Do Normal People Even Matter Anymore? (How To Make Real Impact) - Episode 108

Welcome back. Another episode the C Suite Unfiltered with Mike Andes. How are we doing this Beautiful morning of 2026?

Fantastic. January 2nd. Let's go.

January 2nd, we're starting, we're starting the year strong. So, yeah, any, any major updates from, from you and the Mike Andes camp going into 2026 or just keep, keep along, Keep, keep keeping along or whatever the phrase is.

Yeah, Nothing crazy. Nothing crazy. It was a good, good holiday season. Um, I, I'm so looking forward to getting back into the rhythm of things. I hate the last two weeks, but whatever. Yeah, I, I just don't like when, like, people are out. You don't get anything done, progress comes to a halt, so. But we're, we're back on the grind. It's good.

Yeah. Yeah, that's one of my, like, I guess I, I, I don't know how many times you have to do it to call it a tradition, but it's been like the last three or four New Year's days. It's like you, me, and a skeleton crew in the office. I like that I get so much done because, like, there's no distractions and no, and no one's emailing you. Like, no one's, no one's asking you for anything. So it's like, great. I can do the, lock in on what I need to get done, which is fantastic. So, yeah, I agree. It always feels a little weird. And then it's like timelines. Like, I don't want to bother people, but I also, like, need to get stuff done. So I get what you're saying.

Not think about the first part. I don't want to bother for I. So out of my, I don't.

Oh, yeah.

It's like, look, if it's, if it's a, it's a day besides Christmas Day. Like, I'm going to, I'm going to reach out, so.

Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. I just, yeah, you don't want to be like, spammy, I guess. But you're, you're talking. Most of your communication is like internal, right? I'm thinking external.

I just, I just default to email. I just don't use WhatsApp. I'll just try to use email if it's like, because, like, it's just so hard to keep track of everything otherwise. So it is nice, though, if you have projects. The thing is, I didn't really have a project. I had a bunch of collaborative stuff I was doing this past few weeks, some of the media and stuff. So I was like, oh, right, good. But the media team, they crushed it. They honestly worked almost every day besides Christmas Day. They've been crushing it. We've been going changes in the department. So.

Yeah, that's awesome. That's fantastic. No, I love to hear, yeah, the content, everything that they've been putting out has been fantastic recently. And I know you've been doing lots of live streams, webinars, the book launch everything. So I, I, I did want to see if there was an update on the book totals. If you have that or if you're tracking that, you know, the people want. Many books have been sold.

Yeah, we're pretty close to 27, 28,000 last time I checked.

Nice.

Because a lot of so how it works is like in kdp, which is channel distribution, like they, they, they track your orders and the end of the quarter they give you the number of books. So that's how I was able to tell like on the launch day is like, you know, there's a few hundred orders, but each of those, most of those were 10, there's like thousand 1500 orders. I think like that. So all I say, I think we're right around 27 to 28,000, give or take probably 500. But we just started, we put in the place to be able to get, give out free books. So people will start to see ads next month probably. But there are, if you finish the course, you can get the book for free, essentially. And then we will also do straight ads, straight to like giving away a book for free. There's like four different ways we're going to give books away throughout 2026.

Okay, nice. I love it. That's fantastic. Yeah, I know, I know. People have been getting, receiving them, posting pictures on social media with the books. I think that's very cool. Personal question here. Every time you've released a book, I usually get a signed copy. Am I, am I going to get one of those? Do I need to buy one on Amazon and then bring it to you? How does that work?

You just need to go over to the room in the office.

Fair enough. Hey, I just, I figured I'd ask, you know, I want to be polite about it.

I even have my Sharpie here for you.

Nice. Beautiful. I love it. Thank you very much. I got my collection, my collection of signed Mike Andes copies. Alrighty. On to lighter topics, or should I say heavier topics. So you know, people like to, you know, they talk about the new year. I need to get this year behind me. Oh, next year is going to be A good year. And I know you don't really prescribe to that type of thinking. You know, you're very much a lower highs, higher lows, try to exist on more of an equilibrium, a more calibrated decision making system, if you will. But I do feel like a lot of people have been feeling the weight of, call it politics, macroeconomics, just, I don't know, heaviness in the world. And it seems like people are more lonely. Money feels tighter, feels like impact is like reserved for the rich, for the famous. So what I kind of wanted to talk about today because this is something that I've been thinking about a lot and I've been listening to a lot of podcasts about it and I'm sure a lot of other people think about it like, what does impact look like for, for normal people who just like want to work hard, who want to serve their community? Like, do you ever think about that at all?

