like that they can trade in, you know, yuan or other currencies that's backed by gold or whatever outside the US Dollar. Right? And the US dollar loses its reserve currency status, which would be detrimental for the United States because that's why we're able to print money is because people are willing to buy US Dollars. And so yeah, that's like the general gist of it.

Yeah, yeah. So I looked it up on Investopedia just To get like just the base level definition for folks. So yeah, you explained it perfectly. So it was formed in, formed officially in 2001 originally Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa came on later in 2010 and the thesis became a conventional market wisdom. But there were always skeptics including some who claimed that the phrase was Goldman Sachs marketing hype. So it was essentially people were like well it's Goldman Sachs just trying to get into like emerging markets and create a ticker symbol and be like get into this, like this is a good thing. But now it's become more prominent with bitcoin and with you know like not having a gold standard shout out Nixon and people, people are getting concerned. And that's what Patrick bet David's video was about, is essentially the title of the video obviously clickbait. It was like this could make Americans poor overnight. So what are your thoughts on brics an emerging market in terms of creating a global or more digital currency?

I think like all media it's like over dramatic. Dramatic. It's overhyped ultimately a currency. The reason the United States currency has held its own for like 103 or 105 years and I believe has decades ahead of it still is because it's not just the power of these countries, it is the full faith of the United States that's behind that dollar. Right. The Federal Reserve, everything that we stand for politically and democracy. And so the reason that like politically it's so good to have checks and balances is because it creates a more stable framework and economy. There's not going to be crazy things happening tomorrow in the economy because we don't have a dictatorship, we don't have a one party system that just pushes everything through. We have democracy. And so by having that you have a more stable economy and you have faith that that economy is going to stay stable. And so I think people are failing to recognize, yes, China's becoming more prominent. Yes, because the petrodollar is in jeopardy. And now potentially these OPEC countries have lost faith in our military and are now gonna willing to. Because we were supposed to offer like you know, military presence and military protection like Saudi Arabia. Well that's not been happening. We like miserably failed in Afghanistan. So like hey, forget the United States, we don't need them as much. Let's just trade in Yuan with like China. That's all happening, that's all fine and good. Will those dollars or those currencies ever be the reserve currency of the the world? Not in a long while because it's not just about the gdp and like China's GDP will probably surpass that of the United States. They have like way more people but in terms of just the gross amount. And India is massively growing. Brazil has so many natural resources. I want you to take a look here. Let's look. Go through these countries. We got Brazil politically, economically, probably the one of the most like ruined and roiled in corruption in the entire world. Just fully corrupt. Okay, Russia, okay. We got a dictator basically at the top. We have a whole bunch of, of of things against the Russian. No one wants to do business with them. If you're not in China and these other inside of brics, like there's so much corruption happening there. You can't have free speech. Like trust me, when you take out democracy and free speech, there's a lot of politicking that's happening and corruption. Okay, then we've got India, same thing. So much garbage happens there. So these companies, these countries that are involved, China and Russia and India and then South Africa, like these, these countries are not ones that we would put faith in as investors and we would backstop our economy with their dollars. And so in my opinion, you have to have faith in the currency. And so I don't think it's going to be a long term, it's hyped up but it's definitely a threat and I think it's definitely something we should be thinking about. But like the United States dollar is very powerful because when you compare it to any alternative right now, it's not even close. Like it's not like the RuPaul, like whatever you compare it against, I think we shot ourselves massively in the foot by putting sanctions on R and basically, basically.

Weaponizing the dollar. That was a big mistake because as soon as you do that, of course Russia and all these other countries like, oh, they can literally pull our dollars out of our system. Of course you're going to create an.

Alternative a hundred percent.

So I think that was a really stupid move politically, but it looked really good and there was a lot of pressure, if you go back right when the war started, to take them off of Swift, which SWIFT is basically.

The banking system that we use using the United States dollar. But like foreign trade and everything, it's easy to transact on swift. If you've ever done like a wire, you use Swift.

Right.

