Find Your North Star, Jim's Mowing, How to Deal with OSHA

Welcome back to the Mike Andy's Podcast, where we discuss the ins and outs of owning a small business. If you're new here, the Mike Andes podcast is all about taking your business to the next level. What do we have for you today? Well, sometimes promised money isn't enough to get you out of bed every day. You need to have concrete goals that mean something to you. Next, Mike goes Down under to visit Jim's mowing company, a lawn care franchise with over 2,000 locations. Finally, why it's important to know the law better than OSHA does. You can find all this and more over on the Mike Andes YouTube channel. But let's get into it. What do you do when money isn't enough?

Today's a special clip from a Mike Minutes mastermind that I have with our franchisees every single morning during the week. And we actually talk about success, how to get there, and the different routes you can take and why so many people don't ever actually achieve the goals they have. So it's gonna be really interesting. I think it's really important for all business owners, especially if you're just getting started. Your first few years of business, I think is a really key piece of content I want you to watch. Good morning, Guest nation. Hope you're all doing fantastic. I find myself struggling with the feeling that I am not doing anything of meaning. I feel like all I am doing is working to the status of making more money, which I don't think is bad, but I feel like this is all I am working towards. While I have goals, I feel kind of empty. I usually have a really high high this time of month when I invoice, but by the end of the month, I feel depressed or unsatisfied. Can you maybe give some advice or pointers maybe on how to feel less empty about what we do? We all do as business owners, I typically feel this way the most this time of year when it is very hot and work hits kind of a lull. But for whatever reason, this year it feels like it hasn't gone away. So let me be honest and say it's not going to go away. Whenever you have a mission or a goal, the tools and techniques and the route you choose to get to that goal is always going to be in question. There is no roadmap, There is no GPS to reaching your goals, and there's 100 ways to be successful. And so it'd be like if you were like, hey, you're in Mexico. And you're like, hey, get to Canada. Like, there's several ways you can go, and there's many different routes that you can take. And so what happens because success is that way, is we choose a path. And I start a lawn care business, join Augusta, and I stop my other job, whatever it might be. I'm going to hire employees, I'm going to grow my business. And because there's so many routes to success, we always start to question and wonder what would have happened if we would have chosen another path? What would it have happened if we didn't chase the money? Could I have been successful and achieved work, life balance or where I want my family or personal relationships or health without having to do this business thing? And so what is important is defining what success looks like for you and then realizing that you're just on one of many paths to that location. There are many ways to be successful, many ways to make money. And if money isn't a real massive motivator for you, the goal, the dream, the ambition needs to be much greater than that. And then you've just realized that money is the fuel to get to the goal. If you're going from Mexico to Canada, you're going to need fuel. Money is that you got to have it. You, you can't run out of it, and you've got to have a lot of it. And so just realize that if making money is not going to be enough of a motivator for you to get up when you don't want to and to do things that you don't that are not comfortable, you're going to have to keep the North Star of Canada or whatever you're moving towards that success in your mind and then not judge yourself based upon the path you've taken, because there's a hundred ways to get there. And that's why most people will quit, quit their business usually in the second and third year, because it's been a year, two years, three years, like, man, I'm not making money anymore. I'm not making enough money. Like I'm running out of cash. And it's hard, it's difficult. They get disillusioned by the fact that the five to 10 years that they is required to get to Canada to get to their successful a position. It's very disillusioned. It's very hard when you're halfway through that goal and you're running out of fuel cash. And that's why you feel better when you've done invoicing, is because you've just tapped up on fuel, you've got more cash in the bank. Let's go. We can get to this. I'm going to become successful because I got fuel. That's what you'll feel better when you invoice at the end of the month. You have the cash, you have the fuel, and now your goals seem more obtainable, then what happens is you get disillusioned by two things. One, other routes of getting to that success. And then secondarily, the definition of, of success and the destination that you're traveling to is not clearly defined. And so just getting more money, I getting more gas in the tank is not enough for you to wake up every single day and do things hard, hard things. It's not because it'd be like me saying, well, I'm traveling and I'm just getting more and more fuel. I'm fueling up. I'm getting a bigger and bigger gas tank. Great. Like, why? Like, if you want to make more money, you've got to figure out, why are you making more money? What's the goal? Where are you trying to travel to? If I'm getting from Mexico to Canada, fuel is very important. If you're trying to, you know, give back to your church, become financially independent, provide for your kids and your family so they can go to college, whatever it is, whatever that North Star is, that probably requires fuel. But fuel in and of itself can never be the goal because otherwise you just keep driving all over the place. Drive, drive, drive, drive. There's no reason for fuel other than getting you to the destination. You got to figure out what the destination is. You got to figure what the destination is and then not be disillusioned by the other thousand ways, other routes to get to that same goal, that same place. If your goal is to become financially independent, own five real estate properties and be able to cash flow $3,000 a month passively and have $500,000 in stocks and whatever it is, whatever that goal that you're. There's a thousand ways to get there. You could start a laundromat, you could start a restaurant, you could start a roofing company, you could start a pressure washing company. There's a hundred ways to get there. And so people get disillusioned because they start questioning their route. And then secondarily, they do not have a very clear definition and destination of what success looks like for them. And that might mean taking a pad of paper and for two hours, locking yourself in a room or going out and sitting next to a nice view. For me, I like views of the ocean. I like Seeing far away helps me a lot in terms of just clarity of thought and thinking in the future is like I like to see far away, right? You guys notice that the run that I do on Saturdays I can literally see hundreds of miles away. Somehow this is like unlock something in my brain to be able to think into the future and think about what's going to happen and my goals and my dreams because it's far. I have to look far away. My I will never spend millions of dollars in house but if I did, I have a little tiny, very modern house but overlooking a vast 180 degree of mountains and ocean and I would just be able to see forever. Like I just be able to see a long, long ways away. Get in a spot like that and just start to define those two things. Number one, where am I going? What's the destination? Very clear. Why am I getting all this fuel? Why do I need to make money? And secondarily be very committed to the path that you're on because every single time you reset your path, you're going back to zero. If you're trying to go from Mexico to Canada every single time like oh, I'm going to switch businesses, okay, you're starting back at zero. You're starting back at the beginning of the roadmap. Just stick to one for five, ten years, you will get there and there's going to be where you have lots of fuel, you have plenty of cash. That's why you feel better. You feel like it's more attainable to get to the goal. Then other times you're running out of gas, you're running down with a jerry can to going down to the gas can gas station trying to get some more fuel. That's going to happen. That scenario is like getting a little loan that is running up some money on your credit card. Like was talking to the Facebook group. Literally running your credit card inside a credit card processing so that you can get the cash out for payroll. That happens. So cool question.

