C. Suite Unfiltered: Mike gets ATTACKED on Lawn Site

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 Andy's podcast is all about taking your business to the next level. We're back with another C Suite Unfiltered with your hosts, Mike Andes and Lee Park. Mike is still out in North Carolina doing its 30 day challenge, which you can learn more about by going to the Mike Andy's YouTube channel. But C Suite Unfiltered must go on. So Mike's calling in virtually to join Lee for the next couple of episodes. What's going on today? There is nothing more satisfying than arguing with people over the Internet. Or maybe there's nothing dumber. That's for you to decide. Mike gets called out on the lawn site for his business practices. Lee pushes Mike on his mental fortitude and his ability to adapt as a business owner. Apple released the Vision Pro, which is the perfect product if you want to look like a rich psycho. You can catch the video versions of these episodes over on the C suite and filtered YouTube channel. But let's get into it. Here's Mike and Lee with the show.

Sure. Welcome everyone to another edition, another episode, another sequel of the Sea Suit Unfiltered. And we need some music or something.

Yeah.

I'm out in North Carolina, Lee's in Bellingham. So welcome back. Thank you.

Yeah, welcome back to the pod. Thanks for doing this again while you're in north.

Do you want to do it like you just did to me of what we're going to cover?

Should we do that like at the beginning?

I don't know. See if it helps with their tension.

I'm gonna be honest. Something's really tripping me up. My camera is not mirroring me, so it's like it's throwing me off.

Does that make sense? You know?

You know, I gotcha.

My zoom mirror. So now I'm like, yeah, staring at myself. It feels weird. Yes. Yeah, let's go. Let's. Let's maybe jump into some topics. What we're gonna go over today on the podcast. We are going to do more behind the scenes. North Carolina update, South Park. Mike is down there and I want to ask some hard hitting questions about some of his recent videos. Then if you have a life, you probably didn't see this next thing.

Which is funny because we just talked about Reddit. Lawn site is essentially the Reddit of the lawn care community. And Mike got in some drama there. And then the last thing I wanted to ask you about, Mike is your thoughts on the Apple Vision Pro. Very interesting product that Apple just released a couple days ago.

Dude, as you. As you were. You're talking there. I'm actually jumping back into the lawn site thread to see what else is going on, because.

A lot goes on very quickly there. Yeah. So. Well, anyways, let's jump into the first thing. Go ahead.

Let's jump to the first thing I had. Okay. Yeah. So North Carolina update. So you've been posting daily vlogs, Shout out Zach. I know he can't hear me, but he's in the room with you, so shout out Zach. And just the media team, whoever's. I'm sure he's got help behind the scenes as well, but just. Awesome. Hello.

Yep.

Dude, that's awesome. But I. I wanted to dive into one specific video. So it was Sunday's video. I think it was day four, maybe day four or five.

Yeah. No, no, no.

Oh, sorry. I'm thinking Sunday was when we. Actually, Sunday was when we did the interviews, but it came out Tuesday. So. Sorry, I don't remember what four was.

Yeah, yeah, you're good. You're thinking of your actual Sunday. I'm thinking of the YouTube release, because those are a day or two behind. So it was the release that was on site. It was like day four or five on the count, and it ended, for lack of a better description, pretty real. You said and quote, that you needed to recalibrate how you handle the businesses. So essentially you were just like, burnout. You're like, hey, I'm burning the candle both ends. I have all my other meetings. I have stuff for Augusta. You know, I got co pilot stuff. I got lawn care, web design, whatever other entities you have to stress about. And you're trying to start a business from scratch in 30 days. So what did that look like, recalibrating how you handle the business?

Yeah, like, so I hate resenting the businesses and managing the businesses. Like, because if I resent them too long, I'll usually try to get rid of them, honestly. So what I was. What was happening is those first few days. I know it was just a few days, but, like, I'm also trying to emphasize this for the sake of the video because obviously, like, if I knew there was a. I just need to put my head down and get something done, I could make it happen. But I wanted to make the point because a lot of people hit this. Even though it might not be in three or four days, it might be in three or four months. Right. So for me, I don't want Resenting the business. And what I kept finding myself in those first few days doing is like, man, if I look at my phone right now, I am not gonna like my life. And so, like, I would go do hold the board for like a couple hours. And then I just knew, like, when I pick up that phone, like, I'd just be emails, texts, up for like at least a couple hours, which I don't enjoy that. And it's just part of what I needed to get done. And so usually when I'm able to kind of filter those things in throughout other meetings, etc, it's not so bad. But when you're taking two and three hours, then it makes it really. It's just. I just resented it. I was like, oh, man. So. But, you know, if I had to, I could put my head down, just knock it out. Right? Just sleep less and just make it happen. But it was just a matter of it's just more or less time. Like that, that one, that day was with a breaking moment. I was up to like four with copilot, and I need to wake up and like, do something for. I forget what that day. So, yeah, basically in terms of what it looked like for the business was hiring up the thing that I need to get done, and that was door hangers. And so in the past couple days, I've been able to have someone doing door hangers for me, and we started to get leads and things like that. So it's been good.

