Mike Andes: AI Will Change Lawn Care Forever

Okay, we're live.

Hey, everybody, this is Liz today and I have with me a very special person, Mike Andes. And I have him back today to interrogate him a little bit more, let you learn a little more about him, and to pick his brain on a couple things that will be of great interest to you. So first of all, how's your day going?

Fantastic.

Did you work out today?

Ran stairs.

Let's go, sir. Is it nice there?

We live like several miles away from each other. Yes, it's nice here.

It's nice here too. Yes, I'm doing great too. I did work out today, although it was. It was sad. When you wear. When you go swimming, you wear these goggles. They give you big puffy things on your face. I'm 50 years old and taking swimming lessons finally. So they tell you to wear these goggles. My teacher wants me to wear them, and they're so tight, they suck my eyes in. So I guess I'll learn how to use them. That makes me think of you. When you were little, when did you get swimming lessons?

Well, after I drowned when I was 4, or I would have been 3. Basically right after that, we had to go into swimming lessons, like, all the time. We were pretty hardcore.

What state did you live in?

When I drowned, I was in Arizona. That was when I was three. And then like the year after that is when we moved up to.

Up to Washington state.

So you took lessons in Arizona?

I think we. Yeah, we started there and. But then once we moved up here, that's when we started getting more serious. Took a whole bunch of lessons, ended up doing like, almost kind of like more competitive, like a. On a meet team and got certified for like a lifeguard and stuff like that.

Yeah. People, I had no idea about this part till the other day because I've been sharing my. My episodes of swimming with Mike and he told me about this time they had. He was so little. Tell me about the brick.

Well, yeah, we had. So we were getting certified to. To become a life lifeguard. And so one of them is you have to like, go down to the bottom of a 12 foot pool and. No, 15, I think it's 15ft pool and grab a brick. And I believe the brick was about 40 pounds. And so at the time, I probably was like 110 pounds. So that was not easy for me. So I, like most of them could just like kind of kind of drop down to the bottom, conserve energy, pick it up and jump, you know, basically spring off the bottom. I had to dive in and then like, really kick hard to get down there and. But yeah, eventually I got it. I would always, like, cap out, though, like, two, three feet from the top. I just could not keep going up with the brick, so I let go. It was like a rubber brick, so it was cool.

Did you grab it with both hands and then try to kick back up with your feet, or were you trying.

To remember there was some sort of, like, way of doing it? I don't remember exactly. I think you cradled it in one arm and then you kicked so you could have one hand up, right? I don't remember exactly.

Lives and people way more than you.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, Right.

That's crazy. So I want to ask you a few questions today, and I want to start with something that these business questions.

Or personal questions, they're.

They're business questions.

Oh, cool. All right.

Yeah. People. I don't tell him anything. We just jump in and do this thing. So I was wondering, you believe that people can change over time, change their opinions as they grow and learn, right?

I do. Yes.

Well, there was some advice that you gave me, and this past week, I heard you telling somebody the 100% opposite.

Oh, really? Okay.

Than I had ever been told before. And I was like, oh, my word. This is completely different than he's always, like, shoved down my throat that this is true.

And you. You probably can't even think of it.

I think it has to do with what I told Nick.

No, I don't think so.

Okay. All right, go ahead. Sorry.

So when you were really small, your brother was in school, and you were little, had nothing to do, so you learned right along with him. And then when you went to school. Yeah, you went to school, you were quite advanced because you had already learned this stuff. So you started helping the other kids and teaching them how to do things and tutoring them. So your whole life, you've been talking, training, teaching, coaching, since you were tiny. And so you're very good at this.

I'm still tiny.

But you're still tiny. However, you have a big message, big following, all this good stuff. And I hear you all the time. Like, somebody can hand you something, a topic, and you can just go. Like, that's really one of your gifts, is that you could just be randomly thrown questions. You do really well answering them. But when I would have to speak somewhere or speak at all, you would go. You already know that. Why are you practicing? Don't even practice. And you know what I'm going to say now.

Yep.

And I would get so mad at you. Because I disagreed completely. I believed that you prepare, you do the mechanics, and you put a lot of preparation in. You write everything down, you get it detailed, and then you practice it till you can do it naturally. I used to sing and the same thing, I learned the stuff till I had it memorized and I wasn't looking at a paper and then I could just sing. And I heard you this week say that you needed massive preparation and that since you met Dr. Kashi, suddenly all the light from heaven has shown upon you and you believe that a person should prepare. Can you tell me about that?

So I don't actually think my opinion has changed on this.

Whatever.

It doesn't. It hasn't. I'll give context. So when I. When I originally was saying that to you in part, I was trying to put air in your tires and give you confidence because you were overthinking things. And you. You were reading your script and you'd write word for word your entire presentation. And I was encouraging you to do is get the concepts and then just go talk. Because you would. It would come more fluid and you have it in your head, you know what you're talking about. You don't need to read it word for word. It is different, in my opinion. If you would. The style. I was. I was critiquing the style of the speaking. You are talking about the mechanics of practice. I believe in practice, the mechanics of reading a script on a speech. I think you will lose the vast majority of your audience and that that was the differentiating point between those two.

Different diagnoses because you're such a good speaker. You're making excuses.

But anyway.

No, I was. I was. I believe that you have more inside of you than you know you have or you believe you. You think you have. And I was encouraging you to let that shine organically. And the rough edges created by having less quote, unquote practice would be made up for the fact they would come across more fluid because you weren't reading from a script.

Okay, well, can you tell me what you were talking about this past week? I think it was with Lee. Yeah, I was listening to C Suite this morning. You guys were talking about that. You were talking about having eight months to prepare for the summit. So can you tell me your thought process around that? Like, why would you need that much time? Is it the kind of content or, you know, from learning from Dr. Cash? Do you need all this time to prepare?

Well, I wish I had this whole time to prepare for the workshop. So basically, at Blue Collar I'm doing like a full day workshop, which like a keynote is fine, you know, 30, 40, 50 minutes, whatever. But when you're like, okay, for five or six hours, I'm going to be straight teaching, you need to really know what you're doing and climbing and pacing and like keeping everyone engaged. So I wish I could spend the next, you know, eight, eight months working on this. Unfortunately, I have a book and then I'm working on winter tracks for Augusta Lawn Care to use, so. And like everything else that goes into running the businesses. So. But it's definitely percolating in my head, you know, late at night, just like kind of putting stuff together, like thoughts that like I want to convey. And, and really it's a culmination of like the last five years of work that's kind of going into this workshop. So a lot of it's there. It's like, it's not, it's not about the content. And this is back to what we just talked about. Like, the presentation is important. And so the same way I would tell you, like, don't read a script, it's okay to have some rough edges. Just be confident and go off the cuff because you'll, you'll be, it'll come, you'll connect better with people. I'm very aware that like the content is already there. It's been in the making the past five years.

