C. Suite Unfiltered: WORST Tech Predictions Ever and F.Y.R.E. Fest

Welcome back to the Mike Candies Podcast, where we discuss the ins and outs of owning a small business. If you're new here, the Mike Candies podcast is all about taking your business to the next level. We're back with C Suite and filtered with your hosts, Mike Andes and Lee Park. So we've been reading the comments on YouTube shorts that Mike has been posting, and we know it's not all roses, so we're answering the question, does all press count as good press? Who's had the worst tech predictions of all time? Mike explains the importance of not comparing yourself to your competitors. And finally, Mike and Lee discussed the impending return of Fyre Fest and its implications. Is this a big joke? You can see the video versions of these over on the C suite and filtered YouTube channel. But let's get right into it. Here's Mike and Lee with the show.

All right. Another day, another dollar.

Welcome back to another episode of the C Suite, unfiltered.

Let's go.

How's it going, sir?

Good, man, Good. Do we want to do, like, business updates at the very beginning?

Yeah, I feel like business updates are fun.

Yeah. That way. Yeah. Cool. All right, so right now in the businesses.

How many location at 129.

Still.

We should do, like, every episode.

Oh, okay. I like that. Yeah. 129. Okay. Or no, 130. We're 130 now. Officially signed up. Another person emailed me today. Ready to go.

Cool.

Marcus, you know who you are, so, yeah, that's how many locations are at. A few people in the pipeline. Next training is July. Most of the slots are full. We do have a few left, but, yeah, it's looking good. We're excited.

Cool. Yeah. Tomorrow we have a couple big features coming out at Copilot, so that's fun. The dispatch boards, you're getting redesigned with the map being afloat. The map as you scroll down and then just readjusting the listing format to be able to be thinner so you get more per view.

So, yeah, that's kind of a big deal for me.

Nice.

But, yeah, hired another developer on the weekend.

Cool.

Um, he worked the guy I talked about last week working at Adobe, so I hired him. He agreed and everything, and so I'll probably get one more.

Nice.

So we'll see. Yeah.

How's. I feel like we haven't talked about, like, landscape, business course, like media.

All those.

Yeah.

All your side hustles.

They're going good. You know, it's just. It's a more of a slow burn. It's directly correlated with the media team in terms like, you know, how well the media is doing. That's typically how well our leads do for like longer media and all the rest of it. Long term Media has done really good for us this year in part because I tied some of the compensation of the team to it. Nice. So they started making sure things really went well, just like with upselling and like sending emails for abandoned checkouts and stuff like that. So it's, it's done well. It just, it breaks even. Like you lose money and then we make money and we lose money like month over month. But it usually doubles or triples every year. So like in 2020 is the first year I actually had Josh start full time. So it's really been almost three years that I actually had a media person of any sort. And so you know that I think that year I want to say I did like 100k or 80k in revenue maybe. And then it's just like doubled and tripled every single year. So this year we're. We'll do over a million easily. Nice. And I think last year we did like seven or eight. I forget.

Yeah. Somewhere around there I remember the talk talking about that with the media guys. 750k and you've like 6x your staff for media.

Yeah. Every dollar comes in. So we just look every single month and like okay, either A, I'm doing raises or B, we're getting equipment or C, we're getting more team or we're out offering like a free something. So like we'll do a free course. So like we're going to do a free course on taxes. You know, it'll cost us because it's a natural amount by the time we recording and editing and making a website and all the rest of it. But yeah, like the goal of the media team is simply break even. So every dollar we make and all that stuff we can put back into that.

Nice. That's awesome. Your YouTube subscriptions. You're up, man. How many? 84, 85.

84, 85 for a downtrend. We kind of change up shorts a little bit, but I think it'll be a higher value. I'm gearing up for June, so I think June's going to be big. I just don't know how big. I don't know if it's going to be like. Well, I don't know. I could guess like I. Yeah, I don't know.

Do you want to get in the shorts thing at all?

What do you want to get into that Conversation with a franchise advisor.

Yeah.

Okay. So the franchise advisor Council was basically like, hey, some of the shorts, are they really good for the brand? Yeah. In terms of. And if anyone wonders why we're sweating, it's like 80 something degrees in my house because I don't have a very good AC system. Well, I have an ac, but it's like a wall in my bedroom, so my bedroom is cool. And that's it.

Yeah. So the Franchise Advisor Council. So what's crazy is I had already talked to the media team and kind of said like, hey, we need to change things in the shorts a little bit because this could be misinterpreted just in terms of the overall brand. So they were mostly concerned about like making customers look bad or making us look bad like the brand. And especially when it was like the customer would call and just be like not be able to do math or like just was this dumb and we were putting as a shorts. I could see their point 100%. Prior to that, I had already talked to the media team, so really actually when they, when they brought it up to me, we actually looked forward to everything we had scheduled and everything was actually kosher and we didn't have to change anything because we had already talked about it and already made changes. So we're kind of making more of a pivot towards what I feel the higher value audience anyways. And it's something that like over the past three months we learned a lot about what makes shorts work, what doesn't work, what converts over to long form, what doesn't convert. So I think we learned a ton.