Good. So would you say it was more of a recalibration of just your time, or was it also, like, energy and focus? Like, I know those things kind of go hand in hand, but I think in this instance, like, I guess from the viewer's perspective as well as my perspective having worked with you, to me, it felt like you were saying I need to recalibrate how I handle my energy is what I was thinking. Not just time. Like, does that make sense? Like, you're.

Yeah, but I thought I had four hours. I thought I could take. Whoop. Do you. Sorry, did you. Can you hear me okay? You're kind of talking. Cool.

I kind of thought I could do four hours a day. I thought I could get away with like, doing a solid four hours of working locally in South Park. And so it just didn't work out that way. And mostly because I thought I'd, like, with the time change, I'd go to sleep earlier and I'd be awake up earlier and get ahead of everything and then like, help work on the business. It just hasn't worked out that way. I've been up late every night and so. Or not every night, several of the nights. So yeah, it was just, you know, it make better videos if I was working on the business. Like if I was, if I was out there doing the sales, talking to people, all that stuff, it would make a better video. But like, I'm not, I, I'm not going to let like the franchise and copilot and P4P and everything else I'm doing suffer. So what we're trying to focus on now is like, okay, I've hired the parts I need to get done for the business and that if I had a full time run of the business, that's what I'd be doing if that's all I was doing. And then we try to do a bit for like two hours a day. So when I get, I need to get film, we need to get something for the video. Basically we're like, okay, these are the things that we got to go shoot and let's go knock those out. So.

Okay, gotcha. So I was actually talking to a franchisee today on a coaching call and they were talking about how do, how do I, how do you, how do we manage our time? So would, would you say it was like, did you have to become more rigid with your time structure or is it more like mental prioritization? What would, what would you say has.

Helped you the most in this last couple weeks?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

With those times and be like, all right, an hour here, an hour there. Or is it like mental prioritization of this is what needs to get done if it doesn't like everything else doesn't matter.

He's realizing it was not sustainable. Like literally the first several days, every single night we went to bed after midnight finishing up the video because he'd be recording for me throughout the day and then he'd start editing at like 5 or 6 o' clock at night and he has to finish the whole video. And then, you know, so I'm accommodating that and then I'm hopping into, oh, okay, I got to catch up on, you know, four other businesses and everything needs to go on there. And so, and then for me also, even just knowing the stress of what you guys, knowing the stress you guys are under, even with several, the projects you guys are working on, doesn't help me at all either. So uh, I usually like to be when, when I know like you guys, when I say you guys, like my direct reports are under a lot of stress. I Usually want to be in the business, and I want to be dirty. And so it kind of kills me to be this far away. Honestly, when that's all going on, I'm not stressed.

I'm enjoying all of my projects.

It's funny. I should share the story. So we were originally going to do this a couple of days ago, so apologies for the people waiting for this episode to drop. We had scheduled a time to meet, and you can't text Mike. And it's 20 minutes after the time we scheduled me, and I text you, I say, sorry, I was just getting yelled at by a customer for the past 45 minutes. So someone had come by one of the businesses and wanted to give me a piece of their mind. So it was very fun.

That's why I made sure you still stayed at that location. Sitting in the corner, bro.

Yes, sir.

I was like, punching bag.

Yeah, 100%. I was just a punching bag. And the conversation literally ended with, well, if you'd like to take legal action, that is fine, but if you come back on site and harass my staff, I will be calling law enforcement. Super fun conversation I had the other night. Yeah. I was gonna ask, though. I wanted to kind of go, like, another layer deeper just because it is fun to honestly just watch the vlogs, even though I've got the pleasure to work with you for a while. The vlogs are a different light, a different spin on how Zach edits, what he shows, what he emphasizes, and just what you're going through. So what is your approach to balancing you personally?

Not.

This isn't just as a business owner. You personally, you have a bunch of other businesses. What is your approach to balancing those? And how do you prioritize the businesses that you currently have?

Well, I can't say I'm a pro at this. I would say, because whatever biggest fire is going on is probably getting most of my attention.

Yeah.

But for me, it's more a matter of, like, the first year of any, you know, initiative is going to get a lot of my attention. So, you know, for even, like. And it usually filters down. Right. So for myself, and I'm usually going to hand it off to one of you in my direct reports, Chuck is obviously taking on, like, all the corporate locations and the. The executive model, and you and him together kind of taking on franchise training or franchise coaching. You're taking on the sales side. Liz really handles command center. And then, you know, obviously the same thing, like the gym, et cetera. There's people that are managing stuff. Zach Takes a lot in terms of media, et cetera. So the first year or two, though, typically I'm very like, everything is going through me. And so it's. When it's in its kind of infinite stages or like, infant stages, I'm. I'm handling it a lot more. And then you guys don't even hear about it. So, for example, you guys aren't really even in the loop much on, like, the AI stuff that we're doing for the phone calls and stuff like that. Because, like, I'm very much hands on. Every single thing is going through me. I'm in there with the developers. I'm literally on the recording, like, listening and trying to figure stuff out. And then eventually that will get passed on, probably Liz, because she's in command center. And then I will not deal with them. I'll hand off the contacts from the development team and move on. Same thing with Copilot. Like, you know, I'm developing someone that could do that underneath me as well. And I think George is kind of priming for that position in terms of being able to be my liaison. And so right now, it's taking hours and hours in my day, and I would say probably five hours a day, four or five hours a day is spent exclusively on Copilot stuff. And so probably more. But.

