"I didn't think we were gonna make it." - Episode 100 (part 1)

Welcome back. This is a special, special day. The hundredth episode of the C Suite Unfiltered with Mike Andes. Mike, how are you doing on this hundredth episode? Morning.

Good, good.

Realistically, do you think we were gonna make it to 100 episodes?

That was gonna be. My first question is like, did you think this would ever happen?

Did you?

Why? Tell us why.

Most people, Most will give up. Because the first 500 videos don't get a lot of views.

That's fair. What do you say? I guess I wasn't planning on divulging or going into this. What would you say is like, do you think we'll hit 200? Do you think this is something that fizzles out? I know we've obviously, you know, the viewers we didn't like publicly say this, but they've probably noticed we are posting a little bit less. So we have switched to more of a bi weekly schedule. You're obviously very busy. I'm busy working on some developments that you have me overseeing. And so we were like, hey, let's just switch to bi weekly. So any thoughts on that? Looking forward. And it's impromptu, so I.

Hey, I don't know. We'll figure things out as we go along here.

Yeah, all right, fair enough. Well, welcome back. It is the hundredth episode and we do appreciate everyone listening and watching. We would only do these if people did find them engaging. And we do get comments and people reaching out to us that they do like them and, you know, that they want us to release more. So we're going to keep doing it, at least for the time being. So let Mike know if you want us to keep. Keep doing it, and we'll. We'll go from there. But I thought for the quote, unquote, hundredth episode, I wanted to do a callback. So someone did put in the comments. A couple people, I think put in the comments of the last episode was like, you should go through and like, highlight some of the funniest moments or the best takes from all of your previous episodes or from some of the early episodes. And I was like, it's a great idea. Like, let me look into that. That takes a lot of work. So I'm not taking the easy route here. But I thought, you know what? I'm actually going to go back to what was. And I'll put this up on the screen here, put a screenshot of the thumbnail. I'm going to go back to what was episode zero of the C Suite unfiltered. It was technically not an Episode of the Seat Unfiltered. Two and a half years ago, Mike invited me onto his main channel to interview him. And some of you probably watched that interview. And I thought, you know what we're going to do? Without prompting Mike? I'm going to ask him the exact same questions that I asked him about two and a half years ago. And then we, as the audience, as the listeners, will get to see how his answers have changed. And then maybe next week or in future episodes, we'll see, we can talk about how his answers have changed over two and a half years. Because I can almost guarantee Mike probably doesn't remember every question I asked him. I didn't even remember every question I asked him. But I found my notes, I rewatched the video. So we are going Back to episode 0 of the C suite before it was even named anything. And I'm going to re ask Mike the same questions. How do you feel about that, Mike?

Sorry, I muted myself. I was going to mike gandies AI.com AI and I was trying to get the hot best moments of the podcast. As.

I thought about that, I thought about that. But we're gonna go back to episode zero. So it was not technically a C suite, unfiltered. It was ultimately just an interview that I did on your channel. So if you're okay with that, we're gonna dive in. Does that sound good? Let's do it.

Let's do it.

All right, perfect. So two and a half years ago you asked me to pop on your channel to interview you and my first question was about your day. So you had recently said on a Mastermind at the time that Your day was 95% Zoom calls and meetings. I want to know, is that still the case? Is that what you are still doing, you know, two and a half years later, has it changed? Is it still that many zoom calls and meetings? Like, what does your day to day look like right now for everyone? Kind of on the outside looking in.

A lot less, A lot less, I would say half compared to Ben. Then two and a half years ago we were just ramping up copilot. So there's a lot of like hiring engineering calls, I was on every single stand up, etc. So I'm not on those anymore. And there are people in place to make sure those go smoothly. And I'm thinking more, much more, like content related stuff, strategy related stuff. What are the two or three things we can do this quarter to make sure the owners are served more at Augusta and then just like, yeah, longer Term like things like the book that take forever to build but kind of become the cornerstone of the principles we teach at Augusta usually bring in a lot of leads and.

Attract good talent. So I'm much more in like the talent acquisition, strategic thinking and creating content realistically like it's such a. It seems like you're such a content creator, but realistically like usually those frameworks is what we use for improving the systems at Augusta. Things like Augusta leads I spend time on.

So yeah, what do you want your data look like? So I'm just going just straight from kind of my script from the previous episode or unreleased episode 2 and a half years ago. I followed up with what do you want your day to look like? Is that what you want or is that what is currently needed for the business? Would you prefer your day to look something different or did you like what it was a couple years ago and you like it less now? Like what is that evolution been like? And what do you want your days to look like?

I don't really care. I just want whatever best of the business like back then that was required. Now it's not so much and even three or four months ago it would have been different just because like there's a period of time like I need to jump back into the businesses and kind of get my hands dirty a little bit. So as I move out of that phase, like I just like thinking more long term strategic stuff even like with like where we're going with co pilot and I don't want to say too much there. So yeah, there's like lots of stuff.

You know what's crazy is in that interview copilot is not even mentioned. This is not even a whisper. Because it wasn't even a thought at this point. Well, it was a thought but it was nothing publicly released. There was nothing.

Say the word. Did I not say you never.

At least. At least. Okay, so I didn't. I didn't listen to the whole interview. I didn't have time to go back through the whole interview.

You.

But the about 70% I did listen to. You don't mention copilot. We're talking specifically Augusta and the Augusta franchise.

I kept it pretty tight. I kept it really tight until we launched that conference.

Yeah. Because I think that that was recorded right before the launch. Like the announcement. Yep. Yeah. So which is kind of crazy. So this will change probably a lot of your answers to maybe some later questions that are going to come. So part of kind of my probing into this is because at the time the Two and a half years ago you were doing more of a vlog style channel and obviously the channels changed. And we'll get some of my questions later that talk a little bit more about the content and the media side. But I pressed a little. I was like, hey, why, why don't we, you know, remove the veil a little bit? Why don't we peel back the curtain and go, as I said, full barstool. Why wouldn't we make it more of a dramatic vlog style where everybody inside of your business has like characters in a story?

