Mike Minutes Mastermind 11/21/2024

Hello, guys, nation. Hope you're doing good. Let's get this thing kicked off. I'm noticing these texts from copilot is getting faster and faster, which is awesome. One on one texts I think are going out within like two or three seconds now. So let's go. Very cool. Sorry if I sound like I got run over by a truck.

The usual fighting. Fighting the demons this time of year. Get cold here in the Pacific Northwest. Gets windy, gets rainy. But we good, we good, we good.

All right.

Let'S jump right into some questions.

Oh, wrong one. Some people had some questions about conference. I figured I'd just recap it because there was some questions about it.

Everyone gets two tickets from Augusta Nation. That includes the Thursday Augusta event as well as the Saturday after party at.

The golf thing, whatever that is. Golf. Something blanking on the name. Let's go.

And then all. All of the landscape Summit as well. I'm sorry, Blue collar summit. Get two tickets. If you want to get a third one, feel free to just buy a ticket for two number regular one. There is a room block of 90 and we're taking up about 20 of those with our team. So there's not a ton of room inside the hotel. So that's why I was saying yesterday, if you want to get a hotel, I do it now. It is pretty expensive. It's a little bit cheaper than last year at Omni Hotel, but it's the same Hyatt kind of thing, so it's a little pricey. But we looked at like six different venues in Seattle and this one by far is like top most convenient, the best layout, etc.

So I would like to make this our host hotel in the future that we kind of stick at. You know, we can make it things a little. It's. It's easier for logistics when we have the same venue, but we'll see. Sometimes it's cool to have different venues all the time. So.

The. Yeah, the. The rooms per night are like 260 bucks, which is not cheap. But you could split with someone else from a guestination if you're just coming by yourself. So it's always an option.

So I think that's all I got in terms of conference updates. I am getting a lot of stuff prepared for it, both for the public conference but also for Augusta on Thursday. So I'm looking forward to it tremendously.

Let's get this party started. Sorry if I seem low energy. I'm just fighting stuff off. So we will be just fine and dandy. First question is from.

Eric from Largo, Florida. Hey, Mike, question. Yellow slips. I had a customer pool pump cable get sliced during a mowing visit. Mowing service. Two man crew did the service and it was likely from the mower. Should the yellow slip cost be split between the two regardless of who was on the mower for that stop? Yeah, traditionally I always default to the whole crew. That way everyone still takes ownership for the entire team. For example, if one person was brand new, they were on the mower, the other person should have been like, oh man, there's that cord we always go over. We gotta make sure we move it, for example. So I traditionally default to.

The whole team that is on the, on the, on the project or on the job.

It's in rare instances though, I'd just go after one. Especially if they're repeat offenders.

I don't want to be penalizing the team for basically the fact that I allow someone to stay on the team that is a repeat offender of yellow slopes. Because in that case that's when there's pressure just to. You need to let them go. Your responsibility to the team on P4P is that you do that. And.

If you're putting up with someone simply because you need the, the hands, you need someone to be doing the work, then I would say you should be eating the brunt of that in terms of.

Putting it at the employee instead of the entire team. But literally, I'd say 95% of the time I'm throwing it at the broader the whole team that's on the project.

But again, in the two page document, Beaver P, that's why it gives you that little bit of space in terms of the gray areas to make these sort of calls. Because sometimes if it's like complete like ignorance or blatant obvious problems with the employee, I'm going to try to tack in on them. But if it's little things like this, I'm probably going to put on the whole team because I'm imagining someone else on the team has been there before and could have been like, oh, make sure you move the cord. Or like they're, you want them watching out for each other because like your quality control in P4P is the crew's eyes and everyone else on the team. And so if you lose that because they're like, ah, he'll go over the cord. Who cares? It's off his back. Who cares? Doesn't affect me. That's when you lose a little bit of that QC quality control around the crew being on the job site.

