Plan B, Changing Your Mindset, Admitting You're Wrong

Welcome back to the Mike Gandies Podcast, where we discuss the ins and outs of owning a small business. If you're new here, the Mike Gandies Podcast is all about starting, maintaining, and taking your business to the next level. In this episode, Mike finds out our loan for the new Augusta headquarters is officially denied. So what's plan B? You can turn any situation around if you know how to plan accordingly. Next, Mike has a consulting call with a business that can't seem to find their dream employee. However, it's not for a lack of trying. Changing your mindset can drastically change the future of your business.

Business.

Finally, even the best leaders say something they wish they hadn't. Every so often, it's important to know how to admit when you're wrong. As always, you can find lectures, interviews, and more on the Mike Andes YouTube channel. But let's get started and see how to create a backup plan for when things fall apart.

Not gonna lie, though. It is a little bit of a punch in the gut. We had a lot riding on that.

And.

Yeah, I don't.

I don't know what plan B is, but we're about to find out.

Now, I was listening to a podcast.

The other day on Ryan Pineda's channel, and he mentioned something really, really interesting because they're doing this Houston hot chicken thing, and they're actually thinking of making a fund where they start a location and then it's funded by the audience and they all invest together.

Hello.

Awesome. Thanks so much.

Now, I don't know if we do.

The exact same, but it would be really cool one day to be able to involve the audience for people that don't actually want to own their own lawn care business or own their own Augusta lawn care, but want to invest in what we're trying to do before we go public, which would be like 10, 15, 20 years from now, but they'd be able to get involved somehow.

That'd be cool.

I don't really know how that would work, and we're not even close to making that work because I got to make sure that I can run 10 locations and start them immediately and do that on my own dimension before I let anyone else invest in the concept.

A little concerned. How so? I haven't seen, like a.

A rollout or a demo for anything.

New on the dispatch board. Most of it's pretty cool. It's been a long time, so, like, you know, incremental change, but you'll think it's pretty cool. I want to get the redesign done. I want to get the App where it's better for the, for the employees. So. Okay. No, I'm, I'm happy with it, you know. So like if you update that, that's.

Going to update.

Like integrated.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. It's like, because a lot of they.

Just, they basically design the preview.

Yeah, exactly. They design the preview. They're like, this is how I want it. And then we'll send it back to.

Quick tip with Mike. Quick tip, here we go. When you're setting up interviews, I highly recommend you text message. Yes, old fashioned sms. The applicant. We have seen a massive response rate to text messages. Even if you call them and leave a message or you email them back or you message them back through.

Indeed.

Or Facebook or something like that, that's fine, that's okay. But text message people, when it comes to getting them to show up to an interview, everyone complains about I can't get them to show up to an interview and they set up an appointment and they never show up. Text mess message them and then text message them like an hour or two before and remind them of the interview. If you don't get them to the interview, guess what? You can never get them to show up to the first day of work. You never get them to show up to the first day of work. They're never going to be able to work for you. So use SMS techs.

It's really worked really well for us.

Conversion is much better than phone call or email.

This evening I am going down to inspect the work that has been done at the Mount Vernon location. The new septic tank has been installed. We have moved most of the stuff over to the new shop.

In terms of the tools and equipment.

The trucks, the trailers, that stuff's been moved over and I got to meet the electrician and I'm gonna do three interviews today. I have a 5 o', clock, 5:30 and a 5:45 all confirmed via text message. I don't usually do a lot of interviewing but the past few weeks I've.

Been able to kind of keep my.

Skills sharp and I enjoy it. I probably didn't do interviews for man a year or two there for a bit.

So I kind of like jumping in.

Occasionally at least making sure I still know what I'm talking about. Getting my fe feet wet, get my hands dirty. Good stuff.

Big notch here in this Sheetrock will have to get patched. But say we come out of here and offset down into a junction box. Get it out here on the surface, right through there. Not sure what that one is, but it's not cozy.

Christmas lights.

You should be right on the siding here. If we were able to shoot right now.

Yeah, I bet. Can you move this enough of this stuff around? Yeah, I guess it's the main point. Is there enough room to get 80amps in here?

Yes.

Okay.

Yes.

