I had to APOLOGIZE to my entire team

That was what I was trying to say. Did not come across that way. And it was bad. I said something stupid. That was a dumb thing to say.

It is Monday morning. The team's not here quite yet. We're gonna have a team meeting. And honestly, I don't think it'll ever get old coming out here to this farm and having the smell of manure, the bleeding of goats and cows. It's. It's awesome. Got the fence rails in, it looks like. So we putting up the panels today and tomorrow, getting ready to roll out of here.

This thing popped off. That stinks.

This 20 foot storage container here is basically filled up with just, you know, a couple zero turns and mowers and.

A little bit of support supplies.

So what we're going to do is we're going to put a 40 foot box at this location once we move from the Bellingham shop. Because right now the Bellingham shop has three 40 foot containers. And once we move to the new headquarters next spring, they won't need any of them. So we'll just bring one or two of them down here and give them a lot more space. But right now those 40 foot containers are like four to five times more expensive than they were three or four years ago. So it's nuts. Now, I used to always recommend these storage containers because this one, for example, was like $2,000, which is a great deal. It's super. You know, they're really great in the elements. They're great to lock up and have great storage. But now I'm not going to pay $8,9000 for one of these things. It's just ridiculous.

You might remember from last week when I was filling out documents for a quick claim deed. And it's basically you're switching ownership of a property from your personal entity into an llc. And so now I got to actually file that today with the treasurer's office down here in the county.

Check it. All right. The deed has quite literally been done. In case you're wondering. Why I would take a property and move it from my personal name into a entity structure like an LLC is really just to protect myself from the liability of a renter or somebody trying to sue me personally and then affecting all my other businesses. And so every single entity that I have and the real estate is kept in separate LLCs and separate entities and corporations to make sure if someone tries to tear me down, they won't affect the other businesses. And my biggest fear is it affecting the jobs of the employees that I have. And because of my own investing or real estate or any other business venture affecting them. Because all of a sudden someone's trying to sue us for all the assets that I'm connected to. So keeping my real estate and all my different businesses in separate entities helps a little bit with preventing that liability. Now make sure, if you're going to try to do this, you've got to make sure that all your bank accounts stay separate, all your credit cards stay separate. Everything cannot be co mingled between entities. Otherwise in a court of law, if you are getting sued, they'll still be able to come to you personally because you breached the veil of the corporation.

Let's talk about employee orientation day. Now, I did employee orientation wrong for a very long time. And yes, this is max dangle it.com got some of these bad boys. If you're like most landscapers, if you're like most home improvement business owners, the first day of work for an employee typically consists of something along the lines of, here's the keys to the truck, here's your uniform, jump in the truck and you'll learn on the job.

And honestly, it's just not a great.

Experience for an employee when their first day of work they just changed occupations. They literally are now trusting you to provide for their family and their livelihood.

And you're taking it so nonchalantly.

It's like, oh, we'll just try you out and you'll like learn on the job. And I understand that a lot of.

Times, a lot of the work that.

We do is taught by hands on training, but it doesn't take away from the importance of that orientation and actually establishing what the rules and regulations and how to win inside the organization are.

We've always ensured that the general manager takes some time on their first morning to just show them around the shop.

Show them where the mowers are at, show them where to put the keys.

Just showing them where things are at.

Is helpful so they don't feel awkward or strange the first few days and.

They don't know where anything's at beyond that. We also have a training guide and a manual that allows them to know exactly what tasks and skills are going to be required to know over the first two weeks of them being employed. Now the mistake I was making in the past was I left a lot of the rules, the regulations and what was required of them in their employee handbook, which is like a 30 page document that's signed virtually digitally. But there's definitely some core pieces of that document that they need to know and I want them to actually sign off on in front of a general manager. So over the weekend, I actually create.

A four page document that's a kind.

Of a summary of the employee handbook, but it's going to actually be read with a manager and employee in person on their first day of work. And it goes over things like, what is being late? Like, what's the definition of that? How do I get ahead in my career at this company at Augusta Nation? What is the 3F program?

Franchise fee forgiveness program?

What is P4P? What is a yellow slip and why do we have them? These are all things that we have in that four page document. It's going to be read with the manager and then sign off from the manager and the employee that it was read and comprehended. And at every single section seem like.

Hey, do you understand that?

Do you have any questions about that? Great. The document also goes over how they can make more money outside of of just pay for performance and their hourly wage. It's like, there's Profit sharing, there's $100 bonus, there's $10 bonus for upsell, there's $50 bonuses for a new referral of a new customer. There's a $500 bonus to be able to bring a new employee into the team. These are all things that people usually figure out after like two or three months of being in a job. But if you give that information up front, it equips them to be able to be a longer tenant employee, hopefully stay on longer and get ahead more in their career. You've actually given the step. It very clear as to what is expected of them and how they can get ahead.

I understand algorithms and clickbait, like, apparently not.

I feel like it fell down like a rabbit hole.

Yes.

You can see in the retention graph, like only the first, like 22nd of listening to like the audience attention on.

That video is like, it's just for.

That first five seconds where it's like he's two seconds late, two minutes late. And then like, yeah. Are you serious? Are you serious? How's it going? Are you serious? So I get it.