But how do I deliver this in a way that over the course of five or six hours, someone walks away and like the goal of that presentation, that workshop is that someone's like essentially mind blown and like they have a clear path for their business and they, they look at their business like they've never seen it before. And so when you're having that level of expectation of from what you're trying to produce, like you need to have equal and if not greater, you know, preparation. So that's the part I'm trying to hone in.

Yeah. When you were born and little like that, you had raw talent, obviously. And as time has gone on, what do you do personally to try to hone that skill? Do you think it's just come because you've had so many reps talking or have you tried to fine tune that in some way to present your yourself better?

Yeah, like, so the difference between talent and skill. Right. So like talent being more innate or God given at birth. And I believe we all have some level of talent and most of us just default to that as the excuses to why we can't actually gain skills because we weren't born with them, or we don't have a high iq, etc. So whatever you've been given, you have no control over that. Like, you can't choose your parents, you can't choose what talents were given to you. The only thing you can control is how much work you put into gaining skills. To take what talent you do have and, and replicate it, multiply it, make it better, improve it, shine it up, et cetera. And so, you know, it's easy for people, for myself specifically, because I was so young when I went to college, just to point out and be like, oh, he's very talented. And I would agree. I was born, you know, privileged in a lot of ways, one of which was to be able to learn school, etc. Like, education came easily to me in part because I started listening to my brother when he was in kindergarten getting homeschooled at 3. So, like, put me ahead. But then it's a matter of, like, there are plenty. Thousands of people have started college at 13 and 14 years old. And so that doesn't matter. No one cares about your talent. The skill is what refines you from being good to being great. And the greatest people that we look to and would call very talented have all taken what talent they were given, even if it was large in measure and created massive amounts of action in terms of skill and work around making that making skills. And so skills, in my opinion, will. Will stand the test of time. Whereas talent can be misguided, it can be derailed, and it can oftentimes quit. And whereas skills just, like, stand the test of time, the test of endurance, they're much more enduring. And so that's like, my focus all the time.

If you have a business owner that would call himself an introvert, suddenly he's got to communicate with employees, other business owners, customers. Maybe he's not that great at sales. How you take somebody that has zero skill at all, where would they start? Now I've got to talk in front of people. Where would they begin?

I think.

To think that someone doesn't have a skill and, and therefore that becomes the excuse for why they can't be successful as misguided, because we all have a. We all have skills. For example, to use a fresh example, last week there was an owner inside of Augusta Nation basically saying, like, hey, this is my first spring rush. It's been tough. Like, I don't have much money. Like, how do I get. How do I get more leads? I need to, like, this thing. I need to grow this thing faster. And so some would say you could say that that person has, quote, less talented. And I'm not actually speaking of this person, I'm just saying, like, the analogy works. And that is they were given less to start with. They didn't start with 50, $60,000 to spend on marketing. They were given less at the beginning. You could say they were, quote, unquote, less talented and given less raw material to work with. However, they have skills. And their skills entail being able to stand on their two feet and be able to hold a sign. And so even though you might not have the skill to speak, maybe you don't have the skill to sell, quote, unquote, this individual took what skill they did have and they went and held a sign next to the road. And today, within the first hour, got two new customers.

I love it.

And so to. To. To give excuse as to why the lack of one skill leads to your overall downfall or lack of success is extremely misguided in my opinion, because what skills you do have can be refined and can be used to promote other skills that you need to compensate for. There are plenty of skills I don't have. I'm very aware, and I have to do a lot of things to compensate for them, and I will use the skills that I do have in order to make that happen.

Yeah, that's awesome. There are so many excuses that we all make. The introvert thing is one. And I've heard people that are very public on podcasts and everything say they're introvert, and you would think, oh, no way. But they've worked so hard to be where they are today just by trying to work hard and get there. So it is definitely possible. So I wanted to move to the real heart of what I wanted to talk to you about today, because it is so forefront in everybody's mind and business, especially in Augusta Nation. It's something that we deal with all the time, and specifically you and I, this past Friday, we had a call with this company, and I just want to start from the beginning. If somebody knows no, nothing about AI, I remember back on all the podcasts and everything we listen, they'd say, someday when we use AI or when we use AI, and I'm thinking like, this is like some robot or something flying over and all this stuff's going to happen. Tell me what it is.

Well, AI in terms of essence, is artificial intelligence. How I define it is.

Well, the definition of is irrelevant. Essentially.

For most people, it would be better just to think of it in terms of technology, because all technology is becoming AI enabled. You could say it's an algorithm, you can say whatever you want. It's technology, it's where the world's going. And is essentially quote, unquote, artificial intelligence. In other words, technology and software and hardware interacting to be able to come up with decisions that otherwise would have in the past been thought of as human intelligence. So making decisions, picking between things, being able to choose between options, the ability to be able to understand, quantify, and then have qualificate, qualify things. And so, you know, I'd just say for the vast majority of people, AI is technology because like all of technology is going to be using AI and artificial intelligence and generative AI to be able to become better.

Well, it just seems like it just blew up. Who really pioneered that to bring it to the public?

It's been for years, like everyone says that it's been blowing up really since ChatGPT came out from OpenAI back in a year and a half ago, like October, November of 2020 too. So that's when it kind of became. Everyone became real to everyone. But the vast majority of people think that it's gonna like change the world next two years when like there's been elements of AI been used for many, many years, whether it be algorithms on YouTube, whether it be searching on Google. There's just so many ways that, you know, these algorithms and technology has been used and now it just become much more tangible because we, things like ChatGPT, generative fill when it comes to video and picture, and those things will just keep getting better and better, but it's not going to be like, it's not new, it's not new. This is technology. Technology is not new. It's been just escalating to the point where now it's getting smarter and smarter, and more importantly, the processing power has come to the point where we can actually afford to run these models, large language models, LLMs, without spending gobs of money, which is important. It's still extremely expensive to run these models compared to, say, a search on YouTube or on Google. But the cost will come down over time.