That will eventually come down too, right? As the. As we catch up to what I've always said, like 2023, we got to play catch up. And we like so much iterations, and we're changing stuff, we're breaking stuff. And today I'm taking calls multiple times while I'm out doing stuff. That was a change. I'll be able to hand more of that off to George, and then I basically can hand off more operations and focus more on the strategy, because the strategy is where the real value is. But the beginning, I need to understand operations, right? Like, I understand enough about Command center to, like, answer 99% of questions. Then, like, there's one, like, mastermind. This morning I was like, hey, Liz, please chime in here if I'm saying this wrong, right? Because she's obviously now taken operations off my plate so I can focus more on strategy. And so that just becomes more and more over time. And some people don't like that. Like, same thing when people start stepping out of their business. In daily ops, customers don't like it, and they want to. They want you to do the job. Same thing is with me, right? People will be unhappy when, like, I'm not as involved and I don't know every nut and bolt of certain things because I'm handing off operations and I focus on strategy. That's where the real value is in the long term. But in the beginning part, I do try to get really, really dirty with what's going on. So I do understand a little bit better.

Yeah.

What is the first thing a potential customer does when deciding to hire your services or not? Hopefully they look at your website. Your website allows you to have complete control over how you present your company. But if your design looks unprofessional or your SEO isn't set up correctly, that potential lead could completely pass you by. Our team at Lawn Care Web Design and Home Service Web Design are experts who can help you the perfect website for your business. We handle every aspect of your website for a fraction of the cost of other web design services and outperform the SEO of our competitors consistently. That means your business will rank higher than your local competition in search results. Get started today by either going to lawn carewebdesign.com or homeservicewebdesign.com.

Would you very long answer your question?

No, no, no. It's good. It's good. I've been listening to a lot of A Diary of a CEO, so I don't want this to turn into like, you know, a therapy session, but because I feel like, what's the guy's name who does it? Stephen or something? Yeah, Stephen. Just phenomenal. Very well read, very eloquent, great questions. But I feel like his all his, like, proverbial cop out question is like, do you think that framework stems from and then like asks, you know, about like, childhood trauma or asks about like, you know, what's it called?

Open ended questions.

Dude, let's go. Huh?

Open ended questions.

Yeah. Open ended questions, exactly. Well, no, I was gonna say, do you feel like that what your answer, do you feel like that stems from, like, the fact that you need to prove that you can do it? Like, I am in the operations, I build it, I'm in the mud, as you said. So you need to prove, like, I can do it, I can build it, I can understand it. So that way later down the road, you can hand it off and have that, like, confidence, you know, what you're talking about?

It's, it's a few things. That's, that's probably part of it. Part of it's probably fear of the financial aspect because typically I'm most involved when we're losing money.

So.

That, that probably mix those two things and then like a very Small portion of it would be like, there's no one else that can move as quickly because they don't have all the different facets of the business. And that's true. But I overemphasize that. I know that for a fact. But it's definitely something you feel in the moment, like, hey, I'm the only one that has this, like, for example, copilot. I'm the only one in my brain. Whereas, like, okay, I understand what command center needs. I understand what the user needs. I understand what the owner needs. I also understand, like, from a business perspective, what other industries. And I'm only one who understands the AI side right now. And I just know that I'm overthinking that. But also, if I try to delegate that right now, it would slow things down. So. But it's more probably.

It's probably.

I'd say it's 60 when we're losing money, that I'm more. I get more hands on because I'm afraid. And that's just the truth.

Yeah, fair. So if someone does have multiple businesses, I kind of came up with another question is, would you base your prioritization. So to go back to the quote from the video, recalibrate how you handle the businesses as. Would you base your prioritization of businesses on, like, fires? Like, in terms of you're fixing things, you're just. You just have to fix all this stuff. The fires are happening, so you have to make that a priority. Would you say fires, revenue stream or passion? How would you categorize the priorities of your business based on those three?

The latter two have zero factor whatsoever. It'd be a mix of the first two, which you can recite to me again now that I forget.

It's just three. It's like fires or things going wrong. I couldn't think of something better to say. Failure, maybe preventing failure, revenue stream and passion.

Got it. So it's really just number one, then. So really it's like, what is the biggest fire in the micro? That's what I'm gonna spend my time on. I guess then what I was thinking in my head is I guess would be kind of number three. I wouldn't call it passion, but I would call it.

Objectives. So, like, right now, like, the main objectives for me are 1, co pilot, 2, copilot, 3, make sure it's ready for Augusta. Right. And so, like, that's all I'm focused on. Right. I know that. That Liz has a good handle on command Center. I know you and Chuck are handling the, the, the support tie of things with the franchisees and then you with the sales side and then the corporate locations, etc. So I am simply looking at. Okay, I have two months until we have locations inside of a. Inside of Copilot, and I have six months until we need to move. We need to be able to move, like, tens of millions of dollars worth of revenue into it. And so.

That'S my number one objective right now. The same way that, like last year it was fix everything at command center with Liz, create departments, systematize things, etc.