Oh yeah.

And creating more of a narrative around you building the business and not just the logistics and the X's and O's of building a business. So has your opinion on that changed? Has it gotten stronger? Like, what are your thoughts on going more? And I know, Bar, I'm just using it as a standin. But going more the vlog style where you are really opening everything up for everyone to see what you're doing instead of just the exit X's and O's of business.

I definitely don't want to go the varshal route. I think if we would have done that and then gone into bug hell, it would have been catastrophe also. Just like. But there's a lot of things that.

In the past few years I would like to think I've learned and just become better at. And one of them is just like dealing with mid level managers individually and helping them in their departments and then just being able to step back and praise them for what they did.

And I think if we were sharing all the little X's and O's of what we were doing, I wouldn't have that opportunity because I would get the credit. And so like, we're not trying to build a business around my candies here. We're trying to build a business that like serves the owners, serves the industry. And it's not really the best use of our energy to just make me look good all the time. There's a certain level of credibility that needs to be built and authority around the content. But like long term, like Augusta Copilot, these brands need to, you know, surpass me and outlive me. And so.

I think if we showed all the X's and O's, I would get way too much credit because I would be looked at as the quote unquote grandmaster when reality I'll come up with the idea, but then someone else is executing on it. And a lot of the too much of the praise usually goes to the person that comes up with the idea.

Instead of the person that's executing on it. And so in my opinion, it would be detrimental to what the vision of the brand is.

Well, you, you. I don't know if you're taking notes or if you just got lucky there, but that's my next question. It's actually going into Vision. So I think we're on the same train of thought here. And these are my notes from two and a half years ago. I did save them. It does go into vision. And I appreciate you sharing that. Because my question, you know, why is this uncomfortable?

It seems so uncomfortable for me. I don't know why for you. Retrospectively, two and a half years ago.

I think you're worried that your answers are maybe they're going to drastically change or that a lot has happened in.

Two and a half years.

I know. That's why I was like, this is perfect. I think I was re going through the interview, like I said, I listened like 70 of it and I was like, oh, your answer would have changed there. Oh, you definitely wouldn't have said that now. So that's why I was like, this will be good. It's a good thought experiment. Just ask you the exact same questions. Now, obviously my framing has changed, my experience has changed, so I might not ask them the exact same, but it'll be interesting to still see what your answers are. So do it. Don't stress. It's all good. None of these are like overly pressing. None of these were overly pressing. But. But it is fun. So. So I did go to Vision next and it was kind of around the conversation of, you know, as companies scale and there was a phrase, a saying going around at the time. You know, the only thing that you kind of treat as corporate about Augusta, or the only thing corporate about Augusta is what you treat as corporate. I remember that was actually one of your general managers, Corey kind of was. Had that sentiment and it was that, you know, yes, it is a corporation, yes, it is a large company, but it's only corporate in the way that you treat it as corporate because it is still led by people to still founder, led by Mike Andes and his team. And ultimately it is for business owners and very pro employee, right through our compensation packages and through P4P. But the question really was around, you know, as Augusta Scales. How do you not, you know, lose the vision? It's still your business. Like you're still being the founder leader of the company. But do you feel that it's hard to express that vision very clearly as you bring on more partners and also as the external critics grow, because that's a big part of believing in your vision is dealing with the critics. So do you feel that it's hard to express that vision or has it gotten easier for you over time?

I think honestly, sometimes when you have opposition to what you're trying to do, you have to get much more granular and specific in terms of what the vision entails. And so I'd say the thing that differentiates two and a half years ago and today is like, I went through bug hell. And like, it was. It was a year of just a lot of pain. And so during those moments, like, you do have to. You get really clear on the vision because if you don't, you will quit. And so I, I would say, like, yeah, I would. Just now I feel like, and it's funny, like, now I look as, like I'm getting further and width further away from a year and a half ago, for example, I'm starting to become more like, yes, I could handle that again. I could handle again. And I know, like, in the future I will have that same level again and it will seem like a breeze, but then there'll be like another level of pain. And I kind of actually know when that thing's gonna happen. And so, yeah, I just. It just. You more clear on why you're still in the game? Because it's so painful and there's nothing. There's no reason to keep going. And so why do you has to, like, you have to come to grips with, like, why you keep going?

Do you feel that you have to answer to more people now? Now that you have, you know, the co pilot team, obviously the media team's grown. Like, everything's grown. Even in the interview, I said, you know, I know you one day want a media team of like five to six people. That's what I said in the interview. And now it's what, seven or eight or nine or whatever. So it's like things have scale. Well, there you go. Things have scaled. So my, my number was half of what it currently is. So it's really cool to see the change. But you feel like, because you've brought on more people both internally, right? Your own employees, your own direct reports, but also more partners, right? People that are joining Augusta and now subscribers, quite literally to a software. Do you feel that you have to answer to more people or do you feel like your vision is still like the North Star and that is the answer for people, if that makes sense.

I don't really think A lot about that. I think more about. I need to know why we're doing this and, like, the vision of what we're trying to accomplish and what people think of that. Like, you know, I need my internal team to know what's going on. But external to Augusta Nation and customers of Copilot and people that are trying to support the vision, like, I really could care less. And so one thing that has changed in the past two and a half years is my. I've shared what the vision is, because two and a half years ago, public was not in the cards. Copilot wasn't even. Like, we didn't know what was going to happen. And maybe I would have quit back then if I would have known what was going to happen. But, like, yeah, it's just, you know.

