CEO Spends Time on Yacht Instead of Office - Episode 037

What's up? Not much. Dude.

Good morning.

Good morning. We're now shooting this in the morning.

Yeah. To the people watching, this doesn't affect them, but to us, it does. So we're gonna try it, mix it up, try it.

In the mornings, we're in the studio instead of at my house.

Yeah. Is there any reason for that?

Now I can have the desk facing the camera, and, like, I can keep the desk my work zone. So, like, in the past, I had one desk in my bedroom, and I'd work there, and then we had our pod desk. Well, now I can just. I move this one out of my living room, move my real desk into my living room, and I can do it all in the same spot now.

So you have an actual bedroom?

Kind of, yeah.

It doesn't have a recording spot in it anymore.

Okay.

Yeah, any. That's. That's the only reason. No major developments.

No, I'm trying to move next door into the other unit. Okay. And then I'm trying to run out my space. So why.

So there's. There's another tenant that I want to move out and renovate their. Their unit. So they're being. They're paying, like, way too low of rent. So you can either jack rents up, which makes people mad and is, like, not really looked on well, or you can give them another place and be like, hey, this is another option. You can live in here, and then we'll renovate and then raise their rents on that. Okay. Yeah. This person was like, like, begging for, like, not us to kick them out, basically, when we did all the renovations. But we need to. Now we need to do, like, three more units. So we're just raising the rents and then moving them over.

Yeah, because that property is what was built in, like, the 70s.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's an old, old property. Yeah, it's nice. But, yeah, the insides, if they hadn't been updated. Yeah, we're some of them original insides. Are they like, 90s?

Oh, no, they're like 90s 2000. They've been renovated. All of them were renovated, but, like, none of them are, like, up to the standard. And then where you can charge higher rents.

So how's the vote search going?

The votes are.

Dude, I had that on my notes.

I was like, so yesterday. Yesterday, the first day in the boat.

Nice.

I got my license and everything. And, yeah, we nailed a feature that I've been working on for years. Not years. It's probably been a year since I've been working on one of the features that we Want to build next year in Copilot. And so I was just, I just got in flow and like pounded out pages and pages of logic. It's like a very, very complicated thing and it's something I want to show. Conference? Yeah, so I don't want to talk about much.

Public conference?

Yeah, public conference. I want to do a demo of it. I think it's going to blow people's minds out of the water.

So you wrote the code?

No, no, the logic. So I know enough. So I know enough about the code to know, like what can and can't be done, but I'm not going to actually be able to compile it. But I do understand very clearly, like what can be done in code and like where the problems are going to be at with like retrieving data from databases and stuff like that. So for me, I need to write the, the, the logic for a developer to actually go build it. Like I'm right. I'd say, like, I'm the architect for the builder. I don't know how to build it, but I know how to, like, I know what the language they need to know is. And so, yeah, that's what I wrote yesterday. It was probably like five pages. I was just like, just like, okay, so if this, then do this. If this. Cause like there's so many different ways you can take it.

So they say that I've heard this and someone might correct me that, like, architecture is harder than engineering. So are you saying, like, is that part that you're doing harder than code?

I wouldn't say I'm doing architecture. Architecture is a little different. Like you would need no backend and you'd actually be in the database, the actual form of architecture. I'm just, I'd say I'm more doing product development, like figuring out strategy, but I know what that next stage looks like enough to kind of be like, okay, this is not possible. We need to be able to get this data point, to be able to extrapolate, etc.

So are you moving a little faster at co pilot?

Oh, we're finally hitting our groove. I think there's several things we've been doing just to make it better, but we've been moving fast in terms of features because we need to get Augusta. And so this week Augusta starting to move in to Copilot. And there were certain features that we had to get done. So unfortunately we had to kind of abandon our current or what was our strategy in terms of bug fixes. And because we had to get the features Done. So I couldn't pull devs from like the feature team to fix bugs. So our bug threshold got a little too high.