Look, we don't expect anyone to be the perfect entrepreneur, but it's your duty to do everything in your power to set your business up for success. And the biggest thing you can do for yourself and your business is to get educated. Mike has developed the MBA for entrepreneurs with that in mind, whether you're starting, growing or saving your business, the course teaches the principles of small business ownership at every experience level. With over 350 in depth lectures and bonus live streams, you'll have access from anywhere through the teachable app. Do the right thing for your business. And sign up for the MBA for entrepreneurs by heading over to mikeenneys.com education. All right, Jim's Mowing is the largest lawn care franchise in Australia with over 2000 locations. So of course Mike's on location to find out just how they did it.

As soon as I get my rental car, I got to get some food. When I travel I don't sleep much and I find I do a lot better when I don't have sleep if I'm not eating. So I haven't ate or sleep, slept.

For.

36 hours now. Good stuff I guess. The Longa's budget for travel is not very high so I didn't go smart car style but pretty next close to it here. But this is going to take a while to get used to on the wrong side, well the other side. So there's probably not going to be any video while I am driving. I'm not going to have headphones in while I'm driving cuz it's going to take every ounce of concentration. My eyes are going to be peeled to make sure I don't die. See how this works? It looks massive but I think the car is just tiny. Let's go. You know it's bad when literally on this thing it tells you to drive on the left. Oh man, this is gonna be so bad. So I've driven in Europe and you know, I'm used to not even knowing the names of the streets and everything, but it's the fact that this is not my indicator that's the thing that kills me. The indicator is over here.

Alrighty, day one of training. I'm looking forward to the first couple hours after with the founder Jim Penman. So should be fun. The rest of the training is done by a lot of the staff here at Jim's group, but I want to definitely catch the first couple hours here with Jim. I met him virtually and things like that, but be fun to catch up with them. Now.