So does it take a company that has a lot of money to really bring it down and bring it tangible to the public with something that we can all understand and use? For instance, you hear Elon's name a lot with, with AI, chat, gbt, all these things. What involvement does he have that his name is constantly mentioned with?

I think Elon realizes that AI is important at all fronts of technology, whether you are flying someone to Mars Whether you are driving a car that's going to be driving by itself, whether you're trying to, you know, implant things into people's brains, like AI is important, software is important. And so I've seen this for the past few years and prior to all this AI stuff coming out, was very aware that software was what was going to help the our industry in the next 10 years. It wasn't going to be robotics. And so that's like we. I started Copilot a year before ChatGPT came out in terms of like making the acquisition and buying everything and setting everything up and then starting to work on it. So, and we've been working on P4P for a few years already. Like, I already knew that like software was where we needed to move. And so people, people use this AI thing. It's really helped the economy, honestly, because there's been certain efficiencies gained for a lot of businesses. But the actual people like building the AI frameworks, a lot of them are all vc, venture capital and private equity backed. A lot of them lose money. Even the company we were specifically talking about with Friday, they lose money hand over fist. And so in the future it'll likely be like most technology, and that is, it'll get rolled up into the top 5, 10, 15 players that will be selling the picks and shovels the same way that Google, Amazon and Microsoft sells the processing for in the backbone of the Internet. I believe that's probably will end up happening. And so right now, like, you know, the big challenge for Augusta with us pushing AI in so many different directions is like making sure that we are choosing the correct vendors, we have the right team in place, we have the knowledge to actually stay ahead of that curve. Because over the course of the next three to four years, I believe a lot of the technology we are currently using and have paid so much money for will be off the shelf from a big player like Google using Bard or, you know, all these different, you know, models that are being built. OpenAI they'll have these models. And so it's just a matter of how do we stay ahead of that. It's the best talent it is willing, willing to spend money and burn money. And that's why VCs and private equity is so involved right now. And it's really been the boom for that market for the past 12, 24 months has been anyone saying the words AI, because there are possibilities to make a lot of money, but it's going to probably go to the top 3 to 5% of companies that are starting in this field like it always has when it comes to technology.

With Augusta, we, we are and we plan to continue changing the professionalism in the landscape industry. But we're doing things that no other service business that we know of has done, and that is really starting with nothing and making something of it just on your vision. So you're learning about AI, you're listening to all these tech giants and all these software, you know, startups and everything. What was it that came to mind to you like that this was something we could use in our industry. And how you thought in the, in your vision from nothing, how it could benefit us?

Well, technology is deflationary, which means it brings the cost of everything down. Anything that is going to bring the cost of anything down inside an industry will eventually disrupt it. And so when you're looking for a moat around any industry, you can become the better player in terms of product quality, et cetera. But ultimately, the one thing that we will with full confidence know that the customer prefers is a lower price. And so if technology is deflationary, the question is, where's technology going? So that when it's there in five years, I'm in a place to be able to have the lowest cost and so, or lower than my competition, or be able to produce a quality product or service that is relatively the same to my competition for a lower price and be able to have higher margins and so, and do it in a faster way, because customers want things faster, they want things cheaper. That will always be the case. And so if I can just deliver on those two things, which software does well, I believe that in, in five or 10 years.

The customer will still want things faster, the customer will still want things cheaper. And when I saw that robotics were going to probably be 20 to 30 years away from really helping our industry, I just realized that software, whoever won the software game will win the robotics game because they'll have the brains to be able to empower the hardware to win. And so that's really been the focus. It's going to be the focus for the next five to ten years of Augusta. And like, every dollar I have is essentially pointing in that direction through Copilot, through showcase reviews, through P4P software, and like, you know, I think over the next six to 12 months, it'll, those things will start to triangulate and like come together a little bit more and it'll become more obvious, like kind of the direction we're going. But yeah, whether it be Max AI, instant quotes on our website, like, all of that is just technology. And I just believe that in five years, 10 years, the people who adopt those technologies and then make them extremely well, like, do them very well, will be the ones that suck up market share and disrupt an industry that is otherwise extremely.

Cut up. And like, there's no industry leading. There's no one that has 5, 10 of the market. It's extremely fragmented.

So when you had this idea that you wanted to use it in Augusta, you had to find somebody to help you build it. But all these companies are in their infancy and trying to figure it out. So you mentioned having capital funding from somebody. So whoever these companies are, they're in their infancy and they're getting money from some someone. So how did you even find a company to help you build it?

Well, when we first started Max, there was probably less than 10% of players that are currently in the market now. There's a lot of different telephony, which is like phone AI companies, and lots more of talent. They actually know how to use AI and generative AI for telephony services.

But it was difficult to find them when I did because I was looking at these and interviewing companies and interviewing engineers before ChatGPT even took like, AI was not a thing. We weren't talking, we weren't even using the words AI. We were talking about how do we create models, how do we use text, how do we use words, how does it distinguish between things? But we didn't even use the word AI because, like, it wasn't popular. It became a buzzword a year and a half ago when ChatGPT came out. So, you know, now there's a lot more options. And I really hope that the cost of a lot of it goes down because it's been really expensive for us to get started. But I just generally believe that us being a couple years, even three years ahead of the rest of the industry, because this will eventually trickle down, it'll start with restaurants, it'll go to hotels, it'll go to the financial system, which they've already adopted a lot of it on the phone side. But do we able to use the AI to actually do things like take payments and other things, and then it'll eventually be off the shelf technology that service providers can use. My hope is that we are three to five years ahead of everyone else that adopts it and by then have our own model and are like, way ahead. It's connected with Copilot, it can do like 50 to 70% of what a human can do. Like right now it can probably do like 15 to 20% of what a human can do, but that's fine because 40, 50% of the work that comes in, I. E. Lead. Lead collection is okay for it to handle, but it needs to be able to expand its capabilities to be able to do work, change orders, take payments, tell someone their next date of service is, be like, cancel service, be able to upsell people, be able to set up a new customer and tell them when their first date of service is and take their card information and put it all into copilot. Like that can all happen. And I think we'll be able to get there in three to five years while everyone else is just like, figuring out the whole, like, oh, someone doesn't need to actually pick up the phone and they can answer the phone for me 24, 7. And then we'll be like, way ahead, hopefully by then.