I think. I think as founders, we need to know why we're doing what we're doing. We need to. We need to be able to express that to our team in a clear and concise manner. But ultimately, like, if you believe in the vision, that's all that really matters. If you believe in the vision enough, you will attract the right people. But if you allow 100 other voices, and as you're. If you have a public facing, you have employees and you have vendors, you have other people that you're connecting with, as your business grows, it's more and more, like, just by default. And so if you're always caring about what they think about your vision, you will get derailed. Especially when it doesn't seem like you're actually making any progress towards the vision. It feels like you're kind of stalling out or going backwards. And so I think the one thing that we've changed a lot is, like, last year, like a year ago, getting clear internally, like, hey, this is what we're going to do here. With, like. I've never talked about eight to ten years down the road. I don't think I've ever talked about, like, more than 12 months down the road to all the team. And so to share that was, in a way, like, required to keep the team involved when things were really hard and then just keep my head in the game in a way. And I knew I had that all in my head before, but I don't like saying stuff if I don't think we can do it. So even when it comes to the timeline of when we go public, I've been pretty conservative with what I think we're going to do, but I'm trying to beat it. It's just A function of. I've never really shared prior to A year ago, June 2024 is when I talked about, okay, we're going to go public to bring the three companies together. Here's what needs to happen over the next six months. And then we did it in January. We brought into the holding company and, you know, essentially created $10 million of thin air because the valuation went up by that much when we brought the three companies together. And so, yeah, yeah.

Now in that conversation that we were having two and a half years ago, I thought something was very interesting and I don't remember exactly how we got on this train of thought, but it was the comparison of vision to promises. And we were kind of going back and forth on is is a vision, a promise. Like is the vision you've set forth for Augusta, a promise to the owners in Augusta? Is the vision that you have for Co Pilot, a promise to the subscribers of Co Pilot. Where do you currently stand on that? And do you remember what your answer was two and a half years ago?

I don't know what it was 2 1/2 years ago. I'll answer it as if you just answer asked it. Now. That's how I'm going to answer these questions.

Yeah, please. Well, that's what I want. Yeah, I wanted to. It's the now live reaction and then you can go back and look at your answers.

I think that to an internal team member, I still consider it as a promise because if you're going to cast this vision in front of them, they are planning their job, they are planning their livelihood, they're planning their family, where they live, et cetera, all around this vision. And so if you're not, if you do not have a plan in place to accomplish the vision, if you do not actually strategically know how you're going to get there, I do think you are. It's a pipe dream to think that you can just throw random stuff at the wall and just like make big. We're going to have all this. We're the size of business. If you're going to say that, you better be like showing up to work, you better be having a plan in place. And so I still do look very much as like when you spread forth a vision. I am making a promise to my internal team. I'm going to make this happen. And then to the external, they will judge me whether or not I execute on the vision. Right. And. And one thing I've seen, I've seen that people are relatively forgiving of externally is timelines more than I thought. And I actually looked at Elon around this a bunch with like the cybertruck he promised in 2020. It came out like 2024. And so and, and then it came out like it was like there was a lot of defunct and there's been some problems with it. Right. So. But you know, he's for four years late on his timeline. Somehow he's still worth hundreds of billions of dollars. And whether or not you like him politically or not, I could care less. It's just a function of, you know, he's obviously been successful. And so I've just been much more about like, hey, the vision matters a lot. And it matters to customers, it matters to third party stakeholders, it matters to my internal team. And being better about sharing that is something I'm still learning and realizing it's a high leverage use of my time. In the past, they're just so used to doing things and being busy. Whereas now, like sometimes putting together a report for the leadership team or giving kudos to someone or just expressing the vision to the team, like telling them why Copilot exists, telling them why. Augusta, it's like you feel like sometimes you're. I heard someone say the other day, a founder's job as a business really begins to scale is simply just telling this, being good at telling the same stories over and over as if it's the first time.

I agree with that. I agree with that, like wholeheartedly. No. And if I could take over there, actually, and this is kind of going down a rabbit trail, but I agree with you because I had the opportunity to. I don't know if we even talked about this on the pod. A long story short, there's a franchise show in Seattle. They had a speaker drop out. They asked if I could fill in. I said sure, don't need to go into the details of that. But someone who was there, who is a franchise owner, very cool guy, and he has an education center. And it's all around his story that he moved. He's an immigrant to the US and felt that he was under educated and felt that people didn't understand him. But it was. He didn't understand English. And so he came across as uneducated. He came across as someone who did not have the skills to be part of our society, if you will. And so his passion, his vision was to create education centers for immigrants and for people that do not speak English as their first language and to support them and help them grow. And now that's expanded outside of just language to like tutoring centers. And that's his franchise. Very cool guy. And I'm blanking on his name. So I do apologize. I would love to give him a shout out right now. And I can't remember the name of his franchise, but it's a learning center. I can think of it. I will, I'll put it in the. I'll put it in the description. He's. He's awesome. I'm just blanking on it right now.

With AI coming around, but.

Yeah, yeah, totally. But he asked me, he was like, hey, you got. Because he's like 30 locations. So he just asked me, he was like, hey, you guys have like 170. You know, what could I be doing differently? Like, do you have any tips for me? And I was like, well, I'm not the guy to, to, to really help you because it's just in such a different realm. But I said, if I can give you one piece of advice. Your story is extremely powerful and you need to lean into that story because guess what? I didn't remember his name. I don't remember the name of his business. But what did I do? I told you a story, right? Because the story was so powerful. And so I think leaning into that story and then how does that story then traject to vision is, as you said, extremely powerful. And that was my piece of advice to him. I was like, you need to get tired of telling your story. I was like myself and other members of our management team, our leadership team of the businesses that we represent with Mike Andy's know his story verbatim. Why? Because it's so powerful and we've heard it a million times, right? And it's not a bad thing. Like we should know your story because it is powerful and it helps express the vision. So I would agree with you in that regard. I still don't know if I agree that vision is promise, but we can, we can, we can leave it there.

I think you just like to hear the vision. Like you should like just go for it. Just like, just say it. I just want to hear it. Because I was so much more conservative like two and a half years ago in terms of sharing what that vision was, the goals for the leadership team. I was like, yeah, we're just going to do more and better, essentially.

Yeah, yeah. 100. Well, anyways, that, that is, that, that was vision. Now I do a follow up there on vision. And this was me asking, you know, rookie salesman. I was looking for anything I could do. I still consider myself a rookie every day. But I did ask you, I was like, hey, this is a little bit more specific for me. But now that co pilot's in the picture, I think it's still a good question to revisit which is what makes you slash Augusta slash Copilot different than any other large scale Corporation franchise SaaS, like, what is your differentiating factor now? What do you feel that that is at this current time?