Cool.

And so I think we can switch now to more of an educational business type short but, but, and not have as many views, but have a much higher value audience that we're going after as business owners. Because when you start doing like funny reaction type Karen type shorts, you bring in a whole very, very wide audience. Really is, is going after the broad market. But you know, the valuable customer to me and valuable audience member is someone who's a business owner.

Yeah.

So we're going after more of like businesses that are for sale and breaking them down. And so really leaning into like what people brings in business owners as numbers. So we're really leaning into numbers showing the numbers breaking down profit margins. It won't get as many views because it's just a much smaller niche audience, but I think it's a higher view audience. And as we gear up for June, I want that audience to be who we're targeting for the $300,000 in revenue. Month business. Yeah. So that's kind of what we're going. Gearing up for. I really hope. I really wish that we looked back in June again. A couple of years in June is like, the time we, like, things took off from there. I think it could, but it really just comes down to we don't know what's coming. Like, even the day Chuck was like, so, like, do you have, like, a place to stay? Do you have, like, a storage facility yet? I'm like, I haven't really looked at anything, so I think it's gonna be, like, really good. Could be raw. How well can we edit? How come? Well, can we actually share the story? And then on the flip side, like, I've got to really create a real business in 30 days and then hand it off to a general manager that I found and trained up in that time too. So it'll be interesting. We'll see what happens.

Yeah, I like that jumping backwards a little bit on the shorts side of things. So the.

Sorry.

No, no, you're good. I loved where we went. I think I just wanted to dive into. There were people saying that our shorts are. Your shorts were a little too negative, maybe. Could be taken wrong in terms of us making fun of Augusta customers, is that bad for the brand? Does that make us look unprofessional? Is that helping us raise the level of professionalism in the industry? What's your thoughts on that kind of direct statement?

Yeah, it was really a branding play, right? So in every single. Those clips that we. That someone was calling Augusta, we would play clips of Augusta long hair. So, like, yellow trucks, yellow uniforms. That's our brand. So the fact of the matter is, I got that message in front of 15 to 20 million people per month, and those were all potential customers. Even if they're not business owners, they're actually, like, our ideal customer for Augusta Lawn Care.

Right.

So I actually feel like it was really good branding. And in general, I feel like getting your name out there is a really good thing, because you can change your brand perception within a matter of three to six months pretty easily. But it doesn't matter if no one knows who you are.

Right?

So it was very much of, like, this is a wide net. That's why we bumped up and doubled subscribers in a couple of months, is because, like, it's. You throw a massive wide net.

And we learned a lot from it in terms like the media side, and they kind of command attention on shorts and conversion to long form. And. And then secondly, my Argument as to why we did it is because it was a really good branding play, because there's always people who react negatively in the comments. And, like, I would say one third of the comments we got were negative against Augusta. Right. You charge too much, you're ripping off your employees with P4P, all that stuff. The other two thirds, though, are very much in support. And so the vast majority of, you know, 15 to 20 million views per month are people that are positively thinking about Augusta. And the other one third, if you keep hitting them time and time and time and time again, you can change that perception.

Right.

So it was very much more of, like, all. All attention and all press is good press type thing.

Yeah.

That we were kind of leaning into.

Yeah. I. I think I default, generally speaking, to there's no such thing as bad publicity.

Right.

All press as good press. No such thing as bad publicity. And my example is, first day of college, had a guy that I was on my dorm floor, and he wore, like, a horrible, like, tiger suit to, like, the first big school event.

Smart.

By the end, he was, like, one of the most popular guys. And I was like, that's a horrible move, but everyone's gonna remember him. The funny guy in the tiger suit.

Yeah.

So what? I've done that. No, because I don't want the bad press. I don't want people seeing me in a tiger suit.

Right.

But it works. So I think we weren't making fun of our customers. I think there's a line of vulgarity or harassment or intentional embarrassment that we never even got close to. I'm not even gonn. We didn't cross the line. We weren't even close to the line. But I think there's an element of, like, casting that net, seeing what sticks. And, hey, if we get more eyes on us, it's not a bad thing, in my opinion.

Yeah. And, like, from Augusta's point of view, that was the standpoint. Like, it's an overall brand play. And then for me personally, like, the personal brand side, it was. There's no one else putting out negative, like, comments about their business and negative phone calls. And so what that creates is small business owners that when they get one, they think that they're the only ones. They think they're alone. They get depressed. It really affects them. When I wanted to try to normalize it, they, like. That's why we put out so many that were, like, negative. Like, we made mistakes, and it was really just, like, how we corrected it, how we made sure these customers taken care of or we just admitted failure. And so like no one else does that. And that's why in the comments we were like, how in the world is Guy still in business? It's like, well, first and foremost, we get thousands of calls a day. So we get, we get to choose from a few of bad ones a day that we can actually show. And good percentages, like still a really good percentage of happy customers. It's just a matter of we have so many calls. But.

