Mike BERATES his employee - Episode 030

We just start right there. Like all, you know, white women across America that don't have anything to be mad about, like a social movement. I'm gonna have a summer project, so.

And for the people that just tuned in, you are not gonna get to hear what Mike and I were talking about before that. So you're just left in a cliffhanger. What's up, Mike? Welcome back. Another episode. C Suite Unfiltered.

Knock it out, dude. It's nine o'clock here at six o' clock your time.

I know. I appreciate you doing this. Late. Yeah, Forever for everybody. Mike taking time out of his busy schedule, like, and subscribe, maybe share, because it's late for him and he takes time to do the pod for us. So. Yeah, man. How are things going? I want to jump in, obviously, on a little bit of behind the scenes. North Carolina. Things have changed up. Seems like we're starting to get some momentum. So how are we feeling? Last week, you know, the episode, we were a little bit. We went a little bit sad, you know, talking about time management priorities and how hard it is to be a business owner. But I feel like now we got some momentum. So how are we feeling?

Good. Good. You know, it's obviously the media side. We have to kind of emphasize the highest and the lows because otherwise it'd be very, very boring. We're actually running that now because now we kind of have. Now we have found our stride. It's like, okay, we have two weeks left. And really the game is get more estimates, sell more jobs, and hire one person. Like, that's. That's all I need to do for the next two weeks. But we somehow need to make it interesting every single day. So. Yeah, if anyone's actually watching the daily videos, thank you. But just know, especially next two weeks, the drama will, like, any bit of, like, story will have to be emphasized. We won't be drama. Like, we don't. We don't create things. However, we will have to take what's there and really embellish it, like, make stories. Because otherwise, literally the next two weeks is keep doing door hangers, getting more jobs in the schedule, get enough budget hours on the schedule to hire a second person. That's like, it's so.

Yeah. Yeah. One thing that was interesting when I was talking about with Liz was like, we can tell in the comment section who's brand new to the channel and who's been around a while because there are people, like, calling you out, like you're contradicting yourself. Like, we're in the digital age, like, why are you saying door hangers are the best form of marketing? It's like, bro, go back and look at like any other video you've done over the last few years. It's like you talk about Google, Facebook next door, like all different types of marketing and they're like, well, you're probably a new subscriber, so hopefully you stick around a while and see what are actually about here.

So yeah, yeah, like if you're in spring rush, I'd say, you know, probably spend more of your. We would be spending a lot on digital. But I, I pulled my Facebook ad down today too. Like I just, you know, I wasn't playing a lot on it, but I was like, there's no reason to do that when I know it's working and you know, we have a good strategy and we're finally getting some traction on it. So like I say in, in almost every single time when marketing comes up, let's say test as much as you possibly can and then go all in. What's working? Yeah. And you know, we've had to do that in two weeks, which typically is not enough of a sample set. Honestly. Usually I like to see a month or two, but you know, we have to just kind of do it in a more hyper speed approach. So.

Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. I had a thought there and then I just lost it.

Oh yeah.

It's interesting when you think about like marketing and then having an established customer base because this is kind of funny story I was going to tell you. So your. Your original location, the Bellingham location. I've been helping out with some estimates and there is a gentleman who we've done. He represents an hoa. We do a property cleanup form every once in a while. It was recurring for a while. Now it's just like when needed. And he reached out and I was like, well, we haven't done any marketing for three weeks. We're booked out four weeks. No paid marketing for three weeks. We're booked out four weeks. Well, I'm not going to get him on the schedule for at least five weeks. So let's just see if he bites. So I increased the exact same property cleanup we did last year. I increased it by $900. I put increase it from $2,600 to $3,500. He accepted within five minutes. It was awesome. Like that's how like that building, that recurring base building of trusted respected brand. Like I was like, dude, we're booked out five weeks. Like I'm not giving him this project for the same price he got it for last year. Like, prices have gone up, inflation. Our hourly rate's gone up. So I increased it by 900 bucks. And he literally said, sent it. And then I got the notification. It was accepted like, five minutes later. And I was like, let's go, dude.

That's great. Love it.

So in terms of the marathon, half marathon, Whose idea was that? Was that your idea? Was that Zach's idea? Was that just.

Honestly, dude, at this point, at this point, it's like we got to make stuff up. So, like, for example, we got to make a video on Saturdays and Sundays when no work is getting done. Right? So we already kind of burned through some of our creative ideas, like holding the sign, you know, on the first weekend. But there's only so many things you can do. So, you know, some of it's obviously for the media side.

Right.

But I'm also making a point that is like, you do whatever it takes to get jobs. I don't care if that's holding a sign, doing door hangers, running a marathon. You know, you gotta crawl your way to do it. If there's a will, there's a way. And so I kind of. In one regard, I'm happy I'm not eating spring rush. I really think if I was needing a spring rush, this would be, like, in the bag. But it's so hard now because no one needs the services as much.

Or the. The only customers I'm getting are the ones that are switching from service, other services I'm not getting. The person that is, like, moved in the past four or five months during winter and is looking for a new service. I'm not getting those.

Or.