The franchise hall needs to respond to you within 24 hours on business day, which means if you call at 12 o' clock on Friday, they've got till.

12 o' clock on Monday.

Most franchises are very, very good at this and they will tend to call you back fairly quickly or take your call. Pretty cool place they got here. It's kind of right next to a conference center. It's not like technically owned by Jim's Mowing, but it's next to a conference center so you're able to say basically on grounds. So just gonna head up to the hotel meeting with the web team because we are doing a dashboard back in dashboard for the franchisees where they can change stuff on their website a lot easier. Put ad service pages, banners, things like that. So going to have that zoom call meeting right now and then hopefully get a little rest before dinner.

How I'm currently running the operation is this smartwatch thing shows the time locally and my actual watch shows the time back in Washington. Keeps me on track. Cuz being 8 hours ahead or whatever it is throws you off.

It's not augmented reality.

See, when I'm visiting a new place, I don't go see the new tourist attractions. I come to the mall to be able to see how they market and what's different about their marketing and advertising. Very interesting. You get so much data just walking through one mall. You have so many different companies.

Jet lag is real. Just cannot sleep. So I'm gonna go ahead and work out. It's just, it's a little before 4am right now and yesterday was day one of Jim's mowing. Today I'm going to go over on this video what are some of the things I've learned already at Jim's Mowing and some of the differences, the comparisons and contrasting between Augusta Lawn Care, my company, and Jim's Mowing. I've learned a lot and I'm really looking forward to what this whole week holds. But let's go over what I kind of learned in day one and a little bit about their system versus ours. So the first thing that makes Jim's Mowing really different than Augusta is really just the size of their franchisees. The average Jim's Mowing location does about 140,000 in annual revenue. And, and I would guess that they're mean. Like the 50th percentile is more around that 90 to 100,000 level. And they're really trying to shoot for making $2,500 per week. That's kind of like their benchmark. Whereas last month at Augusta, for example, our average was I think like $35,000 a month per franchisee. And then our, our median like the 50th percentile was like 33,000. So it's not wrong or right. It's just a matter of they've really gone after that solo entrepreneur, the person that wants to work for themselves. But over here, Australia, labor is extremely, extremely expensive. Like 25 to $30 an hour to get started. And so most of them don't get any employees. Another thing that makes them really different is Just their structure. When you pay your franchise fees and royalties, etc. That doesn't actually go to the head office, it goes to franchisors. So you have the head office, then you have divisional franchisors, then you have franchisors underneath them, and then those franchisors are the ones who support, support the franchisees. And so different fee structures, different costs per lead is for every single, different division as well as every single franchisor. And anyone can become a franchisor after being a franchisee for so long. And then really, you're the one that does the direct support with the franchisees, not the head office. So the head office here, I don't see like franchise business consultants and salespeople and marketing and all the rest of it. That is all done at the franchisor level, which is really just someone who's been part of the franchisee, been a franchisee, is able to become a franchisor and support, you know, 5, 10, 15, 20 or more different franchisees in their area. This makes their model much more scalable because they don't have to have all of the support and the infrastructure at their head office. And the franchisors that come up and have 5, 10, 15 people underneath them take a lot of the responsibility for things like coaching calls, compliance, legal, all the fee collections, all that sort of thing. What's really interesting is the story of Jim's mowing is very similar to my own story in that Jim was really highly educated and then decided, like, this is not for me, and started mowing lawns. I did the same thing, then started Augusta Lawn Care after deciding I wasn't going to the medical field. Also, the way that we structured our franchise agreements and legal papers is very similar in that it's very pro franchisee. There's a lot of rights given to the franchisee and they're allowed to leave the franchise without huge consequences or being put over a barrel in terms of fees. Another thing that's similar is the phone. They have a call center here, we have command center. And that is a service that they offer. And what's different about Jim's Milling is really where their model is different is they charge per lead. So per lead that comes in, you're going to charge anywhere from $15 all the way up to $65 per lead that comes in through the head office. And that's the phone number that's on all the trucks. All your marketing material is the head office phone. And when that phone rings, you're getting charged when that lead is sent to you. And then it's up to you to follow up with them, set up a job, do the scheduling, invoicing, billing, etc. Really their main thing at the head office is answering the phone call and creating a lead and sending it to a franchisee at command center. I've always said the hardest thing we've done is command center and it's because we do invoicing, billing, scheduling, we do their payroll, we do all these other things and we'll actually schedule the jobs like schedule the estimates. They don't schedule the estimates for their estimators or their franchisees. Here we do. So that's been a huge operational drag for us at Augusta because from, you know, the first year we started actually when someone calls to schedule the estimate and that's been huge and difficult for us. And I talked to Jim himself last night and he said hopefully within year or two they're going to be able to have their call center be able to schedule the first appointment, like the estimate with the client. But right now they don't do that. And so I can just see how much their model has allowed them to scale so much faster by having franchisors underneath the head office to do a lot of the support as well as not having a full fledged command center where there's services outside of just answering the phone, taking the lead and then passing it to the franchisee.