Impact in terms of what they are trying to accomplish or.

Yeah, impact, impact. Really like, like think about like someone like myself, like I obviously, like we're on a podcast, but like, you know me, I don't want to be rich and famous. I don't want to be like an influencer, if you will. I'd love to just have a positive impact on, in the world. You know, my kind of ethos is like, work hard, be good to people. So I want to work really hard. I want to like serve my community, you know, quietly. But it just feels like almost hard to do because there's just so much going on in the world. So it's more so like, like having a local impact or I guess like a pseudo local impact. If you can have it in a, in a community that maybe is like virtual, maybe not physically close to you, but you know, you have a community of people that you can be a part of and have a positive impact in the world. So impact, you can take that as you, as you see. But like that's kind of. Did I explain that good enough?

Yeah, like, I think it's kind of like saying I want to be rich. Like the levels of wealth are staggering and if you get a million dollars, then you're just looking like, oh my word, there's other people. With 100 billion, they get 100 million this. Oh my word, there's people a billion. Oh my words, people, 100 billion. And so I think the same thing is true with impact. It's like, I want to have an impact is like saying I want to, I want to be rich and so for that reason you have to define what level of impact you want to have. That makes you satisfied. The same way that you need to determine what, how much money you need to have in order to be able to accomplish the goals you have. And so for you it's like, what's cool is you actually know what level of impact you want to have in order to be feel content. And you, you've, you basically say, hey, I don't need to be elon when it comes to business, I don't need to be elon. You're saying the same thing for impact, which is like, I don't need it to impact the world, but I want to have like a more localized impact on my local community, my family, etc. And so I think again it's just like if, if you had this open, like I want to change the world, that's where I start, like, okay, let's put some numbers around this because otherwise it's like saying I want to get rich. And it's like this, there's this uncapped, there's no finish line whatsoever. So I think just being self aware enough to know what level of impact you need to have in order to feel like you've accomplished something. And I think for the vast majority of people, they really realize that there's, it's really just a net negative and net positive game which is like if we all just made a positive impact, the world move forward. Unfortunately people who make negative impacts and so there's negatives and positives in every community, every organization, every team, every company. And so if we just all focused on being net positive, I don't care if it's plus one or plus a million, just like plus something as an aggregate whole, then we can move, move in a positive direction.

Yeah, I think it's a fair way to look at it. Now I want to hit you with kind of a laundry list of stats and I'm going to apologize in advance if not a lot of this is very clear because this just something I've been thinking through for, for a good like month and a half now and it was spurred by a podcast and it's going to be my non financial advice to listen to it so it'll make more sense after people listen to this. But I want to hit you with like a laundry list of facts because I think impact and I'm going to make a claim here. I believe that if someone is actually going to have impact in their local community or in the world, they need to first be Stable in themselves, who they and who they are. That is financial stability, emotional stability, spiritual stability, physical stability, whatever that is. Right. You have to be stable to extent in order to have a positive impact. Now, you can disagree with that claim, but that's the claim I'm making here. And to kind of back that up and why I feel like there's a lot of negativity, why the world feels heavy, feels dark, whatever. A few stats here. So if you look at research from the Federal Reserve, 27% of adults said they're just getting by or finding it difficult to get by. 19% said, I'm just getting by, and 8% said they're finding it difficult to get by. 1 in 4 adults basically are saying, I'm not okay, think things are getting by, but like, I'm not good independent. Pew Research found that From May of 2024 to May of 2025 and expecting worse in 2026, based on their projections, it went from 35% of adults to 48% of adults said that they feel their finances will be worse in a year from now. So it's feeling, yes. It's not statistical data, but 35% in May of 2024 were like, yes, my financial situation will be worse in a year. 48% of people in May of 2025 said they will be worse in a year. And Pew's early kind of projections for this year over year study is saying it's going to be More than 50% of Americans feel that their finances will be worse in a year. And now I want to talk a little bit more about the kind of psychological side of it. This is a greater good study and they said one in six Americans feel lonely and isolated most of the time. And 8% of Americans say that they have no close friends. So jumping back to my claim that I feel like you have to be stable, if you will, in order to have an impact in the world, how do we even get ourselves as a country to baseline stability? How do we get more people to feel stable, to feel confident in who they are, to then be able to give back and have an impact in the world? I know that was a lot there, but what are your kind of thoughts on that?