And so when we, when we cut them out of that and there was so much political like social like people online, like, oh God, cut them out of stuff, they have no idea what that means. And so there's a lot of political pressure. I think we. Wait, we caved that and then we basically forced these countries into saying, hey, we've got to create an alternative. Because if the United States can basically walk in and take all of our dollars, we better have an alternative. And they should, like, they should. That's what they should be doing. So I think we messed that one up. But yeah, yeah.

So it's interesting, one of the stats from an economist said that 62% of the world reserves are still backed by the US dollar today.

And what, it was 70%, like 10 years ago.

Yeah. So. So like the power of the US dollar globally is coming down. And that's what people are saying is like China and Brazil are essentially trying to break from this. And then they got Russia on board. India, now South Africa is joined. And Elon, you know, from South Africa, he tweeted, you know, we got to bring up Elon, this is less than two weeks ago, March 29. He said, this is a serious issue. US policy has been too heavy handed. Like you're saying with the sanctions making countries want to ditch the dollar, combined with excess government spending, which forces other countries to absorb a significant part of our inflation. Right. So Elon is basically saying, hey, we should. This is, this is an issue. Like we got to pay attention to this and it makes sense.

Yeah. But Chamath Pala, Apatio, whatever his name is, brought a really good point on this up, and that was that.

The yuan is still denominated in US dollars. So until they peg it against like gold or precious metal, it's still really tied back and pegged against the US dollar. So if, even if you trade in yuan, it's kind of like saying, okay, like we're gonna trade in water bottles, but the water bottles are still denominated in dollars.

Right.

So until it's actually goes against something like gold. Now that being said, you look at like Turkey.

China, India, these countries have been like buying tons of gold. Turkey was the bought the most gold in 2022 of any country. That's a little alarming. China, I think about like 30 tons of gold. So when these countries are stocking up on gold, that's why like the price of gold's gone up so much. Because like, if they flip to something like the gold standard, that becomes an issue. Right. Or it becomes more of a threat, I should say, than, you know, trading in yuan. Yeah.

I saw a recent economic meme from a guy, Preston Pish. I don't know if you know the name. He's from the podcast. We study billionaires, so it's a pretty popular podcast. But he tweeted out this meme, and it was the candle to electricity, gold to bitcoin. And I'm like, I don't think those are necessarily parallels, but I could see the train of thought. Right. It's just we're evolving as a society. But then I saw, like, someone evolving. Evolving.

Yeah.

And then someone sent a meme in response, and it was basically like, yeah, bitcoin is the best until we're. Until the power goes out. Yeah, it's like, yeah, that's true. Like, that's why we had the gold standard, which is. No, this is a physical asset that we can. That is quantitative. And now it's like, oh, yeah, but you can mine this coin on the Internet. And then what happens if you lose your hard drive or your. Your wallet isn't secure?

Yeah, it's weird. Yeah. I think regardless of what currency we use, like, we can't control that as Americans. Like, what happens there. Like, the. The average person, what you can control is investing in assets that regardless of the currency. Like, if. If we change to, like, the world gets taken over by Bitcoin or the world gets taken over by yuan or whatever, or the gold standard, if you have assets, regardless of what currency we're denominating in, those assets will. Will fluctu, like, go up or down with whatever that currency was is pegged against. And so having something like real estate, things that go up in value, even pieces of company, like shares in the stock market, things that are. Have attainable value. Not like a car, it's depreciating clothes, like things that you just spend money on. That's why I'm not too concerned about it for. I think this would be massive. And if you go back to what, like Patrick David said, this would massively crush people that don't have assets.

Right.

People that live paycheck to paycheck, the lower. The lower 50% of earners, they'd be massively impacted because debt would get so much more expensive and we wouldn't be able to dig ourselves these massive fiscal policies of government handouts. So, like, that would get dried up very quickly and gone would be the days of printing money. If this plays out, like people are saying, yeah, yeah.

