Mike Owns EVERYTHING - Episode 068

Welcome back.

We haven't talked in a long time.

I know.

Since last time we've given projections like so much has happened.

We've had a lot of things, both professionally and personally.

Yeah. Yeah. You had a baby.

I had a baby, yes. So personal announcement. Yeah.

Also called, and I completely called the fact that it started with an E. I just wanted to point that out.

Yeah, I appreciate it. So, yeah, my wife and I had an Ernie James time of recording only five days ago. So very fresh. But I wanted to come into the office and hang out for a little bit, get some work done, do the pod. Thankfully my in laws are in town, so they're helping my wife with the baby and I could sneak away and see you and see the team and. Yeah, sanity back.

Yeah.

A little normalcy.

Anyways. Yeah. Back in the office, lot has happened in the last couple of weeks, so there's so many different directions we could go. But yeah, I wanted to give the personal update. My not financial advice, of course, is now going to be parenting advice.

What type of stroller to have got a new SUV now.

Yeah, yeah, that's true. Yeah. We're making lots of changes, but there's lots of different ways we could go. We could go business kind of updates. Maybe for you. We could go questions from the people or we have to talk about it. A little bit of politics.

Okay. Okay.

So where would you like to go? Where would you like to do the.

Politics segment at the end so everyone tune out.

Do you want to do.

Well, before we get into that? So, okay, the past week, you got to give me like, was there ever a moment where you're like, like the, the aura and like all of it, like, sunk in or was it just like another day in the office? Ernie comes along and we're rocking it.

Yeah, it's a really good question. I think the part of our. Or my wife's pregnancy and preparing. We, we, my wife and I have kind of two extremes. But, but it's. It's a very good thing. It works for our marriage. And I've said this to you about kind of how I operate as well as an employee of yours. I do really good with really aggressive, like, rigidity and preparation or I do great when there's no guardrails and I just get to figure it out. So with the actual, like prep for the baby, we were over here. Everything was prepared. It was rigid like the crib, the car seat, the. You name it, like the plans. Everything was like, so rigid once the actual, like delivery came. Yeah, we Went this way, though. We were like, hey, let's just roll with it. Like, whatever she needs, whatever's happening, we're gonna roll with it. So all that's to say, to answer the question, I think it hit me probably, like, an hour after my wife gave birth. It was just like, whoa, like, he's here. Like, we have a baby. I'm a dad now. So that hit me. And then each day, it's just become more normalized without losing, like, obviously the love and the emotional side of it, but we're just kind of going through it. Like, the first night was horrible. Like, we didn't sleep at all. He cried all night. Like, you can't figure it. We're trying to figure out how to console him because we're new parents, but, like, each night has progressively gotten better because, okay, this works. This. This didn't work. This works. This didn't work. So there's an element of normaly, but I don't think that, like, the initial, like, positive shock will ever wear off, because it's like, whoa. Like, I have a kid now. I have such a responsibility to this kid. I have to raise him right. I have to train him. I have to protect him. I have to protect my wife. Like, there's a lot hits you all at once, but it's a very cool experience.

Okay, so when did you know you were ready to be a dad?

Did that ever happen?

Yeah, I don't think, like, this is cliche, but I don't think anyone is ever, like, ready to be a parent. Of course. Just, like, you know.

Okay, when were you okay with taking the risk? Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, right. Like, as dumb as it sounds, I think people do need to be responsible about how they, you know, plan to have children, if you will. We wanted my wife to make sure she was finished with college, which she was. At this time, I knew that I had a career at Augusta, so that. That once. That was, like, legitimized. That was in, like, kind of our first year of marriage. I was like, hey, like, this is a real opportun opportunity. I think I'm gonna stick around here. It's like, great. Okay. I have a career. She's finished with college. And then we felt like, you know, for us, obviously, we're Christians. We were like, it'll be in God's timing. And that's how we operated. It was like, hey, those are the things we need. I need a secure job. She needs to finish college, and then we're rolling with it.

Cool. Let's go. Good.

Stuff, so you'll never be ready to be a parent. I think the more you can prepare, communicate with your partner about like, the timeline and what you want it to look like and maybe set a couple of these things should be taken care of before we have a kid and then after that, just roll with it. And that's what we did.

Good job.

So be ready for lots of parenting.