Yeah.

Um, and that's really what led to a lot of the stress like you know, in the last pod and stuff like that. So we're almost done those features. We've gotten like the core loop bugs all figured out. Even this morning, like we figured out finally Australia is not sending in Twilio text messages. We figured it out. So it's nice. And I'm just creating better structure too in terms of like making sure that like it doesn't affect me as much like in my head space.

Yeah.

So I'm creating like incentives for team members to be able like be more the firefighters and care more about attrition and bug fixes and things like that. Yeah.

So is the boat already paying for itself then?

Dude, the vote, literally, if you really want to look at it from that perspective, the vote paid for itself yesterday. Yeah. Like that feature is something that I don't think any other CRM has really nailed. We've. I've seen the two that have tried and it's like it's okay, but we never could use it because it wasn't customizable enough. And so when you start allowing a user customize basically the code by like automations for example, where you allow them to customize things, it takes a lot of work. So in this case it's something that really. I don't haven't seen anyone else do it. So I don't have a template. I don't really know. So I really have to think through like what does this look like? What questions do we ask the user? So you know, it's around automated scheduling but I'm looking forward. I want to do a demo at conference and just. I just want to make it really cool.

Did you stay on the boat? You stay overnight or we.

No, no, I'm not an overnighter. No.

I feel like people want to know about this experience.

It's just a couple hours dude size boat did you get Yesterday was a 20, 24 footer. Okay. Yeah, a little nice one. You know what kind of.

What kind it was?

I have no idea.

It was like sea sport.

What are we. I know, dude. No, not trophy. No. I had a little bit of an inside cabin area and so I did my test my like to get my license and then I just stayed out. Cool. And yeah, just kept. And I got home and just kept writing code and then, and then I sent it over to George last Night. I'm like, hey, dude, day one of this new strategy. I'm so. I'm trying to get out of the office earlier. I've told the teams that directly report to me, it's like, hey, I have to get off by a certain time. I have eight keynotes and I want to make them all amazing. And I only have six weeks. And in that six weeks, I also have to travel to do shots for the media team. So like technically probably like five weeks. And I need to make eight keynotes and I want them to be really good. Like usually I'm pretty much like, I make my keynote, I kind of like put stuff together and I make my slide deck. And then it's like based on my slide deck, I can free flow it. I want to spend more time really just like ironing out my presentation. And I'm not going to have my notes, but I want it to be better. So I'm going to spend a lot of time making them good. And then after that I'm going to start compiling what I've been working on for a couple years in terms of the book. So. Cool. So we'll see.

You want to tease the book at all? I don't think I even know.

No, no one knows. So since I got my remarkable, I had made. Started making sketches and I've just kept it in like a sketchbook. And so to be perfectly honest, I didn't think I would write one this soon. I was thinking like in a few years. But definitely watching Alex, how he launched his book, I was like, very inspired. Okay, this can be done differently. And then in a way that is like really helpful for people and, and like even seeing some of the things I didn't like about his and I did like about his. And I really liked the fact that he had a course and like a journal along with the book that was like as resources. So that was inspiring. Cause like that's the way I like to communicate is more like video style. So if I can build it like that, but then have the book as like also there. So yeah, it was. I'm gonna start working on it and like make. So this is the very first book I technically actual write, like every single word. Yeah, yeah. Because in the past I've either had people help me write it or it's been more technical writing P4P, which P4P has done really well in terms like selling copies, but it's just a matter of like, you know, I didn't write it. It's. It was like a Passion, like I needed like math on there and, and I did write a lot of it, like pieces and stories and things like that, but never really every single word. So this one, like I'm gonna get an editor.

Nice.

And really make it good. And so I'm hoping I can write in the next six to eight months. So I'm gonna do it right. Like this is gonna be one I want, I want to like I'll be proud of.

That's sweet. I'm excited.

