Mike Minutes Mastermind 07/18/2024

Good morning everybody. Hope you're doing amazing. Another edition in the opposite end of my Grant's Mastermind in the airport. So horrible audio typically. I apologize for that. Let's go get things kicked off.

There's no plan. Questions?

I'm sure I'm starting this before most of your text messages are going to hit me, so sorry for the a. Let's go into questions.

First question is from Matt Slakey, South Salem, Oregon. Number one, have you been in contact with the people who told you were wasting your life with my lawns? If so, how did it go? No, I have not contacted them.

I really don't care what they think anymore. So it affected me for like the first maybe two, three years as I was running the business. There was like no evidence of success.

And thinking back to like what could have should have been according to them. And so after that though I do not waste a second of a day.

Two, I've heard you mention a while ago a project in Africa, maybe starting a clinic. What are the details of what you want to do? How's it coming along? No, so I started, I started the orphanage over there, like built one. But like in terms of the clinic side, I don't think building a clinic is necessarily what I want to do. I don't to the nonprofit that I went to help with the clinics that are currently there, specifically the one to go anywhere.

But in terms of what I would like to do eventually down the road is very similar to what Zipline does.

So Zipline really got started and started kicking things off like a year or two after I left Africa. And so.

I closely follow them. But what they're kind of doing is what I would like to do and that's really focused on the, the transportation and the mobilization of the resources and medications, et cetera, to areas that are super rule. So they're already crushing it in that area. So I'm just really watching what they're doing and seeing what exactly the holes in the market are after that because by the time I can afford to do something like that, it'll probably be extremely.

Developed already in the past, even six to 12 months, they, they've made huge strides, huge strides because it's one and they secure enough funding to really actually do some good stuff. So.

I'm 100% locked in on it.

The mercy system, pretty cool. I've seen those too. I like that because then you're not tied down to a geographical location in terms of doing the clinic. So there's a few things I just have as the port to stay closer to and then we then to do something like that.

Honestly though, like there's so much to do in the US so like.

There'S so many areas that need improvement. Dylan works from Boise. I have a question for you on employees. If I have three employees doing 60 budget hours a week of mine but all are making T50, does that technically cost me the same as If I had two employers doing 60 budget average and all making T for fee? Yes, you're 100% correct in your assessment here because if they're all making PMP you're paying a percent of the labor revenue which that does not matter if you have two or three employees, it's cheaper for you to have the two employees because you have less taxes, less software subscriptions in terms of QuickBooks, profile it, etc. So yes, my thinking is that all my GOP I'm paying out the same as if I had two guys who are working full time and making people pull. The reason I ask is because the three guys I have are all fine not having full time and my plan is to try to book myself 30 ish budget hours a week of projects. I feel like it's a good spot to have all three of them mowing as long as they're hitting people who covers me for one of them is sick or when one of them eventually leaves. Just curious if there's any reason to get rid of one of them to help with profitability. Now there's definitely not massive amounts, there's incremental. But when you have three people your garden, it's much wiser to take a little bit of the loss and extra payroll tax or extra subscriptions or whatever in order to be able to have the redundancy. So if one person leaves, if you only have two employees and one person leaves, that's half your workforce. So I agree with taking a little bit, maybe less quote unquote efficiency but having the backup on the third side. So would highly recommend that.

O.

Just me being nosy. So so so feel free not to answer. Okay, how is your relationship with Patrick and what were some of the reasons for needing to own 100% of copilot? But first off, my relationship with Patrick is fantastic. I literally texted him yesterday. So that's my message with him yesterday because he wanted to know about the audiobook coming out. We text and or call at least once every couple weeks and then we text more often every month or two weeks I'll do a zoom call to stay in touch.

With Patrick not allowing certain features or it's simply just the speed at which you wanted to move. Copilot's going to require probably.

Another one to $2 million of investment. And so either he was going to get diluted or he was going to pay a percentage of of what that was. So if it needs a million, if he owns 10%, he needs to contribute 10, 100 grand.

And he's really willing to do that. He didn't want to get to get diluted either. So the cost of buying him out now will be a fraction of what the value of that equity will be. So basically what how I look at it is the money that I would have otherwise got from him contributing in as an equity partner. I'm basically buying that equity so I can give it to the C suite. From a technical perspective, I need a CPO and a cto. So both of those people are working with us now. You're gonna meet Josh next month. From the CTO perspective, Chief product officer and the technical people are the only ones. I give equity too, because they have skills that would take me like, 10 years to actually get. So I need the equity. So it's a relatively cheap cost, honestly, in terms of what it'll cost me down the road if I give that equity away. So it was a good deal for him. Need the cash he likes. He's getting the real estate a lot more. He's definitely on the eve of his career. And it's good deal for me because I can take that equity and make it as an incentive for C Suite to stay with us for 10 years, to invest over the course of time.

But, yeah, from a cash perspective, it's tough just to outlay that right now.

Yeah, in terms of our relationship, it's great. Patrick really had no say whatsoever before me buying out 100% because he was a silent partner. So he can't say anything about how fast you're moving is more a matter of investment.