Yeah, like first off, I don't know if the premise is true because there are plenty of people that contributed positively and had a huge impact in the world that were not stable in many of those areas. They didn't have the most money, they didn't come from the best place. They weren't mentally or physically Stable, et cetera. So like, I don't know if I necessarily agree with the premise. I would also look at the data and ask myself whether or not these, these are cherry picked. Because, for example, if I Do you think that in next year you will have more or less money or be in a better financial position? 48% of people said they'll be in a worse position. That means that 52% did not. Meaning if we actually go to next year, what is likely going to happen is we're going to probably move a few percentage points as a net whole and it's probably going to be slightly positive. That is the GDP will be 3 to 4%. That's approximately the delta between what 50% and the 48% is. And so also many times the person that said you would even say that is likely going to be the person that in a year won't have the money. Whereas the other 52%, there's a segment of them will be like, I might think that. I'm not going to say it. I'm going to go work more, I'm going to do whatever is possible. And I also understand that there are people that work crazy amounts of hours, insane, and they still feel like they're on this hamster wheel or this treadmill and they can't get ahead. And I am certainly sympathetic to that. I would also say those are the people that need the information and the education to, to, to see what they can do with things like AI, to be able to learn the skills required that are higher value. So you don't spend your entire life working for 10 bucks an hour. There are higher level skills, there are companies that you can move up inside of. And will it happen in a year or two? No, but it'll be a better trajectory. And I think that what we've always tried to do is create a meritocracy in the companies by which, like if someone's willing to work five or 10 years extremely hard, they will get ahead. And if you, if you're willing to like just show up for work, that's like table stakes to keep your job. But if you're willing to put in extra time, if you're willing to put an extra effort, if you're willing to spend discretionary effort, you will get ahead. And I think that in general, the person that says in a year I will probably make less money and be in a worse financial position, will be in a worse financial position regardless of what the economy is doing. Because in 2020, 2021, the same things were being said when there was so much money sloshing around, you could literally go pick it up on the streets. And so now, after inflation has tamed down and we have higher interest rates, and yes, it's going to be harder to borrow, it's gonna be harder to make money because less money is being spent. There will still be those people. And so, unfortunately, I think that stat of 48% will feel less. Probably varies somewhere between 40 and 50, 55%. Most of the time it probably correlates with what's going to approximately happen. But the other 52% of people that were in that study will make more money. And therefore we will have a positive GDPR GDP print in the coming year.

So you think it's more about individualized motivation, less about individualized speculation. Like, people are speculating that, like, oh, I'm like, macroeconomics, the economy is bad, so I'm going to be in a worse financial position. You're saying they need to flip that to be just more internally motivated.

Look, it's not a matter of should or shouldn't. I understand that there are, there are circumstances that put people in positions that make them extremely disadvantaged. I also think that of that 48% that said next year they're going to make less money, that 90% of them took a lot of days off in the past two weeks. And so it's like, how bad do you want, how bad you actually want to be able to. And so those are the type of things I look at is like, do you really, like, what, what's it worth to you? Do you like, I think we're all so entitled to, like, we need to be able to make more money. We need to be able to take, you know, at least two or three weeks off a year. We need to work no more than eight hours a day. We need to be able to have free health care. We need to be able to have free education. We need to be able to have everything given to us. And we just don't forget to like, there's a cost to everything. And to some of these things, cost is. The cost is feeling good. The cost is feeling comfortable. And we have just somehow thought that we are supposed to make more money every year and we're supposed to be, no, you are going against entropy. And entropy pushes things towards disorder. And so if you are expecting that to happen, it's going to take a huge amount of effort and stamina. And yeah, this notion that, like everything, we somehow deserve to make more money next year, we deserve to have a house, we deserve to have an education. It's like, where's this mindset coming from? Because there is going to be people that have all those things, and they likely don't have that mindset.

