@MikeAndes thoughts on Skool? - Episode 063

Welcome back Another episode C Suite Unfiltered.

Dude, I already have my non financial advice locked and loaded.

I got a lot of non financial advice.

Really?

I feel like the gears have been turning. So I feel like when I'm busier, I have.

Like, more ideas. It's kind of like a snowball effect. Does that ever happen? No.

Well, I feel like when I'm less busy, I get way more.

Okay, fair enough. I think. I think for me, it's a snowball effect because, like, maybe, you know, some of the turnarounds you go to. What I see is, like, when owners are down, they don't, like, think to do anything, if you will. They're just like, oh, I'm down, or I don't know what to do. I didn't even think of that idea. But then sometimes you have these owners that are, like, spinning their wheels and they have so many ideas because they're just busy. I think I might be that type of person. Like, the busier I get, the more I want to do, the more ideas I have.

So it's summer, so I'm running outside.

Nice.

And when I run, that's when I get all my ideas. I come back with just list of stuff to do.

So you just type it in your phone?

Oh, yeah. Every single Saturday now when I'm running, it's just like a list of like, do this, do this. Like, little stuff and then big stuff. And like, it's fun.

I like that.

Ideas for conference changes in webinars. I need to add this slide in here.

Yeah. Well, you brought up conference. Did you post this everywhere or just in a story?

I just threw it in there. Slid it in there.

John, say it.

John Taffer's coming.

John Taffer is coming to Blue Collar Summit. Blue Collar Summit. I am thrilled about that. I'm very excited. So we. What was the reasoning behind securing him?

The hormones are just too busy, and I think they're declining basically everything.

Hopefully Jon doesn't watch this.

Yeah, you were second. We love you, John. But, you know, I think in a few weeks, everyone will see why they're kind of canceling everything. They got big projects they're working on, so understandable. And so, yeah, John was like, kind of like the one. I was like, okay, the only other person I would really want there that kind of like aligns with everything I'm doing would be with be him.

Okay. And, you know, we've obviously talked about it before not to beat a dead horse. Turnarounds, kind of a version of bar rescue in the home service.

We're handing off the baton, baby.

Yeah. The profit to Bar rescue to turnarounds.

Exactly. Beautiful thing if the Prophet and the Bar rescue had a baby just being the turnaround show. Yeah.

I. I'm like, ecstatic that he gets to speak. He's very engaging, obviously a big presence and just phenomenal in terms of his education. So very excited about that. All right, well, we'll dive in. Someone asked this in the comments, actually, my buddy Braden, who's on the pod.

I haven't been looking at the comments. I apologize. All good. I've been in this recent cleanse. I actually, you know what? I'll be honest. I had the. The C suite was on the chopping block for stuff that needed to get cut, and I didn't. I didn't put it in that category.

I mean, you could. We don't get that many comments. You know, we need to get the engagement up. Yeah. So Brayden commented. Hey, we would love to know your thoughts on school.

Okay.

Sk o O. So this is an Alex Hormozy project, so you would probably know more about it than I do. So if you look it up. This is one thing I wanted to do. I was like, you know, I've never actually been to the website. Like, I heard a lot about it.

Yeah.

And so I just went to the website and I'll put up the screenshot. It just says school.com discover communities. And then it just kind of looks like YouTube thumbnails.

Yeah.

Not super educational. There's just a sign up. There's a login button. There's a create your own button and discover communities. There's not a whole lot of, I guess, functionality. Even if you scroll all the way to the bottom, you can see community, affiliates, careers, privacy. I was. You would think there would be like a mission statement or like, this product is great for our. You should join because. So what do you know about school.com?

So I knew about school years ago. We actually. I actually really considered putting instead using the Facebook group for Augusta Nation. Using school. Because there's several elements that are actually really positive in terms of like engagement and notifications and things. And be like a pure form instead of having. Where Facebook. You have a gazillion other things. So people get distracted when they go on Facebook. So I did consider that and I actually knew that. I knew that when he launched the School Games, Alex, that if we just switched over to school and did our payments to the franchise, I could immediately blow out every single person and just win the Whole thing, but it was a matter of. The reason I didn't switch over a few years ago was twofold. One, from a community perspective, it required too much friction because everyone already has Facebook, but like 95% of our owners already have Facebook. So it's like there's less friction. Just like, hey, click on this link and sign up versus click this, download this app. You're gonna have. You're gonna put all your information, you're.

Gonna get used to the ui, separate logins.

Yeah, all that. The second thing is from a monetization standpoint, so take off augustination, like the community aspect for a second and look more at like building an online school, like an actual courses, et cetera. I think they do great at communities and that's the thing that they actually are uniquely capable of the actual creation of like courses and material to sell. I'm gonna give them a B minus. I think they'll improve the product over time. But unless it's changed in the past month, there's things like you can't actually upload video. You have to embed video. So you'd have to upload on like Vimeo or YouTube and then embed it in school versus other programs. Like I use teachable. It's very similar products. There's a lot of other products like school.

Right.