All right, well, we'll jump into more business stuff. Thank you for those that indulged in parenting, but if you, you know, if you don't like it, you can skip through it. You've had a lot of updates, so I'll jump straight into this one. Is this a new update to Augusta Nation? I asked you before we hit record if you'd be willing to share publicly. Copilot now has no other owners. You are the sole owner, so you were the majority owner. So it's not like anyone else had control over you. You were the majority owner, but now you are the outright 100% owner of Copilot. Why are we doing this?

Yeah, it's just a matter of like, there are certain things I wanted to do with all the companies that required a lot more intermingling, not necessarily of funds, but of like, leadership. And so to make it most simple for compensation plans, profit sharing, etc. It was just easiest to be able to combine stuff. So, yeah, like I own 60% from day one, then I bought out 30% more, so I own 90%. And then he was a silent partner, so we really, like, he did nothing in the business. But yeah, it just become abundantly clear in the past, like, month as I've made like the ten year plan very clear that like, I cannot have any other equity partners, at least right now. And so, yeah, I just have to clear off the deck and cough up a bunch of money. So, yeah, it's not easy. Like, it's. The company still loses money and we're growing quickly, but, like, that's part of the game.

Yeah. So would you say it is more. It's probably a combination of both. But would you say that you acquiring 100% of copilot is more for speed to get to. You mentioned a 10 year goal. Like you need to get to a goal in 10 years and we can do that faster if I am the sole owner or is it for congruity with your other businesses?

Definitely congruent. Like just the. Is that even a word, congruence? Yeah, I think it's congruency, but I'll go with congruity. It Sounds cool.

Yeah, it's a real word.

It's a real word. All right, we got congruity all over it.

Let's go.

Look, man, I'd say it's that one like the speed part because he was a silent partner. It really didn't do anything but like I wanted to like do certain things like with like the legal entity formation and then having things more combined, sharing developers between different softwares, et cetera and. And then also like making some big hires that are going to have equity in the company and being able to do that, you know, my full discretion.

Yeah. So this is obviously like high level. I still want this to be valuable for those listening and maybe they are, you know, the owner, operator, they're one business. But you did announce to your leadership team of Augusta, of which I'm a part of, that you were hiring a pretty high level kind of VP C suite type person for copilot, but that person would also of have that integration with a little bit of P4P with Augusta. So do you think that, that I. I guess I'm trying to like bring it down a level from like multi million dollar businesses to like small business. Do you think that, you know, business owners should potentially maybe hire someone that has like a complimentary skill set to help their existing team? Because the skills that this person has, when you told us who it was, obviously I LinkedIn stalked him. I wanted to learn more about him. Like he has skills that I don't have and I probably have skills he doesn't have. So is that like the main goal of hiring someone like that is strictly for the skills you don't have? I don't have to fill in those gaps, I guess.

Yeah, it's the skills that I don't have and would take too long to learn. And so, you know, I'm not going to take five to 10 years to learn a lot of these technical aspects that someone else has spent time doing themselves. And so when you pay someone a certain salary, not necessarily paying them for the experience they, the job that they're doing today, you're paying for them. The fact that they've done five, 10 to 20 years of experience doing that thing, and now that's what you're getting all that experience rolled up into this salary. And so, you know, there's skill deficits that I have on the technical side that just become glaringly obvious. And we've tried to hire a lot of those things out. We try to have like consultants or contractors, et cetera, but ultimately I need someone has skin in the game, is in it for the really long term, and they actually have skin in all entities because I want them to be able to be married together. So well. And so, yeah, we have one person that's coming on in August and then we're going to be looking for another one at a very high level that will join like the C suite over the next like six to 12 months. Yeah.

And I appreciate that you are almost practicing what you preach because you were saying there was a deficiency and I hired out for it to ultimately save me time, provide me more security and take something off my shoulders that I don't need right now. That's also partially the approach to franchising. Right. You are buying time, you are buying systems, you're buying resources so you don't have to figure it out so, so that you can have an accelerated growth rate for your company. So I like that you practice what you preach. You basically are hiring a person. You're not joining a franchise, but you're hiring a person that has all this industry knowledge that you don't have. And I appreciate that you're not just saying like, oh, we're gonna figure it out, or you're just going to sell off portions of the company. You are going to practice what you preach.