So those who have no clue what you're talking about or what we're doing, there's so much to it, but we are using it as an assist to answer the phone so that we don't have to staff massively and have people twiddling their thumbs till calls come in. We want to have to be able to have a normal work balance for people and have something that answers the phone so that we can say that we never miss a phone call. So you developed Max. We named him Max. He's our mascot for Augusta. But the company we worked with. Can I say their name?

No.

Okay. So the company that we work with had a different name. And so we've had to train everybody to call this Max AI for us to work with. But what was your purpose to bring this on? Like, was it. We. We have a very mature understanding where we want to take it now. But in the beginning, was your goal very simple to just have it be an answering. An answering service, basically?

Well, the lowest hanging fruit is lead collection outside of office hours, because only 38% of people that you missed the call are going to leave a voicemail. And so, you know, if you're. If you're open for 40 hours out of the week, there's another 128 hours that you are closed. So the lowest hanging fruit is simply out of office hours to collect leads. And that's like baseline entry, like starting stakes for AI when it comes to answering the phone. The thing that we're working on now and like taking what the building blocks, that was like. That's like the hardest actually part to do because you have to still understand, like, you actually have to build the AI. And then the part like, you know, our meeting about on Friday stuff is like, how do you start developing and training the model to understand things that are edge cases and then being able to take those edge cases and actually do things connected to a CRM like collecting payments, sending text messages, sending out emails, be able to give pricing and so.

Yeah, I don't know where you want me to go with that.

No, that's good. We'll get to some of that. But when I call a doctor's office now, after hours, a human actually answers. And the human just says, oh, I'm just the answering machine. I'll just take the message. They'll call you back in the morning and I'll say, okay, need a real refill on my meds or not doing very well, have these symptoms or whatever. And they just take the message. So you're saying instead of having a human to be answering that, that would actually save money for you eventually you would think and still give the customer a way to connect with the doctor's office.

Yeah, like.

If you, let's just say you have two incoming leads that you miss in a night and it cost you, let's just call it 30 bucks an hour by the time you take into account tax and everything else for an employee to be staffed in your office and taking calls. Well, if they're going to work, let's just call it the 16 hours that you're closed. Typically you take 16 times 30, you're looking at $480 you're going to spend to collect those two leads. Whereas with something like max, our costs are, you know, between a dollar and two dollars per minute extrapolated out. You probably collect the lead information in two to three minutes each. So you're looking at about seven or eight dollars to be able to collect that information. So we just took what would have otherwise been a $500 cost thing. Let's just call it cut in half. Just to say it's like a really entry level person. Like $250, we took it from $250 down to about 10 bucks. So we're literally going to have 96% deflationary cost in terms of getting those two leads. And so that's just the tip of the iceberg though, because then it comes down to the fact that AI doesn't need to listen and comprehend. AI can record and then digest and process later on. And so what that means is if someone's calling in and asking for any sort of customer service Related question. We don't need to look them up in our CRM and type their name in. We don't need to ask for their phone number. We don't need to ask for their address. All of this has been connected and can be connected to a CRM. And from that.

Computer immediately knows their customer's name. They immediately. When the customer says, I'm on X, Y and Z street, it already has that. It's like, moving on to the next question. It's not like, okay, let me type that in. There's no processing speed, time required because it can do this in the background after the call. And so that's why right now, max takes about 25 to 30% as long as a human does not because he's any faster at talking to people. There's just no hold time. There's no typing in, there's no keystrokes, there's no hold time. It's all just get this customer off the phone as fast as possible. And so then right now, there's more human interaction where people have to come behind Max. But down the road, I think we can eliminate that. And that's where you start to see massive efficiencies gained. And ultimately, the cost of admin is what eats most service businesses for lunch. And not so much the actual cost, the admin as much as during their slow season. The fact they have fixed expenses around office, you rent, utilities, expensive payroll that they keep on simply because they don't want to lose their office people, which is understandable. That's what kills most home service businesses and keeps them from going above 500,000 annual revenue. And so our goal is like, to prevent that.

So you have to actually pick a voice. You name this voice, and then you're training this voice to respond to customers the way you need them to. What we found with Max is that he was tweaked and created so real that we actually had to back it off a little bit because people actually thought they were talking to a human. And so over time, we've refined him so when somebody calls and asks, I would like some lawn care, he can figure out if they're in the service area, the radius of this franchisee's territory. And he's able to say, you're in the service area, he's able to ask them what services they need, then he'll ask their address and all of that. But over time, we've dialed that in a lot more from listening to those recordings and feedback from franchisees and customers. And we've Come so far to where we are now is where we're able to. If a customer is listening to Max, they're able to follow all Max prompts, answer his questions, and then we have all that information and what we do is we call them back. So. So we have a whole list of Max calls in the morning, and we instantly call them back. So if somebody called at 3 o' clock in the morning, we are there by 5 and we start calling all of those customers back in the order that they called us. So we did back Max off a little bit to not sound so human. And more recently, we've solidified that. He does say that my name is Max and I'm an AI agent or something. I'm a virtual assistant. Correct. And so then people have become a lot more understanding and what's the word?

They just give the information.

Yeah. And they're okay with it. So the best calls I've heard are.

Well, one that will change. That will change. So, like, the reason that that is important right now to do is because there is still required for human interaction after that call. Because Max doesn't do anything right now.

Yes.

He doesn't actually sell the job. He doesn't actually put it on the schedule. He doesn't actually take payment. When that changes, we will dial Max back to being more human and we will not tell people he's a virtual agent because he can do everything that a human can.

Right.

But the thing is, we will never be able to train him without this information we're collecting now. He'll never be able to get to that point. And so I believe when everyone else is currently doing what we are doing now with Max, which is basically lead collection, everyone else has hit that point. Our goal is that in three to five years, he's actually doing things.

Yes.

And that's when we will have massive leverage because now there is no human required to call the customer back. There is no reason for us to have to do anything touching the customer from the point of I want an estimate to Max can sell the job, get the car information, and give a date of service using drone mode inside of copilot. And so that's like the end goal, but like, we can't get there without what we currently are learning. And like every single call and thousands of times of hearing words, because generative AI has to learn the same way that a baby has to learn for three, four years to really be able to speak at a decent level of English. These AI models don't know know anything. They are Taught. And so we have to tell it what to say when it doesn't understand the difference between law and lawn. Like, we have to. We have to make these clarifications. And so, yeah, anyways, so when you.