Like I would say it's in a. It's in a community of like 20 other products that are of the same size, if not bigger, and then probably 200 very comparable products. That being said, when you look at like say COPA similar thing, there's like a lot of different other options. And so what I think of school is Alex will make it great in the long term. And I think, I think he will bend it towards making money versus the community aspect. And I think if he does that, he'll do that in this is just my guess. I have no idea. Fy, just because we have the same coach doesn't mean I have inside information. Like I'm just guessing.

Yeah, yeah.

I think he'll bend it that way because the value of that audience member is so much greater. And when you think about going to like say post secondary education, you think about you do it so that you can get a job and make more money. When you think about joining a community and it's very much around free stuff, like a lot of their communities, I understand it's like easy to get people in like free. But it's also like you don't go to a college education, like brag about your free Education, you pay for it and you get certified. And like there's, there's a barrier of entry there. And so I have a feeling especially he's been doing with his content, he's going to push like instead of discover communities is like make your make money online. And it's like learn, like educate, like, you know, kind of like let's, like, let's kind of stick it to the education system. I think if they go that route, especially with the name of the business, like school, it's like, yeah, we can't even spell school. We're just like doing this like underground, you know, kind of rebel type university thing. That would in my opinion be the route it goes. And if they do that, I think they have a really good shot at actually being competitive against universities and colleges versus right now it feels much more like a message board and much more like a community group thing. And I don't know, I don't know any of the metrics in the back end. So like I don't know. But I would imagine that the value of someone looking to make money online is so much greater than someone just like wanting to learn about gardening in a free group on school. But I have no idea.

Okay. Yeah, this, this is an article. It's a, it's a review article and it says school is an innovative online community platform that provides interactive learning and networking. It is a dynamic space where you can create courses, foster discussions and build a community of like minded people. So it says that you can try it for free, but whenever I see the ads, everybody says, well no, you have to pay or you have to sign up or this, that or the other.

If you want to be the creator.

Got it.

Right. So if you want to actually create a group, then it costs. But I'm 99.9% sure that you can just join it for free and then join as many groups and things that you would want. And some of them are free groups and other ones you pay for.

Yeah, yeah, like this, like looking at the discovery page, the top one is $22 a month, then the next one is free, then the next one's $1 a month. So just kind of interesting. What, what is the, the value that you see in school? Like kind of personally, but also business perspective. Like for you, is there any personal value in school?

Like if I was to make it.

Use it or be a creator?

Yeah, for me to use it. Man, that's tough.

Probably pretty low for you because all your stuff's unteachable. The franchise, I think A lot of.

It is entry level stuff. Yeah. Which is where the vast majority of like 95% of the audience is looking to make a hundred thousand dollars online or less. Right. So I feel like it'd be difficult to go on there with high, high ticket and like high value, like that sort of thing. But I think it could change over time. And then in terms of like me creating on there, I feel like the value gets a little bit watered down.

Yeah.

Like if you go to like landscape businesscourse.com it feels like its own thing. And then when you click on the on like to register and everything, it feels like its own like course. You don't go to YouTube, you don't go to Vimeo. Everything's there. I can do quizzes. The community aspect is where school shines. The ability to like comment and like the group environment and the sociability of it. So I just think if they can just pair that with a better model for like actual education. And I just don't know, like I'm never gonna drive my audience to school because they're distracted by a thousand other courses. I want it to look like mine, like my school. So there's a way to do that and there is a way to like tie in your school in the back end of the kind of what I was teachable. So you come to landscapevisioncourse.com definitely looks like mine. You then sign up. When you sign up, it logs you into teachable. But like teachable isn't like a community thing. It's like it's a course, it's a school, it's education, it's quizzes. And so I think it's just different. I think it's going to move more in the direction of like higher value, higher ticket, more business, make money. Because that's why people go to school in general.

Yep. So yeah, I do want to just like kind of poke fun because if you go to the discover page, it, it ranks like the biggest or best or fastest growing communities.

I don't know, it's very entry level.

I don't know what their algorithm is but. So number six, just number six ranking on school is the High Vibe tribe. A community of dedicated. Dedicated to raising their vibration, healing and letting go of limitations, creating freedom.

To each their own.

And then this might be my personal favorite. This is number 15.

This is the guy one.

This is Alpha. This is Adonis School.

Yeah.

Get everything you need to attract your dream. Ghoul, business, brotherhood, seduction.

Yeah. Oh, mercy.

So let me join and that's 129amonth.

129. Let's go.

So learning about seduction with a bunch of dudes. Yeah, I just. From a strictly consumer's perspective, if you will. You know, I am not a business owner. I looked at it and I was like, you know, I saw the ads. Okay. I respect Alex Hormozi. Anything he puts his name on, I'm going to look into. And then I went to school.com and I was like, what is this? This looks like a weird YouTube.

I will say this. You bet on the jockey. Alex will make it great.

Yeah.

I have no doubt that in 12 to 24 months, it'll look different and it'll look way better.

Yeah.

The same way that, like, if someone looked at Copilot, especially a few months ago, and even now you can ton of competition, it looks very similar. Blah, blah, blah. Like, we will make it great.

Yeah.

