Everything you NEED to know about Co-Pilot CRM - Episode 009

Could you, Mike Andy, start a business and then just have AI run it? Yeah.

100.

What's up? How's your voice? Address the elephant.

It can. It can. You can hear me now. What's weird is when it drops out the occasional word. And now I just like. It feels like I'm always tickling my throat and I cough all the time.

For those who maybe don't know. How did you lose your voice?

Conference, man. Let's go. Today's what? Tuesday?

Yeah.

Finished Saturday. So Sunday, Monday, Repair voice. It was good.

Yeah.

So Sunday was brutal. My. My jaw hurt. He was really bad. I'm good now.

Yeah, we'll just. We'll start right there. Yeah. We had the landscape summit. So we do one day or half a day, most of a day with just the Augustination franchisees and then we open it up to the public. So just initial reactions.

It's good, man. It's the best one we've done so far and I think there's still room to get better. So looking forward to October when we're going to take it to Louisville next to a Quebec spo. So that's going to fun.

Yeah, that'll be sweet. So a couple people did mention the POD to me at the summit. I was actually very surprised.

I got that plug in there, bro.

Yeah, you did. Thank you. I appreciate that. Someone actually, unfortunately she's not here right now while we're recording, but someone referred to my wife as the producer.

Yeah, that's. Producer isn't here today, you know.

Yeah, so, yeah, no, no, it was good. Landscape stunt was great. It's always good to see all the franchisees in one room. Kind of a little bit of a step back. I was talking to one of the newer franchisees and they were like, I didn't realize like how big Augusta is. And we got what, 80. 80 locations represented. And then a lot of them brought a spouse, a manager. Some of them brought most of their team. And it's like, it's wild that it's over. Like, what was it? 110 people just that were attached to Augusta.

Yeah.

Yeah. Pretty awesome. So next year we're going to Louisville or. Well, in 10 months.

Yeah, dude. October.

16Th and 17th. 16th. Yeah, 16th and 17th, I think.

What was the thought process behind that? I mean, you can give the short version.

The short version. I was walking outside the Que Expo when we were leaving. I was like, we should have a conference here. And then I was like, looked over at Ryan, looked over at Liz, and I was like, why would we not have a conference here, poke a hole in that one. And the only good reason was that it's kind of fun to travel up to Washington for people down south, but it's expensive, it's less affordable, accessible. So I think it'll be a good move. And yeah, hopefully get more. More people come because it's. They're already making the trip to Louisville.

Yeah. Yeah. I think one of the arguments that I had, I guess not against, but one of the holes I tried to poke and in the chaos that is Equip Expo and the fact that we're just dead tired after those three days, one thing that I thought, and I didn't know if you've given it any further thought, was are you ever going to differentiate in a way the Mike Andy's brand from the Augusta brand? Because I. My initial reaction when you said, let's do it out Equip, I was like, well, does that pigeonhole you now as the landscape guy, or do you feel like you have to be, I guess, the landscape guy for the next three, four, five years, whatever, in order to just continue to grow the audience? And then you kind of.

Yeah, like the vast majority of my audience still lawn care landscaping. What's about 50 to 60%, though there's a lot of people who aren't. I've done polls on it before and things. So I think down the road we'd probably have a conference for home services and we might do that in Washington and then keep the one for landscaping, that one separate and ideally next to Equip Expo all the time, because that's where all the landscapers are. And then that way to our franchisees, it's just. They can kill two birds with one stone. They come to equip, they come to our, our, our conference as well. Plus the summit that they get publicly.

Yeah, Yeah. I just, it's just interesting, I guess, because I have the outside perspective of like watching you as the entrepreneur and just being an operator underneath you and thinking about all these guys who were entrepreneurs and they grew an audience, but then they, I guess, take their talents in different directions. It's like interesting watching you kind of go through that and just see where it's going to go.

Yeah.

Interested?

Yeah. Like, I think there's still a lot in lawn care landscape. They don't know who I am. And then just like the services and proxies build are mostly for the lawn care industry. However, like with Copilot Home Service, cpa, those are more home service generalized. And so that's kind of a tapping our, you know, putting our foot in that, that kind of end of the pool. And it's a much wider, larger net and audience, honestly. So it definitely allows us to scale. And, you know, I think in 10 years, you know, the majority of my audience won't be in lawn care Landscaping. Yeah. In terms of the public brand, just because the audience is so much bigger. Right. Lawn care is one vertical. You could look at fencing and if you look at cleaning and like, there's just as many people in those verticals. And so when you do home services, you literally get 10, 20x the amount of people that are able to be reached.