Or their guy doesn't show up in the spring and they need a new service provider. So I don't get any of those. Right. But I am somewhat happy with the fact that, like, the way we're doing it is like, I'm not doing a bunch of Facebook ads. I'm not doing a bunch of Google stuff. Like, literally 95% of leads I think we have, like 35 or 40 now have come from door hangers and my sign. So, like, if you can get door hangers and a sign, you should be able to start a business. Like, I like that. I like that. That. And we didn't intend on that. We don't really have, like, a plan for the whole trip. Like, we don't know what's going to happen. So, like, we. We kind of have thought through, like, what happens if I Don't make it. What happens if I do make it? But, like, it's not really, like a daily. We know what's happening. So it's like today, tonight at dinner, we like, figuring out what. What's tomorrow's story going to be, right? But in the grand scheme of things, I think it's a good. There's just a good. I like the fact that I'll be able to say, like, look, I didn't spend a bunch on ads. Here's what I did. And people will be like, well, you hired Jonathan to door hangers. I'm like, yeah, if I wasn't doing everything else, I. I would be doing the door hangers, right? And so that's why, like, Sunday I kind of wanted to do the run is because, like, look, I was able to do 400 in a day. He usually gets about 2 to 300 done in a day. So, like, if I was not doing all this other stuff, I would. That's what I would be in. Six hours a day of door handles. Right, yeah.

No, that makes sense. I think I like the fact that you're just proving, like, you can keep it simple and then obviously, if you have the back end systems, like a good CRM copilot, CRM.com, right, if you have the command center, you can scale up quickly. If you're just dedicated to whatever works, test the market, and then dedicate all your energy to what's working.

Right?

And in this case, you're not going to. You're going to pay out the wazoo to get any digital leads. So you might as well just stick to door knocking and pounding pavement, as we say. So I think it's just cool to see you do it. Did you actually run 13 miles?

Yeah. 13.8.

Let's go.

13.8.

Is that.

Yeah. Well, no, no. Like, the whole thing is technical on 13.1, but I did because by the time I realized I was past it, I had already, like, I was away from the house, so I had to come back to the house. But the last, like, five miles I did without a backpack. So, like, that was a breeze. That was like plugging your headphones and run. But the first part was brutal.

Here's. Here's a thought I have. I think I might have told you this before. People that have, like, the marathon stickers, right? The 26.2, 13.1 head. Here's my thing. I've never run a marathon. I've never run a half marathon, so I know I'm punching up Here, these people are better than me. However, I would never put a 13.1 sticker on my car. It just says half of that. Yeah, I was halfway.

Really? Well, I thought this too. And I was like considering it. I was like, it's not worth the pain. The pain. The next three days, like going from half marathon to marathon. You huge jump. Huge jump that goes from like, like I could just put my shoes on, go run a half marathon to like, I would be hurting for at least three to five days.

Oh yeah, 100. So I, I was not.

I'm not that committed, bro.

I'm not that committed. You're really good at doing things halfway. That's what the 13.1 sticker shows me. That's what that shows me. I judge you secretly. If your car has a 13.1 sticker on it, I just do.

One guy's comment was funny. It was, is if you just had a bike, you could have done a triathlon. Because the rain swim bike, I was like, that was a good one. That was good.

I like that. Do you think you'll ever do anything like that? Like ultra running triathlon?

Honestly, dude, I would love to because I've done like the several of the tough mudders and spartans and stuff like that. I would love to. The problem is long distance, anything is not really good for your body. Like there's. This is the thing, people say that and not even I say that and then I look at people that do it, I'm like, man, they literally look like so healthy and they live old. Like I think though that it skews. Like if you're doing marathons, you're probably, probably also eating healthy, have a pretty well balanced life. Like in terms of emotionally and spiritually. Like so, like, I think it skews the information. But when you look statistically, like the kinesiology of the body and the biomechanics when you're having a marathon and like literally pounding your your knees that many times, it's not smart. And so like I genuinely want to. I'd rather much. I would rather run a 5k when I'm 95 or 100 than run a marathon now. That's kind of how I always think about it. And even like box jumps, I love box jumps in the gym, love them to death, but I know it just demolishes your knees. And so I just try to stay away from them. So. But I love them. Like I could do them all the time, but I try not to.

Well, I know you've done like tough Mudders and like Spartans and stuff. But is there anything you would want to do to like, push your limits? Because I feel like a lot of people will do things like that. Like now it's the, you know, C suite, unfiltered. Now it's like the cool thing in the C suite to climb Everest. Right? Like, you see that like now Everest literally has lines during peak climbing season because there's all these Sherpas and there's all these tour companies that will just take millionaires dollars and be like, yeah, we'll just hike you up Everest. And like, that's cool. I'm not knocking those guys. It's just the thing to do to push yourself. Is there anything that you would ever want to do like that to?

Like, I think you're similar. No, I think you're similar in this regard. Like, if I, If I just made the decision I was gonna do it, I would do it. It's just a matter of like, it's. And it's not even about like the time or anything like that. For me, for me, something like that would be like, okay, why am I doing this? Because some people, like, they really do get a lot of like, personal satisfaction for it and like, kudos to them, right. If you want to climb that Everest, go for it. But for me it'd be like, okay, am I doing this for like, so I can say it? Like, just make a cool statement. Yeah. Am I doing this because like, I am going to feel a certain way at the top, which like some of you have said that. Right? And I've. And I've lived through like those sort of moments, like, of what it's going to be and like I'm probably going to feel like it's kind of a letdown at the top, like if something Everest or running a marathon or whatever, Right?

Yeah.

And. And then secondly, the bigger thing when it comes to like physical is like, I know it's taxing on the body. And so like again, like, I want to, I want to be able to be able to like just do a 5k when I'm 95.

Yeah.

And if I'm trying to do all these crazy things now, yes. Be fun and like, yes, I would enjoy it. But I also feel like when I'm sick, like, this is. If you talk to people who know me a little bit, like, like a family, I'm weird in this. Like when I'm sick, I know I can do like regular things like going and working out, and it's extremely difficult. But I get that same kind of like, okay, I've got to push myself. And that is fun and very addictive. And that's what, you know, people, like, do those crazy things. You know, they have a little bit of that tendency type sometimes. Yeah. Yeah.