And so I'm. I will. I will bet on that. I'm not using the product. I keep my eye on it. I see what they're doing in terms of ads. It's obviously working. But like, right now he's saying about 31, 32% of users that join make their first dollar online. Well, you need to make $100 to make back your investment because, like, it's $100 per month, so. Well, is it 100? Maybe. Maybe 10% of people get over $100 a month. So then that means the other 90% will probably end up leaving in terms of paying creators. Right. So it's very much of like a 1% of them probably make up 80% to 95% of the income. And so. So I think that, that a lot of people will join with the expectation of making money, not make money, and then leave bad. There'll be some bad karma around that, but I think if they improve the value, like the way that the system works and it's much more of a university feel, like there's billions of dollars, trillions of dollars we made in university and college. I'd go after that market, not like, you know, figure out how to do your gardening online and make five bucks a month. Like, I would put the threshold, like, hey, it's a minimum of 99 bucks a month or whatever. Something like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I'm not, hey, I don't know the data and I just know that they are crushing it in terms of their ad return, like return on ad spend, and they're doing really good. So I think he'll like, crush on the current Value prop based upon his authority and influence and then he'll actually change the product. I have a feeling that's going to happen.

Do you feel that creators could potentially and just using you for example could just re post their existing content and make money off of it? Like you could go back.

You assume that people are scrolling through school just looking for stuff to buy, right?

But I'm saying could you make a community like Andy's start to build a new community of people that maybe hadn't heard of you but found you through school? You're just posting old videos.

That's the assumption. You are assuming people are finding you on school. I don't think that's a huge community. I don't think there's a huge audience looking on school. Never heard of Mike Andes and buying from me.

Okay.

And so I feel like if I'm gonna make a school community I am simply splitting the attention from what I already have in terms of my audience going to certain places. And I would rather them go to landscapebusinesscourse.com which Mike Andy's versus go go to school and see a thousand other communities. And now my product is gonna be ranked up against Adonis, whatever and other cheaper products for a dollar a month or free and all the rest of it. And so I feel like you're sending people to the Goodwill versus being like go to my Apple store where like it's just Apple and it's just premium. It's just me. And so they're going to figure this out. I have no doubt about it. But personally as a creator right now this could be fixed. But the biggest sticking point for me right now like in terms of putting my course on there is I do not want to just embed videos.

Right?

I want the videos hosted on the platform. The challenging part, at $99 a month, they might not have the bandwidth to actually store videos for creat. Right. Like I can make courses and all sorts of. I pay more though on teachable. Like I have everything hosted there versus me just making web pages where I do I embed videos and that could have changed. I just want to make it clear. But I actually think they need to go up market. This is my $0.02 stupid opinion. Yeah, I think they need to have a $99 per month version and they might already have this. I could be completely wrong here but I think they should make like a two $99 version because people like me would consider it if there were certain things like I could embed the back end to my Current site I could upload and host my videos. I could keep all my members selectively on my school only instead of joining all these other communities. So I think they'll figure this stuff out and I think right now it's attracting 99% of people aren't going to, aren't going to make a lot of money and they aren't going to, you know, they're entry level. Like when I run ads, for example. Like okay, we'll just use our example since we just did it. Yeah, the franchise webinar we did the other day. Right. Every single people person that joined is a business owner. 95% of people that came from the Facebook ads. We're looking to start their business. Like it's people that come from that environment are like they're wanting to start, they're wanting to quit their job, they're wanting to become their own boss. But that audience value is so low because they can't buy anything. And so I think that's what they're going to. I think they'll elevate the experience, the brand of school and then they'll go up market. The same thing with Copilot will happen like eventually Copilot will be a premium product in terms of pricing. We said to fix the product but they'll do the same thing at school in my opinion. Just okay, predictions, here we go. Yeah, predictions. 12 months, it'll be a minimum. There'll be another option at school to pay like three times as much and they'll go up market. They'll go after people like me that want premium stuff on the courses that they right now can't even afford to offer. So like for example, example at Copilot we're doing all this like onboarding and like you have all these live zoom calls. You can't do that when you're charging someone 150 bucks a month. It's impossible. You have to do product LED growth which is like click these buttons and watch these videos. When you're doing one on one onboarding and training and we coaching calls and like goal setting with our users, you usually need to be above 5,000 ACV. Like you need to have $5,000 a year that you're at least making annual contract value for each customer. So we're not even close to that. We're like at 3,000 and so we will have to go up market the same way. I think school will go up market, go after that 1% because there's more people in that 1% that can make way More money and they'll drive way bigger audiences. But they'll have to come after people like me that already have an audience. Not people just getting started that want to get people for a dollar a month or whatever.

Yeah, okay, that's fair. I would say.

Dude, I just want to make a very good point because, like, I know some people in his team listen to my stuff.

Yeah.

I have no idea what I'm talking about. I don't see any data, I don't see any metrics. The same way that people would hypothesize and say stuff that I should do. Copilot, I have no idea what I'm talking about.

Fair enough. And if anybody from his team listens to this, just know his. His dome co host is just probing. I know nothing. I like, literally, I've done no research. I've seen some of the ads.

I know it. I know whatever they are currently doing is working very well.

Cool.

I know that much.