Yeah. Are we. I feel like you were alluding to the building, too, that we're building into the new headquarters a little bit.

Dude, that's so, like, not even on my radar right now.

I don't even want to bring up. I know, I know. You got so much to, to think about right now. I feel bad bringing it up, but.

I did, I did email the contractors today. Just kind of. We're still waiting on wetlands. Like, literally. We have everything ready to go, so it's frustrating. But that's why you have a contractor too. Like, I trust the contractor. They, they know. I just want the thing done. So. Yeah.

Yeah. So anyways, let's switch it up. Thanks for letting me probe. I think you're doing great down there, but I had, I had to ask some questions because that video was pretty heavy, if you will. So. Lawn site, let's move on topic number two. So lawn site is essentially the Reddit.

Let me preface this conversation. Go for everyone listening. You do not need to go on there and defend me, all right? We do not need a bunch of people going and saying, mike is nice and he's not this way, and you guys are losers. Please don't do that. It's, it's, it's not helpful at all. Sorry, go ahead.

Wait, you're. You're saying debating on the Internet isn't helpful at all?

Did you, did you read through the whole thread today?

Yeah, I mean, I, I, I just pulled it up. I don't know if I, I read the whole thread while it was live, while it was happening.

Did you know what the. You want, you want to see something that's funnier than the thread that you, you read the day. That is 200 comments long.

All right, one second.

All about you or Augusta or.

No, no, no. Dude, this is funny. This is funny, dude. Oh, dude. Oh, man. See, there's too many now because, see, once I got on here, it was lights off. One second.

Let me see if I can't pull this up.

Oh, man. Okay, I can't. All I know is this. So I signed up for Lawn Site. I hadn't been on the site, like, 10 years, and so I was like, whoa, this thing still exists? I only did it because someone in the comments of your last C suite Unfiltered said I was getting. What was the word? I forget. Like, basically people were tearing me apart or I was getting shade. There you go.

Yep.

And so I went over to Lawn site, created an account, hopped in there, and sure enough, there's this thread going off about me and blah, blah. So.

I'm a big fan of, like, any controversy about yourself. Just, like, go in there, make light of it. Because, like, don't take yourself too seriously because no one else does. And I do. I do believe that most people on the Internet are just like. They're just. They have way more confidence. They would never say these things to my face, ever. And so when you. You can just, you know. And if. And if someone actually wants to be deliberately mean and bad and say horrible things, I always bring it back to my gut. My brain is. No, there's no really, really successful person that punches down, like, you're, you know, you're people that say theft about Elon Musk. It doesn't even phase him because, like, he's so far above them. Yeah, right. The only time that you would ever, like, retort or come back is because you're not that great. And it's like, with Tigran's thing, I took all my videos down. Like, this is. This is small boy potatoes. Right. And so.

And I'm still learning that, like, I'm still. There's still things I've done wrong. Like, even with my content stuff, where it's like, okay, that was like small boy stuff. And so anyways, hopped in on. On the stream, commented back and forth to them. Like, I did like five or six posts. And then like, I came back six or seven hours later and there's like, pages more like, oh, my word, it's not common more. This is the funny part. I wake up the next morning because now that I've created an account, people can tag you. Oh, big mistake. So I turned that. I turned off where I don't get notifications my email anymore because the next morning was a bunch. Anyways, the one that caught my attention was Good Morning Mike. And it was a different. It was a different name of a thread. Like, it was a new thread. Someone created a new thread called Good Morning Mike and was like, you know, sometimes you just need a new thread to kind of shift the energy in the direction of who's getting on this channel. Mike, want to say good morning and welcome to Lawnsite. That's so funny, dude. I'll try to find it, but it was great. I was very entertained. So.

Dude, that's awesome. Yeah, I, I definitely want to find that. So, yeah, I mean you got, you, you got some drama. I, I appreciate the sentiment there. I think you handled it well. I don't really have like the specific comments to pull up or anything. We don't have to dive into it because Internet drama is arguably one of the biggest waste of times in the history of mankind. Like just being honest. Busy be lawn service. A loyal subscriber to the C suite unfiltered tipped us off. He said, Mike's getting some shade on lawn site. Someone basically dragging you Augusta that the 3F program is like multi level marketing, like all sorts of just baseless claims and you just hopped in there and just made light of it. So was there any, was there any favorite part you had in that? Like, I, I don't want to drag anyone online, but.

No, dude, I wish I could find the second thread just now. There's too much. So anyways, no, my favorite part. So how it kind of started is first and foremost someone said something. I created an account and responded like finally, right? And then he's like, oh, that's not suspicious. I mentioned Mike Andes and then someone creates an account. Do you wrote me basically. Do you really think I believe it's you? So I literally took out my remarkable. And I wrote down his username. I said, hi, so and so. And I just took a picture and smiled. And then that just blew up the threat. So it was fun. It was fun, dude. Like I, I don't, I don't take it too seriously. And so that's. I would want of an influencer, someone that can like just not, not be so serious. Like people were saying things about Augusta and saying it's a multi level pyramid screen. But. But what was happening is the person that originated the entire thread, the entire thread was saying that you need to work for Augusta for two years. Then you could become a franchisee and pay 20,000. You work for two years, you get it for free. And I cover all the legal costs of training and all the rest of it.