That was kind of 80amp search breaker goes there. These four breakers go on to it. Just like these are right here.

Split breakers, the.

The peanut breakers, the tandems.

Okay, cool.

We just take these four twenties.

But you're not one of them.

You already got one doubled up on it.

You're.

You're not going to be able to.

Split the power bill though.

That's fine.

Okay.

Splitting from the post and having two come out. One feed the house, one feed the, the hot tub. So it's got.

No, I'm talking about putting the panel out there. Then feed your RV pedestal out of that panel and then you can still feed other stuff out of that rather than being here.

So the main thing we were trying to figure out with the contractor there is just where can we connect the power for the 80amps for the tiny house? Again, don't need 80, just need 50 for a tiny house. But because of that hot tub that I want to include, we were just going to beef up the wire a bit, bouncing back and forth between the new and the old shop. Because like the garbage wasn't delivered today. Like dumpster and I had to run Caleb back to the other shop. So fortunately it's only like five minutes away, but kind of playing a little bit back and forth. And now I'm late for this next interview, but it's okay. So they have moved the trucks over here, moved the box over here. Tiny house is in, getting some power, sewer water hooked up. We'll get to that in a second. But this is the shop area, kind of the two car garage that we've turned into a shop. And they've been working on it today, just kind of moving everything over. It's really nice, actually. It's perfect bench for us to be able to work on things, grinding. Got storage space for all the trimmers and all the rest of it. So it's gonna be perfect. It's gonna be a nice little shop area for us. It's not too big, but we can definitely grow this location, you know, down the road, maybe six, seven guys and not be too, too big. So starting tomorrow, the fence is gonna be installed. So this will look completely different in a couple days when I come back. But you can see here they are Trenching out right now because we got to bring water and power to the tiny house. So they're gonna trench it out here, go cut through the concrete and connect to the house. So over here, the tiny house. You guys saw this the other day. I'll have a more detailed show inside this weekend and actually show you what it looks like inside. But you can see the trucks are all here. At least some of the trucks are here. A couple of the trucks are over there. But this will all get fenced off. And I think today we got four trucks here so far. Five trucks. Five trucks in here so far. The box got delivered. That's where we're going to dump all the debris right back there. That'll be nice. But again, all this is going to be fenced off. So much more private. And we'll have a gate that goes to the shop. A lot of you in the last video had mentioned how the garage is really close to the house. I agree 100%. That is the biggest thing I do not like about this property. That garage being right next to. Right next to the house. I would love if that was like 100ft this direction. But, you know, we're just going to work with what we got. And I'm going to discount the rent on the house and to be able to accommodate the fact that, yeah, we're going to be close to their house. And yeah, I'll discount the rent. I'll pay their lawn care and we'll pay for their trash and all the rest of it. So, yeah, moving to the back here, we got the septic system that was installed today. I'll go ahead and put some pictures up of what it actually looked like today because this is actually a whole drain field. They put a massive tank in here and then it's connected all the way to here. We'll do a 4 inch where the sewer septic will come out of the washroom and the shower, which is inside the tiny house. And that will go here. And this is where down the road I want to put a pad of concrete and put a nice hot tub. That's partly why we have to bring an 80amp instead of a 50amp wire coming out of the house. Because I want to have a hot tub. If you have a hot tub in our climate, which is mostly cold, cold and miserable, this place will literally rent for 40 to 50 more per night. If there's a hot tub over the course of 200 stays for the course of a year, that starts to add up very quickly. So when I Have a hot tub here, and I have a fire pit. And I true, I truly believe we're gonna get 200 to 300 a night for this thing if we do it right. And so for those of you asking, like, what's the return on this sort of thing? This whole thing was $74,000 by the time I install power, get a hot tub, and all the rest of it, let's just say 100 grand. To be conservative, by the time I furnish it and able to rent it out for $250 a night, and I'm able to get 220 nights a month, like, this starts to be a really good investment. Paid off relatively quickly. And again, this. This alone will pay for the mortgage of the entire property, which I'm also getting a renter and my shop space. So it's a win, win, win. I'm trying to utilize the property to its fullest extent. You can see here today they installed the parking stops, all lined up nicely. These are really good, actually. You can get them on Amazon for like 80 bucks, 70 bucks. And they're rubber, so they're super flexible. They don't crack like concrete. Trucks are all pulled back from them just because they had to install them this afternoon.