Nice. But if you are in school and you want to join a community.

Oh, did you start one?

No, no, no, no. Free ads. Green industry professionals.

Okay. Yeah.

Started by Connor Hutch Hutchison. He's got 19 members.

That's go.

So very cool. All right. That is school. At least what I know about school. So I wanted to jump into another topic here. This is something. We're gonna go back to the reels. You know, I've been showing you reels, tiktoks, things of that nature. This is one that I saw recently and I titled it. Well, you know, I. I titled it in my notes here. Blue collar versus McDonald's. So I'd love to see what your thoughts are on. On this.

Okay, quick question. We had the three 10 piece McNugget meals from earlier. You did such a great job. They were delicious. I figured since the fryer is still on, could you just like do three more ten piece McNuggets? Awesome. Yeah. What do you mean it's gonna be $30? This is bad business. You're already here. Just. Just put them in the fryer. I love it.

All right, so watch that. I put it on the screen there. You got a guy, you know, He's. He's at McDonald's and he's like, hey, I'm already here. Why can't you just make me a few more McNuggets? They were great. Why do you feel that people treat home service providers, lawn care providers. I've had those comments. I'm sure you have. You know, as one of your, you know, former field guys, Project managers, you know, we're doing a project, and they're like, oh, can you just throw this in? Can you do that? Can you trim that tree? Oh, can you clean up that area? I know it wasn't in the bid, but you're already here. Why do you feel that people can do that in the home service industry, but they'd never do that to McDonald's? Because McDonald's will be like, no, we don't give away free McNuggets.

Two things, size of business and then variable cost structure. So size of business. They're never gonna do it to McDonald's because they know that every other, you know, there's a value. Like, there's a thousand other stores that are selling the exact same price, exact same. So, like, as a customer, it's like, I can't haggle with these people. They have all their pricing nailed down. So the smaller the business, typically you're gonna have more haggling. And so we've even seen, like, a command center, like, less and less people are haggling or, like, trying to ask for discounts because they're like, oh, this is part of a bigger brand. I'm not even talking to the owner. Like, I can't haggle with this person. Second thing is the fact that they see us as variable. Like, they know that there is no additional product costs or hard costs to getting a little more. You know, can you spread that a little further? Can you turn that bush down a little further? Or whatever? Because there isn't a product associated. There's not an actual nugget being exchanged. There's just simply, like, time. And so there's variable costs, which means to us, we do more work. It does cost us more, but there's not hard costs. So, like, I think most. Most customers wouldn't ask for two more yards of mulch, but they would ask you to spread the mulch a little further. Right. Because the hard cost of the mulch, they understand that that is going to cost you something. Where they do not attribute the variable cost of labor to spreading or doing a little bit more as necessary to have to pay more for, they say, okay, just put a little more effort into it. And so I think that's probably the two major things.

You're giving the consumer too much credit.

Okay.

I just feel that, like, that's. You're right from a technical analysis standpoint, but I don't think consumers view it that way. I think it actually speaks really true to your mission statement. The mission statement of Augusta is that we want to raise the level of professionalism in the lawn care, landscape and home services industries in general. I think that it's just you're not seen as a professional. You don't have set pricing, and I can bend you over a barrel to.

Get what I want. But the reason you don't have set pricing is because you have variable cost structure and because you're so small and you're desperate for work. Like, if you have work booked out for five weeks, you have leads pouring in, you're not going to take on, you're not going to bend anything.

Yeah.

So the only reason that someone can negotiate with you is because you don't have enough leads coming in. And so fix the root of the problem, which is like, get big enough to where people will not negotiate with you and get so many leads coming in that you literally, if someone negotiate, like, go, go flag height.

Yeah.

And so it's. It's a solvable problem. But if you're small and you don't have enough leads, you're gonna get beat up.

And what would be your piece of advice to an owner that you know has these situations happen maybe on a regular basis with their customers? What's the best way to handle it?

Hit capacity and book yourself out.

Yeah.

So like, you probably have excess capacity. So that way you're needing leads, you've hired too many people, or you have too many trucks and equipment. So either a, if you're just solo, you need to like, go sell, sell, sell to fill the capacity. Because once you're at capacity, it means like, I don't need the jobs, I'm full. And then if you raise prices and all your customers stay, you actually are like, if you want to go shit, go fly a kite.

Like, I am full.

I am already working to capacity. It's like, fill the capacity. The reason you are the most profitable at capacity is because you don't need the work. And when you don't need the work, you charge what you're worth. And when you charge what you're worth, you make a higher profit margin.

Yeah.

And so that's why I always say, like, fill your schedule to capacity. And until you've done that and raised your prices, you cannot judge your business. That's what people give up. They're like, it's like, look, if you would have just like, cut one or two trucks out, reduce capacity. Now you're at capacity, all your guys are working busy, you're all your trucks are out throughout the day, and then you raise prices, you'd probably immediately double or triple your profits. And so.

I would say, like, yeah, either reduce capacity so you're going to hit it or sell, sell, sell, so that you hit capacity. So when someone negotiates with you, you're like, forget you, dude. Like, I don't care. I am so booked out. I have all these customers coming. I just raised prices and everyone stayed. And so you have way more confidence.