From my, my point of view, like my personal brand, I was still going after the business owner that found this because no one else was doing it and that's why they took off. Is like it was our secret sauce. Is like no one else has a phone, has thousands of phone calls to comb through every single day and find the most dramatic ones. So that's why it did well. We learned a lot in terms of what works, what doesn't, what makes a talking head actually still get more views. We have like a framework of which ones do well, story and drama and questions and things like that. So I think it just set us up really good for June. And that's like everything this whole year has been gearing up for that.

Yeah, I love the shorts.

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Cool.

All right.

Well, this is weird without headphones. I took the headphones off. I'm too hot.

Too hot, too hot.

And we had a brief interruption there. Yeah, I think too on the Internet there's no context. So it's hard on short form to be not genuine, but to be perceived genuinely.

Well, about 50 to 60% of our audience that watch our long form videos, they are subscribers, Whereas less than 1% of our short viewers are subscribers. So there's definitely no context. They just swiped and then you are there and so they're going to react however they want to react. And if they think you're a scumbag or a scam artist or whatever, they're going to say it.

Yeah, 100%. Well, you know, there's no context on the Internet. Segway time. Let's look at a TikTok with no context. Okay, I want to see what your thoughts are on this. So I'll try to screen record this, put this on the screen for everyone. But I saw a TikTok of the worst tech predictions ever.

Adam Newman.

So, so I think there's, there's like five or six. We'll play the TikTok and then you and I debate which is the worst.

Okay, so we're going to play the whole thing.

Yeah, yeah. So it's a short video.

Ok.

Sa.

Cool.

All right, everyone watch the Tick Tock. I'm gonna try to screen record it. I need the media guys help with that. But let's start from the top. So these are the worst tech predictions. Someone put on a Tick tock short. Now I did not verify these things but, but it's the Internet, so who cares? You know, speaking of no context. No context. Yeah, I didn't verify. I don't have time to verify this. I'm just gonna take it. But I feel like some of them I do recognize for sure. So first one, Bill Gates. Two years from now, email spam will be 2004.

Yeah. So I mean, I think we just underestimate. So yeah, every single one of these has a learning. So do you want to go through each one?

Yeah, yeah, let's just like quick thoughts.

Yeah. So quick thoughts on this one is the fact that like to every technology improvement there is going to be a. What's the word? Like a perversion. Like the scam artists, they're always going to be like they're going to catch up. Yeah, right. And so like with AI, that's what everyone's worried about because like it will happen. I think this is, you know, 20 years ago, but now we understand that. And that is every new technology comes with bad actors.

Right.

And they're going to figure that. I think in 2004 we was much more oblivious but like looking through rose sunshine goggles or whatever of technology. Yeah. So I think this is kind of a given now.

My two Thoughts on this? Say that to my spam folder.

Yeah, right.

It's. It's massive.

Yeah.

All right. Steve Chen from the co founder of YouTube. There's just not that many videos I want to watch for.

Yeah. I think it's just a matter of like, in this case too, in 2005, the iPhone wasn't predominant. There wasn't, you know, all those, like, cameras.

Right.

Back then. Let's just call it, you know, for every million cameras back then, there's probably a billion today rolling around in terms of, like, actually that could create content and then the access to even distribute it. Right. Like when YouTube in 2005, like, it wasn't not commonplace to upload videos to YouTube. The UI was janky. It took forever. Internet was so bad to get it up onto the. It was bad quality. Like, there was an HD prevalent. So, you know, the access to the production, the distribution, all of those things and the technology is just so much increased in 20 years. Right.

Yeah.

But so now, now it's a matter of, like, we took the matter, the scope of videos, and now we have a thousand times that because we all have a production vehicle. Yeah.

See, now there's too many videos I want to watch. So that's my two cents.

Hey, how do you do? So I use the Watch later thing on YouTube.

Well, okay.

Yeah. I ever see a video, I watch it just put into Watch Later. Yep.

Fair.

And sometimes I'll get to 40, 50 videos and then they'll usually, like, in a day. I can knock them if there's like, there's not much going on. Or if I go in a run, I'll download the entire list and just listen to them all. So that's kind of how I've done Watch later works.

I'm also an insane person. Sometimes I'll just leave the tab open, like, because I watch a lot of YouTube on my desk.

You watch videos on your desktop, dude.

Well, I'm serial as like a listener. Like, I'm more of a YouTube listener than I am a watcher. Does that make sense?

Yeah, but then why would you need. Because of your screen.

Well, more like business content. I don't know. Because I'm using my laptop all day.