Fair. And I don't think I'm positioning as a, like, they deserve this or we deserve certain things, or the system is, is not set up to help the average person. Right. Like the greater macroeconomic college education institutions of America systems aren't set up to help the average person. What I'm saying is if the average person doesn't have a baseline of stability in their life, they can't, they can't externalize anything. Everything is now internal. It is, it is a fight to survive. It is a fight to pay the rent. Is it a fight to pay the mortgage? Therefore, I now have no extra time or energy to expend on exterior impact, on helping my local community. And that's where I feel like that's where the system then no longer takes into account middle America or the average person. And it's just this cabal of oligarchs, if you will, that, like, rule the world and tell us all what to do. So then it's like, well, how do I even make an impact? Like, if I'm your average Joe, and let's even flip it, let's say, like, I don't mind using myself as an example. Like, financially, I'm well off in terms of, like, where I'm at currently. Like, I have a mortgage. I don't have a ton of debt. Like, we're paying off a little bit of college debt. Like, very, very little debt and a mortgage. And like, we have a little bit of savings available. Like, we're good. We're not driving the nicest cars, but we're good. And so it's like, even I sometimes feel like, how am I supposed to have an impact? Like, my baseline is good. Like, I am. I have my Maslov's hierarchy of needs are met, like, at a baseline level. But how do I have an impact? Because it feels like this. The greater macroeconomics, everything's just so negative and so heavy. And I mean, I can give specific examples, but I'm just trying to have more of a general question of, like, I guess, motivation.

Yeah. Like, again, I think that you have a huge impact on, you know, Ernie, I think you have a massive impact on Sarah. And ultimately, if you can have a positive impact on those two people and then every other person, this is where it breaks apart. Every other person does the same Thing in their localized community, then we have a net positive and that trend would disappear. The unfortunate thing is people in your situation, they're looking for what their spouse can give them, how their kids are taking so much from them. They're trying to get money from the government to be able to do all the things that they want to do without having to put any effort in. And because of that, they're not actually like, the, the. The whole notion of like, ask what you can do for your country, not what it can do for you is not about your country. It's about the organization, the community you're part of. And so that it works for our family we talk about all the time in Augusta is like, you want to give more than you take. And when that notion, then that is the. The first step to failure of the organization. And with so like, for, I think, like, instead of thinking about world, we just start breaking down the organizational units towards family finally gets down. Like family, like your spouse, your relationship, your friendships, things like your church. And like, we can start moving up into higher levels of impact. But I think ultimately every human being just did the impact on their most microcosm of their community, which many times is their family. Then we'd have a net positive. And I think that. To think that you have to impact the world is crazy. And that's like, we all feel this sense of like, oh, I can't do anything. I'm not doing very much. Well, yeah, like, you want to make your ding in the universe, like Steve Jobs, which after his death we still remember because he's literally one of one. But like, we're. We're not all going to be that by definition, we will not all be that level. And so if we just took it back to like, no, no, I'll just be the best dad possible. I'll be the best spouse, best spouse possible. I'll be the best manager possible. I'll be the best team member possible. If we did that as a collective and we were satisfied with it also, many times we start to compare ourselves to other people in terms of their impact. Like, oh, if Elon's doing all this, like, who am I? It's like, no, Elon's playing a different game. He's going after the world. So I think chunking down the level of community that someone's trying to impact and then realizing and being content with the level of impact and the size of the community that you're trying to impact is like, it is depth and not width. And so Elon is trying to impact the world at a very small level across the entire industries etc. Whereas like I'm going to have a huge impact like you on. On Ernie will probably have the biggest impact on his life as anyone in the world. And so these are the type of things that like it is very easy to start playing the comparison game in wealth. It's very easy to start playing this in the impact game and starting to think like I'm not doing much, I'm not. In reality you're having a huge impact. It's just the, the size of the community or the organization that you're comparing against.