I think you and I are in a similar vein. It's like, if I just wanted to put my mind to it and do it, I would just do it. So, like, why. Why would I. Like, who am I proving it to? Myself? Am I doing it for that, like, some sort of feeling or just to look cool? Like, I don't know. Like, I've never wanted to ever do, like, long distance running, but that one day. My mentor in college was. He was a big runner. Like, that's what he loved doing. That was his. That was his outlet. And so one morning, he was like, hey, you want to run with me? I was like, sure. So 4am we wake up, we just bust out 10 miles. And I was like, I, like, hated every second of it, but it was, like, cool to, like, spend it with him. And I guess, like, now I proved to myself I can do it. But, like, it didn't make me want to, like, run a half marathon or anything. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know. I think I'd like to do, like, some sort of, like, mountain climb or something of that nature or, like, like, really, like, backwoods camping, like, where you really have to, like, push yourself. Like, pack in. The only thing that you can bring is what you can bring on your back, and then you just go, like, survive. I kind of like that. I think that'd be cool.

I still think, like, the reason you're doing that is to tell a story, which, again, is fine. Yeah, it's a great starter conversation. But I don't know. I. I would hate that, dude. Yeah, I would hate that. I would only be doing it to push myself. And, like, that just is no longer enough of a reason.

Like, I don't know. Okay, fast forward 10 years, 15 years. Is Augusta gonna do corporate retreats?

It's like, half marathon and then, yeah, dude, climb at Everest together. That'd be fun. No, see, but it's different when you're doing it together. There's a certain level of, like, there is. There's ties being built between people and, like, camaraderie, teamwork. Like, there are. There's valid arguments for that, but when you're just doing it for yourself to push yourself, it's like a matter of, like, hey, what's the pros and the cons? Of it. Because if you get addicted to it, because you can, and you get addicted to kind of that adrenaline and the high you get there, you can really hurt your body. And so, like, I really want my knees when I'm old. Like, I know I keep saying it, but, like, that is a big deal to me. I think about a lot. Like, even this weekend, it came through my head. I'm like, okay, putting that much weight on my back, I'm not used to that. Like, the miles are not a big deal, but me putting that my back, like, I. Like, I said it in my previous interview. It literally is going through my head. And I was like, I'm taking years off these knees right now. Yeah. And I. I think about, like, tread on my tires. I think about my tread on my tires all the time. Like, what the tread of my tires is looking like. I think that's like, my knees, dude. It's like if I've been jumping and all that sort of thing. Yeah, dude.

So, yeah, I'm. I'm. That's. I think, where we disagree. And I know we're on a tangent at this point, but I'm like. I'm the type of guy. I'm like, you'll see that old lady on the news who's like, her 99th birthday, and they're like, what? Why? Why'd you live so long? What's the secret? She's like a can of Dr. Pepper every day. I'm like, bro, whatever you do in life, it, like, doesn't matter. Like, there are people that are so unhealthy that live way too old. And then there's people who are, like, perfectly physically fit and they'll, like, die at, like, 50. And you're like, what's going on there? So I mean all that to say we should live healthy lives. I'm trying to live healthier. I did 75 hard not that long ago. But also, like, I don't know. I'm going to die one day. Whether I live extremely healthy or not, it's just going to happen. It is what it is.

To me. To me, it really does come down to the length of time that it takes to push yourself. So, for example, I would much rather run a full marathon than do 75 hard. And it's not even close, because that makes sense. I know I can just suffer for six hours and it would be hell and I would hate my life. And then maybe. Well, six hours, that'd be really slow. Mercy. Let's just call it five hours.

And then I'd be hurting for a few days, but I don't have to do all that. The amount of time and energy when sending a puff hard. If you spent three or four hours a day multiplied by 75, you had 250 to 300 hours that you spent on that, that suffering. So I would much rather do a marathon. Much rather.

Yeah. But I wouldn't get the results In a marathon versus what I got with 75 hard. A marathon. I would just be dead for three.

Days.

And lost a lot of water weight.

It comes from the objective. I'm just saying about overall pushing yourself.

I get what you're saying. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair.

I don't know.

Interesting thought. So, yeah. Maybe people that are listening leave a comment. How do you want to push yourself? Or how would you like to see Mike push himself? There we go. And maybe we'll see if we can incorporate into the content, find ways to push Mike a little bit.

Okay, so you know, because you've been busy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I, you know, I had to come in here and you know, make sure I carry the episode for you.

Thank you.

So let me, let me.

Summer project.

Let me share my screen. Can you see this? Let's go. Have you ever seen this? The fear and greed index? Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So this is somewhat, this is somewhat in relation to my non financial advice last week. And if I actually am honest. Okay, I can't show you this. This is my, this is my checklist for this week. I can't show you everything. Sorry. But on there it says greed and fear index. Non financial advice literally was fueling up with a gas station and made sure I wrote it down. So I forget it. Good, good, good. So this is a good, this is what's called the fear in green index. And if anyone, if anyone's listening, the episode now that we are, you know, 15 minutes and they deserve to be able. Here's some actual content. So this is what's called fear ingredient. Have you seen the quarterly?

Yeah, I have seen it.