I think they're, they're. It just. Okay, so here, so here's the thing. Okay, so if you're talking about the franchise, I think that especially in the past two and a half years, like I do believe that anyone starting a lawn care business should use August. I, I wouldn't have said that two and a half years ago. I, I believe that everyone should like the, the math is on our side and I say our side. I mean Augusta nations. And so.

I'm more confident that than ever. And then like just us getting better at training, us getting better at what is the system, what is the model? What does the Augusta model look like? You know, six to eight employees, 800, 000 in revenue, three years profit mode, general manager in place and 20 $200,000 in profits. Like that is the model. And so getting more defined with that has been like for the franchise from Copilot's perspective. I think that.

I would hope that the track record we have with Augustine as like making it the obvious choice is the reason that someone would join KOP knowing that I will do the same thing with the software side. And I don't say that out of hubris because it's very, extremely difficult. And I know we're up against people that are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to make sure that doesn't happen. So I don't say out of like pride. I'm just saying like I won't stop until that has happened where I can confidently say it is the best software and every single home service business owner should use it. And so I don't think we're there yet. It took me five years to do that with, with Augustine. I think it'll take me about the same long same period of time for, for Copilot. And when we get there, like, I'm looking forward to it because like, like we're just about, like we're just starting to gas in my opinion, the franchise. And it's because it's like, hey, I appreciate everyone's joined and believed in the vision and believed in me and like got a lot of value from Augusta from from the beginning. Till now, but like, it's only been the past year where I can comp. Tell everybody, every person that like, this is the way you should do it. And I have full confidence, full belief and full conviction. And so when that happens with Copilot, then like, we have a. We have a whole other level we will go to because it's one of those things that's easier to scale simply because it's software. And instead of having to build huge amounts of infrastructure like we've had to do at the franchise level to support incoming customers. And so.

The reason someone should join. What makes this different? I would say.

Like, it sounds horrible, but like, I really do care about their businesses. I don't see horrible. I mean, like, it just sounds so cliche, but, like, I really do care. And so I think it is evident in a lot of the decisions I make internally. And I hope that the content kind of expresses just how much I actually care about these owners. And I know what they feel. I know their pain. I know. And so I'm sure there are other people that have gone through this industry, they have grown a business and then they start software companies or do other things in the industry. And I wish them well, obviously. And I think that because I have the unique ability to be able to stay grounded with the owners. And every single day I have phone calls being answered that are in this industry. I talk to owners every single day that in this industry. I travel to a whole bunch of different services and get ideas of different industries. I think that would probably be the different differentiation right now down the road. It's. It's the vertical integration of all these things together that will give us a big leg up. So.

Yeah, yeah, no, that's good. No, I, I appreciate that sentiment and I think I, I agree with it and I think that your answer changed a little bit. But that's. That's a, That's a good thing. I think it should. What did I say back then?

What did I say back then?

I. I mean, I don't remember the specifics and I don't want to be overly reductive, but I think it was more so.

Less about you caring about the owners. Like, this is. This is just me, so don't. Don't shoot the messenger here. But it was more along the lines of like, founder led. Like, we're still founder led. We're still light on our feet, we have adaptability and you do care about their businesses. But I think it was more leaning into the fact that, like, we were light on Our feet and founder led and kind of going by the beat of our own drum. Now, that's very reductive version. You might have been much more eloquent than that, but that's kind of what I got out of it.

Yeah. The challenging part about saying something like that is the definition of that is different to everyone. So, for example, if I don't put one button where someone uses it a lot inside the software, they would say, well, do you really care about me? And so it's sometimes difficult to say that knowing that that definition to everyone is different. Like, if I just said, we will be the fastest software or we will be the cheapest software, or we will be X software, that's easier to measure. But care is. Is very, very soft and very difficult to quantify. And so. But like, I know, like, when I'm on the turnaround show, I don't even think about the cameras. Like, it's. It's not even there to me. Sometimes it's difficult for me to get the owner to get there. It takes me an hour or so to try to get them. Like, hey, let's focus on you and this business because, like, who cares about the cameras for a second? But, like, genuinely, like, I'm not thinking about the camera numbers. I am trying to help this owner, and I really care. And I usually come up very exhausted from coaching because we are dropped in. I don't really have a lot most the time, I'd say more than half the time. I don't have any numbers going into a coaching on turnarounds because they don't have numbers. And so you. I'm just like. I'm like, hypersensitive and I'm not. I just get exhausted. And it's because I generally walk away from those knowing that if I'm exhausted, it's because I'm genuinely caring and I'm like, trying to focus on this. And the same thing happened back when I was doing surgery. Like, I just come out of the surgeon. I was just standing there for five hours. But, like, you just come exhausted because you're really, really trying to focus. And so, yeah, I don't know how to quantify it other than that, yes, I do care a lot.

Yeah. Well, I'll give you this as a. As a compliment, if you will. Recently had a call with a husband and wife that are interested in joining Augusta. They've been looking at different franchises. They spoke to some that will not be named, but they, in their words, they said that they spooked us a Little that kind of spooked us. And then, you know, there were some follow up questions to that and they asked me a very pointed question and I said, hey, we're just people. And like, I saw them just relax, right? I saw them just take a breath and it was like, you are just people. And like we've watched Mike and we get a good feel for who Mike is and who your brand is and who you are on this call. And it kind of made them relax. And I think that is that unspoken care element that we've been able, that you've been able to really show, which is extremely hard and extremely hard to quantify. But I think that you're doing it well. And like, I think everyone on your team really does try to embody that. Even yesterday in the copilot group, someone left a very like, critical but like constructive, very constructive criticism post. The first comment within minutes of it getting posted was from Josh, who is, I can't remember his title, but high up in the co pilot team. And it was just like, thank you so much for this thoughtful response. And then he just responded with like an essay back and not, not arguing, just like, this is great and here's why, and this is why we're not doing that. But, but here's where we could maybe implement, hey, we understand your concern here and here's why we're working on X, Y or Z. And that in that moment just showed so much care from him. Whereas he could have been like, hey, thanks for the feedback, we'll look into this. He like took his time to basically write an essay. So I guess there's me publicly giving some flowers to Josh unexpectedly, like that showed care right in that moment. And so I think that you're doing good and I think leading if the vision is changing, level of professionalism, if the vision is helping small business owners get rich and not go out of like underneath all of that, you have to care, right? And I think that you're doing good at that. So my response there. Thanks.