Say industry disruptor, that is like an understatement for what we're doing now, because nobody's ever heard of it, nobody knows anything about it. And now you're asking the franchisees to not try this out. We're doing this and accept that in. In its beginning stages, knowing that, you know, we're going to fumble along for a little while till it gets dialed in. Franchise franchisees that come, you know, 50 from now are going to experience it in a much better fashion. But how do you talk customers like, you basically have to retrain everyone, every customer, every owner to think in this fashion. Do they have to change their mindset to be like you? You have to think this way if you're going to be on the cutting edge of your industry going forward.

So let's take it first from a business owner's perspective.

The question I would ask is, do you think that laborers were more efficient, more dependable, and more reliable 50 years ago? If the answer is yes, the next question I would have is, do you think that technology 50 years ago is at. Below or above what it currently is today? And I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to think that compared to 1975, we're ahead of the curve in terms of what they were doing in terms of technology. What we have in our cell phone would have in 1975, been disguised of a skyscraper in terms of processing power. And so I'm a massive believer to get on the right side of history in terms of technology versus labor. And I can, with great confidence say that for the next 20 to 30 years, there'll be less people that will be able to do manual labor tasks. And so the goal is to automate and use technology that is deflationary, decreasing in price, and gets better with time. Like, Max will only improve. He will never decrease in accuracy, efficiency, what his capabilities are. He'll never decrease. So I am going to pour gazillions of dollars into it for Augusta Nation with the expectation and knowing that in three to five years, our quality of labor will do the exact opposite. It'll go up in cost and it'll become worse.

Yeah.

Whereas I know that the technology. So, like right now, whether or not it is.

Higher or greater value than a human, I want to make sure I'm on the right side of the trend, because the trend of technology is cheaper and better. The trend of labor is more expensive and lower quality. And so.

The people that create massive wealth see the trend, get on the trend, make massive losses on the up onset, and then take massive market share when everyone else tries to catch up to them, when they realize that the technology is now better than humans. And so whether this be the personal computer, whether this be the cell phone, regardless of what technology you've seen, the companies that we know today are the ones that 20 and 30 years ago adopted the technology, took many massive losses, like Amazon and then now everyone, they're all super successful, they adopt the technology. Prior to when it was, it was, it was cheaper for a human to pack the box. It was cheaper for a human to deliver the box, like deliver to someone's house. Eventually drones will deliver things. Eventually a automated car will exist. But it takes people losing massive amounts of money and being willing to have a substandard service for a higher cost for some period of time. But eventually, eventually that trend continues to the point where they win massively. And so you know that I would say to business owners in general, like, technology is going to win over labor every single day of the week. And when I look at, you know, I go into rooms of the people that are working on technology and I go into rooms of the average.

Just getting started in my business, I realized that I want to be on the side of what these people are working on, on because they are geniuses, they're smart, and that they're going to beat out me being like, I'm gonna work harder. Working harder will always get you somewhere, but it's not going to be able to compete with technology. If technology is going to 10 and 15 and 20 and 40x over the course of the next couple decades, I would say that to the business owner, to the consumer, the consumer will always choose the thing that is faster and cheaper. And so when it comes to the question of which one is faster, I know the data on that already. That's why there's a subset of the market even currently, that customers love talking to max because they can do a call in 60 to 90 seconds, which otherwise would have taken four to eight minutes with a human being. And so.

Down the road, as he gets more capable and can still do that, and it takes, he takes average of 8 and 10 minute calls down to 2 minutes, the satisfaction of customers will go up. The adoption of the technology, like credit cards, like cell phones, like having an email, all these things have always been technological hills that we've had to climb. And so 10 years ago it was almost unheard of to have all your credit cards on file. That was like the new technology.

Exactly.

Covid came along, accelerated everything really quickly. And now it's very commonplace for everyone to have a credit card on file. And if someone says they don't have an email, they died during COVID because they didn't weren't able to get anything delivered to their house. So like, I just believe that it's like.

Yes, we could, we could in the short term maximize profit. Especially from my standpoint, it's very tempting to, because we don't actually get a whole lot of benefit in the short term to create maps. I actually deal with a lot of more kickback and like more of a PR thing from the 10, 20% of the customers that are not liking Max as much as a human in relative proportion. And then that affects owners, businesses, and that hurts me and I don't like that. So I am willing to put up with that and put like a lot of my money into this because I just know where it goes. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see a trend and realize that eventually, whether it be in two years or in four years or in six years, that the customer will prefer this the same way that customers prefer to buy things on Amazon. Like, everyone's like, oh, you're knocking out like small town home businesses. Everyone shops on Amazon. Why? Because it's faster and it's cheaper and so it's more convenient. So the reason that is happening right now as we speak with Amazon, is because 20 years ago they poured gobs of money into warehouses, infrastructure, aws, and they became, and they were the laughingstock of the retail world. They're the laughing stock of the stock market. And so I'm willing to endure this short term pain for what I know happens inevitably in five to 10 years because technology will always trend in this direction.

And you're not wrong when you say about the cost, when you consider the cost of what it takes to have an office person, office staff, and in my position, to have a whole call center with locals and virtuals. And if you think of Max, his accent never changes. He talks very clearly, he's always cheerful, he never has a sore throat, he never coughs while he's talking to the customer. And so he becomes very consistent. And so people that have had issues with accents and enunciation, when you're actually training or employ these people, then you have to have all kinds of quality control and constantly Check up on them and further their training and who is not doing well. Now they need more coaching. And so Max has helped so much in that way by getting all the information up front and then when we call back we're calling out to the customer. We're already good, we're already on top of our game. We already know their contact information and we just take the customer on to the next step to meet their needs. So we already save a lot of money by having Max. Even though he's outrageously expensive. The cost will, will definitely measure out better and better. But you know how when people have iPhones would have been outrageously expensive before now we hold it in our hand and could do absolutely everything and it gets cheaper and cheaper. So Max will do the same. Can you tell us a little bit over time how he has changed in, in what he can offer? So can he, can he offer now any kind of information that is like sticky to a customer's account? Can he actually create an account or just take information?