When did we lose that like as a society? When did we lose that like your impact as like one person? It does like doesn't actually matter that much anymore because I feel like that's it, that's. And I'm making, I'm making another claim here. I feel like we've lost it that like people don't see their individualized impact as important anymore. It has to be this macro Elon Musk esque.

As soon as we started counting likes because now you see a post and it has, it has 50,000 likes on it and if it doesn't have 50,000 likes or 50,000 comments, you don't even see it because it's like lost in the ether. And so now everything that's being served up to us is literally the top.001% of posts. And so if you don't hit that you are less than and the chances of you hitting that is statistically less than one in a million. And so therefore 999,999 people will feel less than that one person that's making a huge quote impact and what their thoughts are being portrayed to a whole bunch of people. So just put the microphone to such a small segment of people and so everyone else will just feel like they're followers by definition. And so it the whole ideology of like there'll be a few people that will rule the world. Like this notion has been forever and actually has been much more manifested back in time in terms of where money was congregated, in terms of at the top people who just like ruled the, the lower class. The thing is now everything on social media also magnifies that. So now it feels like everything they say is the thing that we all see. It's the thing that we all like. It's all comment. They are the thing that's in our feed all the time. And so as soon as the plus one, the thumbs up the likes follows and subscribers thing came. It's a social currency that we all play this game with that we lose the fact that if Lee makes a really good post in a small group of dads and shares with them something that's super valuable, that has a huge impact, but because it only got 4 likes that somehow that it's not like, it's not a big deal. And so we've lost our, our, our ability to go deep with humans because the surface level, like or comment or follow has become the, the status symbol instead of the depth at which we are actually impacting people.

So it's not necessarily, and this is just me kind of thinking through what you just said because, because I was trying to have an answer to that question as well. It's like, okay, when did we lose it? And part of me is like, well, was it the Internet? Was it access to information? It's like, well, no access to information in the Internet. Like we made leaps and bounds as a society. Like I think it's a net positive to life. Like access to information from like when the phone was invented and you could now call someone and get information instead of having to like take your horse to like go see them. Right? Like when the Internet was invented. Now we can instantaneously share information across countries, right across time zones. That's a net positive. Access to online encyclopedias, books, whatever it is, resources, courses, videos. Net positive. You're saying it's the currency that then was developed because of I guess the Internet or social media that now has devalued the individualized impact of people.

Yeah, because like everyone would look at a post that is made by a very popular person that gets millions of likes and a bunch of people commenting and a whole bunch of reshares as far more valuable than you today going and spending time with your, your family and making a huge impact on them. But the depth of the connection that you make with those two people is all that's required as a, at a macro for us all to do in order to have huge net positive change for society. And so it's just the comparative scale of every time you make a post online. You are trying to impact the world. Like ultimately that's your, your gauge versus when you go into a WhatsApp group with 10 people that you're, you closely are identified with, that you can also have a huge, very deep impact with is that that is somehow of less value. And I think that for that reason a lot of people feel like they're not making a big Impact. And this is where I try to. Like, it's tough sometimes with. Even with contents like I am. Every time you post, you are theoretically going after the world's audience. You're going after the world's attention. And so when a post only gets, you know, a few thousand people looking at it, it's like, oh, man, it's negative. It's like, no, like, hold that for a moment. Like, do I really need to get millions and millions of people, or do I just need to impact a few thousand really positively? And I'd be super happy with that. And I think it's just your scope and scale of the impact you want to have.

Yeah, that's a good point. So how do you think about that as. As an influencer? Right. Because I think nowadays with this, like, social currency, this social media currency, I think we do equate influence to impact. And I. And I don't think those are equals, in my opinion. How do you. As an influencer, and I use that term lightly as an influencer, like, how do you handle that? Like, you want to make sure you have an impact. I know you on a personal level, like, you want to impact small business owners, and you want to help small business owners to achieve greater results, to have more money and have more stability, to then impact their local community. You don't want to just influence them to buy your course, buy your products. Yes, we're running a business. Yes, you want to make money, of course. But how do you balance that, the influence to impact?

I don't really think about it. Yeah. I get on these podcasts and I hypothesize with you because you think deeper thoughts than I do.

I don't know if that's true, but I appreciate you entertaining my. My deep thoughts.