Yeah. Okay, cool. So it basically tracks several different factors, kind of from 0 to 100. 0 being extreme fear, 100 being extreme, 100 being extreme greed. This is a stock market and it looks at several things. So the momentum is one thing that it looks like. It's like where are we at according to 125 day moving average in the S&P 500? Obviously when we're up here you can, you know, you can kind of, you know, come to the conclusion that we are greedy. A lot of people are trying to buy stocks, etc. You know down here you can see the relative strength index which is basically what percentage of stocks are hitting their 52 week high. So we just are coming out of where there are actual companies having highs. Because if you go back into like 2022, you know, a lot of companies, the you know, majority of them are actually having lows. So then you have breadth. So you know, having a more, you know, a wider stock market going up is, is obviously an important thing. Breadth instead of just super, super narrow, like just technology put and call options. So basically people that are shorting the market, you could say thinking it's gonna go down is low. Very, very low right now as well a market volatility, extremely low on the vix. And so the VIX is essentially just like tracking how volatile, volatile the market is. So that's also like at a all time low since like a year and a half ago. So yeah, these are, these are the type of things that I, I like to look at in terms of why I gave my financial advice last week, which was to potentially not sell out. But keep in check the fact that as we go into extreme greed, you're going to have all these cheap junk stocks and cryptos and all other garbage start to pop their head back up. And to feel the pain of 2022 is not a bad thing when it comes to this sort of market environment.

Yeah, I've heard that before and I've seen the Fear and Greed index but I've never actually looked at a full length article like that. So. So not financial advice. Would you say sell obviously or now is the optimal time based on these metrics?

No, because you can stay in extreme green for a very long time. So this indicator, I haven't, I don't actually have an actual number to give you here, but I would imagine if this chart could go back, let me actually try to pull it up here and greed index, let's do five year old. I don't know if they had it for five years. So let me just see if it is, goes back that far in a different chart. But what I'm getting at. Oh, is this it?

I was gonna say I can't see your screen.

I know, I know, I know. I think I'm looking at the wrong thing. So you just can be very good. Give me a second here.

2020, 2022. Where's Blue? Okay, here I'll show you what I'm looking at. Let me see. You don't think I'm crazy.

I'm gonna pull my portfolio.

Oh, really? Okay.

I'm not gonna show that, but I'm just gonna pull it up.

You know what I want to see? What I want to see is 2020. But I would imagine, basically what my point here is, is it can stay in extreme greed for a long time. You miss out on all the gains, Right. So, you know, it's extremely irrational in the stock market. You know, we're at all time high of interest rates, and here the stock market is, you know, going crazy high. So.

It can stay that way a lot longer than you are. You know, what's the saying? It's a really good saying saying about being solvent longer. Here you go. Let's see here. Marcus can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. That is a quote from John Maynard Keynes, which is very, very interesting. And it comes down to positive and negative. And in this case, when you have so much greed in the market. Yes. It's like, oh, I should sell. Well, if you. It can be irrational for a year or two, like we saw in 2020 and 2021. Or if you're like, oh, no, it's crazy. Covid is nuts. Like, money's being printed. We're gonna have inflation. And you pulled out. You just lost out on like, literally the, you know, 24 months of the. The hottest stock market in. On record. So I wouldn't say just sell, but I would definitely be saying, like, don't be looking at cheap, stupid stocks. Like, Right. This is the. When everyone's being greedy is when you can be fearful. Right. And so everyone says that very, very candidly. But this is what's cool, dude. This is what's cool. You know, the bottom of the market.

Like, the bottom as in, like the past.

Yeah. If you look at that year, let's say the past year.

Like, when was it? Like, timeline.

Yeah, this is nuts.

I don't know.

Let me. Let me make sure it's on all indexes before I speak out of turn. I'm pretty sure it's for the S pip, but let me just triple check.

One year. Okay. Let me make sure. Let me make sure he says S P was not. It was not true. For. Okay, let me just say this for like, the NASDAQ and more tech related stocks. The low was January 4th.

That's on. I pulled up a chart.

Yeah, yeah, January 4th. That was the night of conference when I. When I showed the chart where I said, like, I feel like the stock market's almost at the Bottom. Not at the bottom. Yeah, but like, I think it's almost the bottom. I think it'll come up and then, like, the real estate is, like, still towards the height and coming down.

Yeah.

So I do have that screenshot somewhere because I, I found much joy in the fact that if you would have bought that night, you would have been buying the bottom of the market.

There you go. There's, there's, there's the year right there. Oh, I got my ring light.

But that's your today. Yeah, it's your to date. Yeah. So I always love that people, they're sharing screenshots of their stock portfolio year to date, and it's like, yeah, let's go to 2022.

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

2022 is wrecked. Like, honestly, you know, it's funny. If you would have sold, I, I like 2022 was just trash here. If you would have just stayed out of stock market for all of 2022, you would have been a genius. Literally. January 1, 2021.

January 1, 2022. If you would have sold everything and then bought everything a year later, January 2023, you just, you would have just crushed it, dude. Yeah. Like, literally, you look at the top and the bottom of my stock portfolio. This top is literally like end of December 2021. And then like the very bottom was January 4, 2022.

Yeah.

Well, we talked it. We talked about Tesla too. In one of our first episodes this year, we talked about it. We were like, dude, it's at a low. It's like hovering around 100. At one point during trading, I think it went. Yeah, it went below 100. I don't know. Did it ever finish at the end of a day below 100? Either way, we called people like, dude, that's like all time low. It's never going to go lower. And then you bought like a massive amount and then sold it later.

Let's see here, let's see here. Let's get the exact.

I'm kicking myself. I didn't take my own. Not financial advice. I didn't buy any. I didn't buy any. I'm gonna be honest. I'm, I'm, I'm a D Hands guy.