Right now he can only take information and you know, require connecting it to copilot. So we have a four phase plan for connect copilot. At each phase he'll gain more and more skills. And like the first phase is just like let's get that information into copilot so that there's no copy and paste involved. So it's like how do we just keep reducing the amount of human touch that's required after max? And so the first will be like reduce, you know, copy and paste. Then it's a matter of how do we, how do we attribute certain tags inside of the software that is copilot to be able. Based upon certain tags we can run automations out to wazoo. Well that means that I can. If someone was looking for pricing, I put a tag on their account, sends them a text message. From that text message they're determining which of their, these three properties look like theirs and then they respond back. That's going to then go to the AI. AI is. Oh, this is a three. Okay, that's a large property. Okay, tell it to. This is going to be $80 per cut. Great, $80. Oh, they said yes, they accept it. Okay, let's bounce this back to copilot. Create the estimate mark is accepted and now it's in the system and then down the road this is like stage four and beyond. And that is like, then it's like okay, great. Now copilot just said, okay, this, this person based upon their geolocation is going to be on Wednesdays for their schedule. Okay, tell them that, tell them that we'll see you next Wednesday. We need a card on file. Okay, how do I know that there's settings inside copa. I need a credit card on file. Great. Get that from, get, get that from the customer. Okay, Max gets that. Great. We will see you next Wednesday. Gonna be 80 bucks per cut. We got your, your billing set up. We're gonna send you an email to have access to your client portal. If you ever need anything going there, give me a call back. And then when you start think, thinking 10, 15, 20 years from now with robotics, Max will be the one that they simulate as the owner of Augusta, because Max will answer the phone 24, 7. Max will also show up to their property in the way of a driverless vehicle and a robot. And so, you know, everyone says you can't make money in mowing. You're, you're probably right if you do it the old way, but I just genuinely believe that in 20 years that if we can have AI answer the phone, AI dispatch the job, AI drive the, the machinery to the house, and then a robot do the property and mow it, and then we are simply hiring the, the mechanics and the operators of said machinery, I. E. Command center.

I feel like that's just like a moat that no one will be able to penetrate. So that's like a 20 year thing, though. And so right now we're just trying to like get the building blocks of that. But no one will appreciate this time and no one will think about this time in 20 years. Those like, oh, like they're part of Augusta. They're big. Like they just get it the same way people talk about Amazon and talk about other companies that have been big.

Now they become the enemy. Yeah. So think of the person, though, that the owner that's going, oh, you're losing all the personal touch. Grandma Susie, she likes to talk to somebody. She likes to vent about her day. She wants somebody to give her some sympathy and talk things out with her about her dog. What do you say to owners that are feeling this way because it is a big sentiment for them?

Yeah. So I would say that. What was the name of the customer you said, Sally?

Grandma Susie.

Grandma Susie. I would say in most of your markets, ask how many, how many other of your competitors could serve Susie? 50, 100, 150. I don't want to be competing with 150 other people.

Yeah.

I want to be competing with a subset of the audience. Maybe 20, 30, 40 of the population that do not Want to deal like Miss Susie with a bunch of humans. They'd rather talk to AI. They'd rather have a car on file. They'd rather have things automated. They'd rather be able to just get a quick video and get upsold immediately. They'd rather click on one button and have everything taken care of. And they'd rather have a robot show up at their house because they don't want to deal with people in their property. There's a population that is like that. And what's really cool, if you can actually dominate that 30, 40% of the population, you become the only player in that 40 versus going and competing for the other 60, 70% of the population that would prefer like Grandma Susie, the personal hometown mom and pop. But you're now going to cut up that 60% of the market between 150 competitors or 50 competitors. And so it's very counterintuitive because you will have the, you will have more people say no to you. When you go after a niche of the market, more people will say no because they prefer what everyone else is doing, but what everyone else is doing isn't working. And that is a low margin service that is extremely seasonal and we can't make money. Like, I mean, I see many, I mean, like 30% profit margins. Plus, that only happens if you go carve out a niche of the market that no one else can compete with. And no one else will be able to compete with AI because they wouldn't have built it. When, when robotics come along, the same thing will be true. Like, I know what I'm fighting right now in terms of building the AI and like, we have to suck up a lot of the costs, et cetera. The same exact tune will be said in 10 to 15 years. When now I'm like, okay, robotics are about where we're at. We have the bot that backend software and command centers were dialed in. We, let's really start to figure out this robotics thing. I will have the exact same issues in terms of like, how do we get the customer to accept this? I like, look, yes, 70, 80% of customers are going to be freaked out by having a robot show up with a driverless car at their house. That is true. After they just talked to AI and gave them their credit card information. The other the 30 that we're going after, no one else can get them.

No one.

And so, you know, I talk about Leap Blue Ocean versus the red ocean tragedy. If people are into Blue Ocean, strategy is the book to read. It's an old book, read it in my MBA class, still remember it. And that's always been the goal. Like how do we go after what no one else can go after? And in doing so I will tick off the 60, the majority in the red ocean because the only thing they have to compare us to is the other 150 competitors. And so they will be unsatisfied. And so I have to balance that out though in the franchise because people need to pay the bills today. And they, they have a lot of.

Categorical. Not categorical.

They have, they have, they have instances of customers complaining. Yeah, a loud squeaky wheel. Even if you get two or three of those in a week or like someone complaining about Max, for example, that can be very demoralizing as an owner when you're trying to get more leads. But what they don't see, and this is the part that is so challenging, but they don't see is the customers that accepted because of Max because they see that they can have automations because they see that the phone gets answered 24 7. And so they just assume that those are just regular leads when in reality they, as we begin to diverge and create the get the AI better as we then connect that with copilot and then they see their command center bill go down. I think it'll start to win more people over. But it's going to be always a challenge if you're going to be on the edge of technology. Because people don't like change. Because people don't like change. That's why this industry has not gone anywhere for a very long time. Because the customer always wants what they've wants what they have always had. The majority of them do. The 30, 40% that want the automated, they don't have anywhere to go right now. They only have something to compare to what they had in their last provider. And so.

I hope that having more locations will increase the brand of Augusta to the point where people have trust to the technology even though it's different than everyone else and we are fishing in a blue ocean. It they have trusted that the brand is going to deliver on the promises of the service and then they've fall in love with the process that no one else can replicate.