I wonder if we should put the extended clip of that section specifically in.

The explanation, him trying to pronounce somebody's name. Are you serious?

And then he's like, no, it's sire.

It's sire. I just got a YouTube comment. I was scrolling through there, saw one that said, hey, people are really positive on this video about you, but if you go check Facebook, people are just bashing you. And so, sure enough, I went to Facebook Page. I never ever look at my Facebook page and I started going through some of the comments on this video, and there's like over 200, 000 views and hundreds of comments, and 95% of them are really, really negative about me. I wish I would have filmed what.

I went and did.

Like, I went out and talked to the guy who was late and did a quick interview. I was nice to him. I was like, hey, look, you're late. They aren't gonna hire you. There's no way you show an interview and get everyone to love you no matter what you say. Yeah.

Unless you're like, I hired him for more than he was asked.

I hired from more than asking. I didn't care about all his personal drama and all his firings. I'm just like, let's give it a shot, buddy. We'll see how much Stephen leaves in from the actual video. Because you'll see me, like, introduce myself. Talk about, hey, we're gonna film for educational purposes. Like, but that's not gonna do well if I show a 30 minute video. But the extremes are where you get attention. So that's like, yeah, same thing with the comments though, right? Whoever, like, says the most outlandish and horrible thing about me is probably gonna.

Get the most likes.

But my clarification video says this. Like, look, if someone was late for their interview, I'm okay with it. But call ahead. He's like, hey, I. I didn't get a train. Or like, my kid. No, didn't wake up. Right. Whatever. And just, just let me know, and that's totally fine.

I have a hangover.

I have a hangover right now. Can I come in a little later? Got a headache.

It's a communication right off the back. They can't just, like, ghost you.

Here's the balance to, to prove myself wrong, though. For example, when we were quote, unquote late to Jaden's interview the first time she came in.

Oh, yeah, right.

Well, then we don't deserve an employee.

She almost didn't give you another shot.

I know, she really did.

She actually turned it down, like, coming in, and I was like, dude, just give a shot. Like, you know, so.

But the thing is, the employee, they don't get to tell their side of the story either. Yeah, that's the whole point.

It's not fair. People don't like things when they're not fair.

I think as long as you keep a head notice, though, like, yeah, I'm late for X, Y and Z reason. Or I'm just Gonna be late. I'm on my way though I would.

Be totally fine for any reason. It's like whatever. But just that communication I think is key.

Just made a video for our command center. We do a lot of our meetings on video because we have a virtual team and then we really can't have all hands meetings at the office because someone's ought to be answering the phone and answering web chats, etc. So typically when I have an announcement, I actually do a video and then we share it. So I just made a video because at our off site meeting we do peer reviews, but also there's anonymous reviews for management and like areas that can be improved or made better. And so I made a pretty open discussion about like compensation and wages and different levels of compensation throughout the company. But I definitely have to apologize for one thing I said during the off site and it was a dumb thing I said because it was a question and I obviously didn't have time to prepare for the question, this cute live Q and A. But one of them was basically kind of comparing the P4P of the guys out in the field like working, doing lawn care, landscaping versus the P4P at Command Center. And I said something stupid. I was basically like, you know, if you think they're making too much money on the field, comparatively to us, like you should go work one day out in the field. Another dumb thing to say because even though it's, it's like my point was they do really hard work and they deserve every single dollar of it. And the fact that if they don't work out in the field doing actual work like lawn care and landscaping, there's no work for us to do at command center. There's no phones that are going to ring, there's no emails, there's no estimates to be done if the work isn't getting done. That was what I was trying to say did not come across that way. It was bad. So I have to apologize. It was by no means demeaning their job or saying it was less than. Because honestly, if you put someone in the field in command center shoes, answering phones, dealing with hard customers, they'd also fall flat in their face as well. So it was a misrepresentation and a bad characterization on my part. So I had to apologize for that as well.

Another thing that I mentioned in the video for the team was in relation to firing, someone had said, hey, like it seems like firing just seems like it's somewhat on a whim or there's really no clear direction on it. I said, look, like, I hate drama. And so if someone is fired, sometimes we will let everyone know why, just so there's not all, like, the murmurings or like the stories of why that potentially might have happened. But then secondarily, if someone's fired and they have a whole bunch of friends and people that they've made acquaintance with at work, we also aren't going to throw them under the bus and tell about all the things that happened and things they did wrong and they're low performance. So there's a balance, like a case by case basis, as to whether or not all the details are shared after firing. I tried to make it clear. It's like, look, if you're going to get fired, you're going to know prior, you're going to have meetings before, you're going to have numbers that are shown to you. And it's not like it's some massive surprise. And honestly, the last thing you want to be doing is going to work every single day worried that you're going to get fired.

Are you videoing me eating?

Yay. Let's go. Oh. Based upon my peer reviews, I should.

Be not talking with my mouth full.

You shouldn't.

Peer reviews.

Then you swallow Zach on my peer.

Reviews and then you speak.

I got that. I got it. I have to chew with my mouth closed. By the time I'm done chewing there, I forget what I was going to say. Short term memory loss at 26.