Yeah. I think it's like realizing that I'm making content, that not going to be like, first off, it's business owners, so you cut out a big chunk of the audience. Then it's like, it's home services, so you cut a bunch of people. Then it's like, okay, it's only this size of company I'm really focused on. It's like, I know it's not going to be as wide. And then in terms of, like, yeah, I don't think about that at all. I really don't. I just like these people I'm passionate about and I'm pouring myself into them. And so, you know, if I get a, you know, a quote like it in the middle of the night and I want to write it Down, Like, I'm just thinking about them, and I don't. I don't need anyone else or anyone else to care about who I am. I need a certain level of attention in order for my product to be purchased. So I can use that as fuel to hire people, get good talent, and create products. But, like, I really don't care about what other people think. Like, I don't know. Yeah.

Yeah.

So I. I don't think about that, like, at all, honestly. I don't think about impact.

No.

I just, like, I just want to make this change, and I'm just, like, gonna keep grinding away at it.

Okay, let me. Okay, let me inter. And kind of push back on that. Because if you say I don't think about impact at all, why have a. Why have a mission statement? I think having a mission statement implies that there will be impact because of it.

I agree. I agree that impact is the mission, is the goal ultimate. It's just I don't think often about the impact we're making. I just think about reaching the goal. So, like, I think the impact is a byproduct of us reaching the goal. Like, if our goal is to make home service business owners rich, we will have an impact on people if we are able to get them to that place. I just think mostly about getting them to that place and the impact of them, their community, and their family that I know that will happen. Yes. It's just very hard for me to measure that. It's very hard for me to. I don't see 99% of the things that the impact I make. It's like, why would I use that as my measuring stick? Because if my measuring stick was people posting about the book or posting positive stuff or telling me that their business improved, I probably see less than 1% of the people that actually come back to me and say, yes, I listened to that and it changed my business. I see such a small portion. So, like, that is a byproduct, and the impact is a byproduct of doing something. Like, the same way that the waves of the ocean and the ripple is, in effect, of an event happening. I'm just focusing on the event happening. Like the rock falling into the water and the ripples is a byproduct. And so the impact that we have at Augusta on the industry will be just simply a byproduct of us getting to a thousand locations. And so most of our day to, like, you and me is like, how do we get to a thousand locations? Because that is something that we can tangibly go after. And all the impact or changing the level of professionals in the industry is very hard to measure. It's very long term. It's very delayed. It's ultimately the infinite game. And so we, we just try to stay more focused on inputs because the outputs are just very, very hard to measure.

Yeah. 100. And I think in business it's much easier to like draw a very clear line like you just did. Like I'm not going to push back on that. That's like, that's a great definition. It makes sense. In personal life it's much harder because there aren't measurables. Like there aren' locations. Like I can't measure the impact I have on my son via a metric.

Right.

Like I can. You know what I mean?

How many cinnamon rolls? How many donuts?

Yeah, like of course. Right?

This would totally be something. Lead pulls up and the kids like 18 is like how many donuts? How many times I would put you to bed?

Yeah. So let's go ahead and look here. Yeah. So year over year, performance review. Yeah. But, but I think about it and like I'll use myself as an example and you know what, what I'm, I guess about to say or share may be taken wrong. And that's fine. But it's, but it's, but it's true. And so I'm just going to share it. People ask me a lot of times like, why do you not have an Augusta location? Why don't you own your own Augusta location? I can say this in all honesty. It would be the most self serving thing that I could do. It really would be. It would only serve me to have an Augusta location. It wouldn't serve the greater good of Augusta Nation and it definitely wouldn't serve my wife and my son. And so I am optimizing to serve and work extremely hard for you and for Augusta Nation. And I'm optimizing to be a great husband and a great father. And if I add owning a location onto my plate, I know I will have to sacrifice in both of those avenues. Now could I do it? Yes. But the only reason I would do it, it is self serving. And I know that that to be a full truth. So like that is me, I'm being very like vulnerable here. That is me saying, I know I will have an impact in Augusta Nation and my wife and my son's life if I just focus on those two things. Throw in another thing and my impact diminishes drastically. To do a self serving task. So what are your, what are your thoughts on that? I don't feel like I've ever shared that like that bluntly. But that is holistically how I feel and it is true to how I, how I feel and how I operate.