Essentially, yeah. When we talk about labor and then we talk about a manager and we talk about architect in terms of the size of business, like, once you go into architect mode, it really does become about who you're hiring. Because if you, if you're, you know, a couple million dollars in revenue, it is a 100% based on, like, who are you hiring for general manager, regional manager, salesperson, like, it all comes down to who you're hiring. And so when I've gone around like really successful people, I just find that the only thing they question when you're starting like a new department or a new business is like, well, who, like, who's going to do that? Like, and what skills do they have? Like, did they have they done this for 20 years? Because if so, there's a good chance they're going to do a good job. And like, is there a track record? And so the thing is, you can't afford those people many times when you're smaller. And so that's why, like at the manager stage or even the labor stage of growing a business, like under 800,000, you cannot afford someone that has five or 10 years experience. Like, even the person we're hiring right now, even a year ago, I would never been afforded them like, they would have been more than all my tax return. Yeah. Like, it's insane. And so. But I know that, like, as you get to that level where you can afford it, as the architect of the business, is your job to be looking for, like, stresses in the business and then reinforcing it and then, like, looking for deficiencies and then being able to have backups? Like, so, you know, the deficiencies were very clear that earlier this year, in terms of Copilot, like, my technical experience, because I just don't have it.

Yeah.

So it's either a, do I spend the next five to ten years grinding my gears or trying to learn myself, or do I just go out and hire it? And so at this level, as an architect, you shouldn't be stepping in and doing things. You should be stepping back and hiring the right person.

So, yeah, no, that makes total sense. So with, you know, Copilot, P4P, Augusta Law, Care Media, the Media side of things, everything that you have going on, you said you. You put some projections out there. Now, we don't have to talk about these publicly by any means, but what would you say is your reasoning for giving out projections to your team? So this was. Was this. Was this information given to all of your employees, or was it just, like, leadership teams? But I guess first clarify, you know, why you gave us those projections and secondarily, who is it or who is it for and why did you give those projections?

Yeah, so I would refer everyone to the video I made this past week, literally yesterday, so Tuesday, I've changed the tag like, 10 times. I was doing so badly on YouTube. But I think it's like, right now, it's like, how to win at business or something like that. But it's basically what to do once you've passed the architect stage. So passed a million dollars in revenue. And, like, what are you supposed to focus on? And one of those things is, you know, actually giving projections and benchmarks. And so it's like, when you talk about vision or the mission of the company, I've been pretty clear about that. And you're like, the finish line. But then when you're running a race, people want to know what the mile markers are so they can pace themselves, so they can know, like, how close am I? Am I ahead? Am I behind? And be able to then, like, track their success. And so the reason that I've done it recently and I made it more clear in that video is, like, as a team member inside the organization, they don't necessarily see the brand vision Every single day that I see, like, I get to see all aspects of the businesses and where we're going and where we're at, etc. And so when I don't like give projections and I haven't like say for example with locations number at Augusta, I've never, we never had a location target. And in part because like, I know everything's working. I just know it's all kind of coming together. But like, as a team member, they don't see that. They just see every day them feeling like they do the exact same thing all the time. And that, that piece of the pie is very important. That piece of the company is important to keep doing the boring work for those two, three, four years where it does seem like nothing changes. But in the grand scheme of things, a lot of things are happening. And so I want to make it clear to first, the person that is grinding and in like the boring work mode for the next two to four or five years and you just need to do more of what they're currently doing, they can understand that there is progress being. And then for the person that wants to know, like, where, like I want to, I want to feel successful. I don't want to feel like we're always, I'm always just go, go, go, like where am I actually being successful compared to some sort of benchmark.

Yeah.

And so giving that clarity, I think is. Is mostly important for the team. Like, it's not going to change my behavior a whole lot, but it definitely will get everyone on the team to know, okay, are we winning? Are we, are we ahead? Are we behind? And then have something to shoot for.

Yeah. And I think it's important that you are demonstrating to your frontline employees that we will always celebrate growth. But I need to bring you into that growth if you have had the same position for say two to five years. Right. Kind of just doing that boring work. The grind over and over. We are doing growth. Your work is important. Even though it stayed the same. The growth is happening and I want you to be a part of it. I think you're kind of bringing them into it. You see these companies and I don't know if you ever watched the, the Apple plus Apple TV show on We Work, the like dramatization of We Work.

Maybe I did. This is a couple of years ago.

Two or three years ago.

I might have watched.

It's called We Crashed.

But yes, I was thinking like, I think someone took it off and put it on YouTube. I watch it there.