You're using your phone? It's sitting right next to your laptop. You don't have to have a tablet.

Yeah, but then I don't have to touch my phone. I don't know. I. I do my YouTube mainly through my laptop.

Hilarious. Yeah, I never watch well.

And I don't have a YouTube Premium because I'm cheap. And it's easier to skip ads and navigate. It's easier to skip ads and navigate desktop. YouTube.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

All right, so we got Larry Ellison from Oracle. Maybe I'm an idiot, but what is cloud? It's gibberish. Insane.

Honestly, the cloud was like not a thing until like even 10 years ago.

Yeah.

Like this is 20 years ago. But like, even 10 years ago it was not common. Like store things in Dropbox. Like Dropbox was hot 10 years ago. Right. But it was still not complex like Google Drive is now and like sending links for videos and that was not common. So I still remember thinking like the cloud was kind of a bit of a thing, like. Like a fad. Yeah. Because it was just like, it was a joke. It was just kind of a running joke for a long time. Like things up in the cloud, like fugazi. Yeah. Whereas everything is right. So I don't know.

Yeah, it's wild, especially from one of the biggest tech companies in the world.

But just goes to show that even someone who's around something all the time, they can still make incorrect predictions and faulty judgment. And so that's when it's like being humble enough to realize that these same people that said this also are making billions of dollars off of just course correcting. Because each of these people, if they would have just said, like, oh, email is going to. Or like, the cloud's never a thing. Well, now Oracle makes billions and billions of dollars on the cloud because someone, Larry and otherwise, were able to be like, hey, that was our prediction, our thought, but we're not going to marry it. We're going to be open to what the market says and the vat. For every one of these people that were like, you know, the only reason we're joking about these people because they're successful.

Right. Yeah.

We're not joking about all the people who also said this but then stayed on their course and just kept going. Oh, no, emails, never a thing. Or like, you know, the cloud's never a thing and then now they're in oblivion. Yeah, right.

100%. This is more just a funny thought exercise because these are horrible takes objectively, but obviously they are successful.

But the only reason we're listening to them today is because they're successful. And the only reason they're successful after making a horrible prediction is the fact they're able to course correct.

They're able to adapt and overcome. Yeah. The next one, next up. So we got the man himself, Steve Jobs, buying music is bankrupt you could have the second coming in a subscription model but it might not be successful.

Yeah, same thing today. Like the reason that Apple is at currently right now at all time highs is because there's their ability to do subscription and have self services instead of just iPhones. Right. So you know the, the it is, there is no, there should be no pride in predictions or the ability to make pontifications in the future. Rather taking current data and modifying and course correcting. That's, that's what's important.

Yeah.

And that's why like even when it comes to things like prediction of the economy or like our industry, like it's like look, I'm going to make them but like I care less whether or not they're right because like in a year I'm going to make a completely different set of observations based on the data that's in front of me then. And I'm not going to try to behold the old my because a year ago I thought this was going to happen. Therefore I'm going to stay in this lane to try to prove myself right.

So is, is gonna try to make a comparison. Here is Apple Music to Spotify what in 2003, right. Steve Jobs what like Sony Walkman users were to iPhone and ipods. Does that make sense?

I don't use Apple Music or Spotify very much. I can't really comment on that.

I just feel like Apple Music users are like but it's so much better dude. And I'm like you're the Sony Walkman guy that wouldn't get an ipod. It's like no, the ipod just makes sense. I like Spotify just makes sense. Apple Music is not that much.

But that's why am. That's why Apple does so well. Like even Apple Music is the fact that it's the ecosystem, right. They control the hardware and so like they can be like if tomorrow they wanted to shut down Spotify they could like they run into all sort of legal tape over it. But like they could. They own the keys to their house. Yeah.

And make everyone use Apple Music.

Yeah.

Like that one time they made everyone download the YouTube.

Yeah.

Why is this on my phone? I don't, I don't listen to YouTube. Not a big Bono guy. Do love his glasses.

The last one I remember was good.

Steve Ballmer Microsoft there's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. It's a 500 subsidized item.

I don't like Steve Ballmer. I think he is all carrot charisma. And like shine and not a whole lot of substance. I'm sure. Like there's a lot of positives about him but I felt like he was so out in the open and like glamorized. Like he was just like a big cheerleader. I don't know. And he kind of rode the wave of like post 2008 in terms of like his success obviously like he's a billionaire. But like I'm just saying the reason I say that is because like these sort of statements is, is, is a lack of like he's going after the, the, the competition. And this is something I've talked about at copilot. Like we are not going to talk about the competition. We actually have a code word now.

Oh, nice.

For one of our competitors.

Okay, nice.

We call them the 737 Max.

Okay.

Yeah.

Wow, that's.

So bad press with that. So. Okay.

Things crash.

Yeah.

So.