Yeah. And I think, like, obviously a big example of someone that's done that is like Alex Hormozy. I know we talk about him on the pod previously, but he started Gym Lords, he started franchising, and now you go to his YouTube channel and he's just like the business philosophy guru. Right. So I think I'm, I'm excited to see you go through that because I get to see that and that's kind of an element of this podcast, is showing that other side of you. But I'm just excited for when we. When you diversify the Mike Andy's brand a little bit more. I think it's going to be cool.

Yeah. Like I've said before, like, in terms of the media side, our goal is to kind of become the Dave Ramsey for small business down the road. The way that people would say, oh, you need a budget. Oh, you should go listen to Dave Ramsey. I would like it to be when people are like, I'm gonna start a business. Like, oh, you should make sure you check out Mike Andy's and listen to stuff. So that's down the road, though I'm not in a big rush. I think building a really big business and controlling the vertical of lawn care and landscaping will set me up for a good platform. Cause so many of the things, like you could take every single thing almost from the conference keynote and basically make that a business conference about every industry.

Definitely.

You take out the word lawn care, switch out for any other service which take a word, projects and recurring revenue and like, it's the same stuff.

Yeah.

So it's just the way you brand it. It's important.

Especially when you get big picture in the home service industry with like sales. Pretty similar sales. Oh, it's all marketing. It's all the same.

Yeah, all the same.

So interesting. Do you think it'll be a choice that you make to like, diversify your Your talent, or do you think it's just a natural progression for a content creator? EntrePR.

It'll be natural because what will happen is the products and service we build for lawn care and landscaping would just need rebranded into becoming something for home services. Home services would just be rebranded in a small business. So in my opinion, like, the next 10 years, be lawn care. Ten years after that, it'll be like home service and then like the eve of my career or like the highlight of my career, like 40s and 50s. I think that's when it'll be like, small business owners will know who I am, hopefully, and I can help them. Hopefully. So I'm not gonna rush for it, though. I think each stage needs to have a solid foundation to build on top of if it's going to be a longevity thing. And so, yeah, I think it's cool.

It's just like, I don't know from once again, the outsider looking in, it's like we just got to enjoy the ride a little bit, too.

Yeah.

Because there's times where I'm like, man, I remember my first conference and it was like 60 people.

Yeah. You were sitting on the slot and on your computer off the left, right off the side of the fishing. Next.

Yeah.

You're on your laptop.

Yeah. Yeah. I never forget, I ran the slides and the audio and everything off stage because then media guy Josh, Shout Out Josh, was doing everything in terms of trying to record it, trying to get good pictures, trying to just help you and I with whatever other tasks we need. And I. I accidentally remember on your first opening keynote, I screwed up a slide. I went ahead a little fast. You didn't like that. So it's all good. See. See where we've come. See where we've come. Yeah. So, dude, that's awesome. But, yeah, it was a great event for those of you who are there. I'm. I'm. I'm extremely thankful. I know Mike would say the same thing. Um, and I'm also humbled by, like, the kind words people say, not only about you, but just about the team that you've built and that I get to be a part of. I think one of the biggest things is we just. We're just there to work and we care. And you message your team that. It's like, you know, we're bought into the vision, we care about the people in the room, so we just get it done right. There was no drama amongst our team, the team that put on the event. So, like, shout out the media staff, the Folks from Command center that helped out. Like there was not one moment where we were stressed, but there was not one moment where we weren't on the same page or we weren't trying to help each other. I think that's just like cool to be a part of.

Yeah. I'd say we probably at least tripled or 5x the amount of preparation on this conference compared to last year.

Yeah.

And this coming one will be probably the same three to five what we did this year. But I think it was apparent like everything from walkie talkies in all of our ears, like the communication, everything goes smoothly. We had a lot of timing involved. Like we had to time down to the second. When we launched Copilot, when we launched the announcements is it was all timed on a second. So everything had to go flawlessly. And so, you know, I think people, if they look in hindsight looking at some of the things we did, like me having my ear plug in or my headset in the last keynote, like all these little things that we did.

Yeah.

Added to it and then we just hopefully learn from all the stuff we can do better on and we'll make it even that much better in October.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you did mention Copilot, so that's what I want to honestly invest most of our time into. So you're, you're, you're a SaaS guy. Is that how you say is that you pronounce it.

Software as a service. Very diversified in terms of your business portfolio. So you're in.

I don't know, dude.