Nice. So I'm you're almost like the foil to that story where Adam Neumann was able to rally all those people around him because the growth was so obvious. Little did they know they were leveraging everything they had, as well as doing many illegal things behind the scenes to make these deals happen. But all his employees could rally around the fact that, like, we have cool office buildings and we're growing like crazy and we're having this huge impact and you're saying, hey, we're doing a lot of boring work. And I know for the next two to five years your office isn't going to change your position, might not change, your compensation will hopefully go up, but it's not going to be drastic. But let me bring you into the real work that's being done, because this is what's going to create growth long term. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Like, the thing that I really like about going public, honestly, is you. Now everything becomes in the plane and in the open, and you can tell usually in the first, like two to three months of a stock going public. What was it? How was it being ran as a private company? Right. So, like, when we work was about to go public, they literally crashed because all of a sudden all these numbers came out. I was like, oh, my word. These guys, like, are running. This is not. This is not a tech company. This is a real estate play. And this is worth like 4 or 5% of what they're saying. Yeah. And so. And then all like, the stuff about him, like, my goal is to be able to be the company that when they go public, it's like, oh, my word. This company is, like, way underrated. And like, there's like, real enterprise value here, like this solid fundamentals and leadership. And like, then it just takes off. So, like, like, even my projections, I know that, like, the projection I gave in terms, like, our valuation when we go public is like, it could be. It could be way more.

Yeah.

But I was just trying to be conservative.

Fair enough. Yeah.

The.

We crashed is. Yeah. If you. If you did watch it, I feel like you'd remember it is a wild story.

It's crazy.

Everything comes.

I've watched a few videos about. We were. Because it's a very good case.

Yeah. Yeah. Because like, you. I guess you could just watch like the, you know, the. The news article, videos, types, even the.

Art, even the book is good. There's a really good book on. We work too.

Yeah. So we're just trying to do the opposite of that.

Yeah, exactly.

Like hyper growth, but with real results. Like, hyper growth on boring work with real results.

Yeah.

Cool. Well, we are going to switch it up. We're going to go to some questions from the audience here. If you comment, we will always try to get to your question, you know, if we think it provides value to many listeners. So this is from Aylor Hansen. 1, 2, 3. He said we're opening a satellite location that corporate, that's corporate owned. What's the ideal pay structure for a working GM? I currently have a $1.5 million lawn slash pest business. I'm really interested to know how you would structure that. Currently we pay P4P with our techs and they make great money. I would like to take one of our current techs, plug them into a new location as a working GM but obviously P4P is going to be trash in a new location until routes are built up. Do you recommend having a larger base pay with no P4P but have bonuses off revenue goals or are you sticking with P4P with just a large revenue split in the beginning and heavy bonuses for sales slash growth?

Yeah. So first thing is I would say don't just start them in a new location. So I would try if, unless, unless this is like an hour plus away in terms of a drive, I would try to grow into that area so that when they did join and start that or start start up that area that they already had like a solid route.

Mm.

So I'd try to be shooting for at least, at least 30 to 40 budget hours on the schedule before you even start if possible and if not have a marketing budget that could ramp to that very quickly. And then secondly, I would say for a working gm, I put them in salary if they're out in the field and in the office like and it's like always back and forth because it gets too difficult on PvP and then they can game the system and you don't want them to like they do need to do hiring, they do need to do like other managerial tasks. And so I just want most of their incentive around either profit sharing or revenue growth. And so yeah, for working GM I typically will put them on salary.

Yeah. And I would also just speak from the employee side is potentially have a sit down conversation with them and see what they want. Right. Just be candid. Like hey, I think you're, you're great. I think I see a lot of potential in you and I think you can really grow in the company with me and I'd love for you to be around for a couple of years. What does it look like, for you, what would you want out of this? And then maybe you'll find that they have different aspirations than you initially thought, and you can work with that, and maybe you can kind of manipulate their pay package to hopefully make them feel incentivized for the work that they. That they have to do, but also pursue the. Pursue the work that they want to do with this opportunity. So have that candid conversation. I think it's important. That's what you and I had a lot early in my career with Augusto is we would just sit down and be like, well, what do you want? I think you can fit into this role. What does that look like to you? Right. We just had those conversations. And I think that not only helped me feel rewarded as an employee, but I'm sure helped you realize, okay, this is what he wants, but this is also what the business needs.

Cool.

All right. This is another fun question. This is from at All Ashore. How do you politely and professionally decline service to a customer that you have are. That you're already going to tell is a headache? Before the estimate.

Before the estimate.

Before the estimate. But let's ask that question. But then let's also do the. How do you cancel a customer that you've already been doing service for? So let's answer this one first before the estimate. How do you handle that?