Yeah. So it's a lot of like, like little sketches and stuff I've made in the past. Like I've never really shared and it just honestly gave me confidence. Like see what Alex did because like he's so much bigger than I am and he like he showed his sketches and stuff. And to me I'm like, okay, like I, these are the things I've drawn out to are valuable. But more importantly it takes it down for service businesses because his are very general and so a lot of stuff. So I went back to my remarkable and start flipping. There's value here. I could write a whole chapter about this one diagram or this thing. So we'll see. I, I think it'll be fun.

Yeah.

Yeah. I'm really looking forward to it. I, I, I've never looked forward to writing in my entire life. But now with like having the boat thing and like knowing that I can just get out and just like really focus on it and then like I've now been setting up structures at the office to put lines of defense between like fires and myself, I feel like I could create something that's like valuable for people.

Do you still have people book one on one calls with you?

Yeah, I've restricted those. So I allow two of those a month now.

Yeah.

And then still doing them. Yeah, they're expensive as I'll get out. If someone asked me about 800 bucks for 45 or 50 minutes but I restricted on a 2 and calendly a month and then.

Yeah, like I don't want to do them. It's just a matter of like if someone has to talk to me. It's like I have a way you can do that, but you're going to have to pay out to wazoo. And if it's just a question, like please just do it on a live, live call. So I, I try to do live calls, you know, once or twice a month. It's very intermittent, but I do that mostly. So if someone feels like they have to ask me a question, which usually they don't but if they feel that way, then they can. They can do it sensible. Yeah. Yeah.

I just figured I'd ask because I think with everything you're developing with Copilot writing a book now, if you're only doing two a month, it makes sense. But also that 45 minutes would make your businesses more than 800 bucks.

Yeah, yeah. But by restricting it to two months, I feel it's like. Like, if someone really has to talk to me, like, I don't know why, I still really understand, like, the logic of, like, that needing to be the case. Like, you can hop on a call and, like, yes, other people are gonna hear it, but, like, it's not a big deal. Yeah, but there are people that feel that way, and especially if there's, like, relationship stuff happening then, or like, they're going through a divorce, they want to figure out how to do the business stuff. I understand it's more private. Yeah. So, like, I do honestly for myself, more like just the accessible and just having. Having that still available.

Do you think it's also for you a little bit of the reps of, like, still talking to business owners? I mean, you still do, but do you think it keeps you sharp? Like, all right, this random person booked a call with me. I have no idea what they're going to throw at me.

What's interesting is usually those are not in lawn care and landscaping. Right. Almost all of them. And so that makes a little more sense to me because, like, look, most of my content is geared that way, but, like, the last one I talked to was, the one I remember is the guy who did like 20 million a year doing insulation and fireproofing stuff. And then another guy, he had a roofing company to, like, 10 million. And so a lot of them are like, hey, like, where's the next step from here? A lot of them are very unprofitable and massive businesses. And so those. I can see where you don't want that to be, like, public information. Like. Cause you're seen as very, very successful if you have a 10, $15 million business. But if you can barely take two $300,000 home a year, that's like a couple percent profit margin, and that's freaking you out, like, significantly. I can see how, like, you don't want people to know.

That makes sense.

So. But that's. Usually who's on those calls is not.

A lot of people. Someone in that position can turn to, other than, I guess, inside their network of colleagues.

Yeah.

Like, they can't. There's not someone at their scale or higher that's accessible to them. Does that make sense?

Yeah, no, totally.

So it's like you're an option.

It's honestly just someone to bounce something off of. Right. A lot of times, I think most business owners, if they would just forget about who they were talking to and they just talk to someone about their issues, they'd actually resolve a lot of them themselves if they were self introspective enough. If you have the ability to be like, oh, I was wrong on that, then you'd probably actually just talking through things will help you a lot. So even the POD helped me a lot last week. Okay, this doesn't make sense. I can just delegate to.