It's not really about what's right or wrong. But I do believe that Jim's mowing is probably set up better for a solo operator than Augusta Lawn Care. Because at Augusta Lawn Care I openly tell them if their goal is only to do like 5, 10, 15,000amonth in revenue to not join Augusta, there's not really a point we're built more on scaling up and growing. Whereas here, like you really can't even run Facebook ads or Google Ads as a franchisee. Here you got to rely on your franchisor for the ad fund, the technology fund that you pay them. You gotta leave it up to them to do a lot of the advertising for you outside of door knocking and what they call mail drops.

A stat that Jim shared with everyone yesterday I thought was really interesting is he talked about everyone throws around this number around 50, 60% of small business fail within the first five years. And he said he actually think that's more on 90% when it comes to service based business businesses. The reason is because small businesses is anyone less than 50 employees. So even like a Taco Bell or A massive retail, where they spend a million dollars, $500,000 to build out a space and it's really capital intensive. They're going to be much less likely to fail because that massive capital investment, as well as the fact that whoever is investing that probably has deep pockets and can sustain the business for a lot longer, even if it's unprofitable. So he believes for small businesses like lawn care, cleaning, you know, fencing, construction, that because it's so easy to get into and the barrier to entry is so low that the actual rate of closure is more on 90% in the first five years. I thought that was very interesting. And he said that over the past they've now been franchising for 33 years. They started off with a 75% of their franchisees failing the first year and they've been able to get that down to about 10 to 12% just by increasing the training, adding the community, making sure the franchisees are all together. So that was really eye opening to me. The massive advantage that Jim's Mowing has, that we do not have at Augusta Lawn Care yet is the fact that they have brand awareness. With almost 2,000 locations for Jim's Mowing in Australia, almost everyone knows Jim's Mowing. And so what happens is when someone starts, they immediately start getting leads because everyone knows the brand. That brand. Brand awareness is only achieved when you get lots of people driving trucks around all the time. And especially in places like Melbourne, Perth, Sydney, where they have tons of franchisees. Like I'm talking 50 to 100. You're seeing 50 to 100 trucks driving around the city all day long. Massive brand awareness. If anyone else joins the franchise immediately, they're getting leads. That's something that will only come with time. I think we'll achieve it probably to a really high extent at Augusta, probably in two years. We would really need at least 300 locations to really make it where it is. Something that everyone knows. Augusta and you think of longer, you start thinking about Augusta prior now, because they've been doing franchising for like 33 years. I really think their training is very, very good. Especially taking someone who knows nothing and really building them up slowly. So even though some of the elements might seem elementary to like myself when I'm here training, it's a matter of like really taking someone through the basics, the elementary parts of business and then growing them up. And that's all you really need if you're going to be doing 100, 120,000 in revenue. Whereas at Augusta we Really focus more on things like pay for performance, hiring, the whole culture side of things, meetings. Because the whole goal is more or less building a million dollar plus business or at least 500,000, whereas here that's just not the goal. So the training is just totally different. But it's something I'm learning about because I think we need to do a better job of instituting more elementary steps to get to 500,000 and beyond. So we've actually already added a fourth day to our training. We've in the past always had three days. We're adding a fourth day to actually have quizzes and exams around the stuff that is taught and have software skills where it's like, hey, look, before you leave, you have to know these certificates skills and had demonstrated it in training. So those are the type of things that we need to do. So that way when people get started, they're just brand new that they don't go through very common pitfalls that are just the basics. But we kind of glossed over in the past because we only had three days to do training. So adding that fourth day having tests and exams that they have to pass before leaving training is going to be something that we're instituting literally in a few weeks. And that's honestly the main reason why I'm here is just to see how another franchisor does their training is super valuable. That's why I got an anytime fitness franchise, is just to learn this process. So seeing it now in my industry after being through the whole franchisor thing is super helpful because I see all I can see behind the scenes. I know what's going on behind the scenes. I know where the money's at, I know why certain things are done a certain way in terms of legalities. So this has been super helpful for me to be able to improve our processes, our training. And I'm really looking forward to making that happen. What made me feel a little bit better is yesterday Jim's mentioned how in his first, the first 30 or 40 franchisees they used to do all the training at his house. That's literally what they did. And when I look back at Augusta in the first 2030 franchisees, I'm almost embarrassed at how he did training, honestly. But I felt a little bit better yesterday when Jim said that the first 30 or 40 franchisees he just trained them in his living room at his house. But if he can point to the fact that improving training took their first year success rate from 25% to like 88%, that's incredible. So if I go to fly the other side of the world and spend thousands and thousands of dollars and spend an entire week, week, I'll do it. Because you don't get this anywhere else. There's not like a book to read or an online course. So I really am appreciative of Jim's group. I reckon I'm highly for anyone in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, once they get started, especially if you want to work for themselves and you don't necessarily want to have tons of employees or trucks rolling around all the time, I think that's a great move. Day two of training coming up. It's like I'm back in college. Here we go. Do a job for that customer. And after the job you require the invoice.