Well, it depends, like, how. How desperate you are for work. If you're desperate for work, you might put up with and just increase the price. If you are, you know, fat and happy and you have plenty of work coming in, you're probably going to be like, hey, look, we're booked out for, like, 12 months. Sorry, you're not going to get in. Maybe next season we can help you. And then just try to get rid of them that way. If you already have them doing. Doing service for you, then usually I just say increase their price to the point where they do leave, because at a certain price level, you will put up with their headache. And so I would just jack their price up until they leave. Probably some people say it's bad because then they can go leave a negative review. But I rather do that than tell them, like, I'm not gonna serve you. And then they go out and say some stupid. Like, they're discriminating against me because whatever. Like, yeah, insert whatever you want there. Yeah. Because I have, like, facial hair. Like, you could just literally put it in whatever you want, and then, you know, it's just as bad.

Yeah. I mean, I was once accused of elder abuse as one of Your managers. Let's go. Because. Because the. The daughter who was taking care of her parents property. Right. It was her elderly parents property.

Yeah, yeah.

We were providing services. The daughter was upset about some stuff. She screamed, yelled, swore, everything you can imagine at our team and staff. I said, that's not okay. We're no longer servicing you. Then I was accused of elder abuse. It was very fun. So, yeah, you just, you just be.

It's been exposed, bro.

Yeah. So, yeah, I agree with Mike that like, you just jack up the prices or sometimes like in those cases, it's just like, we're no longer serving.

Yeah.

Like, you know, it was period done. Block the number, block the email, send the final invoice, charge the card. Like in that case, when like they're swearing and yelling and accusing me of elder abuse, like all this stuff, you're just like, okay, like, we're done servicing you. Here's your bill. See you later.

Right. And you.

And the second half of this question. I apologize, I forgot to read it. He said, I provide a unique service and I can't really refer another company. Typically, if you have a good relationship with another company, you don't want to refer a bad customer. So that person who accused me of elderly abuse definitely didn't get a referral because I don't want them to go to another company that we have a good relationship with and annoy them and say the same things.

Yeah, that person sounds like we're like a pretty bad person, though, versus, like, it sounds like they're more like they're just more of a headache. Yeah. Because the headache. Because like some of the worst customer, honestly sometimes is the one who's nice but like, way overly picky.

Yeah.

And you're like, I don't want to be mean to them. I don't want to raise their price. I don't want to like, tell them I can't service them because they're nice. But there's just like unrealistic expectations of what this job is going to look like. And that's sometimes the hardest ones to deal with.

I'm thinking of. I'm obviously not going to say the name. I'm thinking of a longtime customer. We had corner lot in a certain gated community up here. Did a lot of work for.

Augusta. That's right.

You're good in Birch Fair.

Yeah.

Oh, man.

Anyway, I don't tell you after, but she was great. But it was. She paid us a lot of money, but very particular kind of a headache. And I specifically remember, like, we Just slowly increased prices on her over and over and over. And, you know, we started to make a lot of money off her and the headache was worth it after a while, so. All right, cool. Well, those were a couple of questions. If you have more questions, feel free to put them in the comments. All right, I do want to ask. We had the presidential debate. If you don't like Lee talking about politics, turn off the phone. This is where you drop off unsubscribe.

But, I mean, I'd be remiss if we didn't talk about it.

The comedy. The Comedy Central, and we're a few.

Days late, so we're. The algorithm already is not going to reward this content. But I do want to know your thoughts.

Yeah.

Did you see any of the viral clips of the presidential debate? Did you watch any of it? What were some of your takeaways? Any thoughts?

Yeah, I watched the whole thing. Oh, it's the whole thing. Like, I don't. I didn't watch any of the commentary. Like, my thought on this one is I'm going to watch the two debates and that's basically it.

If there's a second one at this point.

Yeah, well, it might be someone new. It could be really interesting.

So I'm not really listening to commentary, so I'm. I'm a little bit out of the loop on that. But, like, I watched the debate and I made my own decisions on that.

What were your decisions?

Like, I want decisions as much as my opinions. Yeah.

Thoughts.

Yeah, my thoughts and opinions.

Thoughts.

We need to have a max age for the president, dude. Just in general, I really like the way that they turned off each other's microphones. At first I thought that was gonna be really bad thing and, like, silencing people. Like, I'm a huge fan of that, but, like, it was good. And then no audience. I hate people clapping. Like, if I was the president, United States, no clapping at the State of the Union. Like, shut up and let me talk.

I can bring this thing down 20 to 30% in time.