Yeah, if you were to do that, you would increase the, the width of your impact because you have start having employees, you'd become a business owner, et cetera, but you would decrease your depth. And so to you depth is important and I would agree with that. And so I think some people width is important and so they're willing to sacrifice and someone like Elon will start more businesses, they'll just keep traveling more like you know, have a bajillion children, like that's all with. And so I think I, I tend to be much more in the depth camp along with you. But there are also people that like, they need the validation, they need the stimulation. They need some sort of outside validation from a lot of people like the width part. And so they would go start another location because it'd be a very much of a slam dunk financially. And then also they'd have quote unquote, greater impact width wise in terms of employees and everything else in the community etc. And so yeah, I think, I think too if you were starting a location, half of it would be this is the part that I've like, but I closed down like or sold my location, sold off some of my real estate like went more than half of my real estate portfolio in the past couple years is because like, and I think if you were starting a location, part of it is you're trying to get the monkey off your back of like, well, people are always saying I, I should just do it myself. Like why? It's like when you start doing financial decisions and, and decisions that are going to impact the people that you do love and actually are trying to have an impact on when you make decisions that are in contrary to those people, you know how resigned like you sold your soul, right? You're making decisions based upon other people and what they think about you. And so like when you start stripping that away, then you can make more clear decisions like, okay, I'm trying to make impact what, who am I trying to make an impact on? And then once you define that, you can actually judge whether or not the opinions of people matter because if they are not inside of that group, I should not care what they think and I should not make this, I should certainly not make decisions or sacrifices to appease their opinions based on the subtraction or the hurt to the people I do care about, and I do care about the impact that I'm having on them. And so if you would reduce your depth, because you're going after width, and you're going after width to simply scratch the itch of what other people think about you, that's an extraordinary. L.

Yeah, I completely agree with you. I think that there's a balance, too, in life.

We need the.

We need the width impactors, but I think more holistically, we need more depth impactors. And I think we've lost. Just coming full circle here in this conversation, we have lost the importance of the depth impact. And that's where I think I have very personal, strong convictions in, like, belief in, like, the institution of marriage, the institution of the family unit, the institution of, like, a boss to a direct report. Like, the relationship that you and I have. Like, I think those are core institutions to what has allowed us as a society to get to the point that we have gotten to. And I feel like. And I'm making a lot of claims today, I feel like a lot of those institutions are drastically crumbling, and I feel like that's where we're losing out on impact. Like, the individual is losing the ability to impact because we have devalued those institutions so heavily.

Amen.

I don't want to be, like, preaching to the choir. These are just things I've been, like, aggressively thinking about recently. And I was talking to one of my friends, Shout Out Braden. He's, like, one of my best supports, been friends for a long time, and we've been talking about it, and he.

He.

It was very refreshing for him for him to say this, because a lot of people think about in the short term, right? Like, oh, I'm gonna make a bunch of money, and then I'm gonna do all these things. I'm. Whatever. He. We were on a call. He was like, Dude, 2025 has been so good. It's been a great year. He was like, you know, if you and I just put our heads down for another 10, 20 years, then we'll have a bunch of resources, and then we can, like, have a big impact in the world. And I was like, like, gosh, that's so refreshing to hear that someone that's, like, willing to, like, we're gonna grind for 10 to 20 years, and then we'll have the resources, the ability to have an impact. I don't need to have an impact. Tomorrow. I'm gonna put my head down. I'm gonna focus on what matters. I'M gonna have depth impact now in my marriage, in my local business, whatever it is, my local community. And then once I have the resources and ability to have a width impact, then I will do that. So I kind of wanted to one give them a shout out, unintentionally planning that. But what are your thoughts on like that philosophy? Do you think more people, and I know you don't like shoulds, do you think it would be better serving to the community as a whole if more people had that, that thought process of like, I can have a width impact if I put in the work first or do you, would you disagree with that?