They're starting to get a little over, over, overbought one second. So I have been selling them off slowly over the past few weeks. But let me see here. What did I buy? I bought January 3rd. That was 106. 106. Okay. Dude, you're right. I didn't get under 100. Sick.

I was gonna say ended under 100.

Yeah.

But then it peaked right around 200. So it literally doubled in a matter of like a month or two. You could have doubled your worth in Tesla.

It was nuts. Yeah, I think it was intraday. Intraday. I think it went.

Under 100. Let me just look here. It was back. No 101.

Oh, whatever. Okay, well I never, I never bought.

That's all me.

Yeah, but now it's expensive, man. It's the same thing. Oh yeah. Now, now you look at their market cap and what I'm a little bit. Here's the thing, here's the thing. I'll talk to right now. One, the positive thing they have going for them right now is the fact that the government is subsidizing their cars like nobody's business with this new bill. And in places like, in places like California, you get a Tesla Now, Model 3 for under $26,000 because of a $7,500 from the federal and $7,500 from the state tax. Tax credits going to be great for top line revenue, which is basically what Tesla is built on because they're a growth company, right? Yep. That being said, their margins are starting to be collapsed. Their profit margins in part because they lowered price but also because like you got Hyundai and all these other companies coming out with pretty good electric cars. That being said, did you see what happened with the Ford and the GM partnership with the plugs? Basically gf GM and Ford basically relinquished and handed over the reins Tesla by saying we. That they now have a partnership with Tesla where they can, you can charge a GM or a Ford at Tesla's network charging stations. And dude, the app is all over this, the Tesla app. When you. So in order to go charge there you have to have the Tesla app and literally you have to like scroll past in order to do it. You have to scroll past like test drive a Tesla.

Like it's the best marketing ever, dude. Yes.

So like it was so great. That was so fun. But the market I think is overreacting to that. I think, you know, they're, they're so good. It's just hard to like the numbers aren't, aren't. It's tough to make sense of the numbers. Same thing with the Nvidia. Like I sold out of Nvidia last week because like it's a great company, but it's not. No, it ain't worth no trillion dollars. At least right now in my point. Everything has to be perfect. They have to retain their monopoly. AI has to continue at the same rate of innovation, they have to be the only player which they currently are in terms of GPU chips and stuff. Sorry, dude, we're getting off track.

No, you're good. I love this. I love where it's going.

So anyways.

No, no, I loved where it was going. I promise I was paying attention. I just, I was pulling up a tick tock, actually. That related. That related. I forgot that I liked it. That related to what you were talking about. It was. I was going to go on another tangent with you.

Oh, good.

It was about Ford. So the Ford CEO, he had his name. There you go. Yeah. So he, he was in an interview and he basically. And this is something you've been talking about a lot with Augusta, maybe I'll just stitch the tick tock in here, but if you want to listen to it, you can. But basically he's saying that Ford's biggest struggle right now is what you're trying to prevent with Augusta or which, which is what you're trying to control with Augusta, which is vertical integration. He said you have a company like Tesla that everything is in house, everything is vertically integrated. They control every single piece of the car. So they don't, they aren't held hostage to anyone making chips, making batteries, making, getting the cobalt, getting all the materials, all those things. And he says for every F150 that I make, he's like, I'm talking to a minimum of 160 other companies. And I'm like, excuse me? He's like, he basically says in this interview, it's very candid and I respect his transparency, but he's basically saying like a Ford is almost not a Ford at this point. We are, we are builders and it's a bunch of other companies pieced together and like we have a frame, that's it. And he said that's going to be their biggest struggle competing in the EV market is the lack of vertical integration, the lack of control that they have over design, building parts, materials, et cetera. Yep. Yeah, it's nuts. But, but you're right about the margin squeeze on Tesla. Like they are bringing prices down so much. What do you think their next move is? Like, what's the five year move for Tesla? Because they're squeezing margins so aggressively.

Five year move is keep doing what they're doing because if they can squeeze the margins a little bit now, they'll push all their competition out. So they already are having GM and Ford like basically handing them the keys. Right. So if you, if you, if you bring down the margin up to the point where no one will if you want to buy. Like right now, Ford and GM lose money on every single electric vehicle. Right. So if you as Tesla can make 30% margin, yes, they can do that. But if we bring that down to 15, it's gonna in the short term hurt their stock price. And that's what's happened over the past eight months is everyone's like, oh my word, this is bad. I thought that was a good thing because what they were doing is while everyone else was weak, they had the margin to come down on price and just wipe out the competition. Yeah. And so you look at all the other EV manufacturers over the past 16 months, whether Ford and GM, or you look at even the ones over in China that have built stuff like Neo etc.