And so anyways, it was fun. So I had some serious like comments back to some of the things that were factually incorrect about Augusta. But when they came against me, I just make light of it. Like, I'm sure. Yes. You know, I was in diapers last time I was on lawn site. Yes. Like, that's funny. Like, yeah, so you lean into. It's fun.

So, yeah, the. The writing the guy's actual username on your pad and then taking a selfie with it, like a goat. That was so good because he's like, probably not even real. Like, da, da, da, da. It's like, no, it's me. I'm right here. Like, I love that move. You also invited him to do this. You invited?

Oh, yeah, dude. Yeah. So he didn't. So before the. The. Before the image I took, I literally just. I was. I was doing the mastermind. So I opened up. Literally on the mastermind, I opened up another stream yard link and I sent the link on the. The thread. I said, hey, just join me on the link. And of course, he interpreted as like, you're driving traffic to your YouTube channel. Like, dude, it's a private stream yard link. I was just gonna say hi.

Yeah. Anyways, yeah, I feel like more people should do that on the Internet. Just call people out. Be like, top in my zoom room.

Beefing. Here's my zoom link. Hop in. Yeah. Now I. I just think it's like, this is just a general takeaway because the lawnsight didn't even know it existed to be 100. I did not know it existed. And my, like, one of my least favorite things in life is like, echo chambers. And I just hate when you get these communities where it's just the same people saying the same things to the same people. Like, it's just. There's no value in that. No one's pushing back, no one's educating. And it's like, literally, Augusta Lawn Care Services.com franchise. All your questions would be answered. Yet some random guy on an Internet thread with no, like, identification whatsoever is telling you that it's a pyramid scheme. Like, it just makes no sense to me. Like, one of the. My favorite comment from someone was that they were like, if you take a minute to look into him, you realize it's a scheme. And I'm like, you clearly have not taken a minute to actually look into him, because it's not so. Right? So that's the stuff that just bothers me. And then when they come at you, having worked for you, I'm an employee. Like, all the stories about employees and the scam and this and that and taking money, it's like, this is not true. Like, I would not work for you if those things were true. It just wouldn't.

So, yeah, it's actually very difficult to pull off any sort of scam or Ponzi scheme. It's very, very difficult. The reason for that is because great people are required to build anything, anything of size. And so typically, how it works, like an actual Ponzi or a scheme or like a real, a malicious type of business model, is you only really have two to five people in the know of what's going on. So, for example, like Barry Stearns, there were very good employees that just did not know that there was bad things happening and that the company was over leveraging. There's people involved in, like, Bernie Madoff stuff like, that was doing the work, but had no idea that they were doing fraudulent activity. And so the bottom line is that it's very rare that you can do that because usually you need a lot of people and therefore you need great people to build something big. And so if we're going to build something big, and I think I need good people, like, there's no way I can keep them if I'm doing fraudulent things. Right.

So.

But again, these are, these are the type of details that you're not going to put in a thread like that. So you kind of lean into it, you make light of it. And then the only thing I really went after, and not like defending, but just like explaining was Augusta stuff. Because, like, I'm not gonna have that bash. They can say, everybody want to be. I think it's hilarious. But not Augusta.

That's a little.

That's crossing the line.

I, I think I'm that way too. Like, Augusta. It's, it's, it's. I think, for you, because I know you could take that public facing, like, scrutiny, that's, that's, that's comes with the territory. Right? You've put yourself out there. You're on YouTube, you're on social media. Like, you have to expect some element of public scrutiny. But it's like, when they come in Augusta, I take it personally because I represent the brand. I take it personally for the franchisees who represent the brand, all the great people I get to work with. Like, then I'm like, no, no, you, you go at Mike, respectfully, you go at me even. But, like, don't go at Augusta and the people that work there. And so I think I'm in step with you there.

Yeah. And then, like, they eval points too. Like, I said about things in the past that I've done that I'm not proud of. Like, and not necessarily. I'M proud of. But like that that can be taken wrong and that I've stopped doing so. For example, like I used to share all my numbers up until like 2020. And the problem is like, like in that thread people are like, he brags about his numbers, he's egotistical and like his proud. And I, I always did that because I wish that's what someone would do when I was starting out, like to give me inspiration. And that's like what 95% of people probably got from it. But I stopped doing it for that reason. It does look that way, right? The same way when someone gets on there, I'm making millions of dollars because that's what it has become. And if you say that now and there's always then the flip side, people like, he doesn't share his numbers anymore. You must be like fraudulent. So I said, I said, look, look, the franchisees, they get to see the profit and loss statement at the end of the year. That's it. They're the only people I feel accountable to. Outside of that, you know, I don't really care about what your opinion is about my finances, so. And if the franchisees have questions, they can ask me in a mastermind and I'll tell them. So.

Yeah, yeah, no, that's fair. Lawnsight, check out the thread. But that's not us calling anyone.

Yeah, please don't, please don't.

I want to be very clear about that. Yeah, no, no, no, you will go on there. I do not have a burner account. You will not see a Lee park account. I don't interact on that stuff because I literally think it's the biggest waste of time. But I'm not calling out people to go and defend Mike or Augusta. Like, if you feel like you want to chat with people, keep it respectful, keep it light or just, I don't know, do something productive with your time like not wasting it on the Internet and chat rooms.