I think that clarity as to what level of impact you want to have is the actual win. And so for Braden to understand that like, hey, I'm going to have depth impact now and be able to gain resources and then by having more resources, we'll be able to impact more people down the road is self aware enough to know that first off there'll be a huge amount of time and effort put into gaining those resources. And then that the heat does need to have an itch scratched of having a big impact on a bunch of people. I think that the vast majority of people don't actually need that and to do so is actually mostly just scratching their ego and the likes and the comments and people seeing something in the community or having a big house or having a big, a big charity event or whatever it is, is. And so, and, and so being clear as to what you need to have levels of impact is the important part. Because if you're going after the universe, you're usually going to be pretty like disappointed. Yeah. So I think, I think it's not a matter of more people should think that way. It's, it's more people should ask themselves, what level of impact do I need to have? And then what do I need to do in order to reach the level of resources required to have that impact? Whether it be a track record of business, whether it be a track an AM money, whether it be like for example, let's say he wants to have an impact on a, a church. A great way to do that is have a family that all subscribe to the same notions and then also follow in your footsteps in terms of the ideologies you perpetrated to them. Like that's a really good example that in 20 years you can then go and help more people because you have all this evidence. The same way we talk about like building a business and having evidence around success and a big business Like, I. You can then use that and go have more impact, quote, unquote, on business owners. Okay, well, if you don't really care about money and business, then go have a great family and, like, go build that. Like, go build evidence in that domain. And then when you want to have an impact on people in that area, you will also have the authority and the grounds to say what you think. And so I think that the vast majority of us think in the short term, and we want to go after, like, this universal. We want to go after everybody when we have no resources, we have no evidence. And so I think it is mature to say, I need evidence of success before I go and I try to have an impact and tell other people what to do. Because most time, that's what impact is. Your thoughts, feelings and opinions are propagated to other people. And so the likelihood of them taking those opinions, thoughts and feelings is far greater if you have evidence. And so this is like what Alex talks about all the time. Like, create evidence and then you go make content. And he's talking about, like, information, business, just, you know, business in general, entrepreneurship. But the same thing is true in, like, every discipline. The same thing is true, like, you impacting your. Your child. Like. Like, if they see dad go out and work hard and be able to then be able to upgrade the house, be able to give what they want, make impact in their community, give things to their family, take care of other people, it was like, oh, like, that's the path I should go. Then they do it. Then you do that a few more times, and then all of a sudden you're 20, 30 years down the road and there's a couple that is getting married and they're wondering about your advice or for children, and you're able to give it, and they listen because they look at the evidence that you have in that discipline and they believe you. And so again, it's like, what level of impact are you trying to achieve? And somehow, you know, in our world, we put business and money on a pedestal. But, like, that level of impact can filter down from health, family, spirituality, etc.

Yeah, 100. All right, I think that's enough. We. We went deep into the. Well, I appreciate you indulging me, but these are just. These are just some things.

Thoughts I have all week, probably.

Hey. Well, I think it's good. And, you know, now you can take it and you can talk to Bri about it and it'll be a good, stimulating conversation, or you'll just be like, yeah, Lee was On a weird one today. These are just things I've been thinking about very, very, very in depth recently. So we can switch to non financial advice. I can jump into mine. So what really spurred this is, and I think our audience, this won't be as divisive, but I think generally speaking, people will draw some presuppositions about me based on what I'm about to say. My non financial advice. And I think this is one of the most important podcasts that men in America can listen to today. And it is an episode of the Sean Ryan show with Tucker Carlson on it. And I know that they are both have polarizing views. I get that. Take some of them with a grain of salt. It's a very important conversation about impact that we can have in the degradation of Western society. Now, there are a lot of claims in there I don't agree with. I want to put that caveat out there, but it is such a good conversation like Mike and I were having today about like, how do we have an impact as men and how do we better our society? How do we protect the weak, the innocent, the children, like all these things and how do we do that in a society that is so fisticuffs with each other? So I think it's one of the most important episodes or podcasts I've listened to in a long time. I've sent it to many people and I'm gonna send it to you, Mike, after this. It's like three hours long, so I don't expect you to listen to all of it, but it is so, so good. So that's my not financial advice.

I can't, I can't outdo that. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna give my financial advice today. I'll just ditto what you said.

All right, perfect. Well, I appreciate your time, sir. Appreciate everyone listening like and subscribe as always, and we'll see you next time.