It's like, it's like I literally, I live and breathe SaaS already. Yeah. Because we are dealing with every single day at Command Center. I understand the back end pretty well. And like I mentioned at conference, like I do know a little bit of tech. So like it's, it's not new or like different for me. Like I feel very comfortable with talking to developers and kind of being in the know on that stuff. So. Yeah. But it's just like how do we take this technology and make it really useful for not just landscapers, but all home service business owners and give them the information they need And I feel like I'm in a good spot to know what that is. And there's so many different. There's a gazillion different ways you can take a software and there's a bazillion different features that are still this. They pitch to me. Yeah. I've literally got over 150 emails still about feature requests just from my Post the last few days, maybe that was 150total. So probably about a hundred of feature requests.

If anyone's listening that send an email. Will those get read? Eventually?

Yeah, they will be. I'll read every single one. Yeah, I won't reply to them all, but I'll read them. And so you can take it so many different directions. You have to have a clear vision of what you want the software to be. Otherwise it just becomes a scattered mess and a whole bunch of different things to be a very clear, unified vision. I feel like that's lacking. The industry is. No one is like, this was what we're building. Get on board. Or like get on board or. Or just bail, go. We don't care. Just leave. And so I just kind of like stay focused on what that vision is because it's so easy. Like, oh, I have this feature like this and this. And all of a sudden you have something that does everything, but therefore does nothing.

Yeah. So. So to back up a little bit, last Friday we had the summit. We had a time perfectly, I think Stephen.

Seven seconds, dude, our media guy.

We timed a live announcement with our conference and it launch.7 seconds, which is pretty darn cool.

Yeah, we've launched. We had the timer up months before and within seven seconds we had it nailed to this again.

That's. That's awesome in and of itself should be celebrated. Shout out the media guys and the team that got the conference to run so smoothly. But for to bring in the larger audience, if you will. So Friday night of our conference you had a big announcement. The internal team, we knew what that announcement was. The announcement was copilot, which is going to be a CRM home service CRM that you launched. So we. I almost want to rewind a little bit and kind of go through the decision making process how we got to where we are and then we can dive more into the weeds. But I remember when I was first hired at Augusta, it was right when we had switched to our current CRM, which is service autopilot. And I remember it was very chaotic. I had no idea what was going on. Right. I had retail experience and I've used POS systems and you know, I've done basic CRM stuff, but I'd never been involved in a company that used it on a day to day basis. And so I got hired at Augusta. And you and Liz are like scrambling, figuring out how do we use the service autopilot thing. And then it's been my life for the last, you know, over five years. So What I guess summarizing the last five years, been using Service Autopilot. What would you say would be may maybe some major roadmarks that got you to where we got are now and.

Well, the first thing is that the way that the app looked five years ago when you looked at it the exact same way it looks today. Yes, there has been no change or innovation and the reason for that is because the founders left. There's no leadership in, in my opinion, when I say no leadership, there's people in leadership, but that doesn't mean a company has leadership. And so there's no vision, there's no unifying theme. I've talked to the leadership team, I said like no one knows why this company exists anymore. What, why, why, why do we exist? And they can't give me an answer. And so I think that that's a reason, you know, why we're here now, competing against them eventually. And then just there's just so many little features that they could have done over the past five years that were simple. Like I know now from a tech point of view, like these are weeks, these are features that are two and three week of development and you can knock them out tipping the ability to be able to do multi select on dispatch boards, the fact that there's 10 ways to do every single one thing inside the software, the fact that you literally need to hire a.

A coach or hire Service Autopilot to train you how to use their system and not just train you, but like create your templates and your documents and your automations. It's that complicated. So I think it's really bad user experience, really bad UI, a jumbled mess with their versions. Five years ago they were launching V3. It's still in beta. Weirdly, like some pages work, some pages don't. The team app is there, some people use it, some people don't. The legacy app is there. It's just a message and so.

I'm not pulling punches on that. And also at the same point we're using them and I'm very open, honest with them about what we're doing and where I stand on things. And I gave my opinions very straight to them over the past year.

Yeah. So do you think the transition. Let's just talk about even before Copilot, right. You obviously saw some struggles. The things that you just mentioned with Service Autopilot, I can attest when I was first onboarded, you guys showed me how to run through Service Autopilot. It is the same onboarding process for a new employee Today at Augusta, it's the exact same verbiage, it's the exact same click here, do this, do that when you need to debug, because you're gonna have to do that a lot. Triple tap on the top, triple tab on the top, right. The same spiel five years later. So that is, I guess outsider looking in. It's concerning, right, to see that. So for you, was it an instant I have to make my own or did you shop around? When did you realize I'm gonna start my own CRM? Or was that even a thought until you just like had to?