Do you. Do you think, given that, you know, you started your response by, as I said, giving the consumer too much credit, do you think that most customers can sense 100%?

Oh, yeah. 100.

Really?

If you pick up your phone and you're out working in the field and they know they're talking to owner operator, they're going to negotiate. I do that, dude.

Yeah.

Like, it's not a matter of disrespect. It's just like, I am going to negotiate and if I know that a chink in the armor, baby, we're going for it. And it's a matter of pride. Yeah. It's not because I disrespect the contractor. It's like a matter of pride that I get a discount. Yeah, you can make up a number. Just inflate it by double so I can get a 10% discount and feel great about myself. Yeah. And so.

If people see the chink in the armor, like, for example, if McDonald's started doing, like, name your own pricing, people would forever want to name their own price. Yeah, they'd want to negotiate. And so if one time you do, if there's a chink in the armor, if they can hear the mower in the background while you're like, what's that, Mr. Jones? Oh, yeah, yeah. Next Thursday. I'm not sure. Let me check my schedule. They know immediately they can start negotiating on price because you don't have stuff buttoned down. That's why AT commands are like, we've seen a massive reduction in amount of people negotiating because, like, people call in, they've talked to Max, now they're talking to some. An agent. They're like, they know they're not talking to the owner, and the owner's never going to hear from them in terms of being able to negotiate and commands and reps. Like, sorry, we. Like, this is the price. This is what you're going to get. Do you want it or not? Like, we're booked out far. You're probably going to be on three or four weeks. If you book out, book today. Three or four weeks. It might be five weeks if you book next Week. So, like, do you want to get on or not? And so I just think the customers can sense 100%. If I'm talking to an owner operator when I'm, like, working on my construction stuff with the real estate, you better believe I'm going to negotiate. I know they can just knock the price. And once they do it, one time, I'm in, baby. So, yeah.

Yeah. I think I had that experience once when I was your estimator, because I think someone was testing me just to see, like, very nice house, ocean view. And it was a treatment package.

No disrespect. They just. They just want to, you know, polish the skills.

And they. And they were like, well, what if we just did, like, the backyard? Well, the backyard was like 80% of the property. Right. And I was like, you know, we really can't do that. We're already at our lowest price. And if you really want our premium service, you're just going to have to. To pay the price. And he was like, I like it. Let's do it.

Yeah.

And I think it was just like, he had a really nice house, probably a business person. I think he was just testing me. I was like, no, that's our price is our price. You can either take these treatments or not.

It's like when you go to the go get a car, you ask for financing prices. They give you all the rebates. You say, thank you, I'll take the rebates, and I'll pay with cash. Like, it's a very easy negotiating tactic. What he was doing is like, okay, if I can get a discount, the backyard, and then I can do, like, reverse engineer this. Okay. If he cuts it in half for the backyard, great, I'll take it. Because the front yard is only half the. Like, it's like, way smaller. So anyways.

Yeah, no, that's fair. Yeah, I think it's just. I think that's why I like the direction Augusta's going in. I have seen a lot less haggling at your locations for sure this spring. Now, obviously, you know, it seems to have been a slightly slower spring. It's picking up now in terms of the timeline.

Right.

It's been a delayed spring, I guess would be a better term, but I've seen way less in terms of, like, haggling for price, asking for discounts, which is. Which is a good thing. I think it just shows the shift of your location going from, okay, it used to be, you know, owner operated, and then now it's. No, it runs on the systems either take the price. You don't. You can walk.

So.

All right, we'll switch it up here. We'll go from home services, blue collar labor.

I almost picked this up and had a drink. Sorry.

Yeah, we should get like, just some.

Change the logo on the, on the, the. The YouTube.

Yeah, I'm attached to it. I don't know. You know, it's, it's for the audio listeners. Get a less loud logo.

Okay.

You know the visual, this is more visual logo. We'll switch from blue collar labor to tech. All right, so this is an article from Yahoo finance. Apple open AI in talks to add chat GPT to iPhones. So Apple is reportedly closing a deal with open AI to include its technology on iPhones. The companies are set to finalize the terms of an agreement to include ChatGPT on iOS 18. ChatGPT is among the leading AI services as iPhone sales slumped last quarter. The partnership with OpenAI could be Apple's latest move to innovate the iPhone and increase sales. Thoughts?

I don't think they'll do too much here Apple, because they get $20 billion a year just to be the default. Google pays Apple $20 billion a year just to be the default browser on app on iOS devices. And so they're like, ChatGPT can't pay $20 billion. They're worth maybe 100 billion right now, maybe 150 if you stretch their valuation. And so they can't afford, they don't have the cash available to do that. So I would say they might use the technology, but I don't think they're going to replace the browser quite yet. And also, like, Google also is working on AI stuff. So like, if, if Apple can play this like, game of like, hey, you still pay us $20 billion and you enforce all this great tech that's coming along with the game. Great. And I also think Apple's like silently like they just shut down in their entire titan division that works on the cars and it's all going, all those resources are going towards AI. Like Apple is going to become a massive AI player. And so as per usual, they'll be late to the party and then they'll perfect it. And so I think they're going to pull a lot of stuff into like their, their goggles and all the rest of it.