Yeah. So right in the middle of there you had jumped to what my next thing was going to be to ask you or to express to the listeners too is that we, we believe in this, we believe in it firmly. We know it's the way of the future and we're immersed in it. So every day we hear the calls, we hear feedback from the customers that they were very upset or didn't like this look. For instance, Max interrupts me. So, okay, we work with the devs. How can we have him listen? Better not interrupt. Oh, that AI guy, he was rude to me. He hung up on me. And so we, we tweak and change Max. And now even we take those calls and we have a survey, go to customers afterwards, and we're getting great feedback. And the, the franchisees or those that have so struggled with it, they don't see all the positive. They see, like you said, they're coming to their elderly client's house and they're so frustrated, and they have been thinking about it for three days and been so frustrated by that one little thing. So you had this vision and you have what you want to do, and you know it's a game changer. But then you present these to the franchisees and they're a franchisee and you are implementing it. And so there can be really a lot of struggle for them to be. Now I'm forced to use this thing. So how have you given them an out if they really don't want to use it?

Yeah. Let me first just preface it by saying that any owner is completely entitled to do what they want with their business. And that's, like, always been the, the, the backbone of what. How we built the franchise. So.

I empathize with, with having customers that complain about new technology.

And so our goal is to make this transition over the next five, 10 years and not lose customers, especially existing customers. Right. So it's always like, how is this better for the customer? I already know we can do it faster. Max is not better than a human in some regards, though, especially when someone's complaining. And so that's not a good thing. You're going to get unhappy customers matched up with a less. Less than performance. So let me just say first, I, I don't want to override those emotions because they're valid.

Yeah.

Is your question how. What was exactly?

If. If a franchisee feels trapped and they don't want to use it, how have what in place for them to.

If people can opt out during the office hours, we're still open seven days a week at Command center for 12 hours. So per day. So during those hours, they can just have it where it's, hey, just go straight to command center. I don't want Max Dance's phone. The reason for that is because outside of office hours, there's only upside for a Max answer. During hours there's upside of like efficiencies on the phone, he's way faster, there's no hold time, etc. But there's the downside that he does. He can't handle customer service requests.

Yeah.

He basically has to hand it off. So I understand it. There's pros and cons to him now during hours. I just know that in time that will only get better. Yeah, he has to hand off will only get better. The, his, his ability to understand, comprehend, take payment, etc will only get better.

Long term. I, I'm okay with people opting out. Like it's totally fine. They need to do what's best for their business.

Yes.

And you know, because of that we lose a lot of money at developing maps. And the reason I'm doing is because I know what it'll look like in five years. But I don't expect an owner inside of a franchise to bear the brunt of that. And so that's why I've taken on that cost. And then I just know like that's a long term play. But then in the short term, if it's not serving their business, that's fine. My goal is to be able to keep investing into it to the point where it does serve their business. And it's an easy opt in. It's like please sign me up because everyone wants it after hours. I'm close to saying 100% if not very close to 100% have max after hours. It's just right now compared to a human during hours. There's downsides. Those downsides can be eliminated. And that's a, that's why we keep investing into it because I know I can decrease that over time and I can increasing his efficiency, his speed, his quality of service, the way that he talks to people. And I just cannot say that with confidence about humans. And I love humans and I'd rather be able to pay humans more. I happen to think I can pay a human that is controlling robotics and is con is able to manage teams. I can pay them more and have a higher quality person than if I'm having people that have to pick up the phone and take information.

If I have to pay them down the road, down the road to just take, take credit card information or accept a job. Those are things that AI can take off people's plate. And it costs right now about twice as much per minute than what we charge the owners. I'm willing to take the hit because I know that in five years it'll cost us a quarter of what we charge franchisees and I'll be able to recoup this money we're losing now. And it'll be faster, better, cheaper for the customer and for the owners. And so it's just, it's just a longer term play. I don't expect an owner that start just starting their lawn care business to have to bear the brunt of hundreds of thousands more. Like a lot of all the money that we're putting into AI and software, I don't expect them to bear the brunt of that. I expect them to come in and want to make money in the next five, 10 years as an owner and that's what they should be entitled to. And so I know where the technology is going. We're investing in it heavily. And I believe that the trend of people that want Max to take the calls during hours will only increase as he gets better. So instead of trying to focus on like, you guys gotta opt in, it's so much better. I'm just focusing, like make the technology so much better. It's just that you want Max to answer the phone.

Yeah. So we actually have a form that they can go in anytime and they can opt in or opt out and the form comes to us and we make the change to their phone. And so there's not a lot of friction to it. They don't have to make a call to us or anything. They can just, we'll just take care of it for them. And then if they're thinking like it's, it's all this in a bag of chips and they're along with us and they don't mind some of the friction for now, then they opt back in. And then some people think it's like the greatest thing and ever. But I want to address the fear that employees have when they learn about this. And I've had employees come to me too, like, are we going to lose our jobs? And it doesn't matter whether you say no, they're worried about it. And so what we've tried to focus on is learn higher skills, get incredibly good at this and then let me put you in other departments, let me help you get better at your job. And so the more they take on and we're paying them for these higher level things and like you said, said Max takes care of all the rest of this stuff, then we can keep elevating the humans and actually work on them a little bit, on their soft skills and to be building teams and leading people and coaching others. And as we know nowadays that's, that's your role really is to facilitate all of this growth in people because it's not like it used to be. They're. They're kind of running in the game whether they want to work for you or not. So I think that's about all I have today for that. I just, it's such a big deal for us and what we're working on and even our call yesterday. Let me just wait.

Did you want me address the employee thing?

Sure, go for it.

Yeah. So like, if someone's concerned about technology and industry wiping them out, like, you have to realize that the technology you're using today was also feared in the same regard. Yeah. So, same way that like, if a command center agent hears this and it's like, I'm really concerned about Max taking my job. You will use Max down the road the same way that 20, 30 years ago, people fear that your computer that you're currently using, we're going to put them out of a job. And so.