I was talking last night with Brianna about, she said I need to get better at taking compliments. So I appreciate it. Thank you, sir.

Yeah, yeah, I think, I think that, I really do think that's it because like, I don't know, I've had a hard time too as well, like quantifying, you know, working here for, for as long as I have. And people do ask like, oh, so like, why do you work there? Like, what do you do? You know? And you know, you give the surface level answer a Lot of times, because you don't know if it's going to be a deeper conversation. But a lot of times it's like, no, I know that, I know that my boss truly cares about what he does. I know that he cares about the people around him and I know that he cares about the people that we are selling to. Yes, it is business, we are selling products, but we actually care about the people that are using those products. And I think that is something that has become more clear to me. Obviously I'm excited by the vision, obviously I'm excited by the change up in the, you know, the, the, the rapid change of pace or decision making that we go through. But I think it is just the bigger side of like, we actually care about what we're doing. And I think it would be hard for me to be a cog in a machine where we didn't really care about what we were doing. Right.

Yeah. I think it's important to like, always peel back. Like if you, if someone's listening this to like, well, what's the vision? Like, what's my vision for my business? And like, how do I have any sort of, like, I'm just quote, unquote, I'm just clinging to cleaning houses or I'm just cleaning pools, like, why does this matter? And ultimately what I do believe is that you want to draw it back to the good of the community and good of the whole and the good of humanity. Because like, I do believe inherently, we as humans realize that we must improve the collective in order for us to evolve. And whether it be technology or our well being or our economy or, or our infrastructure, we have to work together. And so I would just like, whether it be a team that you're trying to build in terms of employees, whether it be the community you live in, trying to give back to them, whether it be the business owners. For us, like in the industry that we're working in, it's like, make it about someone else, stop making it about yourself. And as soon as you do that, responses to criticism are different because now we're looking at this like a collaborative effort to improve the collective instead of to prove one one to be right. And.

It is a after bug out. Like you're so, you're humbled so much, like publicly ashamed so much that like, you don't, you have less, you have less ego to protect because it was all robbed of you. And so that was healthy. I think I was good.

Yeah, fair enough. Yeah. I mean, I don't want to go down this Rabbit hole too much. I'd like to keep it moving, but I, I feel like, just like a sentiment. There is, like the early success of Starbucks. Like, Howard Schultz was like, what is the end user experience? Like, he felt these, these cafes, and was it Italy that he felt these cafes, these bistros, these cafes? And it was like, why can't we bring that to the U.S. because that is such a beautiful user experience. Right? Like, yes, we want our coffee, yes, we want our caffeine, yes, we want our breakfast sandwich. But, like, we want a place that we feel comfortable, that we feel is like a lounge, that we feel is like an extra living room. I think you said in a couple of interviews, like, it's like, oh, I'm like in my living room, but I'm drinking craft coffee. This is awesome. Like, his whole thought process of Starbucks was user and experience, end user experience. Like, what are they going to feel? And that was what helped him on their trajectory. So, yeah, I completely agree with you in that regard. All right, switching topics here. Unless you had something else you wanted.

To add there, I was just going to say, like, yeah, like focusing on the experiences of the product. Like, ultimately, most of us, our products are commodities. If we actually peel back the onion, it's just a function of what's the experience the end customer gets. And can we actually rally a vision around that? And so it wasn't coffee that he was selling. It was the fact that other people, you meet people at this coffee shop and at this coffee shop, it's like one of the best things I always think about when it comes to this is a sign. I saw it at sports clubs. Yeah, sports clubs guy here.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep.

Did I tell you about this?

Yes. It's great. And it's always stuck with me. I think it's fantastic.

Really? Yeah. Dude, it's so good. I was. So I was sitting in the chair and the, the, the break room door opened up and I looked up into the wall because I like seeing the behind the scenes. And so I, of course, I was like, right away, like, looking around, what's going on? On the wall was this sign. And it was so good. And I always think about it and it says to you because it was an employee break room, right? So, like, this is where the team, team members that said to you, it's just a haircut. To them, it's a haircut for their proposal, it's a haircut for their prom, It's a haircut for, like their first date. It's A haircut for the job interview. It's like. And like getting in the minds. Like, to you, this is nothing, but to them, this is everything. And because it is everything to them, you should treat it as if it's everything to you. And that's where care comes into play. The care that for someone else, this means a lot. And to make me, it means nothing. That's where care comes into play. And so anyways, that I always think about that sign.

Yeah, No, I remember when you first told me about it, I was like, that's so smart. I love that. I've actually tried to have that posture a little bit on sales calls. Recently, I had this kind of realization. I was like, people are literally inviting me into their house, like, digitally. But, like, they're inviting me into their house. And, like, their background is. Their living room is there. Like, I can hear their kids playing in the background. Like, they're inviting me in. And it's like, whoa, that's a. That's a big step. Right? They're opening a zoom call with a stranger.

You might. You might talk to eight or ten people a day that are considering it. And so to you just like, hey, there's this thing, and I need to say these things and I need to weed out these people. And like, last month, I think 3% of the people that you book calls us end up, you know, you allowing in. However, to you, it can get routinized. But to them, this is like career changing. This is. They're moving their family. They are risking their entire life savings. There's such a higher level of risk there. And so if you can step out, and I'm not pointing out, I'm just saying in general, like, if you can step out of the fact that to you, it seems common and it seems.

Mundane, but to someone else, it is literally their entire life. You treat them differently, and you only treat them differently if you care. And so that's why care is such an integral part. Because to the customer, customer, it is everything to you as a vendor, as a seller, it can become in game simply because of routine and because you've done it many times.