But yeah, yeah, yeah, it's interesting. I was just kind of scrolling through the article and I feel like this article, I feel like they either the person who wrote this was either like under the influence or they use charity.

Beatty to write the article. The last. The last that this article is generated by.

It's kind of. It's kind of all over the place, but basically, yeah, they're getting at. It's kind of Apple versus Google, essentially, which you kind of touched on.

So.

Yeah, I think it'd be interesting. Have you noticed that on. Because we use WhatsApp a lot for company communication. Yeah. Facebook.

Yeah. Meta is across all platforms. Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, everything.

Yeah.

Has meta. I know.

Have you had any experiences with it yet? Have you tried.

No, it's not great.

Yeah.

So useful.

I had a weird instance with it.

I use it for search and that's it.

Yeah, I use it for search or keyword search.

Yeah.

Especially in WhatsApp. It's like, oh, I know Mike sent me something about that. Or I know the team I needed to communicate. Yeah, it's search. It should be search. I was on Facebook, I was talking to, you know, it was Mother's Day, shout out to the moms. I was talking to my mother in law and father in law. Father in law is a sheriff, and I wanted to tell him about this drug bust I saw on our local Whatcom County Sheriff.

You did it. Pull it up while you're talking to them live.

What?

Okay. I thought. I thought you were going to be video calling them and it, like, heard you.

Oh, that would be interesting.

That would be sick. Dude. You know when you're talking to someone and you can't, like, understand, like if you're. If you were like, trying to mention a certain. Yeah. And like, pops up. Do you want to show the video? That would be sick.

That would be cool.

Sorry, go ahead.

No, no, you're good. Yeah, we'll put a pin in that. Come back to it. So I was like, okay, I know. I saw on the Whatcom County Sheriff's Office Facebook page. So I was like, I go to Facebook, sheriff's office, you know, drug bust.

Yeah.

And it basically took me to a meta AI thing, asking if I was on drugs, if I needed help or if I had, you know, mental health issues because of. Of drugs. And I was like, great, now I'm flagged. Like, now, now I'm flagged in some category, some drug user. And I was like, no, I'm trying to find the police department's Facebook page about a drug bust to show to my father in law because he'd be interested in it. And I was just like, frustrated. And then there's something else I was trying to do for Augusta. I was trying to look something up. I was like, I know, I saw this on Facebook and then it sent me the weirdest results that had nothing to do. So I'm frustrated by what I've seen with meta. I don't want Apple to go the open AI route personally.

Yeah, honestly, all these companies are after search. Search is a. Has been monopolized by Google. Right. It makes up 90% of their profits. And so the valuation of Google is hinging on their ability to maintain search. And so they're going to lose market share and it's already slipping. But like if you can maintain 90% of search, you have a huge market like you're going to have. They make money hand over fist on Google Ads and YouTube ads and all the rest of it, but they own, they own search. And so all these companies are doing is simply trying to take them down because it's such a profitable niche. It's like literally people are searching. So if they, if they can get used to everyone searching things on Meta AI and then be able to throw you ads so it's like obvious in this case they're not going to pitch you drugs but like basically they'd be able to pitch you stuff in that search. Right. So that's what they're going after. Because when you have intent to buy, the value to the advertiser is so ginormous. It's incredible. You can get like we get like between 10 and 20% impression to click through rate on like say Google Ads for lawn care landscaping. So like if 10 to 20% of people that when they search something are going to click on your ad that is so valuable because they have intent to buy. Facebook doesn't have that. Many of these other companies don't have intent to buy ads ads. And it's just like you get in front of people that might have interest or behaviors that are around your correct psychograph but like you don't anyways, that's what they're all after. Yeah, that's the money.

Is AI though, the way in which AI wants to take over search? And it's not, it's not a takeover of search, it's in an adaptation of search that they think is better. Are they taking the human element out of curiosity? Like they're trying to predict what you want? Like in this case it predicted that I was on drugs and that I needed to seek medical attention.

Yeah.

And it's like, no, like I was looking for something about drugs. That was a drug bust.

Yeah. It'll get better though. Like eventually it will Be where they would immediately have that. And in fact, if you were like literally talking, saying certain words like, let me try to find that, and it would just pop up like, oh, here it is. Yeah. Based on your search history, based upon what you just said, here's the video. And you could like click to share and like, boom. It's like, that'll eventually happen.

But right now it's still not great. Yeah, like, it is not. The thing is too, all this technology is being used in the back end of Google search anyways. They're scanning millions of websites to get data, like, in front of you that is relevant to what you just searched in seconds. Like, people don't under. People underestimate just how much AI is already built into like Google search. Yeah. And YouTube search. There's so much there. They already scanning transcripts of videos to be able to know what to pitch to people. Like, if you say a certain word inside of a video, you can tank the video views just by saying one word. So it's because they're scanning everything already. Yeah.