But, but I've made it very deliberate then like hey, we never down talk or speak negatively of our competition and I feel like that's someone like Steve Ballmer. It gets very motivating and you can definitely, by having a common enemy, you can definitely rally the troops. But I feel like that's more of a short term play than rallying around a mission. And what, what Microsoft failed to do in 2007-2017, that 10 year gap where like Steve Ballmer was a big player in that was they focus more on the enemy instead of the mission of what Microsoft was trying to do. And it's only been since, you know, I can't say his name, the new CEO has stepped in where he has a very clear direction of where the company's going and what services they're going to. And enterprise is like their focus. They moved everything away from buying software into subscription model. Like it was very clear direction where the company's going. And they didn't. They stopped trying to become the next iPhone. They, they can the Windows Phone. They stopped doing a lot of services that they were, hey, this is not where we're. Instead of being very much like so much about the competition, the offensive against them.

Yeah. So which, which ones do you think is the worst?

This one. That's why it stood out to me because he was in this case, he was not attacking the, the market, he was attacking the competition. And you can have ideas about the market all day long, but as soon as you start to say things negative about the competition, it shows that your energy and mental like strength is going towards something that's not actually going to move your business forward. At least these other people making wrong predictions about the market were able to course correct and figure things out. Steve Ballmer really rode Microsoft down and really, really lost the heart of the company.

I agree.

Because in my opinion, he was focused on external factors outside of the company.

I would have agreed with you, but for the sake of argument.

Okay.

I got to say it's Steve Chen.

Yeah.

Like, he co founded an app where you are just strictly designed to watch videos.

Right.

And he said, there aren't many videos I want to watch. And it's like you would have thought with the dot com bubble and the Internet explosion and the fact that TVs were in every American home at this point that he would have had a little bit of sense that maybe, just maybe, people want to watch videos.

Yeah.

Like, why would you found it at that point? That's where I feel like it's like he's completely defeating his own, like, premise for the foundation.

Is this being taken completely out of context?

It could be. And it could also be totally a lie. It's tick tock, dude. I didn't do any research. I'm just saying that that one's pretty bad. I think I agree with you for the second argument. That's horrible.

Yeah.

Like, hey, join Augusta Lawn care services. We're 130 locations across the US and Canada. There aren't that many lawns to mow. But you should join Augusta.

Yeah. But you also take in context. Let's say, for example, he said this right after he sold to Google. Right. And then you have to ask yourself the question too. Would you to be what it is today if it wouldn't have sold? Right. Like, would they have been able to have the processing compute power? Like, it costs a lot of money to have videos up online and have all of the engineers that now it makes it a seamless process and it makes it easy to upload and all the rest of it. Would YouTube have become that?

Probably not.

Maybe. Who knows? Right? Yeah. And even things like, you know, one of the funniest moves I think would ever happen was when the iPhone used to come with an actual app for YouTube. And then one day they're like, oh, we're not gonna ship iPhones with YouTube app. And so that's when YouTube actually really took off, is they made their own app now they controlled the ad revenue. And that's when it really became a great product because now they could monetize it. Before that, they couldn't run ads inside the iOS app that came Native onto the iPhone. Got it. Apple would have just kept them. Let's like again, retain ownership is always the moral of the story. And it was starting to get popular, like, oh, we're not going to allow you to be on our app anymore. That's always the wrong move. Retain ownership and control the hold the keys of your competition and let them grow and expand.

So I like that. I didn't, I didn't realize that. So that was it. Like privacy settings within the iPhone that they couldn't push specific advertisements to people.

Yeah. There was no advertisement inside of the app. Got it. And if there was a third, 30% of it would go to Apple. So any sort of advertising you do inside of your app. Not 30%, I think it's 40. It might gone up now 45 or 55% goes to the app Store. And so they didn't really push advertising at all on YouTube. Mobile is all on the desktop.

Yeah.

And so as soon as, you know, Apple cut them, you look at the meteoric rise of YouTube. It's literally right when they made their own Apple. Anybody will start running, running ads, therefore creating the funds to go get engineers. Scale up.

That makes sense. So that makes sense.

I.

And just jumping back here, the aesthetic of the like iPhone5, the apps were phenomenal. That YouTube was a little TV.

Yeah, that was the name.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. YouTube was a TV. Instagram was a camera. Yeah, that was the aesthetic. That was peak aesthetic. So, yeah, I agree with you. I think Steve Ballmers is the worst. I agree on the, in the concept of like, he was so fixated on the iPhone and what Apple was doing. And you hear stories about this. And one of my favorite business leaders, Simon Sinek, was asked to speak at an Apple conference, like a bunch of execs. And he said he was prodding one of the Apple execs who's like employee number 13, like an original Apple exec. And he's like, you know, Microsoft gave me the new Zune. It's a really good product. It's better. It's better than the ipod.

Yeah.