So in December, January, we kind of hit break even at Copilot. And since then, I've doubled my investment into it in terms of just like team and engineers, etc. And at the same token, like, we haven't doubled our revenue base. It's stagnant standards because of the bugs. So I just knew we needed the investment. Next year's buyer power team to get us out of bugall and then continue on the roadmap.

And we're bringing everything a lot more together for the Gustin co PI and everything.

I don't want to give A piece of all of that to anybody.

Emlyn had a question about door angers had a very dispensing customer call into command center and say that she didn't want us to leave our trash at her house or even in her neighborhood, that she's on the HOA board and we're not allowed to do that. I called her to apologize for any inconvenience and she continued to tell me that I wasn't allowed to be in her neighborhood at all. The question is how do I handle that going forward? If I'm door knocking, then I'm just canvassing. But she's saying that violates the rules and that a bunch of people in the neighborhood are complaining. I have only heard her complaint from her. If she gives you the names, numbers and addresses of all the people complaining, you'll happily address those people. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it is her herself.

And that's about it. Those two are happy parties. So when people start saying other people, I immediately disqualify what they're saying.

Because if they're not willing to come forward. Chasing shadows and so something I've just had to learn the hard way over the course of last several years is just like until someone says something, I am not going to do it again because otherwise you would just constantly be chasing what people say based upon third party data. They say, oh, I heard from so and so or heard from someone. Someone is saying something like okay.

A bunch of team members, employees, they'll use that too. Like, they'll like, instead of just saying what they're thinking, they'll, they'll use like a third party to say something. And as soon as that happens, I just qualify it. If you're not willing to say what you you're thinking, I can't address you. I can't address the actual root of the issue. So you're chasing, you're chasing a ghost. And so in this case she is the ghost. She's the only person. And if there are other people, quote unquote complaining, tell them, tell her that they should address, they can contact you directly. I would definitely not stop doing door hangers over here unless it's in the bylaw with the hoa. Then I try to avoid that neighborhood or in your city or township or something like that.

Cool.

Be pressed me on it the other day. So here I'll give some more here.

We talked about in C suite unfiltered. I had said the other day I had.

Sold all my individual stocks and moved everything into ETFs and index funds. So I figured I would just tell you what I currently have. So I moved out of like my. I basically had 10 to 12 individual stocks. They had done very well. My return over the past.

Years, well past years more than doubled like over the course of the last like let's just call it, since I've been in this account like four years has been like basically a 90 return. So it's been good. However, I, I don't want to spend time looking at quarterly reports, annual reports, etc, and that's just required to beat the market because you're going to actually try to beat the market, you really know. And so it's been helpful, it's been allowed us to fund a lot of this stuff. But I'm looking for much more passive. And also there's just a lot of risk in the market right now in my opinion because everything is so inflated in terms of price. So currently I am in dt, which is Vanguard Total World Stock Index. I'm in the Schwab US Large Cap, I'm in the SPY, I'm in the Schwab US Dividend Equity ETF, I'm in the Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF and I am in the Progressive 2000 ETF. So how I kind of look at it is the quadrant. So I have mid cap. I'm sorry, I have large cap and I have small cap. So Russell 2000s like the smallest, smallest companies and large cap is like the biggest companies. So that's a good balance because a lot of times what happens is large capital popular. So especially in the past like six to eight months, that's really where all the money's been going. So the top like seven stocks have like not the majority of gains in the stock market. Russian 2000 is basically sat for the Project 2 for years. That's the smaller stocks. So like you have large cap and small stock small caps. Then I also have a distribution of dividend dividend stocks. These are much more boring companies typically that actually give back money to shareholders. And then I have also on the other hand I have something like the SPY which has a lot more growth companies inside them. So that's kind of the quadrant. I look at what goes in and out of flavor in the stock market. So growth a sudden everything will go growth, especially when streets are going to go down. That's why like the past year everyone's been pouring into growth stocks is because we expect interest rates to go back down. And so but that slip flops right. So in 2022 when everything crashed, if you were in dividend stocks, you did great. Railroads, Home Depot, MasterCard, like those like very historically usually longer term boring businesses pay dividends. There's a lot in growth. They're actually paying money back to investors. So that's, that's kind of how I look at it. Like it's like a four.

Sided square. Each of the corners have a, a weight and I'm trying to balance it to have a very, very, very balanced portfolio. So each of those six that I have, I just mentioned have six figures in them is basically kind of like the park my money but then when I need it. So for example, I capped a bunch into my own stuff before to buy out Patrick from co pilot. So I need to kind of focus on savings the next like 12 months. And so I just need to focus on earning more money and putting money aside. That's like 12 months. I know there's going to be another reinvestment. I'll need to do back into several things especially on the headquarters building in about 12 to 18 months. So that's my big focus right now this past six months. And then like obviously recently with buying out Patrick has been just a lot of outlay. Cash.

Is what it is. I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day. We'll stay in touch and on the road for the next several days. I'll be doing these intermittently and report to it. All right guys, take care.