Same camera.

All right, so, so you got scratching in the ceiling. Look, it could be two things. It could be possums or it could be rodents. What time of night are you hearing the scratching?

Nearly midnight, around 2 o'. Clock.

Oh well that rules out the possums cuz they usually gone out by the time the sun sets and then they're back, back, back within your roof light at sunrise. So I'm guessing it's either rats or mice with the actual. With the jobs that have been coming in at the moment, we're getting a lot of calls for rats and mice in terms of ceiling. And as I said.

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Had the morning meetings here on Thursday morning at the Bellingham shop. Really good. We talked about the difference between socialism, communism and capitalism and the pros and the cons about Medicare and Medicaid taxation. That's what we talk about about at our meeting. And honestly, to be perfectly honest, today is probably one of the lowest levels of motivation I have had in at least six to 12 months. It is tempting to not film on a day like this, I'm gonna be honest. But I also do not want to create the perception that fun and exciting things happen every single day. And it's all great and fantastic. I'm always hiring and building new things and new shops when most time entrepreneurship is just the opposite of that. So I'm gonna try to record on days when I feel very little motivation and just a grind. And those videos will not do very many views, but at least they'll be on the record so that when we're doing really fun and exciting things, it'll still be proven that that's not the majority of life as an entrepreneur or business owner. It's really just grinding when you really don't feel like it. And that's kind of where I'm at right now.

Now, several weeks ago, we had OSHA come knocking at our door and we didn't expect because someone reported us over stuff. So then they come to a massive inspection of everything, and everything passed besides one thing, and that is the audio metric testing, which means every single year we have, we are supposed to be testing the hearing of all of our employees. And we had never done that before. We didn't know we had to do that before. And it is not common in our area. I know a lot of people were like, I've done this for a long time. I worked at a factory. We have to do it every single year. Okay, great. But like lawn care and landscaping companies that have under 50 or 100 employees, typically OSHA just leaves alone. And so anyways, all of that to say we got fined $15,000. We went ahead and appealed it, and they brought it down to $2,000 magically. Then I appealed it again and said, look, I understand that we got in trouble for this and we were at fault. But then I wrote them back again and appealed again and said, Look, $2,000, not bad. Thank you for the discount. I appreciate it. Somehow just going from 15,000 to 2,000 because I asked, kind of strange, but okay. But I said, I still think that if I'm gonna get a citation, I should have some sort of warning. And I didn't know I was doing anything wrong. And you never told to do it. And so could you please, just asking, could you please just remove the citation? I understand that we have it on our record, and I understand that we need to do it going forward, and we can absolutely do that in the next 30 days. Start having that testing from OSHA at our facility of all of our team. That's totally fine, but can we please not pay the $2,000? Not because the $2,000, it's just the moral of it. It's just I don't want to pay $2,000 for something I didn't know I was doing something wrong. For example, I. If you go speeding down the road and get a ticket for it and you have to pay a fine, hey, look, the speed limit was posted. You knew it was the wrong thing to do, you went against it. But if there is no speed limit sign, how can you blame the person for speeding? They didn't know what the speed limit was. I didn't know I had to do this audiometric testing. So why am I getting fined for it? Just let me know what the rules are. I will abide by them. Like within 30 days, I will get this all taken care of. So this afternoon at 2pm, I'm going right now for an appeal hearing. I'm going to talk to, I don't know, a judge. Judge. I don't know who I'm talking to. Probably someone just at OSHA and appealing my case because it's more a matter of ethics, not really a matter of right or wrong. I understand I'm wrong. I'm gonna get it fixed. But I don't think I should have to pay $2,000 because you never told me the rules.