And the exec was just like, yeah, I'm sure it is. They have a great product. Yes, Zun's phenomenal. Like he just didn't care that Simon was like prodding him with this better product. He's like, we're in our lane, we're doing our thing and we know what our long term vision is and we're going to succeed.

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You actually think you're better than someone else. You'll eventually have to decouple from them. Right? You're always constantly comparing your competition. If you actually feel like you're on a trajectory that's greater than, there's a steeper incline of innovation, eventually you decouple from them and you can no longer compare to them. Right? So if you can compare to someone else, there's a problem with the level of differentiation that you actually have in your product. And so this is what I've said with like with Copilot is like, right now I don't feel like we're the best and I feel like as time goes on I won't be like, people always compare us to other competition and like it's easy to get in this mindset. Oh like they have this feature. I've got to copy this. I got to make sure that this is going to. And eventually like, look, look, look. The whole goal and objective is so much greater than these other CRMs. In order to do that, I have to decouple from what the standard for them is and then like just ignore that. While at the same time realizing that in order for people to adopt our technology, they're going to need certain more familiar features and stuff to feel like they can adapt the new technology. And so, you know, I'm really happy that like, you know, other softwares have adapted like weekly and monthly updates. Now that was 100% because of us. There was not any software in this industry doing weekly or monthly updates until we started started doing it. Not a single one. So I'm really happy. Should I say name? No, we should. So there's at least two that I know started in the past couple months. One's monthly, one's weekly and like that's huge progress. Like I'm super thrilled about that.

And it's the, the users win, which at the end of the day is who you want. Happy with your product.

Yeah. If we just constantly have that mentality, we'll be. Eventually our technology becomes so much greater and if they're constantly comparing to us like, oh, they've done this with their support or they've done this with their feature updates, eventually it'll become they. Oh man, they do this with AI. Like what's, what's coming out this week we're finally starting to integrate with AI and chat. Chat GPT and open. Open AI. No one else has done it and I guarantee all of them will be on it within three to six months. But like it just, we're going to. That will become the trend. Yeah. But we still have to play obviously catch up on a lot of other stuff.

You bring up Chat GPT. We'll, we'll sway away from this. Friday night. Long day for, for your boys at the local shop. Long night. And I had to, you know, apologize to some folks that we weren't going to make it to their property. Right. Spring rush. It is what it is. And I was brain dead at that point. I mean I'm talking 14 hour day. I'm just done. And so I just Chat GPT, write me an email apologizing to my customers for missing their date of service. And it spit out this great email and I just said make it shorter and it was the best thing ever. Obviously I tweaked it and changed it and did make it more personalized to each customer because it was like 14 people in total that I was apologizing to. So I was like, I can take the extra step to customize it, put their name in, like, you know, put my name and those sort of things. But I was like, this is so awesome.

Yeah, that's good, man. Yeah. I used Chat GPT the other day to create our outline for our tax tax online course.

Nice.

I just need like a framework to give Brad because he's going to like flesh out all the details so you can show like pieces of a tax return, break it down and stuff. So I'm like, hey, here's the outline. And I even told it like number of sections that I wanted at different topics I wanted to cover. I told it to have like catchy titles, like a whole bunch of stuff. It was great. It was really good. Speaking of which, have you tried out Google Bard?

Oh, I've heard about it, but no, I haven't.

It has recent like it's not date Dated. It's up to date. So you can ask it like. Like for example, for this pod, you could be like, give me the top three headlines in business today.

Nice.

And it'll give you. Because it can search the Internet.

Yeah, I did see an example of this. It was someone that was like, what are the best like rides at Disney World for my kids ages X and X? And it did like this perfect outline of like, here's your itinerary. And I'm like, that's cool.

Like, that's a really cool Chat GPT can do that. But what Google Bard is currently better at it then compared to Chat GPT is that it has recent data. Whereas currently Chat GPT is only historical up I think 2021, October 2021. But it'll, it'll catch up. But it's great the fact that there's now like a really good innovation, in my opinion. They've had Google Bard for at least a year or two, but they've not released it because then it would become all sorts of security breaches and antitrust stuff. Whereas now, because OpenAI jumps into the game, I guarantee you that's like, okay, great. That's our permission to like release this into the ecosystem. So it'll just be interesting to see how Google does it because they don't want to jeopardize their Google search revenue, which makes up like the vast majority of their profits. And so it'll be interesting how they play the game and how they integrate that.

I want to throw out a name, changing topics.

Okay.

Billy McFarland.

Oh, yeah, fire guy.

Yeah, Fire Fest dude. Let's talk about him for a second. We've never talked about him.

Okay.

As of today, he posted a TikTok that is official. There will be Fire Fest 1.5 the Musical. He's doing a musical, a Broadway production, or maybe not a musical, but a Broadway production of Fyre Fest one and a half. And Fyre Fest 2.0 is official.

What's 2.0? Like actual.