Frankie from Northwest Raleigh Hey Mike, what do you think about AGI Artificial General Intelligence. Thanks. What do I think about it? Oh man. Yeah, like AI is. AI has been around for a long time. It got really popular two years ago because ChatGPT came out obviously like Tesla robots etc are getting more popular humanoid robots. So you know, I think, I don't actually think this is like a huge existential thing. And if you look back over the course of generations, we as humans have always feared something we that we thought was going to wipe us out. And so I'm traditionally pretty optimistic when it comes to these sort of things in terms of their use case and every single technology we thought was going to wipe us out. So we thought like if you. There was. There was a time some science was at that was Einstein, maybe I forget some smart scientist said basically if we traveled more than 35 miles per hour we would essentially eviscerate. Like our cells would just eviscerate. And so sure enough we made a car. And that hasn't happened. So I think we as humans, we like to get creative with all the ways that we could be destructed. I think it's probably in part because watching movies and sci fi stuff we get creative with how are we going to get wiped out instead of just like how do we take this technology and use it for the good? And yes, eventually, maybe one day I'll be wrong and we'll be wiped out. But until then I want to live my life to the fullest, so I'm not going to be worried about those sort of things. Generally my ethos, whether or not you care. Hutch from North Carolina. We got ourselves a big one great interview with Liz the other day about all the people you've believed in and help succeed. I agree many may have become a success regardless. However, you seem to have the ability to really unlock it and pull greatness out of people quickly. I think it has a lot to do with you being inspirational and seeing what you've been able to build so quickly in life. The context of success can help your encouragements and beliefs make a bigger impact. However, no doubt you're a magnet for talent. What other traits or personal life practices do you think have help find?

What other traits or personal life practices do you think have helped find talent and unlock it?

Okay, I'll keep reading. What do you think the ratio of great talent is? If you had to ballpark how many people have you employed versus the maybe 20 to 30 high performers tips to become a magnet for those starting in entrepreneurship With a shorter track record, is it safe to assume it compounds over time, more money and better culture increases the ratio of high performers wanting to join the company.

So there's a few things I think about here.

Well, first off, thank you for. Thank you compliment. I appreciate it.

I don't think about this a lot. I just. I think so many times when we start thinking about this, we start to contrive some sort of. I don't know what to call it. I don't know what an alter ego is essentially. So let me not use that word. We contrive some sort of, like, other Persona. And so I just realized that, like, being me will always, like, say, tried and true. And so, like, there are times I might have to apologize for the way I come across.

Because I'm like, I'm super passionate about something and I come across wrong. But, like, I try to stick to just being me and then doing the work on myself outside of work to make sure that, like, that version of me is contiguous with what I want to be portrayed as. Because if you try to contrive being inspirational, you will look like an absolute jerk. If you could. If you try to. If you try to.

You know, have this different Persona, it's really, really bad for talent acquisition. Great people will sniff through it, average people will be attracted to it, and then you'll realize down the road, they're average. So I just generally believe when it comes to, like, talent acquisition or talent attraction, it's like, be yourself and let your track record speak for itself. And then the people that take a risk on you is the ones you want to keep close to you. So when there's greater.

When there is a track record of success and there's more evidence of success, it's easier for someone to join the company.

And so when there is no track record of success or more so when you actually are, you have a losing record for someone to join the team. To me, that means a lot more in terms of, like.

What happens down the road, in terms of benefits and.

Like, equity and things like that. So this is if you listen to the podcast with Lee, yet it came out today. We talked about this a ton. It's the first time I've ever talked about it. Because.

With the plan of going public down the road, you know, you have to start thinking about that Internet talent acquisition. We have to try to bring on very, very talented people. It's like, yes, giving away equity helps, but, like, what you're talking about here is actually the. Probably the harder part that is like intangible. I don't know how to give feedback on this. And that is like, you need to have a vision big enough for everyone else's dreams to fit inside of it. And so engineers many times are attracted to big problems that they feel like they can solve. They like difficult things. They don't like mundane. They don't want to just like be a pencil pusher. And if they do, they're going to be compensated very heavily for it. So for example, like Facebook and Google, even Twitter a couple years ago, you know, once Elon came in and cut out 85% of their staff, it still operated. What that means is that 85% of staff was there getting paid very heavily to basically push pixels and do very monotonous work. And so I never want to be an organization like that. I would rather be getting stuff done and attracting the people that can actually do that. Is either a like, like expensive in way because you usually have to like protect their downside from whatever position they currently have that is well paying. But then also you, if you, if you want like grade A, you got someone who's, who's a savage and like the money is there, cool. But they see the vision and they want like a piece of it. And so.