Okay, so explain what this is.

So we offer a lot of ala carte services here and it's a lot to know about. And so it's important that everybody who works here knows what we all offer. Random people call in, people call in and ask questions. You need to know what we, what we offer, what our services are.

We made quiz.

So we made a quiz.

For the employees here to take that are very complicated. You would only know the answers to this if you'd studied mikeandy's.com website and looked at all of our offerings.

Okay, so choose a couple of the hardest ones.

You think, oh, my goodness.

And we'll see if people can get them right. And then I gotta sit this. Exactly. See if I can get them order.

This is challenging. So when.

These are the ones that looked really hard to me.

When did the business boot camp podcast start? Do you know when the first day was?

Let me see this. Okay, I know it's not a, it's not 2021, it's B. 2015.

2015, that's correct.

Yeah.

Let's go.

Okay, this one got A lot of people. This last one a great.

Oh, yeah, this one was difficult. A great resource for entrepreneurs is Mike.

Has an MBA course for entrepreneurs.

It would be teachable because that's what's actually available.

It's a teachable. He didn't do a master class. Little tricky.

So, okay, so there's 17 questions. 17 questions.

We've given this to all the employees here.

$50 if they get it. All right, 50.

The first person who gets a perfect score. I've had nobody do better than four.

Wrong.

Okay, here we go.

So Mike's gonna try.

All right, let's do it.

Okay. So this is the only one that I'm not sure of. And the reason is. Is. Are you counting lectures or number of videos? Because there's two videos on some of those lectures.

If you go to the home page, the splash page, it's in the marketing blurb that tells you you're going to get access to this many plus videos.

Okay, we're going out on a limb here, Lonnie. You got enterprise pricing wrong, and you're supposed to be in charge of P4P. Come on now.

Okay.

All right, Brian.

I only really have to ask if the one question is right.

There was 40 plus videos.

Which one did I click? 40, 50.

Yes.

Yes. Let's go.

Let's get the keys.

Oh, yeah.

Definitely 100%.

This made my day. He was actually incorrect here. It's actually 1198. Just wanted to point that out. That is funny. Okay, you ready?

We're grade it.

Okay, it's going to grade it.

Okay, page one.

You ready?

B.

B is correct. C is correct.

B.

Correct. C. Correct. C. Correct. C. Yes. C. Dude, there's a lot of Cs here. Just saying B3 is the third one is B. C. Yes. C. Yes. D. Yes. C. Yes. C. Yes. D. Yes.

B.

Yes. V. Yes.

But I just had a bone to pick. That's the actual answer.

Oh, really?

5.99 times 2.

I think it says 11.99 in the marketing. I based all that off the.

Off the marketing. I have to look. Do they do the math wrong? Cool. Nailed it. Let's go. That can be your key. Was that difficult?

Now, from this whole OSHA thing, I have learned this. And that is when OSHA comes knocking. Everyone's gonna get the day off. And we're not Gonn. And I never had a full inspection by osha. We've had the department of Ecology for things like fertilizers and pesticides and stuff like that. But this is the first Time, OSHA and all this stuff. So they're gonna find something wrong. They are funded by their fines. So if they don't get any fines and they don't hand those bad boys out, they don't get any money. And I don't wanna be the one that has to pay for them. So next time OSHA comes knocking, it's going to be a holiday for Augusta Lawn Care. That's gonna be the plan.