And they were referencing an article from Zero Hedge, which is an online kind of like independent economic articles and reviews. And I looked up, he just posted a new article as of today. So it was a brand new article was posted and it essentially breaks down like the three steps to basically bring down the US dollar and create a global currency of bitcoin and he calls it hyper bitcoinization. So phase one would moving from the US dollar to gold so we'd actually get like the world essentially back on the gold standard comparative to another currency. And then, then phase two would essentially be like bricks and other competing and emerging markets would be competing against a new gold standard. And then phase three would be all that collapses and all we'd be left with is bitcoin. Yeah, and I'm like that's kind of in the clouds and I don't understand how all of it works. I read the article so that was my very, very poor rereading of this article. So check it out. I can put the link in the description.

I do personally believe we'll go back to the gold standard. Yeah, I do believe that. I think it's the only way we'll be able to get ourselves out of the debt. But that being said, the goal gold per ounce would have to be like $50,000. It's like 2,000 now or we have to buy so much gold. I think it's, I think the figure is something like we would have to mine more gold than was currently on the earth for us to like above the ground in order to be able to, you have to substantiate at current gold prices are debt.

But I do believe we'll go back to the gold standard, which is what.

This article is saying. It could happen. But then you get all these competing emerging markets that don't want to be on it and then you get essentially like global economic collapse and it's like all right, what's going to save us? Bitcoin, digital currencies. So it's a little bit out there, but it's an interesting article. Yeah man, I don't know. I honestly don't know enough about this stuff to really make an educated comment. But, but it's interesting to watch. And I think the one thing I do agree with what you said is that like I think sanctions and us being very like heavy handed on other countries and like trying to force our will in certain situations and then letting down, you know, Saudi Arabia and OPEC and them having shaky confidence makes sense why people want to switch to something different. It does.

And then it's like, well why do we even need to be involved with OPEC if we can just have the Keystone pipeline and mine our own oil here in the United States which is how we have plenty of it. So, you know, I think crises like we've had with in the past, for example, the war in Ukraine is still going on, but somehow our energy prices are way less. Like when you start allowing for these energy things to be like, oh, we can't get oil from over there anymore. It's like politically charged and like an issue. You start opening up things locally, like, so I don't know, man, it all evens out. I think the bottom line for me is like, I can't control any of that. I can only play within the rule of the game. And I think that game is just get assets, don't have cash because our cash will become instantly. Like, I don't know, happen quickly. But if that happens, any of those things, your dollars become meaningless.

Yeah.

So you need to have an assets.

It would be quick in the span of, you know, history. Modern, like, modern history. It would be very totally a couple of years.

Well, because even if you look at how long the United States dollar has been in, you know, the reserve currency of the world, it's 103 years, no other. If I remember correctly, I could be wrong here. No other currency in history has lasted more than 110. I think the United States has another hundred years. And I'd say 50 of that would be like where we're still kind of today. But then over the next 50, it's like if we lose that currency denomination, they just keep declining over time, like a slow decline. Because the US dollar has been in decline for the last 20 years. Right. Ever since 2001.

So I mean, some economists would argue ever since we came with the gold standard.

Right.

In the 70s. So, yeah, I don't know. It's a very interesting topic. But like you said, we just play within the rules of the game and that's all that matters. I still don't own any bitcoin. What about you here?

It doesn't matter. No, because it's like saying, because what are you going to do? Everyone's going to peg right now a bitcoin to what, how much it costs in dollars?

Yeah.

Until people start saying that cars worth three bitcoin, we haven't really switched anything. And so even right now, if you say, well, how many bitcoin do you have the immediate thighs. Oh, how many, how much that in dollars. So you're just denominating it. You're just taking a different fraction of it. Right. Until you start selling houses for 48 bitcoin or whatever that number is, it doesn't mean anything. It's just a fraction of dollars, Just a means of exchange. And so when that changes, that whole mindset changes, that becomes interesting. But I'm not like my house, whether it be bitcoin or dollars, will be worth the same amount relative to every other currency.

Yeah. So it's called an exchange rate. I feel like people forget that that exists.

Yeah.

Like it's like, oh, I'm not like, like, you know, you and I both traveled abroad and it's like you go to another country and you pay for something, you're like, oh, that was so cheap. Or that was so expensive. No, it's just there dollars.

Yeah.