The actual Fyre Festival. Yeah, it's official on his tick tock 9 hours ago. I watched it while I was driving over here. So Billy McFarland, very interesting character.

Right.

When he got out of jail, I looked him up because I follow him on Twitter because he's an interesting character.

Right?

Just one of those guys you kind of want to see what happens. Is he gonna succeed or crash and burn again? Either way, I'll enjoy it. And I almost did this. It was right when we like released the pod because that's when he got out of jail, like last fall, last winter. 800 bucks for an hour. I almost booked it.

Really?

Yeah. Just to get him on the pod. I thought I was like, so subscribers, let's like, and subscribe so I can have some funds to get people like that. He was, he was doing consultation calls for an hour. He was like, I'll literally do anything for an hour. 800 bucks.

Wow.

Because he has to pay back all these, like, investors. Investors and people that he basically defrauded.

Right.

So, yeah. What are your thoughts on Billy McFarland and should we maybe give some context? Yeah, I feel like everyone knows who he is at this point.

Yeah. Like, part of it is I do believe in like, you know, if you, you know, go to jail and stuff, you know, go through the criminal justice system and like, you've paid for, you've done your time kind of thing, you can kind of get a blank slate. I, you know, the thing is he left a lot of investors high and dry though, and like, just to walk away from them. I don't know. Like, it sounds like based on what he said in the past, he wants to pay them back kind of thing. I think it's interesting that he's using the same branding. Like, if I was him, I would go into a different industry in different industry, but like, pivot some different direction because I think he has enough of a name because of all the stuff he's gone through that he could actually use that brand awareness like we were talking about, like, you can take bad press and like, channel in a different direction. I don't think he's going to be able to create a big enough business to pay back all his investors using this type of leverage, like this, this method of like, you know, musicals and like an actual fire festival. I don't think it works. Yeah, I don't think the economics are there. I think he should have gone into more media side of things. Like, obviously he's good at commanding attention and there's always people that like, go after that. So I don't know, maybe a media agency. You think he would. I think he would done well at that. He obviously knows how to promote. So. Yeah, that's just my two cents.

I mean, the original Fyre Fest to give context if people don't know what we're talking about. And if you don't go watch the documentary on Netflix. Did you ever watch the documentary?

Yeah.

Phenomenal.

Yeah, just. It's on YouTube too.

Yeah, there's someone probably just ripped it off. Well, There's a. There's a. No, it was. Because it was such a big deal. Netflix and Hulu both did documentaries. There's two separate documentaries. But he promoted this festival, and then it was all fake, and it all came crashing down. And he scammed a bunch of people and investors, essentially.

I only. I only listened to it after I heard him on an interview, and they kept referring to it so much. I'm like, okay. For me to really connect to the dots or any guys see what they're talking about.

Yeah. So the documentary is amazing. It's a wild ride. But he is. He created the greatest, like, marketing scheme of Instagram ever, of social media. Like, today. Like, no one's done anything better. Just posting all these celebrities, paying all these celebrities whatever they wanted. Gobs of money to post an orange square promoting his festival. Yeah, like, that was just marketing genius, dude. You create an allure. You create a scarcity. You create this level of, like, I want to be involved in that. Like, my favorite celebrities are posting that. How do I get involved in what they're talking about?

Yeah, it's tough because he's jeopardized his biggest fan base beforehand. Like, they're already jilted against him. And so, like, unless you were like, hey, you all can come for free, well, then now you can't make any money on it. So, like, it's just like, I think it's a bad spot. I. I would have personally taken Fyre Fest and done. Taken the brand and done something completely different with it. And. And literally, the mission statement was to pay back your investors and, like, you build a great business off of that. And then after you pay back your investors, you have a great business, which.

I guess I didn't say explicitly that he is planning on paying everyone back. And so through this.

He is.

Yes, he is. He makes it. He's very adamant that he has to put. He's going to pay everyone back. I don't know if that means everyone that attended or if just people in law in the lawsuits. I don't know the specifics, but he did say that in the TikTok, he's like, I'm gonna pay everyone back, and we're gonna do Fyre Fest 2, and we're gonna do it right. And this has to happen. So I'm a big fan. So here's my thought. Here's my thought process. I'm gonna throw this out there. We need to get subscribers so we can monetize this channel.

Okay.

And then I will go to Fyre Fest. And here's the thing. Here's the thing, Mike.

You know me.

People think Lee just wants a free ride to Fyre Fest. Me going to a music festival would be my Lee least favorite thing I could ever possibly do. I would hate that. I would hate every second of it. But it would be phenomenal to go and see if it actually happens, if they were able to make it successful and document the whole thing.

The thing is there's gonna be so many people.

I know, I know that's the unfortunate.