Yeah. And I think that to put a bow on this question is why vision is so important, because then it grounds you back into, like, I am doing this repetitive task. I am having these eight zoom calls in a row that can, yes, get tiring at some point. And yes, every call is different, but you're saying the same thing. It can get that redundant, and you kind of get bored almost doing It. But coming back to the vision of I actually care for these people that I'm talking to, and I want to give them opportunities to build awesome businesses. So I appreciate the sentiment, and I think that we have accurately described vision and how we can apply it in our daily lives. So thank you, sir. Now, I'm going to drastically switch it up here. And this is this question that was probably the question I was the most nervous about asking when we did this pod 2 1/2 years ago. So to preface it, and classic.

I'm going to guess. I gotta guess it's something going to be like, give me personal advice for myself. No. Okay. All right.

I did. I did ask for that. That is later. That's coming later. All right. So this is. I will preface in classically park fashion, which great leaders and coaches can turn their weaknesses into strengths. And I use the analogy of the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics, when the US men's hockey team won against the USSR, the Russian hockey team. And at the time, the US Hockey Federation did not allow professionals to compete in the Olympics. But the Russian team was all professionals, Right? There were all these late 20, early 30, just peak human athlete Russian hockey players. And the US team was made up of college players. It was all college players. And then Herb Brooks was the coach, and he was tasked with taking this ragtag group of college players and getting them to compete against Russia. Right? And it was a whole political thing, and it was an arms race, but it was the Olympics. So there's more implications than just a hockey game. And ultimately, Herb Brooks took their greatest weakness, the fact that they were underskilled, undersized, and hadn't played with each other, and made it their greatest his strength by saying, no one will outskate us. Like that was their mantra. No one will outskate us. We're younger, we're hungrier, we're less experienced. So guess what? We're going to outskate everybody. Like, we're going to make goals. They're going to make goals. We're going to miss, miss hits. They're going to miss hits, but no one's going to outskate us. Like, he drove his team to insanity with how much conditioning they did, but he knew that was their competitive advantage. It was their weakness was their camaraderie. But he knew that. That they could come together around that weakness and ultimately win. And so my question to you was something that you had said in your interview with Layla Hormozi. So this is when you talk to Layla Hormozi actually, which is pretty cool. A little feather in your cap there is that you said in your interview with her about kind of looking for business advice, you said that Command center was kind of your Achilles heel. It was your current weakness in the Augusta franchise in terms of scalability, not in terms of the product, but in terms of the ability for it to scale. So the question that I posed at the time, and it's still the same question, is how do you make Command center your strength? Or have you made Command center more of a strength and have you addressed any of the scalability weaknesses that you felt were present previously?

Yeah. So I look at it as if you're going to vertically integrate. There's going to be sections and links of the vertical integration that don't make sense economically and don't scale. So for example, the reason, reason that Tesla has such a massive hold on the north, specifically North America's.

Electric car market is the fact that they own the gas stations. I eat the electric chargers. But when you look at their valuation, no one gives them credit for the fact that they own all of those. And, and so like when, when that was a huge thing and they were pouring money into making these electric charging stations all over the country, no one looked at that as a smart, that huge capital expenditure. It was not what anyone like, there's nothing proprietary about a battery pack sitting there plugged into a car, but it is required to be able to control down the road what we now give them a lot of credit for, which is a network of charging stations that every single OEM is plugging into. Like they control it, like they have a full out monopoly on it. And so there's other ones out there like charge point, et cetera, but they don't even come close in terms of performance, speed of charge. The network is much smaller. There's so many factors against them. And so how I look at Command center is like it is the thing that is required that as autonomy and software starts to become more and more integrated with our industry, it will be required to have human operators, but it'll be by the time that everyone wakes up up to that fact or that, that independent operators are able to compete in that level, we will have done it for 10, 15 years and we'll have a, you know, a huge amount of operating leverage and a moat around the, the commodity technology, which will be a robot. And so yeah, I think there's been a lot of improvements. I look at as mostly whether or not members of Augusta Nation are using certain departments so like, the use, the percentage use of each department is really important. We track that all the time. And that's gone up like dramatically, like 40% over the past six to eight months. And so there's always room for improvement. There's always areas because we're dealing with humans. And until, until AI and robotics take over everything, there will be humanity. And so how do we sure that app, how do we tighten that up? How do we improve the systems and the model? And so, you know, whether it be Liz or Brian Taylor at Command center, like, they've just been really good leaders that stepped up and like, hey, like, let's pick this thing apart and you know, figure out what works, get a lot of feedback from the owners of what's working, what's not. And so it's been like an all out collection of data. And you know, even Liz most of her days, not just talking to owners like, hey, what's working for you or what's not working for you here? Like, if you want to know how to improve your product, talk to your customers, talk to the people you're serving and just ask them like plainly, like, how can I serve you better? And if, if you, if you know the answers to that question and then you execute on them, you will make a better product and you will gain market share. And so I'm just trying to simplify it to that because it's so easy, especially with AI, to think, oh, we're going to run behind, like, we got to do all this new stuff. It's like, no, we need to take what, what we're currently doing and we need to talk to our, to the people that we serve and ask them how we can serve them better. And we need to execute well on those things. And so yes, it is improved dramatically and a lot of credit to the team on that.

Do you feel that you've addressed some of the scalability concerns? Because that was kind of the core of it. Right. Talking about the weaknesses is that not the command center was a weak product. Like you're addressing, hey, we're getting better, which is great. Like, that's what all products should do if you want to stay ahead of the power curve, get better, serve your users better. But the scalability aspect, you still feel like that is a weakness or have there been elements of AI that I know you've integrated? Like, what does that still look like for you as Augusta continues to grow and having the support of Command center on the back end?