Like it just the exchange rate's different so people forget. So. Yeah. Anyways, that was, that was world economics. I'm more. I'm a Ray Dalio guy. Principles. Yeah, check them out. That's how much I get into it.

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Can'T imagine that.

Still bleeding cash, man. Yeah, it's just crazy. It's just, it's just funny because the last like four years they've been like, we're about to become profitable. We're about to become profitable. We're about. And it never comes.

Yeah. Yeah.

So anyways, I wanted to just briefly look at some of the parts of this article and I cannot, I'm not even going to try to pronounce the CEO of Uber's last name. First name is Dara.

Oh yeah. Dara. Yeah, Dara.

But essentially he was like, he's a good dude.

I like him.

Yeah, yeah. And he's a non founder CEO, which he does say that in the article. He's like, this gives me more of an outsider's take on it and what actually needs to be changed and not be like locked into like what we built here. He's like, hey, this, this is what needs to change. So what he said is, I think the industry as a whole to some extent has taken drivers for granted. This was an interview with Wall Street Journal. Since Uber was founded in 2009, its goal is to offer passengers a seamless riding experience, according to the CEO who succeeded Uber's co founder, Travis Kalanick in 2017. Kalanick.

Kalanick. He's a loose cannon.

Yeah. Isn't he the guy who was friends with Gary Vee?

Well, Gary Vee knew him and like invested early, but yeah, Travis, loose cannon dude. Yeah, he's a strange fellow.

So he said, historically we have put a premium on the rider experience and essentially he said the whole experience is pretty clunky. So he explained how he got a secondhand Tesla. So he was doing Uber Black or whatever the like, fancier one is, but he got a secondhand Tesla. You know, CEO can't, can't drive a Honda Accord, right? Or Honda Civic. He said to masquerade as an Uber driver, chauffeuring people around the city with a curated Spotify, Spotify playlist and all. The experiment was internally known as Project Boomerang and was originally designed to learn how the company could attract more drivers after a pandemic induced shortage. Through the effort, the CEO experienced many common Uber driver complaints, including harassment from riders, anxiety over maintaining a high rating, and frustrating signup process. So essentially they're going to revamp kind of how they onboard drivers, how they compensate drivers like there. It sounds like they're reworking the whole front end experience for the drivers, which, I mean, makes sense. The whole backbone of the company, right?

Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, it's a tough business, all of these, like Airbnb, Uber, et cetera, because you have two different marketplaces. You have to satisfy, you have to satisfy drivers, but you also have to satisfy the, the, the passengers. Like it's two different businesses you're running, right? Like you've got to make, you got to have prices high enough to keep the drivers, but then low enough to keep the passengers. And so it's a, it's, you're battling on both fronts. And same thing with Airbnb, and they're going through the same thing right now with regulation and stuff like that. So it's just a very tough business model. It takes off very well because a lot of economies of scale and like, what's it called, like forgetting the term where it's like very viral. It's easy to share. But it's also very hard business model because you can never win both on both fronts.

Yeah. So there was nothing really substantial in the article. I just thought it was cool that a major CEO would go back to Frontline, be like, hey, dude, hey.

I'm doing that in June.

Yeah, I know you are. So I thought, I was like, you're going to do that. But I thought this was funny that they threw this in the article. The company must also deal with competition from Lyft, which last month installed a new CEO. So Uber still dominates 71% of the US rideshare market to lift 29%. But Lyft's new CEO, David Risher, says he welcomes competition. And this is just, this is just sad. I think the world wants and sort of needs a strong number two. Yeah, like, he doesn't even want to like, compete with Uber.

Yeah. But you know what? I think in some markets like this one, it's actually a smart move. And I only have this, this opinion based on reading the book about Uber. And it's called Super Pumped. And that's why I kind of know a little about Travis. I think you'd like it. Have you read it before?

I don't think I have.