And I'm blanking on the other one. Rivian is one Rivian's over in the US but yeah, tons of money on every single car. Right. So eventually what you do is at Tesla like, okay, can we operate on way less margin for the time being, but in doing so make it to where anyone buying electric vehicle, it's like, do I want a Tesla or want something else? Oh, the Tesla's cheaper than this one and it's way better. So just have everyone buy Tesla and then drive down demand, in addition to the fact that they're losing money on every single per unit vehicle on all the other manufacturers and then you just win the game. Right. So I think that's why I bought in like a while back when everyone else was like, this is a bad thing. Like, this is perfect. They're lowering their price. They're gonna like just handicap all. And that's what Jim and Ford said. They're like, we cannot afford to subsidize the electric network that is required to fuel our vehicles. And they, they were depending again on Electrify America, ChargePoint, all these other third party vendors to supply power and therefore could not get their batteries charged fast enough. Whereas Tesla, because they control the port, they control the charger, they control the station, they control battery, they can ramp up speed of charging to the point that these other guys can't compete. And so, you know, it's why like people get mad all the time at Augusta, like with us going relatively low on price, especially when we're starting out a location and then we bring the prices up is because right now we raise prices in order to increase margin. They'll come a time when we have the operational efficiency and I hope that it's during a very Bad economic time that we're able to still sustain some margin will hurt, but we'll sustain the margin because of AI and because of the technology and because we can potentially start leaning more robotics. Again, this is like 15 years, but like that's the goal. And then, and then at that time is when you take market share, right? I don't plan on taking market share by getting more franchisees. That's not going to happen. It's going to happen when we have, you know, a thousand locations and then when, when everything really gets hurt and crushed and the, the labor market is even worse at the same time that the demand is going down at the same exact time. We can say, okay, great, we, because we have everything so operationally efficient and we can do everything so much cheaper and still into the phone and have everything automated and we have the power to use robotics now, we can bring prices down to a point that you cannot compete with us. And so that's, that's typically how.

Fragmented markets do have a market leader. Right. So you got something like Amazon, you control 50 plus percent of e commerce. Well, that was unheard of 20, 30 years ago, is very, very, very fragmented. But they did it by losing money for a very long time and just plowing money into their distribution centers and technology and robotics. Right. And so now it's almost impossible. Like no one's going to topple Amazon unless they do a massive misstep. And that's simply because they just built this massive moat, poured so much money into it and you can't compete with their infrastructure. Right.

Do you think that Tesla is like this, not perfect as a stretch, but a perfect like test case of a modern Marcus market disruptor story arc to Market Dominator. Like they came in as a disruptor, but because they were going by the kind of the beat of their own drum, now they dominate the market. Like no one can keep up with them. Do you think that that's like an.

Interesting test case, what they've done? Well, they, in my opinion is they have harnessed what Apple had when Steve Jobs was around.

And kept it. And mostly because they still have Elon. Like I think if Steve Jobs is still around this, the app, the atmosphere on Apple would still remain that of an underdog. Like they're trying to get somewhere and they're trying to like, it's them versus the competition, it's them versus the industry. It's them versus the world. And Elon's maintained that sort of thought process and culture at Tesla despite becoming the market leader by Leaps and bounds. You know, the Model Y is the number one sold vehicle now in the U.S. and so, you know, and he, he plays into it so well from like for example, not getting invited to the, to the White House when they're celebrating EVs and like that's a slap in the face that. Yeah, yeah, that is exactly what you want. When you're a company that's growing very large, you need to be, you need to be looked at as the underdog still. And so the same thing that, like this is the marketing campaign that Apple did when it's like Apple versus PC is they, they showed themselves as the underdog against the like big bad Windows, right, and IBM and all the rest of it. And so now, now it's switched though, you know, back to what we talked about last week when Apple was like very polished. Everything is perfect. What they, what is going to disrupt them is going to be someone that breaks the rules, gets in there, starts being the disruptor and then they don't let, they, they are enabled to kick it back into gear, into innovation. And so because they've become buttoned down and because they've become the incumbent and so I don't know where we're going with that, but Tesla, they've kind of made sure they didn't do that because they've gone to a trillion dollar market cap and somehow still retain this mentality like you got to be hungry, you work hard, you show up to work and you just crush it. And they haven't got wrapped up in as much in, in terms of the politics that typically come with a company that's grown that size and where it starts to take away from the mission of what's trying to get done.

Yeah, no, that makes sense. That's, that's my take to go on another tangent on why I'm a big fan of space Virgin Galactic. I think there's a disruptor in the new space race.

This stock, like way back when it was at 25. Are you still on?

I am holding Diamond Hate.

Every time I feel bad about my stock portfolio, I just look at Virgin Collection.

That is so rude. My stock portfolio is like 80 to 90%, like extremely.

Oh yeah, yeah. It's like extremely because only because it used to be 50 Virgin Galactic, it sunk so much in value that now it's only worth a small portion.

Like that's my not, that's my not financial advice device. Virgin Galactic is the move. It's a long term play.

All right?

Richard Branson is doing his own thing when it comes to the commercial space.

Any shot in the world against SpaceX?

Well, they're. They're going. They're playing a completely different game, right?

They're doing okay.

They're going. They're. Dude, Virgin Galactic is. Yeah.

The only thing that looks like a spaceship is their stock performance over the past five years.

Also after that second peak is where. Or that first peak, excuse me, is when I started buying. All right? So I didn't buy. I didn't buy those big peaks.

That means.

I want to make that very clear.

That at some point the stock was at 16. And also at some point the stock was 55.

And now it's all the way up to a whopping 4.4. And yet the mark is on a tear. This year is still down 45%.

We have. We had some setbacks as a.

Setbacks. All right. Dude.

Dude, I'm a big Virgin Galactic guy. Believe in Richard Branson. Screw it, let's do it.

Great book. All right. All right. Hold on. You give me the bull case for Virgin Galactic.

Like.

Like the bowl case?

Yeah. Why do you think it's so good?

Space exploration, direct to consumer. There you go. That's elevator pitch. That's all I need.

Okay. So the breakdown of the cost, baby. So, so is their goal basically to like just basically shuttle people to space is like tourism kind of thing.

So that, that's honestly like the thing is, is that is what everyone sees publicly facing, but they also have. Are in tandem with Virgin Orbit, which is a different process of launching space satellites and a different process of using rockets. So the big thing that Virgin Galactic has been doing, so Virgin Galactic is space, S, P, C, E as their ticker symbol. But it also contains Virgin Orbit. What Virgin Orbit is, is a scientific program that uses a 747 and they launch their rockets from a 747. So it's not as flashy or as cool as SpaceX. Right.