Well, I want to go back to one of the first conversations you and I had about AI, because it did change my perspective on how I view it. You said that AI is basically a conglomeration of the average. So how do you feel that that's going to be better for the consumer when you aren't looking for the average? Does that make sense if you're looking for the fringe results or the very specific thing that you want to find that is about a greater topic. Let's use, you know, I don't know, like theology, for example. Right? Yeah. You can find theology on like Christ. Right. But what if you want to find specific things about his being and the dichotomy and whatever? Like, I don't want to get.

It comes down to prompting. Right. So do you like. I don't want the generic advice, give me the far left or the far right version of this topic. Right. So it just comes down to prompting and then also it start to understand where you come from. So like, if you're always going on this certain path, it'd be like, okay, when he asked about this certain theology topic, he's going to like areas over this side of the aisle or whatever. And so it'll start to understand what your preferences are.

Yeah, see, I don't like that though. And I know the algorithms already do that. Right. It's targeted ads and things that you see. Like one thing I like, you know, the social media I use the most for on a Personal level is X is Twitter. And there's. There's two columns at the top. There's for you and then the ones you follow. And you can flip between the two. The ones I follow. Sometimes I'm like, man, this is less engaging. And then the. For you. I'm like, man, they're really serving me, like, exactly what I want. And I hate that at times because part of the reason I like to use X is because I follow accounts that are maybe more educational and maybe less engaging.

Right.

But because I'm trying to learn from those. Right.

But it knows which ones you've stopped at. It knows which ones you've clicked on. It knows which ones where you stop and you actually read the whole thing. Yeah. And so you're gonna. That's why TikTok is so powerful. The algorithm is so dialed on terms of what you like. It's not about who you know or who you follow. It's what do you like? And it can track that so well. Dude.

Yeah, I did.

That's why I don't even touch TikTok. I know. The algorithm is so dialed, I don't even want to spend any time on it.

So I did TikTok for a while, mostly just because, you know, people would send me them, and I was like, okay, it's just easier to click it and it pops it up.

Yeah.

Instead of, like, going to a browser saying, I don't want to create an account, clicking it, turning up the volume, so I'll just get it. So I got it. I had it for probably three, four months. I honestly didn't enjoy it.

Really?

I don't think. I don't. I don't want to be that guy. But the targeting. It didn't work for me.

Did you. How long did you watch stuff? Because if you watch. If you watch videos, like, 20 minutes, it gets dialed fast.

Oh, yes. Yeah, I would know. I Like a minute or two. Like, I'd watch the one that got sent to me.

Right.

And then maybe do one or two flicks. And then I'm like, okay.

Yeah. If you watch Tick Tock as a new account for 20 to 30 minutes, you're. You've now entered the rabbit hole. They get dialed so quick because they're. There's. Okay, so, like, if he does this, like, and just skips really quickly, why. Okay, let's not show him any videos with those words. Let's bring in this. Okay. Oh, he stayed along. Okay, let's dial this. It just gets so quick and so good. Yeah, it's so much better than shorts. It's so much better than reels. In terms of the algorithm. In terms of like just how dialed it is though all those other technologies I think will get good as well. But it's, it's ahead of the curve.

Well, and their incentive is to keep you on the platform 100%. So they're not going to do. What I was saying with my ex follows is that I will follow more educational accounts that like, yeah, maybe when I'm tired and it's a long day, I don't want to sit and read a post about a certain stock. But I follow that account because I know it's educational. But their incentive is okay, he saw it. He didn't read the whole post and scrolling so we won't show him that anymore. And I don't like that because like I follow certain accounts for education. Does that make sense?

Yeah. But as a business, they want you to be on the platform more so they can serve you up more ads.

Yeah.

So they just want you on the platform longer.

Exactly.

That's fair. Yeah.

It'll be interesting to see the way it goes. I personally, as a, as a religious iPhone user, I don't want open AI yet. I could see it down the road. I like search because I feel that I'm good with search.

You feel like you're in control and I'm in control. Yeah.

But. But I also like, I don't know, I was frustrated by some of the searches I've done recently with the new meta plugin that I'm just like, this is dumb, it's not intuitive. Once it becomes intuitive, I think I will be fine relinquishing control, but there are certain times where it just doesn't make sense.

Speaking of social media.

Yes.

I have been on a cleanse on my calendar, which leads me back to like I was. I had all my things listed down like one off. So it's like what I'm trying to get rid of is one off stuff. So like communication with people. They might not get text back from me now. Yeah, right. They just. Or it might be relegated like an hour a week. I'll just go through all my messages because I still got a lot of one off stuff. Like there's too many interruptions in my day and so like meetings like that are spread out hate. Like I'm gonna start stacking and there's things that are gonna cut out hardcore. Like so I'm gonna be setting up filters on messages. I might be dealing apps. Like I just need to focus on stuff and for a longer period of time. And right now like I have meetings that are too spread out things like the podcast. Don't worry, the podcast is gonna get that. Just need to get like it's not high value use of my time. And so I'm on this purge, dude, I'm on this full out purge, trying to get back like 30% of my my time.

I like it.

Yeah.

That's one thing that I always do when I, when I get to upgrade my phone is I start with like no apps. You do like, let me just get the essentials. So I get like, you know, like WhatsApp, Facebook, like my banking app, you know, stock app and like, you know, that's about it.