Well, part of it is like we at Augusta, like we are a big client to any CRM software. Big, like very large, if not the largest. And so because we're, you know, we're bringing hundreds of accounts, each of those have multiple users. So it's a huge, huge account for them. And so now we've just gotten to size, we actually will listen to us. But the other things that got me is like we're using other CRMs alternatively at command center and we still use them to this day, but they are venture capital backed so they weren't profitable. So I was able to see both ends of the software spectrum. One company, service Ava, extremely profitable, makes lots of money and what they're doing with their rate of innovation. And then I'm able to see in other companies that we've been working with that are venture capital backed by the likes of Sequoia Capital, etc. And they are burning money as they're because they're younger, they're smaller, they're more agile, they're able to build more innovative. However, now with the recession they have to stop. They have to like figure out profitability and cut things out and so on. Both ends of the spectrum I've seen just like no innovation. And over the past 12 to 24 months there's like nothing new. There's nothing groundbreaking after Automations service, all plate and a lot of the other like there's just nothing new that is actually revolutionary. It's just me too products, me too features. And I very clear with the co founder and CTO of Copilot, Patrick Cash has said we are not going to create this race of arms of features because you can literally die by a thousand cuts of features like this feature and this feature. There's always other features to add. There's no that one feature is not going to make your product. One feature is not going to make or break whether or not you're innovative. It's not like that. And so I think a lot of these companies that are making a lot of features are simply on this rabbit like this treadmill of like feature feature, this feature and oh this and this. There's no vision of like what are we actually trying to build here? What makes us different than every other CRM out there? And I promise that we will not become me to CRM. It's going to take us a year to catch up because there are several features we need to build to be able to have enterprise level companies on the software. But beyond that, where is this company going? Like in three years we will not look like any other CRM, I guarantee you that. And in five years now it'll look totally different than it is for three. Like it will be a lot of changes. And so yeah, my thought while you.

Were on that beautiful soliloquy was was honestly to really dumb down I guess what you said and correct me if I'm wrong but I feel like my reaction is CRMs have tried to become the jack of all trades and the master of none. Do you feel like you're going to try to be the master of home service based businesses because you're not just trying to be the what was it me too or.

Yeah, like the me too thing is like a feature thing. Right, right. So like oh they have this feature. Okay, well we have this feature, this automation package will this automation like there's a bunch of that stuff. Right. The thing is like.

What were you saying? Because I was thinking a thought jack.

Of all trades master.

That was it. So originally and this is, this is actually a fine line. So what I think service titan did really well is they did industry by industry by industry and by doing that they made sure that they tailored their product to each industry one at a time. Then you're like something like service autopilot. I feel like they have to dilute their product down because they're trying to serve every single industry with the same software. And so you have to kind of dilute things down. However, like I think it just takes a business owner that's in service, the service businesses and it has a wide range of interest in all these different industries to realize that there's still a lot of commonalities. We still need to know our close ratio. We still need to track time to close, we still need to track attrition and like to this date it's not a simple process to get attrition from service autopilot.

No.

When for any recurring base business is extremely important the lifetime value of a customer. They do a pretty good job of that. They actually have a graph. It's pretty straightforward. But there's just so much that is not done well. Even when like copilot we are doing multiple industries. Any home service industry can use it. It's not just for long care landscaping however, there are just so many things that can be added that I feel like just. It just takes someone who's like been in it, knows what they need. And I've been able to see all of our franchisees in lawn care and landscaping then also just like other home and services and be like, I know this same KPI is important in roofing and fencing and cleaning and every other thing. Right. So yeah.

So was there because I feel like I want to know this is. Was there a decision moment where or an aha moment or was it just like for you as a user death by a thousand cuts.

Yeah. So I was going to send a video to service iPad basically not threatening them. I was going to say like hey look, I'm going to post this video publicly. What are your thoughts? Yep. And so I've sent our franchise advisory council as kind of a screening mechanism and they were like, okay, yeah, sure, that's fine. After like you know, plenty of back and forth deliberation. Yes, we should. No we shouldn't. Why? What's the point and objective of this? Would they cut us off? That sort of thing. And then I ran it by people that have been at service all before and basically I realized that like that video wasn't going to get the intent that I want which was to actually make change happen. It was probably going to frustrate people and make them mad. And that wasn't the goal. I wanted to help them. So like ultimately my original thought was like I'll become the CEO of Service all. That's not a job I want because it's. The CEO is not a founder led company in that position.

Right.