Yeah, like there's elements that we did in the Past that really flies in the face of everything I talk about in terms of simplification and standardization. And we did it in the name of trying to serve the owners more. And we had up to like 23 departments inside of Command Center. It's just not scalable. Well, take that back. It's scalable, but it was going to be done. The time period in which we were going to be able to make it efficient was too long. Like, we didn't have another five years to make sure that 23 departments were running well. We scaled back services the same way I talk about, like, standardization and simplification. And he had a huge impact in terms of, like, becoming deeper and better at the ones that we do offer. And so, you know, if someone's an home service business and you offer 15 services, like, take your top five, become really good at them, train your team better on those, they'll become more efficient, they'll become more proficient, they'll.

Be faster to profitability in terms of training them. And so all of these things are true. Same thing on a phone, same thing with software. Like, even with software, it's like we got to cut stuff out. Like, we cannot be everything to everyone. We got to try to, to be the best dispatching service, but also have the best automations. We cannot also, like, there are companies that only do forms. Are we really going to be the best forms company? There are companies that, literally all they do is figure out how to make forms better. And that is like 1%, not even 1% of what we do. And so it's like, is that going to be the thing we die on? Is that going to what we've become best at? And so.

Yeah, I think about a lot.

Yeah.

So, yes, in terms of simplification, yes. It's like we've simplified things, we've cut things down, we've narrowed it down so that we can become better at what we offer to the owners. And the past six to eight months, it's like, it's like one of the largest turnarounds and like, changes I've seen in customer sentiment, satisfaction scores as well as use of the service. And I expect that to do the same thing over the next six months.

Yeah, that's awesome. We'll shout out the whole team at Command Center. All right, so I want to go into maybe one last question. We're not going to get through all the questions. That original pod we did record was an hour and a half long, actually, so we definitely aren't going to get into all the questions. Here. So we'll end with this one for today, and this will be a part two, maybe part three. We'll see how deep we get on some of these. Now, I'm going to, I am going to use my exact data here. I didn't want to change anything because we are asking the same questions to see how your answers have changed or you're, you've evolved in business.

But next time we got to have like, you got to be able to have the recoil. So, like after, oh, did it just break up? There you go.

Yeah, I did.

Okay, we're good. Next time you got to have it where after I answer, you're like, well, actually, this is what you said.

I thought about doing that, but I wanted to not taint your answer. But I guess if I let you answer, then come back. So either way, we'll figure it out, we'll get into it. So this one is around the franchise model. So going to use the same data, ask the same question, but just see if your answer's changed or what you've now learned with a couple additional years of being a franchise franchisor under your belt. So in 2020, the U.S. census said that franchise businesses accounted for 11.4% of all sectors surveyed. 61% of Americans think that starting a small business is a, quote, good career path. Only 23% of those Americans look into franchising as a viable option. So why do you think people don't join a franchise over starting their own business? Even though franchises, statistically speaking, almost always have higher success rates.

Mostly just because the initial capital investment. So if I want to start a restaurant, yes, I can go start a restaurant for probably a couple hundred thousand dollars, take one that's kind of gone out of business, has all the guts of a kitchen, and throw my paint on there, my menu, and be in business within 150 to $200,000. I can do that. So the barrier entry is lower. That being said, the likelihood of success is greater if I use a company like Wingstop, but it's going to cost me $2 million to build out and be part of their brand and go for a whole bunch of training and get a whole bunch of uniforms and get everything set up with the brand. So like, there's way more barrier to entry when it comes to a franchise. And so that's why, like, I, I do. You don't hear me talk a ton about levels of, of success like staying in business for franchises versus not because I know the, a big reason to that is because sunk Cost and the qualified, the type of buyer that is joining a franchise is more qualified because anyone can start a business, anyone. So the likelihood of them failing is high. Whereas if you say right from the rip, there are certain quality metrics that were what literally 3% of people that try to join are joining Augusta. Yeah, so you had like 90 something calls last month and like one or two people joined by the time you weed them all out. So you're, you're weeding out all the people that are probably going to quit. That's really what's happening. And so if starting a business license had that same mechanism, then they. I believe that it would be similar.

Amounts of.

Think. I also think also like two, let me contrary. That is the type of person that starts their own thing is usually quote, unquote. If you have a spectrum, they're gonna much more entrepreneurial, I. E. Don't want rules, don't want structure, etc. So if that's like the most extreme version, I never want to have a single person tell me what to do, what color to paint things or et cetera, et cetera. Those people usually start their own thing. So what? This also proves that being running successful business does not mean you have to be entrepreneurial. You have to be able to who live by the laws of business and follow certain systems and procedures that have a predictable outcome. And so this is also why I like what I just said can actually, I could flip it. I could say like, look, the most entrepreneurial people still have a lower success rate than franchisees, quote, unquote. Because like if you have full 100%, you don't join a franchise because you want to do anything and everything. You want to move really quickly yourself. You want any connection to any other person. You're like, you want to be the lone wolf. And the likelihood of that success is so low. And the data is just like so pointed. Like everyone wants that. That is what is glamorized. And everyone looks at people like Elon like he has all these businesses. The likelihood of that is so low. But I know that the likelihood of running a franchise that has five, six, seven locations and building that throughout your career, being able to retire, hire and sell it off is like very high. And so the question also is like, why do athletes specifically, or doctors, dentists, et cetera, why do they love franchises? Because they know they're not entrepreneurial. They know they don't have a 10 out of 10 skill set when it comes to being entrepreneur and they're okay with that. They Know they have a 7 out of 10, 8 out of 10. They ran their own law firm, they ran their own dentist firm. They know it's very difficult to find highly skilled doctors, doctors, etc. So like, I'm going to use this other model, I'm going to put money into it, I'm going to use it as a capital investment and I'm not going to try to be the best entrepreneur. I'm going to follow the systems of business, I'm going to follow the laws of supply and demand and I will just put my money into this thing. And so the success rate is higher. And so yeah.