They're more practical. They're more practical.

Yeah.

Cheap. Get it off the ground because they have to literally take it off a 747. Yeah.

And then they launch from a 747. So that's the whole scientific advantage of Virgin Galactic. And then what everyone sees, or excuse me, that's Virgin Orbit. And a Virgin Galactic is more the direct consumer, space exploration.

I like it. Look, I like it. I like where they're headed. All right.

Okay. Like they're going after tourism, bro.

Yeah, Flash. That's what sells.

That's.

That's literally Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs. Wanted to go to the direct to consumer. He didn't care about having these super cool high end commercial computing devices.

He wanted that Flash. Steve Jobs had billions of dollars worth of revenue. This company hasn't made a single dollar. They just burn money.

Steve Jobs wanted to put flashy cool products in people's hands. That's what made him a market disruptor. Richard Branson wants to get cool.

No, no, no. A market disruptor. Just because he says something stupid. That is not what a market disruptor is. A market disruptor is actually someone who disrupts the market, not who says stupid things that would, if they would come true, would disrupt the market. That's, that's different saying. This is what happens to people that compete with Elon Musk. Nikola Motors. Look at that guy.

Oh, the same thing's gonna happen to Virgin Galactic, I bet. All right, we already know that. Let's see here. So their current market cap.

Is a whopping $1.26 billion. They have a negative price to earnings ratio. That sounds great. In the high interest rate, market rate environment.

Yeah, it is 100.

It's okay. It's okay. They're burning off a bunch of shares of Lee's. Lee Park's money in the form of owners employee stock compensation. Okay, So I am going to make a bet.

Good volume recently. All right.

Good volume. Oh, brother. Okay, so my, my, my prediction.

So I believe that this stock will go up in 2023. Okay, my prediction. We need to clip this. You gotta like somehow save this. Okay, my prediction is going to be that it is going to reach $9 $10 per share by the end of this year.

Yeah, I mean, I agree with you. So I don't like, I also believe.

I also. Hey, mister. I'm gonna be very conservative. My stock portfolio. Just hold, hold your horses. Hey. Okay. I also believe that within five years this will be a penny stock or will not be listed on the stock exchange.

Yes, I, I would, I would go not listed versus penny stock. Like I think they would just. I, I don't know. I don't know.

So you're betting that in five years this company might not exist and yet you are calling a market disruptor.

I, I think I am going to get a, you know, inaugural shareholders ride.

To space and I won't use it to advertise.

Augusta. I won't. I will not wear space. I would have, I would have. But now I won't.

I won't. Oh, man. What? That's hilarious.

What do you think my total gain is percentage don't, don't let's. We don't have to talk numbers. What do you think?

My conversion. No, my.

Like my total gain is a percent, so it's obviously negative converging Galactic.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. All right, so we're not.

We're not going price. I'm not gonna follow my personal financials here.

Yeah. Okay, so I'm gonna go out in a limb if you said you bought it after the first dip. Here, let me just pull it up real quick.

So everyone's very clear in terms of virgin. Dude, you're gonna get so much flack from this on coaching calls.

Oh, I could care less, bro. I'm doing this for the people. All right.

I'm showing people losing money one dollar at a time.

Yeah.

More than people. Okay. All right, all right.

So made some great plays during COVID that I'm not out here touting and.

Saying how much money I made.

My individual count is way up.

Hey, hey, hey. You asked a question. I'm about to give you the answer. Okay. You said that.

Oh, by the way, I just wanted to be clear that Richard Branson owns less than 11, less than 12% of this company. Just want to throw that out there.

I'm aware. I'm aware of that. I knew.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. I'm not worried about that. Shareholder dilution, shareholder evolution. And they can they walk away through the investors money. That's how this works.

I'm good.

So anyways, I'm going to guess that you bought this at approximately 23 to 24, your market. Let's go a little lower because you would have bought this dip. So you're early adopter.

You got it at the top of the slide.

Okay. So I'm gonna say you. You bought in an average of $22 a share. It's currently at $4. You're gonna be down about 70. But you would have bought one like down here. You would have been a believer. So this would have brought your share price down. So your average is gonna be about 17. You're at a four. You're down about 68%.

Yeah. You're closer on that first one. I'm down about 76%.

But here's the thing. Here's the thing. Now, you know, not financial advice. I'm at a point, but I listen. I listened to some actual financial advice and I did some of my own research. They said if you're down, if. If the stock that you're extremely down in, in your portfolio is under a certain percentage, it doesn't make statistical sense to sell ever sell it. Just ride it out. So I'm at that point where I just. I'm riding it out. If it goes to zero, it goes to zero. Like it's. It's under a certain percent of my whole portfolio that statistically speaking, I should just ride it out. So that's what I'm doing. I'm just riding it out.

So because. Because you had. You were so honest with us. So much courage in showing your lowest stock performance. I have a company.

Because you did that. You have ones that are worse.

Oh, well, okay, here's the thing. Look.

Virgin Galactic is 20 now. The other 60.

I want to make this very clear. I'm not going to show my screen, but I'm looking at my individual brokerage account. My total gain way up.

I'm just giving you a hard time. I was about to say what I was about. I was trying to get somewhere with this, bro. I'm going to show you my worst performing stock.

Good.