Whether you are looking to start your own lawn care business or take yours to the next level, landscape business course is the perfect place to become an expert. This is Mike's personal lawn care oriented course. Directly from his experience growing Augusta into the successful business it is today. It's a step by step resource showing you how to grow your monthly revenue to over $100,000 in just three years. Including over 30 plus lectures and tons of bonuses to dive into. These lessons aren't the same ones that Mike puts up on YouTube. If you want a full picture of how to run a growing lawn care business, this is the perfect place to start. You can find out more by going to landscapebusinesscourse.com.

All right. Apple Vision Pro. So did you see the release?

I did, yeah.

Initial thoughts? Let's just jump in. Let's just go.

I, I right now, I don't think it's super useful.

Apple is always really good at taking something that seems a little far off though, and making it applicable. They've done that for multiple devices.

And so like, like, for example, you know, they were the ones that cut the cord from the iPhone and that was crazy at the time. And now it's like what? Like I never miss my core. Never ever miss my core for earphone jack. And so the same thing with the Apple Watch. Like there was plenty of watches, smart watches before Apple Watch came along. Now they just like dominate the market. Same with AirPods, et cetera. So whether or not they, I think they can do it, they will bring it mainstream and they always start off really high price. It's the way that you price, skim, you take the early adopters, you make high margins, that then feeds R D to be able to bring the cost down. So makes perfect sense. Everyone's freaking out of the price.

I look at it and I think when that dollar amount can come down enough, like robotics, which this will come down a lot sooner than robotics because the technology is there. I would love to be able to train guys like for landscaping, using them. Yeah, and that's like, hey, you know, your first six hours is going to be in this room with this headset on and you're going to hold this weed whacker and we're able to train them and you literally have a person that is virtually, you know, augmented reality walking them through. Okay, here's this M.O. this line edge along this. Okay, here's this property M.O. here go. Right. And it doesn't require an actual field day of training or expensive trainer, which is typically your most experienced crew members or potentially the owner. So that gets very interesting to me. But I think we're at least three to five years away from that being a reality. And I think it's very early. I think they crushed Facebook and Oculus that has spent so much money doing this and has had very, very little success. So we'll see what happens. I think, you know, they didn't mention gaming very much, which was surprising to me. So I wonder about the, the power of the processor chip for now and I also wonder about its performance because it only has a two hour battery.

Right.

And so that, that will improve though, like the one that they have in 2025 will be light years ahead of this first version. And that's when it starts getting interesting. And the same way that there was chat GPT1 and there was chat GP2, but no one cared about until chat GP3. So that's what'll happen I think like in this space, same thing. It'll be a few years of innovation, high cost, and then they'll make one that's cheap and has really good functionality and utility and it'll crush.

Yeah, yeah, it was interesting. Some of the initial reactions that I looked up on like cnbc, Yahoo Finance, like obviously seeing the initial reactions in the stock market, their stock price did dip 3 to 4%.

Like an all time high still.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, of course. I was like, well as soon as I saw the release too, I was like, oh, people are going to hate that. Buy the dip. And then I was like, oh well, Apple's still all time high. Like there's so like a 3 to 4% dip was nothing for them. But yeah, and I think what they did say hurt the stock price was ever. The major investors were expecting a large announcement at the beginning, which is kind of a classic Steve Jobs. But I guess what Cook decided to do was do OC or not Oculus Vision, Vision Pro, Vision plus, whatever they're calling it. At the end he was like, let's t. Let's pretend we don't have this big launch and then we're gonna tease it at the end. But initial reactions, you're right. No, like gaming or recreational element was pushed. It was clearly a business push. They were showing people at desks with zoom meetings with like calendar links with what's the big like not what's the bit like LinkedIn like a bunch of different products like that on the screen. It wasn't clearly recreational use. So I think that hurts general public take. They're like, I don't know if I really want to spend $3,500 on something if I'm not, you know, running a Fortune 500 company. So they didn't show a lot of recreational use.

That's in my opinion because of the price point. You're not going to be selling to the. The average 18 year old gamer a $3,500 device as well as the companies that are highlighted in those enterprise level apps like Zoom, LinkedIn, et cetera, have the resources to put a team of programmers to actually make software that's useful. Whereas if you're going to create A gaming thing, which most of which lose money in terms of gaming apps. They do not have the resources to throw an entire dev team into creating just for this app or for this device. Right. And so the thing is, you got big heavy hitters like Disney walk in that do have the resources to do it. And.

That, that's a huge play. Like, that's Facebook lack that massively. And so in my opinion, Apple will be the leader in this market. They have, they're always slow to adopt new changes, but they, when they come out, they are well perfected. And it's definitely not an accident that this, the launch is still seven to eight, nine months away. Because what they're doing is they're, they're, they're looking at all the feedback right now. They're literally like, okay, let's put this out there, let's see what happens. And then we have an entire half a year to still knock this out of the park.

Right.

And so they're going to crush it. They're masters at this whole game of customer experience.