So once that was kind of like I didn't ever sent the video to their executive team but I talked to them and I said my piece and I said where I thought there was failings and where there could be improvements, et cetera. And they're starting to implement some of those things fortunately. That's really good. I'm happy. Like I really want their software to do well. I want their users to be taken care of. I want to see them ultimately help the industry. But then when I step back and okay, what's right for Augusta in the next five years, do we stay with a legacy company that does a good job, we're all pretty happy with, but I feel like it's starting to fall behind innovation compared to three years ago? Or do we put the eggs in the basket of another software that is more innovative getting things done, but, like, has bugs in it? That is really frustrating our franchisees, and I have no control to fix them. Regard, like, I can't just dump money on it and fix the problem with development. I can't. I don't control it.

And so ultimately, stepping back is like, okay, well, what could I do? I've always known Patrick really well. I flew out to his. His house, stated his house before, tried to help him when Lawn Pro was kind of on the. On the rocks a little bit. And so I reached out to him, just told him, like, hey, like, here's what I think a CRM should look like. No one else is doing this. And I think you and I together are a whole lot more valuable than you and I apart. I said, I can bring the business, industry experience, sales and marketing, you can bring the tech and years and years of experience of coding that he has and the development team that they have. And so I think together, just give me something really, really cool.

So. So Patrick is.

But the moment. The moment. The moment. The moment was when he. He agreed to let me have control the company. And so I told him right up front, I said, look.

I want to do this. We both agreed that we were better together. Yeah, we'd make something 10 times better if we just joined forces instead of me trying to code it myself or him still trying to do Lawn Pro because he is pigeonholed by industry and he doesn't have the social presence or industry experience to help bring it to the masses. So the moment, though, for me was when we both agreed on that part. Dan was like, well, how are we gonna split up the company? And I told him. I was just really honest. I'm like, look, it's not that I don't trust you, but there's no way I'll do a CRM if I don't have full controls and I need majority ownership. And so I put an offer that I literally was like, I know what this can become, but I have to have control if it's going to be in the best interest of Augusta and for the industry. And that's only thing I care about. If I get 50 50, or I can take 49, then we're in a position where I could be in the right back in the square one. In a few years, if he wants to sell or if Venture comes in and says I need control of the company. So when he, he, without any objection, said, yeah, I'd be on board for that. I think 40% of a big pie is a lot bigger than the slice I've got now. And I was a game of that. And then that was the moment. We're all in. We're going 100% because we already talked about, like, I really was very strong what I believed a CRM needs to look like. I told him very clearly what I thought the current Lawn Pro does, does not have what Copilot would be in terms of like, that needs to serve the enterprise level user, not the entry level user. And we kind of got a line of those things. And he's, he's very good at just letting me do my thing in terms of vision. Where are we going? What features are we working on? And he's great at the tech side. He has a great team that we work with. And so together I think we'll make something cool.

So we announced on January. Is that 1-8-6, dude.

The same day as the insurrection.

Literally the day that the capsule got stormed. We literally took over the. We're going to. One day down in history. It'll come.

Yeah, fair enough. You and the people of Brazil, which is not a topic. We're going to get into that.

Not Brazil, the insurrection.

Yeah, but Brazil also did it.

Oh, the same day.

Yeah, yeah, last week.

I know it was the same day. I think so, yeah. Oh, really?

I think they did it.

I didn't know if it's the same.

Day, but we're not. We're not getting that.

Okay.

Okay. So January six, you announce your insurrection on the CRM software for home service businesses. When did, when did. When was that conversation with Patrick? How long ago was that?

That would have been like only three months ago.

That's what I was going to guess.

Yeah, it's very short.

October.

Yeah, it's very short. Literally in about. I would say so one weekend I called him. The next week we had legal papers. The week after that I bought the. That week I bought. I already bought the. The rights, like the URL, got the branding literally before he signed. So, like, I was like, okay, we're doing this once we verbally. I'm like, we're in. So I started running with it.

Yeah.

And then he signed and then we got all the development team. That's the hard part is getting the development teams on my side more. The ui and then him on the UX and then putting it all together, that's been the more challenging part. But he's. He's excellent. He's very good at letting me do my thing as an operator and I'm trying my best to make sure I just let him also run with the tech. So it'll be a good partnership. Cool.

So basically all you need is three months to start a dude.

It was two weeks, if you actually think about it. It's two weeks.

Yeah.

So once I knew service autopilot, that was a closed do of me, never taking any sort of leadership there. And then once I knew that he was game for something and we just had to come with the detail, like, come down the details. There was a lot of messages, a lot of late nights. I was like figuring out I had the entire feature list, the next 24 months, basically ready to go. Then I started developing a whole bunch of stuff on my end. And so, yeah, I'd say two weeks. Two weeks. We went from, I don't know what's going on with the stupid CRM world to we're going to have a solution for this. And a matter of a year.

Yeah. When was the first UI developed?