It's more of story type, but it's, it paints Lyft in a good picture because I feel like in a market like this, second mover advantage is great move. So Uber takes off, whatever. Lyft always kind of like copies, but modifies and makes it better. And they're always like looked up at, looked at as the underdog. And that puts a lot of political pressure on Uber. I like the big dog. No one likes them, whatever. And Lyft comes along and it's smaller. Their market cap is totally different. And potentially if I was them, I'd just be like going straight after profitability. Like, hey, let's not worry about growth and expansion. Let's be the profitable one that has like a 20, 30% share of the market. But we're profitable. And I think potentially in a downturn like a recession, you might win out simply due to the fact that Uber can't keep sucking money. But I think in like, for example, Apple, they did the same thing. They don't make a lot of new features. They just copy the ones that work well and it's profitable. Right. And then you got Google and all these other companies, like making new stuff. And they were the ones that came with like facial recognition and touch open thing and all that other stuff. And then Apple's like, oh, that one's good. Oh, that one's good. And then now they've become the big player by just adopting everything by secondhand.

Yeah, yeah. So I agree with that. But also, like, what percentage of drivers do you think drive for? Both.

Because I feel like, see if you can demonize Uber. You get people on a social. A social status side of thing. Like, do you want to drive for Uber, the big bad boy, or do you want to be like, the small underdog, core, smaller group. Right. So, like, how you position yourself is good. And that's what Apple was to Windows for ages. Had the ads, literally Mac versus Windows and what that looked like. And so I think, in my opinion, Lyft should come up with approach. Like, Uber is bad. They're big and bad. They do all these horrible things. We are. We have social values. We stand up for our customers. We like that sort of customer service. We are profitable. So you don't have to worry about us leaving tomorrow. I don't know. I just think that could be a good positioning. I haven't done enough research to actually know what this person's opinion is. Their new CEO.

I mean, I like the thought process. What's your. What's your Uber rating?

My Uber rating? Like, me as a driver? I've never.

No, no. As a. As a. As a rider.

Like, oh, riders get rid. Oh, it's 5.0.

Oh, okay.

Dude, I'm a nice person. I make sure I buckle up. I don't put my feet. I put my. You know, you don't want to sit in the front seat. That's annoying.

Oh, yeah, right.

Things like that.

I'm like, I think I'm a 4.8.

Really?

A couple bad ones.

Really?

Yeah. I took Uber a lot when I was in Chicago. Like, I lived in Chicago without a car for three years.

Gotcha.

So if you want to go any great distance, you typically have to take.

I remember the first time I used Uber.

Like, substantially was when I went to training for Anytime Fitness. And I didn't have my license. I couldn't drive, like, a rental car. So I had to use quite a bit of Ubers because I couldn't get my rental car before I was 25. So anytime I traveled, I would have to get Uber.

And I remember watching a YouTube video of, like, good etiquette as a passenger on Uber so I could, like, have it all buttoned down. Like, don't take calls, things like that.

Yeah, fair enough. I like that last thing. I really wanted to touch on and Then we can get into some non financial advice. We didn't even talk about this last week. It was, it was our weekend. Well, I mean, we can't say anything. We can't associate Augusta with Augusta National Golf Course.

The Masters. Who won?

John Rom.

Okay. Yeah.

From Spain. Yeah. No, I was rooting for my guy, Brooks Gepka. He got second. He kind of now wouldn't say a choke job, but just did not perform well on the last day. And he gave up the lead. He was, he was leading by like four strokes at one point and then Rom beat him by four. So, yeah, I watched a little bit yesterday, but the Masters is cool. I wanted to do more research into this. Maybe we dive into it in a future episode. But you know, they don't give up the TV rights. Did you know that? They retain that because it's private property. Cbs, well, they. So the, the Masters country club, like the gentleman's club, sells it to cbs.

Interesting.

So they, they basically go to like the highest bidder. And that's where I was. I, I did some light research into this, but essentially the like phrase, a tradition unlike any other, it's a little cheesy. But it's no, because they run it so traditionally in the sense that like they don't allow, legally, they don't allow any secondary ticket sales, even though, like they all go on the secondary market. So I don't know how they regulate that, but they, they give the TV rights to cbs. They keep their food prices intentionally low. Like, have you seen the food prices? It's ridiculous. You can get a sandwich for like a dollar fifty. Get a pulled pork sandwich for three bucks.

Really?