So much more efficient, bro. But yeah, like, like, not having the cheering and the wooing and the blah, blah, blah of the crowd allows you to actually focus on the thing that matters. And that's their policy. Yes. Although they didn't really talk much about that. They threw stones about their golf game. What in the world? But, like, in general, the concept was good. Like, get the audience out of it and, like, get arguing out of it and, like, let's focus on what their policies are. And so one headline I did see that, like just grinded my gears though, was like they referred to the existing president, Joe Biden, as the 10am to 4pm President. I was like, no, no, that's rough. No, he's not even full. I know our part time. He's a little stand in contract worker, you know, I'm like, oh man.

Yeah, I, I will summarize my thoughts by quoting the great David Freeberg. So I listen to the all in podcast.

I did listen to that. So that's like the. I didn't get.

So, yeah, so they did a whole breakdown on it. An exhaustive breakdown from a lot of different angles. Right. You have, you have more moderate to conservative to more liberal to David Friedrich who's like, I abstain. I hate politics. It's stupid. But he basically said the loser of the debate was the American people. He said our president looked weak whether you love him or hate him. Like, our president looked like a sham. It looked like a farce. So that makes us as Americans look weak and on the national stage we look bad. And then our only opponent to him on stage is someone who's, whether you agree with it or not, a convicted felon is very divisive. And other countries see that and they're like, okay, so you either get this guy who's basically can't putting, can't put full sentences together or you get this guy who is polarizing and a convicted felon.

Yeah.

Like, yeah, America doesn't look so great after the debate. So that's my frustration with it. I hate the like two party system. I hate where like our democracy has gone because these are not our best options for president in the U.S. we all know it. Like, it's so dumb that we have to say it out loud, but we all know it.

So yeah, I did. It just, it's just brutal. Like it. There's so many good people. Both of us know that would be better options. And it's like we aren't even anybody like special. It's like, so that's the part that's hard. But then also like, who in their right mind would actually run for office? Like you have to be so either like drunk on ego or you have to be like you have or just a straight faced liar. And that's like most of the time there's a nice blend of those two things that go into politics, which is so sad. Yeah. And I don't know how to fix that necessarily. There's, there's things like age limits that would be helpful, I think, but like, you know, the fact that you can, you can.

Do the politicking and like pay people off and all this, the garbage. And like, people who go to the White House typically then go to like work for hedge funds or they go work for oil companies and stuff like that. It just like, I don't know how to like, fix the problem, but it's definitely like, if I was a, an enemy of the United States, like the next six months, dude, I would be cashing in. Oh, yeah, this would be the, the time. Like, so that's a little bit scary, I think.

And so, yeah, you can, you can spit out so much propaganda right now. There's so much uncertainty in the US that you can really control the narrative in your own country.

Yeah, right.

And put out whatever little clips you want. I mean, shoot, you got, you know, three or four extremely viral Joe Biden bluffs or not bluffs.

Gaffs.

Gaffs. Thank you. Gaffes during that debate. Like, you spread those on all your social media and make sure if you're an enemy of the US look how weak America is this, that and the other. Yeah, like, it doesn't, it's not looking good. So, yeah, definitely a bummer. That is definitely a bummer of a debate. So I do think the format to go back to what you were saying, I was initially not a fan of how, like, controlled it was going to feel.

Right.

But I did actually, like, the mic's off. Yeah, I thought that's actually a nice touch. And I get that people will say, well, they did it because Joe Biden can't respond quickly and, you know, Trump would have destroyed him. Okay, sure, if you believe that, that's fine. I tend generally lean that way as well. However, I think it creates better discourse. Like, hey, let him finish his point. He has two minutes. Like, let's not get sidetracked. So I actually like it more than I thought.

Ultimately, someone's ability to debate doesn't actually determine their ability to be able to do the job well. Right. Like, some people interview really poorly and they are extremely good at their job. And so I take that with a grain of salt too. But like the ability to take out the audience, like, if you're doing interviews for a job, right, and you have this audience and some people are booing you and cheering you like, it just like throws too many elements that are not actually going to be, once you get the job, what your performance is like. And so I like more policy driven stuff. And so I really wish though, like, these debates would be much More structured. It's like, okay, like, I would love to have like a board. All right. Taxes. All right. And then like, and then like literally have it like listed out. Like, this is what his opinion, this is what his opinions are, like back and forth. And then like be able to really, like analyze, like on each individual topic and, you know, take the top 20 topics. Like, I don't know, I just think it'd be. There could be way better formatting. Yeah.