I just try to go through all my apps like once a month and just like purge anything. I haven't used that much. Yeah.

So fair enough. All right. Any not financial advice for the people?

Oh, yes, yes, yes.

Okay.

Okay. So you know the bougie folks, they would get an eight sleep mattress. Have you heard of these?

No.

Do you have it?

No.

Oh, bro, sleep. So Elon's talked about it. All these rich people have these mattresses. They're looking at, you're looking at like $2500, very low minimum. You're really like five grand. Plus if you want a good one, one. And what it does is regulate your body temperature at night and then like cool you or warm you up. It can wake you up with vibration, it can wake you up with heat, it can wake you up with cold. You can program it to your app. It's like the bomb, right? So there's no way in the world I'm going to spend three or four thousand dollars in a mattress. Like that's just not happening. Here's the hack, here's the non financial advice. All right, look up. You don't have to do it now. Bedjet. Okay, bedjet. Okay, so $600 is what I paid. I think 550. It might have gone up since then because I got like some sort of discount on it. I forget what exactly how I got it, but it was like six or seven hundred bucks or five or six hundred dollars. And it is similar. It's not as smart. It's not smart in that it can't regulate your body temperature and it doesn't track your body, your sleeping cycles and all the rest of it. It's not like where it's smart. Okay. But it has a sheet that you put on underneath your mattress and then you hook up the Module to it underneath the inside of like a vent. And then it can do air cooling or heating. I see it, dude, I'm telling you, bro, it's good.

Yeah.

Like, I put that bad boy on, I set it like 65, 64 degrees, like, nice and cool. I like it cold. And I usually sweat a ton. It's not. And this is what the video that they made is probably 90 hype and promotional, but I believed it, so whatever.

So.

And it was like, look, it's not about cold. It's about ventilation. Because the reason you get sweaty is because you don't have any ventilation.

Fair.

So let's make this sheet that has like little holes in it and they pump air through it, and then you actually feel like a little bit of like, ventilation all night long. Dude, I'm telling you, I've done it for two nights. It's fire, dude. I usually wake up sweating in the middle of the night. And if I eat later, especially if I eat like my. My big steak in the middle, like your. Your body temperature goes up higher. So I've always in the past had my AC thing in my room and I put to 61 degrees and I'll still wake up sweaty and I'll get out of bed and be freezing cold. It's because I don't have ventilation.

Yeah.

So that's what we're working on. It's probably because I have cheap blankets too, but hey, we're rolling with it, dude. This is fire. I'm all about this.

Yeah, well, they have a. They have a Memorial Day Sable sale going on right now, so.

See, I don't need the two sided one, right? So I just get the basic. So I think I did the 429 and then I got the sheets. Yeah, the 99 bucks, that's all you need. All right, dude, I'm telling you, you set it on your phone, what temperature you want. You have up and down. You have a timer on it. You can do all sorts of fun stuff.

I like it.

I do.

I'm a big fan.

I'm telling you, it's. It's the most bougie stuff ever. But you will sleep better. And the reason I got into this little kick was someone asked Kevin Johnson is his name the Johnson? The guy's trying to live to like a million years old.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't.

Johnson. He was like. They were like, what's the one thing? If you could boil down, the one thing was a surprise. Like, just sleep. He's like doing all these Crazy, like cold plunge. Like 70 pills a day. It's like, just sleep. I'm like, okay, well, if he says that, I can't do all the other garbage, but I can sleep better.

Yeah.

So I'm trying to do that because I don't sleep very good.

Fair enough. I respect it. I like it. You know, Bad Jet wants to sponsor the pod. Yeah, right. Use code C suite.

All right.

What's your financial Advice? Is a YouTube channel called Charisma on Command?

Demand.

Is it on demand?

Oh, no. You might be right. You might. You might.

Have you heard of this channel?

Yeah, I have.

Okay. Yeah, I think it's Charisma on Command or on demand.

I thought it was on demand, but I could maybe.

It's on demand.

Okay. All right. I know. I know who you're talking about.

Charisma on Command. Demand.

I think it's demand. Oh, you're right.

It's command. Thank you. Charisma on Command. Oh, hail. So check it out. I would strongly recommend this for communication skills, for interviewing skills, and for leadership skills. So if you are communicating in a team setting, in a one on one setting, this is a fantastic YouTube channel. Very engaging because they will use, like, movies and TV shows for their analysis. One of my favorite videos that they've done, someone recently asked me, hey, I'm doing a lot of interviews, like, how can I get better at asking questions? I was like, check this video out. It's actually a kind of deep dive on Sean. I can't remember his last name from Hot Ones.

Oh, oh, yeah.

The wing show where he brings celebrities on. He is a phenomenal interviewer. So they do a deep dive on, like, how he got so good.

I think I've seen that one. That was a while back.

Yeah. Yeah, it is good. It's not one of their most popular videos, but it's fantastic. So if you want to work on your communication skills, your presentation skills, interview, whatever it may be, check them out. Charisma on Command.

Very cool.

Yeah, that's pod.

That's the fudge.