The question is why do less people, why do more people not join branches? And in my opinion, it comes down to two things. One, it is higher level of investment and upfront capital, a higher barrier of entry. And then second is the glamorization of being a lone wolf. When in any sector of the world, whether it be nature or the animal kingdom or humanity, the lone wolf always dies. And so being part of a community and part of a brand and part of other people, people does make you somewhat hindered in autonomy, in independent freedom, etc, but also it makes you safe. And in business, the only thing that keeps you in business is safety. It is stay in business. And so the likelihood of staying safe and staying alive in business is increased when you are part of a collective group.

Yeah, I agree with that. Now I think that one going back to something you said earlier, which is, you know, we have made it clear from a math perspective that if you're going to start a lawn care business, like you should just join Augusta from a numbers perspective, from the support you're going to get, it really does just start to make sense. But I would push back on that with the initial fee. Right. And I think that is going to this point, which is if I am a more entrepreneurial person, if I do feel like I could get the business started by myself, sure, the monthly fees, the support you guys are going to meet, that's great. I like it. Why should I pay you an initial fee to get access to that When I'm entrepreneurial, I can sell, I can do certain things. Like I don't need to pay an initial fee. So what do you feel like is the sticking point? And I'm not asking just for me. I feel like, like I'm sure a lot of other franchises deal with that. Like why should I pay you this big lump sum up front? Like I see the value of the brand, but why should I have to pay you this Huge amount up front. And I would say we're on the lower end of the spectrum. But you look at some brands, initial fees, you're talking 50, 100 plus thousand dollars, you know, so what are your thoughts on that?

So if you look at any community, there's eventually some sort of taxation that has to happen. We call it taxes, it think of it more as like contributing to the whole. The, the healthy have to pay for the poor in, in health and the sick, the rich have to pay for the poor. Like this is a, this is like a commonality around community. There are people that are stronger, they're gonna be, who are weaker, they're gonna be people who are richer, they're gonna be people that are poorer. And as a collective we have to accept the fact that there are gonna be some givers and they're gonna be some takers. And as long as we have more givers than takers, the community as a whole will grow. And so when we look at the deficit of the United States and we look at the debt, it is because there are more takers than there are givers. And so when I think about like an initial fee, for example, it is a contribution to the whole that as a whole will make us all more successful. It'll improve the training systems, it'll allow for infrastructure to be built out, it'll allow for software to be built out. Like we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars developing, developing Max AI, which now we are essentially now moving to a more off the shelf model through OpenAI and Gemini. But we were able to get two years of data, really figure things out. How do we integrate with this software by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars. How do we do that? The initial fees. And so we take every dollar of that and they're able to put it into the collective. Now the thing that's different is in most societies it is when you, you pay into the system and, and then you, you take withdraws down the road. And that's typically how most systems are built out. Whereas with the franchise model, we don't have 80 years or 60 years before we can, we can actually like, you know, we, we can't sustain that like it's economically viable. And so it's like, hey, we need upfront so that we can continue to invest into the model. And then down the road our goal is like, we give back. That's why it's called the Give Back program is actually what where this came back came from is like, hey, the same way that like you contribute throughout your Whole career into like a retirement program or into a 401k or in an IRA and then at the end of it, you withdraw it for retirement. This is the same thing. Hey, you have paid into the system and then we have been able to use those funds to build the infrastructure for the collective. And then the Give Back program gives that back to the person that stays inside the system. The same way that someone pays into payroll tax taxes and into.

Social Social Security, like the, the end. The goal is that you get something back in return.

We should have when. When owners in Augusta go through the Get Back program and they get that initial feedback, we should give them like a Social Security card or like something like, make it like you're old now. Like, it could be like an old person joke. Like, hey, you're officially old. I know my dad, he was a career. Yeah, he was a career employee out at the place he worked at. And once you hit a certain number of years, they just call you dinosaur. And it's like a badge of honor that you're a dinosaur there. So, yeah, we got to do something funny. Give them a Social Security card, give them some little ribbing. You know, they're old now, but they've earned it. They've earned it. So we'll take care of our old here at Augusta. All right, well, I'm going to wrap it there because this is a long episode and we can make this a part two. We can make this a part two, get the people coming back. Hopefully everyone's enjoying this. If you have comments or you want us to maybe follow up on some of the questions I asked, obviously I'll link that video that recording that interview we did two, two and a half years ago for you to go now and watch. It'll get everyone excited, hopefully. If not, my apologies if this is boring, like, and subscribe either way. But do you have any not financial advice to wrap up for this official 100th episode, part one?

I know you do, so take it away.

I just have a quote. So I just have a quote. It's a good. It's a good thought provoking quote here. And I don't know who to credit it to, but I really like it. It's resonated with me more and it is. You have to hate imperfections more than everyone else loves criticizing.

So, yeah, if you hate the imperfections more, the criticism doesn't matter. But everybody loves criticizing. Everybody loves adding their two cents. That's why there's a comment section on everything, because we want people to add Their two cents. And if you just hate the imperfections more, the criticism is null and void. So my two cents.

Agreed. Agreed.

Your step program, we have. We now have treadmills inside the office. I got Lee and my. As soon as Lee mentioned on the podcast he wanted one, I bought, I bought two. One for me, one for him. You're gonna lift it up. Let's go. Yeah. So Lee has. Has a treadmill. I have a treadmill. There's one problem. This is the non financial advice. If you're gonna get two treadmills, you're gonna have to get two different remotes. So this manufacturer, unfortunately, we are 15 yards away from each other and this, this will turn his on and mine on at the same time. So it took us. Yeah, this is me over here. Let's go.

So.

So it took us a few days to realize that the way to make this work was only turning the power switch on the device on when you wanted to operate it. But if the other person's using their treadmill, you can't really use your treadmill or like turn it on.

Yeah, yeah. And the worst part is we're. Our schedules are so inconsistent with who's in a meeting versus who's not. So like, you know, it just. It just is what it is. But, you know, I'm thankful for the treadmill. I've been walking a decent amount, but yeah, it's hard to. It's hard when our remotes have the same. Is it the radio signal? Is that what it is? I don't know.

Probably. So. Yeah.

Great. Enough financial advice. All right, well, I just want to say I appreciate everyone watching listening for 100 episodes and we'll come with part two in a couple weeks.