Hoping and wishing that technology isn't going to move forward is a losing game. It has been for many decades. So, like, figure out the new tools. And so it is a matter of the same way that 30 years ago people said, I am going to lose my job as a receptionist because there's this computer thing coming around that can process information much faster than me. And it can, it is deflationary and it's way cheaper and I'm gonna get, I'm gonna get kicked out. You're right. If you don't adapt new skills, you will get replaced by technology. But if you take those tools that are being created by technology and then you adapt your skills. Back to our original topic here, you adapt your skills, you'll be able to take that technology, be significantly more effective. The same way that today we use multiple levels of software at command center to be more efficient, whether it be Happy Fox or RingCentral or Copilot, and the list just goes on and on and on. Those are all things that put people out of jobs. And we use them today to be more efficient. Max, AI, etc and software and technology forever will put people out of work if they don't gain new skills. And so the race is not to who can reduce technology. It is who can take the skills that they currently have, adopt the technology and improve their skills. And so I believe that an agent at command center can become far more efficient using technology and AI. I believe that they can learn skills that are worth more to the workplace, not just the one business but in general, learning about these technologies, learning about softwares, being able to then manage other teams much more effectively then being able to take off owner's plates what otherwise would have been a higher value task from them. So now that Max is able to answer the phone and able to handle all those customer service requests at command center, the goal is handle one of their biggest bottlenecks, which is hiring and interviewing and doing that really efficiently and effectively for them, which is a much higher value task than collecting addresses on a phone call. And so, yes, you will not take addresses from the on a phone call. In five years, it'll probably not happen for in 10 years, it'll probably be unheard of to call and give information to people. And so the question is, is that going to wipe out a lot of jobs? Absolutely. It's going to be. In the ones who are going to go out of work are the ones who don't. Gain new skills. Gain new skills, take that technology and become worth more to the market and you'll make more money.

Yeah. So that brings me to, like, most recently to yesterday as we wrap up, we had a conversation with the actual company that we're building this with, and there comes a time and you were really firm on this with them. We need to know the vision of that company, where it's going. In two or three years, are they going to be able to not only sustain what we're doing, help us to continue to grow and then grow with us? Because it's just like you told them, in three years, technology will be nothing like it is today. Are you growing with us? Do we have a guarantee that if we suddenly don't like the way this is going, can we bail? And so kind of. What were your thoughts behind that and being so kind of hard with them?

Yeah. When it comes to negotiation, I'm not usually a nice person to negotiate with, but when I am at bat with what I know is going to be for the owners, Augusta, I don't really care about what people's feelings are. So if I hurt some feelings on the call, I really could care less. There's pieces and parts of the AI and the telephony technology that we could never build without tens of millions of dollars. So there's pieces and parts that we have built custom that are ours and we own and the APIs, and that's what we're using like to connect copilot and stuff like that. But there's pieces that are literally worth tens of millions of dollars and they have backing of hundreds of millions of dollars behind them. And so I need confidence that if I am going to invest in all the infrastructure I am building around their technology, that that technology is not going to be there in five years, but it's me better. And so anytime you have any sort of partnership in business I believe in with full confidence, I will uphold my end of the bargain. But if it's. If my decisions are going to involve other parties, and I have promised owners inside of Augusta Nation that we will hit this in five years, we will hit this in 10 years. We believe that Max can do all these things, but then there's a core element that I'm missing that is reliant on a vendor. I am going to make sure that I have the same degree in their level of expertise as I do in my vision. And so.

That'S what we were nailing down yesterday. And it was just a matter of, like. Like, where's your funding? Like, who's behind you? What kind of technology? Where are we going? Like, I want to see the. What's the product looking like in a year? What are you guys doing to improve? Because there's no way that I'm going to keep investing in my end of the bargain. And the technology we're building and what we're trying to build with Copilot and the rest API and all the stuff that we're doing, I'm not going to do that if I can't deliver my promise to owners, because there's a vendor that I is key, a key player, and is now there's more competition like them. And so, you know, I held their feet to the fire, and I was going to bat for Augusta, and whenever it's like that, I'm. I'm. I'm a much less, like. I don't know. Nice. I don't know.

Yeah. And we came away from that call with a firm direction forward. And one was like, this is what we want Max to do. This is what we want Max to be. And we want to be able to, like, we need this. We see these five things on these surveys. We want changed. How do we make that happen? We need this stuff to happen fast for the franchisees. So we actually put together a plan and so that. What do we call them? Edge cases. And so when we would see something we want done, we're able to make this whole list. We want Max to understand what concrete is.

Hey, hey, hold. Don't say this stuff. This is going to give other people too many ideas. We got to get this out.

Oh, yeah, because my channel's just blowing up. But. But you said it's just. He's not a human, so he can't understand these things. So we have to teach him all about our industry so that he can respond. He hears a word, he thinks this. He knows what this product is. Is that even possible? Absolutely. So, you know, you and I will make lists and lists of what we want him to be and grow into and then move it into copilot. So it's. It's so exciting. It's like you said, it's hard for people to change. It's hard for the customers. And there's so much positive feedback. Like, the pendulum has swung. And to where I hear, you know, one of the gals the other day, she is very good at customer service. And the customer said, wow, you sound one like one of those AI people. You sound so good. And she was laughing. She goes, I guess I'm Max girlfriend now. But so much positive feedback. Customers are loving it. They're loving the streamline of it. And sometimes they'll call and they'll just. By the Time we get a hold of them, they'll be laughing and they'll say, oh, that. That. That thing tricked me. It sounded so real. And then at first, others are frustrated by that. And then you just explain, oh, that's Max. And we make sure that we never miss your phone call. And you. And they're like, oh, okay. It's like a retraining of all customers and customer service.

Well, like, 70 of customers choose to continue with Max. The other 30 get 31 get handed off to a human. We need to get that number above 90.

Yeah.

So, like, how do we do that? We simply just make the technology better. So I'm not, like, on the, you know, owners in San Augusta know, like, I'm not, like, out here, like, trying to, like, get everyone to join use Max.

Yeah.

Would it help us? Yes. We're losing, like, tons of money. And, like, I would like to be able to use him more because it brings our costs down. However, it is a matter of. I think if we can get 90 of customers, that the. The 30 that don't choose Max will become less quiet, less. Less loud. And so we just gotta make the technology better. Max needs to handle things better. He needs to be able to do so much more. And I just know that we can do that, and it'll only improve.

Yeah. And bottom line is we. We care deeply about the franchisees. We care deeply about them and all that concerns them, mainly that they have great customer service.

They make more money.

They make more money. And that's what it comes down to, period, is that we help them make more money. And little by little, little, we're getting better and better to make that happen for them. So I appreciate you taking time out with us on this Saturday.

Talked a lot about technology. My goodness. I didn't think that was where we were. You're going.

Well, that's where our heads are right now. And it's so exciting. And I have a ton more to talk to you about, but we'll do it some other time. It's things that matter a lot to business owners and the franchisees as well. So thank you for your time today and have an amazing weekend.

Thank you. I appreciate it. We'll see you.