And understanding what the customer needs. And I think it came through that this is the best by far what's out there in terms of ar. And now it's a matter of put it in the hands of developers because developers are really what makes it useful.

Yeah. Couple of personal takeaways is I loved the tagline. Welcome to the era of spatial computing. That was phenomenal. Tagline, like marketing team, great wording. However, I did go onto their website and I scrolled through the whole page of all the information. The design, the technology. Right. It's very cool to see how they put those pages together just from a website design perspective, but also to see some of the information. So under the section designed by Apple. Thought this was kind of funny for people that are a little, you know, people need to go out and touch grass more. Right. They need to stop being on the Internet. They need to stop living in a virtual reality. They literally call it an enclosure. Bad Choice Awards. Very Bad Choice Awards. It was like designed by Apple. Let's look at the enclosure. They cut like, it's just like, enclose yourself in Apple. Like you don't need the outside world. Thought that was a bad choice of words. Personally, don't know what your take is on that.

I thought it was funny too. They, they showed a lot of like, literally you can take photos from the device and then play them back in 3D, which is very interesting because you can like almost relive time. Yeah. But can you imagine going to like, I don't know, a wedding and some guys wearing glasses. Yeah, Right. So, like, it always starts off like. Like that will never happen. No one will ever go through the social norms and wear something like that to a wedding or a birthday or graduation. You got grandma's over there with her goggles on. Yeah, that's not gonna happen. So. But this will always come down, right? Like, eventually though, it will look like this, right? And eventually they will have clear. And eventually it will get good enough on the projection where this can be clear. You can see someone's eyes. They can quickly turn on and off the projection in front of their eyes. And so this is, you know, V1, right. And they'll get there the same way if you compare it to the first Mac laptop from Apple. Right. The Apple imac. Like, it's, it's night and day now, so it'll just be a matter of time. It'll. It'll get very close to this and that's when it will take over, is when you got this for, you know, probably fifteen hundred dollars. You can wear it all the time. You can get prescription, you can get the projection on there. You can filter on and off. And it's, it's much more PC when it comes to the environment.

Yeah, yeah. My, My second personal takeaway was in all the demo videos. They're showing a user with the headset on, and then everyone they're talking to is like, just doing a standard FaceTime video. So I'm like. So the user is just the idiot with the goggles on. But did.

But you know what was being done there, right? Like, it was like it was taking. So mapping their face, right? And it's like they, they're not like. Yeah, exactly. It's taking like, what's behind the goggles and like replacing it because there's not an actual camera facing them, right? Yeah. What's crazy I thought is there's actually a screen because it's not translucent, the screen. There's actually a screen facing outwards. And what it does is it is simply taking what's on the inside of the goggles and making a screen on the front to people outside. So when, when they were showing people and you could see their eyes, it is not. It is not transparent or translucent. It is opaque. But the reason you saw their eyes is because there's a screen facing outwards that is projecting into their eyes and then tracking their eyeballs.

That's so creepy.

So can you imagine, like, if you were from the side angle, it would look like their eyes are like bugged out because the screens are still a couple inches out in front.

I'm trying to do this new thing where I keep track of my like initial reaction specifically for the pod. So this is what I wrote down. So you just look like a rich psycho with it on. Like it's like, it's like, like you're rich and you're kind of crazy walking around with this thing on. That was my gut reaction.

That's the kind of thing that flies in most places now. Like it's status. Right. So like the same way like having a BlackBerry was like such a status move, you know, and even like the app on the back of the, the imac, it doesn't, it's not about the device, it's about the fact that I have the money to buy this. I also am tech savvy enough to understand it and I am a early adopter. Right. And so there's a group of people that are not early adopters because they are interested in technology. They're early adopters because they want to cool. And Apple's mastered that. Right. And that's why their launches do so well.

Yeah, that's 100% true. So. Right on. Anything else you got for the people? Otherwise we'll wrap it with some non financial advice.

Oh, dude, you're going to have to do it first because I have to.

Think my non financial advice is from Apple's most recent presentation. So if you're ever public speaking and I, I feel like this is something that I've, I'm actually not bad at. I could probably get a little bit better at. But every single Apple a presenter had a middle resting position. The hands were either like here or at the belt or across like the stomach or like folded like this in front. All of them were clearly trained to have that center resting position and it was beautiful. Those are those little subliminal things that you don't pick up as the viewer, but it shows continuity, it shows confidence, it shows that they're all in line together, not only with their bodies but also with the product. Just phenomenal execution of presentation. So that's been our financial advice. If you're public speaking, find your center line, keep your hands quiet. And then when Tim Cook wanted to do a big gesture, he would. And it has more emphasis this.

Very good. Now here's the question.

On that point. Would you rather have that.

Or would.

You rather have someone like Eli who's unpredictable, can't communicate very well, can't hold a sentence in A straight line can be very unpredictable in terms of his energy level when it comes to presenting, but has like crazy big ideas. Like which one, which, like which one is appealing to you more as. Okay, let's take it from our like an investor public, not like an employee's perspective.