Part, but I'm like, I don't know. I don't know. I personally don't think that will be successful. I think he should have channeled it in a different direction. That was higher leverage than Fest. Like, most festivals don't make money, right? You know, most in person events don't make money. So why do you use that? You take all your brand. Like he's just got to go after a higher leverage opportunity. Create a news agency, create a media agency or an ad agency and advertise like a filmmaker company, but. And you know, use your powers of promotion. Don't get into like building housing on the island, crying out loud.

Yeah, well, and you're seeing it too with musicians. I know it's kind of the rabbit hole, but like Coachella, right? Frank Ocean basically, like didn't show up for his performance or performed like 20 minutes. And people are super mad about because like they pay all hundreds of dollars. And I feel like artists are becoming more independent, right? Taylor Swift had her whole battle with Spotify. You had the Frank Ocean incident at Coachella just recently went viral. Young Money Records, which is Lil Wayne, like hosted a concert and basically just stopped it like 30 minutes in. And I'm not saying these, these are good things, but I. I feel like if artists are becoming more independent, like, festivals are going to be the wayside eventually, in my opinion.

And where a lot of these, like really popular artists make their money is in their tours, right? Because the music gets ripped off. They make pennies on Spotify when it gets listened to. The money isn't like bringing a large audience. But in festival is different because the artist usually doesn't make anything or like they make very pennies compared to the event organizer. And so I just feel like festivals have so many layers of management and like, layers of like planning and call. Like, we ran events in person. Events just don't make money. Unless you're literally talking about like a Taylor Swift concert where people are willing to take whatever to get in. Yeah, I don't think that he hasn't he command enough attention or audience to make that happen. Like I don't think he's going to get $5,000 a person or anything crazy like that. And therefore it's like the unit economics are tough to work.

Yeah, it's interesting.

I don't know.

I'd love to see it. I'm watching Billy McFarland very closely. Anytime he tweets, I'm reading it. Like, I just, I love the story. I'm very intrigued as to him as a person, as an entrepreneur.

I just think he could have done something higher leverage.

I agree, I agree. So, all right, well, let's wrap it up. Non financial advice. You got anything for the people?

I'm gonna come over there.

I feel like I don't have anything for the people either. My non financial advice is if you need a wedding officiant, I can do that.

Oh yeah, you're doing your first one.

I'm licensed now. You know some of my peers.

Washington state though.

No, no. Universal life. Church baby. Me, Richard Branson, Conan o'. Brien. Just a few of my colleagues. Just a couple of my colleagues to.

Name a. Oh man, that's hilarious.

So I'm officiating my sister's wedding on Friday. So in a few days. Very excited. Cool. So yeah, but there you go. There's your. Not financial advice.

Okay. My mom. Not financial advice. Don't get an Apple watch.

Oh, okay.

All right. Get one of these. Oh, look at you. I didn't even. I didn't even notice.

No, that's fine.

Okay. So I have had one of those.

Yep.

All right. Opted for one of these. Very good decision. I can buy approximately 10 of these for the price of one of those.

This is the lower level model.

How much is that?

I think this is on 250.

Okay. So I can. I got. These are $35. Okay.

See? Yeah, the lower level.

Seven of these. Seven of these. Okay. This lasts 14 days on one charge. It is waterproof, sweatproof. Never had a problem. Proof and in like 10 minutes gets charged up. That dies every day or two.

No, three days for me. I'm a low use user. Do you.

Three days at night? No. No, no. You don't wear it at night?

No, no.

See that was the main reason why cycles.

Okay.

Yeah, dude, like why else would you have a Apple watch?

I mean my wife bought it for me. Producer. No, I really. I know. Honestly, I, I like it. I think it's, I think it's, it's valuable when you're having, like, meetings or, like, quick updates. I have it. Mine set up to be, like, not a nuisance, so I only get important notifications on it. And it's a cool watch. And I told you last part. I've been getting into golf, so I use it for golf, too.

Yes.

Like, yeah, it's great for yardage. It's great. I don't know. I like it.

That's cool.

It's cool.

I. I think I literally use mine as a health tracker. Right. Steps, activity, standing up and sleep. And really helps with my sleep stuff.

And when I was on 75 hard. This is the greatest thing.

That's cool.

Yeah. Because the digital screen of your activity, your stand, your movement, your calories, like, all that stuff.

So.

So 35 bucks.

Yeah, best. And I'm not worried about breaking it or losing it or anything. That's 35 bucks. I've had it for years.

I'm not. I'm not hard on my stuff. So, like, I know I'll have this for years. Like, I.

When I worked out in the field, I wore mine, and it was like, I was always thinking about, like, oh, man. Like, I did get a gash on it one time. And because I was leaning over the trailers, literally. P2 leaning. You know, in P2, there's the aluminum siding. I was leaning over, and I cut them short. I was like, right there, and it just gash it. And so from then on, it was like, oh, worried about it. Yeah.

Well, that's the pod. Thanks for listening.

Appreciate y' all, like, and subscribe. As Lee would say.

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

Sam.