How do you feel about. Because like, obviously, you know, you could call it self promotion, but the all in podcast has had high level folks on their pod. They did have Donald Trump on. They had Vivek Ramaswamy. They had Bobby Kennedy. They've had, they have Chris Christie. I think they had Chris Christie. I think they had Rick DeSantis.

I think RFK.

Yeah, yeah. So they've had a bunch of people and they, they are saying, like, this should be the new format of getting to know candidates, not these structured, you know, mainstream media debates where it's all, you know, all fabricated, if you will. They said you should have to have the candidate sit down and talk to you for just an hour plus and be asked direct questions and explain their policies. And even Trump in the all in podcast, he actually comes across very clear. And I thought if people watch that and they are maybe a moderate or hate Trump, if they watch him on the all in podcast, they'll realize, oh, like, he's having like an honest conversation about where he stands on certain policies. I would love to see that from other folks, you know, on both sides of the aisle. What are your thoughts on that? Like, that candidate should be doing more candid conversations and not like these structured public appearances and debates.

Well, like, in a minute, you can't solve homelessness, you can't solve the health care issues, you can't solve the war in Ukraine. So like, when you're, when you're going after minute long cuts, like, that's literally creating a YouTube short or like an Instagram reel on like these massive topics. So like, if we can't dig deep into like, okay, so let's talk about taxes, like, everyone knows what the politician should say. So that's what they say. And everyone knows what they should say about all these other topics. It's like they just get really general answers. Like, if you have, if you really care about abortion, like, we can't just be like, what do you think about abortion? And then like, get a 30 second clip. We need like, okay, let's dig into it. Like, where's the span. Like, what do you think about this? What about this scenario? Okay, here's an example. Here's a case study. What would your opinion be on this? And then like, then it could be even like, they wash their hands and be like, I don't think the government should get involved. Which most of these answers should be that. Yeah, like, you have no business in this at all. Get out of it. Yeah. But anyways, you know, that doesn't fly well in policy.

Yeah. So that's.

That's.

That's your political corner. I won't.

The PC dude. Political corner.

The political corner. I won't drag it out anymore. Here's my thing. Since I have a platform and I can say whatever I want, I will vote for any president that can fix the US Men's soccer team because we. We are getting embarrassed right now. The Copa America. So.

Really?

Yeah. Just a personal beef that I have.

Okay.

Like, here's my thing. I just. I know you don't care that much about sports. I just need to say it. Once the Olympics are coming up. Guess what? We're gonna be in the top three of medal awarded countries.

Countries.

Right. We always are. Every Olympics, we're in the top three. We get the most medals.

Yeah.

You're telling me we can't put 11 soccer players together and like consistently be in the top three in the world?

Not against the Europeans or the. Or Africans. Dude. There's so much better.

You're getting embarrassed right now. It is sad.

We deserve it.

I know. But I just like, I wish US Men's soccer was good because I actually really like it. It's fun to watch.

Yeah. But they suck.

We are so bad right now.

Oh MAN Vs. We just. We just are better at like sports that cost a lot of money. When you have a field and a ball of air, we're just gonna get trouts, dude. I'm telling you.

So is that what you. Is that. Is that. Let's. Let's switch that to the presidential debate is how to get the U.S. men's soccer team back in order. Is like reduce funding for education. No, it is bring the schools down.

Get rid of. Get rid of inflation, cut government spending. Have a balance budget and fiscal responsibility at the government level. Yeah. You'll all be living in fields because, like, it'll be completely messed up the system and then we'll have to reset.

Fair enough.

Yeah.

I just did just. I'm frustrated by it.

But that sort of mentality would cause a lot of pain. And that is that. That's a very difficult thing. Even if I was not like that role, it actually be a very difficult. It's one thing to say we have a balanced budget, but that money comes from somewhere.

Right.

And it doesn't all go into the pockets of big donors. Right. Like there is definitely, you know, all these sorts of garbage being siphoned off the top, cream on the top. But like if you cut spending on military, if you cut spending in education, if you cut spending on a lot of these programs, people are going to get hurt and like the economy would be affected and we would probably go into a depression if like the government literally cut as many jobs they would have to to cut spending because like a. Most of the job creation is the government making a bunch of jobs. Like boggles my brain.

Stupid.

Like it's the worst thing ever anyways. It would cause a lot of pain, a lot of homelessness, a lot of hunger, a lot of, you know, relationship issues that would just not be cool. So that'd be like a really hard decision. Like I would not make that lightly, much as like I would think that's the right thing to do. Yeah. And you would not be popular. Like no one. That's why no one's going to cut like federal funding programs, etc. Like Medicare, Medicaid and stuff like that.