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dude, it ain't pretty. It's not as bad as Virgin Galactic. At least there was some sort of thought that when the buying this, besides, it's bright and shiny. It goes up in the air really fast. So besides that. Besides that, this. Yeah. You're funding it. That's what you're doing. Yeah, that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Not cool. And what's really humiliating is the fact that there was a short squeeze on this. Where's a bunch of people on.

All the meme stock stuff. They bought into it and it bounced up to 40. Literally last is during Equip Expo. Oh, man. Let me get the candles here. Let me show that. Let me show you this. This is embarrassing. So if you look right.

There, there's one little line right there. In one day, it went up like 40. Yeah. And I sold like 10 or 15. I'm like, oh, it'll keep going up. Like, this is always what I was hoping for kind of thing. And then literally since then, it just slid. So I am down. I'll actually show you because. Yeah, that's just life right there. There, you can see it. Market value down 43.71. Yeah. So it was, you know that that's my worst perform. I think that's one. And here's my second worst one. Salesforce. It's not so bad. It's down 10. Down 10 since I bought it.

But that got some people, though.

Yeah, yeah. But see, I bought it. I bought it right here. Okay. And I'll lay down here and that was not good. But it has come back up. But I just, you know, they're, they're a fast growing company and in this environment that's not going to be rewarded because they're not super profitable. But you know, we live and learn. We live and learn. And so if we're going to, if we're going to talk about the wins like Tesla, we got to talk about the losses like Virgin. Exactly. And Pinterest.

I got some, I got some great ones in my portfolio that I'm never going to disclose.

Oh, oh, okay.

My personal best is still meta.

Still.

It's still Facebook.

That's good. My. Okay, here's mine. Coven. Since we are now. Now I gotta redeem myself because everyone's like, Lee's dumb. I'm never listening.

Divergent Space.

All right, here we are spending half an episode and just talking about verifying our previous non financial advice, whether or not it was valid.

My group, my best play made great returns was express spa. I don't know if you heard about them. Did you ever do this one? This is a great Covid. This is a great covenant. Yeah, no, it's like, like I'm giddy about it.

But they were a spa chain inside of airports and what they converted to was an express COVID testing site in airports. They converted the spa. I made a great coveted play. Made a lot of money.

You are. You just buy to the story of stocks. Like what was their. What was their price to earnings ratio?

Dude, no idea.

What was their market cap?

No idea. Just being honest.

That's so funny, dude.

That's so funny.

Hold on.

At the time I could have told you. I would. I could have. I'm not that dumb. At the time I could have told you, but it was kind of. It wasn't a moonstop, it was a Covid stock. And I went for it and it paid out really well because Covid everyone was freaking out and they were like, well, we're still going to travel but airlines are requiring Covid tests. Made sense.

Good thought. Oh man.

The story guy.

Do we have any not financial advice? We can wrap it up here, let you get on with your.

My non financial advice was to look at the fear and greed index and what I was going to do before we got massively sidetracked was look at when it's been historically high and when you know, basically if you would just be able to sell when everyone was, you know, greedy and buy when everything was fearful, you'd usually do pretty well. But what you got to be Careful of is there can be troughs where fear is very low and everyone is greedy. But if it goes for a long period of time, you lose out on all the games. So it's not to say you should sell during that time, but what in my opinion is you should probably, if you're going to sell, sell off the things that are high risk, low profitability, Virgin Galactic type stocks that you know in the short term are spiking during high risk environment. And you know, just purge. Purge the old stock portfolio.

Yeah, dude, that's great, great non financial advice I'm holding at this point.

Like I have no leg to stand on for not financial advice. And I also didn't prepare anything. I can't think of anything.

Since this entire thing was about stocks. Okay? And I'm not thinking one right now. So. Because we basically spend the entire show just rambling about stock market. You got to list a stock that you would recommend buying.

Okay, okay, you do.

Wait, wait, no, no. That you do not currently have in your portfolio.

Oh, okay. Well, that might take me a second. I gotta pull up my watch list.

That's awesome, dude.

Let's go.

That's so funny. Let me see, Let me see if I do.

In all portfolios.

You don't need a watch list, bro.

Oh, man. So, okay, just again, their parameters. You have not bought this stock.

It'S not in your portfolio. And yet you would say that you would buy this like with hypothetical money.

I mean, like to be 100% honest. Like, I feel like these aren't gonna be anything crazy. Like I don't have, like. Are you, are you gonna go like edges, like, are you going out to like the edges of the stock market with like wild things?

Oh, I don't even have one in my head. I don't even have on my head. I'm just saying. Okay, let's do it. Let's do it the other way around. Let's do it the other way around. This is easier. But here's a better one.

But I got one.

Any stock personally, I got one.

I'm just saying.

Okay, but we're gonna switch it up because you took so long. So you can give us that one, but then we're gonna move on. So tell us that one. Go ahead.

Right now.

Very low in terms of where. Where it could be.

So because it's low, if it can only go back by.

That's it.

Okay, okay, so now we've moved past that one because you took too long if you had to short any stock. What stock would it be?

They're down right now? I don't know. I. I was kind of thinking Disney, honestly. But they're already. They're kind of. They're trending down right now.

But past stock performance has no indication of future performance.

Yeah, I'm aware of that, but I'm also.

Just because something's down doesn't mean it's gonna go back up. Yeah. If there's certain things against the stock, like, it can't. It's not like it's gonna, like, oh, it's down 90. It's gonna come back up. It's only got one way to go.

Yeah. That's how it works. Yeah.

You would short Disney. You would short Disney. Correct. Really?

Yeah.

Okay, what's your. Why. Why give me what stories.

Are you.

Talking like a FL.