Yeah, me, for me, I would enjoy like an Elon more. But for the masses, you have to do it. What Apple did, their presentation skill. Because it has to be this perfect product rollout that also appeals to the masses, the public, the shareholders. So I personally prefer someone who maybe is a little more authentic, for lack of a better word. Apple is very polished, but that goes in line with their product. That's what you're buying. You're buying. Like you said, it's status, polish, clean, size, strong. And all their presenters, like, if you look, they all came back to center, whether it was here or at the belt line or across the stomach. Just, just. It showed continuity within the team and the product. I liked it.

Yeah. I think it has to do like being on brand. Right. It's exactly what you said. It's like they sell a polished product, they have to present it in the way that like, hey, we're gonna have our stuff together. This is not gonna be a flop. We figured this out. We know exactly what we're talking about. It's gonna be beautiful. It's gonna be gorgeous and amazing. And then someone like Elon was like, he's selling the future of going to Mars, you know, having no emission vehicles, all that stuff. And so in that regard, you know, you gotta sell the dream and you gotta sell it hard. And it doesn't matter whether you're centered or if you're left or right or you're, you know, whatever. It's like you got to get that message across. So it's interesting. It's a good point.

Okay, here's the thing that made me think of something. I don't know if this is recent. Did you see the time Meet Kevin, talked to Elon Musk at a shareholder meeting.

Yeah, dude. Yeah, that was recent. Yeah. Talk about advertising.

Yeah, yeah, you talked about advertising. Like that was like a perfect example of Elon just kind of reacting and be like, oh, yeah, sure, I guess we could do it.

Yeah. Literally on the stage of a shareholder meeting is like, yeah, we should spend some money on advertising. I think that's good idea. Everyone. Cheers. Like, sounds like everyone wants to do it. We'll just spend more money on advertising.

Like that is polar opposite what we just saw with Apple. Perfect. Like dichotomy of successful businesses.

But this is what's interesting, right? So, like, there's pros and cons of both, right? So, like, obviously there's pros. What Apple did, like, it's very buttoned down, et cetera. And for all we know, half of what they were showing is completely staged. So, like, the first iPhone could not connect correctly. It's like they hard programmed the fact that it had five bars of data and the time was hard coded. Like, it was a big show, right? And then with someone like Elon, there's definitely downsides to your CEO in front of a shareholders meeting. Be like, yeah, we should do. That's a good idea. Like, let's do that, right? But then it's like the authenticity level is huge. And like, you would never have a broken window like they did at the cybertruck release. You never have that Apple, everything is buttoned down and perfect. And they literally were in the back room testing out the window right before the meeting. Like, that would never happen at Apple. That could never happen. And if it did happen to be way off brand, whereas if, when it happened with Tesla or yeah, Tesla, like, it was completely fine because they're so authentic that that happening was probably a very positive thing for them from a PR perspective. And from like, hey, we don't show. We don't, like, make this stuff up. We, like, literally threw our beta test out there and broke the window. And like, that's fun. That's funny, right? And so I think it's just. It's about being on brand because, like, Tesla could not do what Apple did, like, and button everything down. Everybody, like, they've lost heart, they've lost innovation. There's no more creative thinking. And then Apple can't do it. Tesla did because of people, like, this device is way overpriced and it's not gonna work. And it's like glitchy and all that sort of thing.

Yeah, I think I may be overstepping. I think that's a great way that you and I balance each other out, though. You're a Tesla. I'm out in terms of how we would want to present something big. Like, I'm like, let's make it polished, let's make it clean, keep it tight. And you're like, roll it out, baby.

Let's go.

Non financial advice. I had one and I lost it. Dude. Sick. We went on that great tangent and we just lost it.

It was a good tangent. I mean, that could be our. Not financial advice. Just wrap it, dude.

I Had good non. Non financial advice too, man. It was stacking up. Oh, here's some non. Here's some financial. Non financial advice. Great.

Love.

Tech is in a very much of an upward trajectory in the stock market. And so if you bought any time in the last 12 months, you might want to think about trading out because you're probably 50 to 50 to 80% up. So I haven't sold for a long time until just recently. And I don't think this is the top. I do think we're going to keep, continue, go up because as soon as the Fed, like, I think they'll, they'll raise rates one more time in July, I think they'll pause and I think they'll start cutting rates again by the end of the year. And when that happens, you're probably gonna get more hot, more upside. But I would be careful, and this is my not financial advice. It's not necessarily to sell out because I'm, I literally have sold 10 to 15 of my portfolio. It is be careful of doing what everyone did two years ago. And as it goes up, you jump onto lousy stocks.

Yeah.

So I would highly recommend looking at what did well in 2020, the end of 2021 and beginning of 2022, and those are the stocks you're watching. So that if we, if there's any sort of downside that you're going to buy into on an upswing, that you look at those stocks, because it's going to be, it's going to get right back, I guarantee it, in three to six months as we come out of the stock market correction and we're going to start going into a real estate correction. As that happens, you're going to have all that same momentum and people talking about all sorts of stupid stuff again. So just be careful.

Yeah, definitely. Good point. I love it. Fantastic. Well, thank you for your time, sir. That's it. Like. And subscribe.

Thanks for all your work on the home front. I appreciate it.

We're doing it well.

All right, guys, have a good one.

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 Andes YouTube channel. That'll be right up your alley. That's all we have time for today. We'll see you next time.