Yeah, well, we're in, we're in the early stages of late stage empire decline.

Yeah, dude, like we are. I know man.

It's just, it's very, very obvious. So on that happy note.

Yeah.

Do you have any? Not financial.

Thinks that there's no other better place. Everyone points to other countries in terms of, you know, areas where they're better. Health care, education, they're valid. But still, it's still the best economy. Like as bad as it sounds like. Okay, where do you want to go? China. It's growing. Okay. Go to China. Go check out how it is to start a business. And like it's so corrupt there too. And so it's just unfortunate we all just like eventually end up in chaos. Come on.

Anyways, the natural order of things.

I know, I know. Like, I wish this cycle is faster so I could get up on the. On the incline here.

Yeah, exactly.

So, okay, sorry, non financial advice. Yes, you have. Not financial.

So mine is you, you know, you have said one day you hope to be married, have kids. So this is for anyone that is planning to have kids in the future.

We're jumping right into.

Jumping right into parenting advice. Okay. As soon as the baby's born, the nurses and Doctors are going to hit you with a long list of questions about different, you know, immunizations and treatments.

And this and the other.

Make sure you're prepared for those. Which we were for the most part, but there were a couple that I was like, never heard of that before, so.

And there's pressure, there's like weird pressure I imagine of like if you don't get these, you aren't a good parent.

Right. Because there are certain, there are certain like shots or immunizations or treatments that you need for.

Certain decisions to be made about your child. You know, I don't get into specifics and to each his own, you know, however you want to parent your child. But they will hit you with a bunch of questions about, do you want this supplement? Do you want this shot? Do you want us to do this to them?

Yeah.

So you just need to be prepared for that.

Dude. I would just be like, no across the board. Unless there's ones that have been around for like 20 to 40 plus years and have like so much science and evidence behind it. Like I personally didn't get a lot of immunizations as a kid.

Yeah.

And like I've been really healthy. Yeah, I know it's like very one off, like my case. But like, I just don't like, I think, I don't want to be. I could be wrong here. I don't think I got any immunizations after birth. I don't think I ever went back in or anything. Like, I know usually have like a two year and one year and stuff like that. Like, I don't think I have any of those.

So. Yeah, we like, I mean, not to get like overly personal, we only. We did two things right after birth. One, it's called a vitamin K shot that's been around for a long time. Helps with blood clotting.

Right.

So if the baby does have like a bleed that isn't caught right away, it helps with the clotting of the blood, which babies don't have initially.

Yeah.

So we were like, well that just kind of seems like a smart move. It's been around for a long time. If he has an internal bleed or something, like we want it to clot. And then the second thing was I can't remember the name of it, but erythromycin, I think it's just like a cream for their eyes because a lot of babies get eye infections during the.

Yeah, but it's not like injection.

No, no. So yeah, but then there were other ones.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

There's Always. There's a few good ones. There's a few good immunizations that are good. Yeah. So like, man, I would take the list and I just like, let's just get it down to like the like cutting the physical budget, like 10% is all we're taking.

Yeah. So we just did those two immediately. We're like, let's just roll those two and then we'll make decisions on the rest. But yeah, they're going to. They hit you with a lot of questions, really. That we were. Some we were prepared for, others, we were just like, I don't know. What are you talking about? Like, call my sister. She's a nurse.

That's crazy. It's. It's interesting. They don't give that to you before you, like, before the birth, dude.

It's insane. So to. Not to talk about like the specifics of it, but like you're. You check in the hospital, it's like, okay, it's time. Cool. Great. One nurse is in and out of the room for, you know, however long it takes. And then all of a sudden it's like, okay, it's time. Six people are in the room and then within an hour, all six people are gone.

Let's go.

It's nuts.

Efficient, dude.

Let's go. It's crazy.

So that's a wild experience.

Let's go.

Non financial advice. I don't really have anything on the top of my head, dude. Okay, I'm sorry. Lock your windows after.

Did you get another break in?

I got like special locks for windows and the cameras. Nice. So I still set up the cameras, but they're sitting there, dude, just in case they break into like.

Oh, cameras, yeah.

Sitting there doing nothing.

She set up like one trap camera that if they like grab it, it's like it's a zaps or something.

Closest to the door of the window. Yeah, like right next to a real one.

Cool, man. All right, that's the pod.

That's the pod.

Let's go.