Okay, so I had the hearing for the Department of Safety and Health or whatever it's called, and here's what happened. You're not gonna believe it. So they literally use the analogy of the speedometer versus the road sign. For example, if you go speeding down the road and get a ticket for it and you have to pay a fine, hey, look, the speed limit was posted. You knew it was the wrong thing to do. You went against it. Again, that video clip, I just was before my hearing, in my hearing, he literally said, the way we run our department is not like a speeding sign. Where you see the speeding sign, you look at your odometer, you know you're over. And then when someone pulls you over, you have data. He's like, we're not like that. There is no sort of warning. There is no sort. We cite what we see. In other words, that they give a citation for whatever they see in terms of problems. And what's crazy is on the actual hearing, he literally specifically said even they don't understand all their rules and regulations and they have to go look at the book because it doesn't always make sense and it's not super intuitive. I was like, okay, so let me get it straight. You work there every single day and you are the department, and yet you're confessing to me that you don't understand what the rules and regulations are. How in the world am I, as a business owner who is not my full job, full time job to know these rules and regulations? How am I supposed to know that? And how is it, right, that you're able to find me for a rule you don't even know without looking at the rule book? We literally called in and the person we got on the phone after our first, after the first citation for $15,000 and then they lowered to 2,000. But on that very first call, literally we have to leave a message and someone have to call us back because the person on the phone didn't have another clue what we were talking about. When it comes to landscapers and lawn care professionals having to do audiometric testing, it's very common in industries like mining and manufacturing, but not in ours. So all of that to say in this meeting, the guy that was determining what was happening in the case said, well, I cannot take away this citation. I can only give you a payment plan. I said, okay. But after going back and forth like 30 minutes, I told him, I said, look, how does it make sense to do annual testing on all of our employees when literally 80% of our staff is gone year over year because we're a seasonal business and people leave after a week or two, they don't make it. But like, literally I said, out of all of our crew that you did all this testing on, only one person was here out in the field from a year ago. Everyone else has either gone and started their own business, been promoted, or is now in management and in the office or they just left or fired or something. I said, how does it even make sense to do audiometric testing on an annual basis? This is not the best thing for the employee. This is simply for you. Literally stated on the call, he's literally like, yeah, we just know these fines is what pays my bills. I'm like. And even said he had a crazy. He literally stated that he had a, a highly paid job that he doesn't enjoy. On the call, I was like, oh my goodness. So here the end result is this. They are not going to find me. For now, he's got to look into whether or not that clause of us being a seasonal business means that they don't have. We don't have to do audiometric testing because what's the point of doing. I said, I told him, hey, hey. I almost said his name. I said, look, if, if it was good for my employees and it was better for their health that they get audiometric testing, I would do it. However, number one, I didn't know about it. Number two, if I'm testing them every year and 80 to 90% of them are not going to be there year over year, what's the point? I'm not helping anything. I'm just getting like, your hearing is good, your hearing is bad, but over the course of the year, I don't get any actual real data to be able to protect their hearing. I'm giving them 27 to 30 decibel reduction ear protection for free and making sure they wear it. And the max that you calculated when you came in practice for a day was 87 decibels, so that puts them down at 60 decibels, which is totally fine. So it was a great conversation. I really wish I could have recorded it, but we'll see what happens. I don't think I'll get it completely waived and taken away, but the point of the matter is audiometric testing doesn't make sense if you're doing it annually and most of your employees are not there year over year over year. And I told them we should be doing it monthly. If this is good for the employees, we should be doing it monthly. And he didn't have a comeback for that one. So let's see what happens and see. See if we can't get around the fine. I told him, I do not care about the fine. This is a matter of ethics and all the other business owners that don't have the time of day to read your rule book and why in the world. He's like, well, you should be asking us to come out and do a free consultation and then you don't have to do a citation. I said, why in the world would we want you to come on our property and do an inspection or take that back, A consultation when we know if you ever came back for an inspection, you just find the stupidest stuff to be able to get fines for. Why would I ever be like, yes, please come on my property? So you know the next revenue producing citation is at my property? Because you're gonna find something.

These department plans.

This has been the Mike Ames podcast. We hope you gained something new today. Remember, find your North Star, learn from the best and stick to your guns. If you like what you heard, we have tons of lectures, interviews, and more over on the Mike Andy's YouTube channel. That'll be right up your alley. But that's all we got for you today. We'll see you next time.