Like we have like, obviously most of you know Josh, he came over a few months full time, but he'd worked with us for about six months at Copilot. But we have other people like that are in the pipeline that have worked with us for a few months, etc. And like next year probably one will become our CTO that have like extreme levels of experience that I would never have dreamed of being able to get. Like someone who has gone through a startup all the way to going IPO with a public company.

That. And then they were a technical leader in there, in that company. So like attracting that like, I don't, I don't think you can, I don't think you can drive it. I don't think you can.

Like put this on. I really don't like anyone smart sniffs it out. And so I've just tried to be myself. And.

That leads to. Sometimes I do get agitated and I'll show it. And then sometimes I be like, hey, sorry, I don't mean to be agitated. I'm just like, I'm just trying to share what I'm thinking, but it's because I care a lot. And so I think that comes across and I used to try to hedge in that regard in terms of like a little bit more about Who I was and what I was thinking, I was like, oh, I've got to, like, have this different Persona. I just be yourself. And if you actually care about your team, you actually care about the industry, you actually care about the people your customers, like, it'll show. And I think that is extremely attractive to people that can actually sniff out people who are.

Fakes. And there are so many of them. So.

Thanks.

Yeah. And for the people that join you and they stick with you for the long term, and you have no evidence of success, that's when I would. You know, you just. You give them a lot more grace. You willing to coach them, you're willing to reward them more down the road. So it's like the first 10 owners inside of Augusta, like, I will fly them out when we ipo, and they will be part of the whole process.

Because, like, there was no reason to join. None. Zero. None. There was no evidence that I was even going to take care of people or that we were going to grow or that we were going to add all the stuff we have. Like, there was none. So, like, to me, anyone that does that in the organization gets a lot more credit versus someone who joins later on once there is evidence of success, once there is a track record and there's a very clear path to success. And I'm not talking about owners there. I'm talking about internal team members in that case.

And so when someone joins, like Copilot, for example, when we're in the middle of bug hell and there is no evidence and everything's very, very negative, and everyone's saying negative things about us, I am going to, like, I remember that. I'm like, I'm not an idiot. And why did they join? That's. That's tough, man. I'm trying to. I'm trying to answer your question here. What do you think the. The ratio of great talent is?

You're lucky if you're 1%. If you had to ballpark, how many people have you employed versus maybe top 23rd. I don't know how he's total. It's. It's like hundreds and hundreds. Um, so it's a lot tips to become a magnet for those starting an entrepreneur with a shorter track record. Get really clear on your vision. Um, the reason we've been able to attract some people at Copilot the last few months, and then, like, we'll come. You'll. Everyone will hear about it next year, but they're already on the team.

Is because, like, I got very clear on the vision and so it's like, okay, so we have the media, we have the franchise, we have software. Those three things will combine. We'll need a ton of money to be able to go into robotics and, and we'll IPO to be able to raise that, those that money. And we'll have an infrastructure no one else can replicate in terms of distribution because of all the network of Augusta Nation. We will have the software to be able to run all of the backend infrastructure and we will have Command center to be able to operate the robotics. So that gets really interesting for people that like wanted to solve big problems. And there's a lot of people that have the technology already in terms of like robotic mowers and they have not been able to figure out the distribution part and they haven't been able to figure out how do we operate these things. And so if I can be patient for the next five to 10 years and build the infrastructure required for the distribution, that is more locations and then the backend infrastructure for Command center, be able to operate these remotely for your team. So when they're out in the field they call into Command center, they do the first pass using the lidar and then that robot's good to go on that address, for example.

I think they'll be special and I think then we can have like a real impact on the industry. And like that's all I really care about. So I don't know how to answer this stuff. Sorry. Is it safe to assume it compounds over time? Yeah, like the greater you have, the greater.

Probability of success that you're going to be attract better people. Because.