Yeah. So they keep like all the prices super low ever.

If you.

I saw TikTok, every item on the menu cost 66 bucks. If you bought every single item on the menu, it's 60.

So it's just cool how they like run a completely different business model.

Like you just mentioning food right there. I'm all of a sudden like, super.

Sorry.

Yeah, so it's just really interesting. And they make a ton of merch. So they don't sell their merch online, which is really cool. Creates that scarcity exclusivity.

Brian Connor, I think he must have been at the practice day on Wednesday because he invited me to come this year.

Oh, dude.

Yeah. He's like, hey, I got an extra ticket and stuff, dude.

Yeah, that's like bucket list for sure.

I know, dude. It would have been fun. It was just like, I can't. Can't do It. During spring rush. It's, you know, by the time you fly out there, two, three days, like, you know, it's five days. I can't do that right now.

Yeah, unconfirmed. I saw multiple, like, articles. Tick tocks. Instagrams, they do $800,000 an hour in their merch shop. Really?

At the. At the.

Because that's the only place you can get masters gear. They don't sell it online.

That's why everyone buys something.

They don't give it to any outside retailers. Like, they only sell it there.

Gotta get those margins, baby.

Oh, yeah.

Get 90% margin of nose and the. And then forget 30% margin on your food, bro.

Oh, yeah.

It's ridiculous.

We got our sandwich for $1.50. Yeah, but you paid $90 for that hat goof. Oh, yeah.

100%, dude, I would. If I ever go to the Masters, it's bucket list. I think I'll go at some point, but I would blow it out in the merch tent. Like, you have to.

It's once in a life. It's once in a lifetime. That's the difference between you and me, man. I do not care about stuff at all. That's so funny. I would be the guy spending all the money at the food. Yeah, that's.

I get like the shirt, the sweatshirt, the hat, you know, all of it, man. So yeah, the master's pretty cool.

But you're not financial advice. Go to the masters and buy food.

That is not my. Not financial advice. Yeah, I can. I know you wrote yours down on your hand.

Yeah, I always forget.

Yeah. So mine is. This is just general. We should all already do this. But you know, people that work in the service industry, people that are there to serve you, treat them kindly.

Oh, yeah. Why do you say that? Just, I just, you know, my salty mastermind.

Yeah. You know, we don't have to air out any laundry, but you know, treat people that are in the service industry nicely. They're providing a service to you. A waiter, someone at a counter, a stewardess, you know, whatever it may be. Just treat them kindly. Treat them the way you want to be treated. That's right.

A golden rule.

Yeah.

Okay. My non financial advice is if you're lifting weights, it's very easy to get wrapped up in number of sets and weight of the weight that you're like, how much weight you're doing. Right. One thing you really want to think about is the timing of your reps. And the reason I say this is because in built for Business, we have different Stages and I'm in the third stage where we change up the tempo. It's incredible. I can do less than half the weight, but I gotta do five seconds up, five seconds down. Or like, like three seconds up or like three seconds coming down. And then like one push and just change the tempo, man. Totally changed the dynamic of your muscle gain. What it does to your. Your like being sore. Totally different. And so I'm in the muscle recovery stages now. So it's lightweight but like weird tempos that aren't natural. And it's, it's really good.

Yeah. Changing up tempo and like progressive overloading. Do you get into that?

That's in the different next stage, like strength phase. We do go into that more Cool. But this one's more about tempo. And man, it's just weird. Like just doing everything slow and, or, or like explosive and slow. Explosive and slow. So it's really good.

Yeah, it's like doing squats. Like if you're like, if you don't think tempo changes. Like do body weight squat and then do one where you go five seconds down and then five seconds up. Completely different.

Or like do heel, heel raised squats. Right. Throw. Throw a plate behind your heels and then see how many. Like, it just totally changes everything.

It's good advice.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Built for business.

Let's go check it out.

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This has been the Mike Candies podcast. Now you have some ideas on how to take your business to the next level. And if you liked what you heard, we have tons of lectures, interviews and more over at the Mike Anders YouTube channel. It'll be right up your alley. But that's all we have time for today. We'll see you next time.