I shouldn't say better people, I should say you're going to attract a better employee. Because if someone has more of a founder mindset or as entrepreneurial, not an entrepreneur, but their entrepreneurial.

They'Ll be attracted to you. If you just have a big enough vision and there's big problems to solve.

And if you're, if you're growing quickly, it helps if there's room for opportunity of growth. If you have a trajectory of growth that is appealing to them in terms of them gaining more skills, them being able to have a better title, et cetera, more money and better culture increases the ratio of high performers wanting to join the company. I don't know if this is true. I think if you have more money it almost can dilute the talent pool. Because if the probability of success is so high, you will attract really great employees. But will you attract the people that are going to come in and move and Shake and get stuff done and work overtime, work on the weekends, work all night long on a problem. I don't think so. And this is. I just seen too many cultures where there is so much money, it's so frothy.

And money is so abundant and everyone's just jostling for more budget and more direct reports and innovation stalls out. And so I believe that having people that believe in the mission and having a vision so big that their goals and dreams fit inside of it will cause individuals to be able to want to do more. And that's when you get discretionary effort, which is effort that must not be expended to keep their job, but is in excess of that because they believe in the mission and they want to solve the problem. And so when you scale, there's more and more problems you have. You have to get really diligent about which problems you're going to solve. And then you have to constantly prioritize which of these problems, once solved, will get me close to my vision and goal and will that be done in a time horizon that is attractive enough to the team for them to be retained. So this is why I start multiple locations is my GMs. This is why I sell my locations to my GMs. It is simply for other people to see, oh, like he is going to invest in getting that stage of their career. This is not just a pipe dream. This is not something I'm just talking about. I actually do it. And so your track record to your team is the thing that will attract great talent because they will talk to the incoming team members and their testimonial of what you've done in the past will be the thing that either A blocks or B creases the way to discretionary effort. And so if you have a track record of taking entry level people and making them managers or owning their own location or partnering up with them, you will succeed. Because the person that joins the company that's 20 years old and has huge amounts of talent and potential would otherwise move on within six months. But because they see that you actually have a tracker of investing in people and actually get in the next stage of their career and and allowing them to become managers or estimates and training them up, they'll stick around for a year and in that year they get hooked and then they say, okay, I'm going to do the 3F program. So you get another year out of them and that, that otherwise that great grade A talent would have gone to college and gone to something else or gone to A different industry that was, quote, unquote, better after six months, but you were able to keep them for two years, they were then able to move up. And then you use that person every single time as an example of what you make small talent into. And so if you're like, hey, this person, here's why they won, here's why they moved on. And so you guys kind of know my five or ten people I always talk about, and I think some of them Connor's mentioning from the podcast that I'd had with Liz on her channel the other day, those are like, my core people that I always could point to. So if someone joins the company and I think they're completely overqualified, or they're joining in a massive risk to their personal career, or they're taking a haircut on pay in order to take a risk with me and my vision, I have, I have evidence because I have people that I have invested in the past and they have gone and done better things. They make more money either inside the company or outside the company. And so just improve that track record, I would say, and then have a vision so big that other people's dreams and goals fit inside of it. If you do that and you just are yourself, stop trying to be a fake.

And look, if you're not, if you're trying to be yourself, some people won't like it.

But, like, you can always be yourself. You don't have to put on anything, you don't have to lie, you don't have to cheat, you don't have to, like, try to be something you're not. It's inconsistent and people can smell it out. Great people can. And so if you want to attract average people, have like some facade on and they won't be exposed, you will be exposed down the road because you've. You've gotten someone that is vastly inadequate for their position. And so, yeah, that's my two cents. Got off a long tangent. Anyways, hope that answers your question, Connor. I know there's a little bit of gray area. Love you all. Hope you have a fantastic day. I do recommend listening to the C Suite unfiltered. It was kind of a cool podcast. Talked about Jaguar and that they're going changing their brand. And then we talked about equity splits and all that stuff. I was up late last night doing financial statements. We're trying to get valuations for all the businesses so that we can start to actually have some sort of value when we are trying to attract engineers. So we're trying to hire two more of them right now. So that's the goal. All right. Anyways, love you guys. Take care.