But yeah, this is good stuff. What's back here? Look at these guys. Yeah. So over here, we got the trailer back here and just some random stuff. Got the toilet in here, too. We try to keep the stuff behind the storage box. That way it's not visible from the road. There is again, though, going to be a fence all the way around the perimeter of this thing just for privacy. So I'm going to lock this thing up. But it's not super organized in here right now because they had to move it. And so they basically just threw everything inside of here. But this will get organized, look a lot nicer, and I'm just looking forward to it. It's gonna be a good spot. Employees will be able to park here, and then there'll be a gate over to the garage there, where that will be kind of the shop space. So we will be trying to minimize the. The traffic to the garage, especially because we're having a tenant here. But it's just going to be a perfect place for us to have team meetings and do shops, shop repair and stuff like that. So if I got to give a renter, you know, 200, 300amonth discount because we're using the space right next to them, I'm fine with that because honestly, no one's going to really want to use this garage, you can't use it for a car. It's too small. And then secondarily, it isn't water, like weatherproof. If you see here, this roof probably needs to be changed and you can actually look up through the roof and see holes. So it's not like you're going to put your most valuable possessions in here. This is like an original build from probably 1930s, 1920s, because it was originally built in 1925. So it's old. So it's really a perfect shop space. I just don't like the fact it's right next to the house. I agree with all of you that said that, but we're working on what we got and I'll give the renter a better deal because of it. So looks like Caleb built this stuff today. He got. This is pretty cool. He made these hooks with the 2x4 in the back there. Over here we got. This is the pull cord for the mowers. And I know he's still organizing all this stuff, but that'll be. The keys are at the schedule as well as KPIs and things like that for the local shop. So looking forward to it. We'll see how things go as we're inside the main house here. There's no way in the world I need to have AC going right now because currently unoccupied, we're going to have to change the schedule here. AC should only turn on at 76 degrees.

Much better.

Save that energy. So, yeah, it's still empty in here. We don't have a tenant. We decided to actually wait to get a tenant until we're fully moved in with the shop and the Airbnb, because otherwise we just felt like it's not really a good representation of what's happening until that's all done. So they know exactly what they're getting and then we can advertise it appropriately. They can see it and feel comfortable with the shop, feel comfortable with the Airbnb. And yes, having those things on the property is going to lower the value of the rent here, but I'm also going to get way more in terms of value from the rental of the Airbnb and having my shop space here. So, again, you know, if I can get $3,000 for this, yes, I could probably get 32 or 3,500. If I didn't have the shop space and didn't have the Airbnb, having those things is going to more than double the revenue that I get from the property. Now, I'm going to end this vlog on a very, very low note. And it's actually very low. And it is a little bit depressing because we just officially got word from the SBA that they are not going to fund the headquarter project. Too many moving pieces in the companies, too much growth and not enough profitability on 2021's tax return.

Not good. Gonna have to figure something out. But we will, we will prevail. See you tomorrow.

Look at these guys.

You guys are gonna make me a lot of money because people are gonna want to be next to you in Airbnb. Thank you. I really appreciate you being my neighbors. Gonna say hi to everyone on YouTube. Give me a little bleach, you guys. This is gonna be fantastic. You're the best neighbors I've ever had.

Alright, now get out your pen and paper because what I'm about to say needs to be in your business plan. In the lawn care industry, your reputation is everything. And yes, providing customer centric quality service is the best way to build your reputation. But there's a key part to how your customers view your business that needs to be on point. I'm talking about your website. That's the first thing everyone sees when deciding if they want to go with your services. Luckily for you, we at Lawn Care Web Design build easy to use websites for a flat monthly rate. Your lawn care website will work on all devices and is specifically tuned to attract local customers. We handle every aspect of your website for a fraction of the cost of other web design services and consistently outperform the SEO of your competitors. If you need the perfect site for your lawn care business, head over to lawncarewebdesign.com and see what our team can build for you. You next up, when you're struggling to find those first couple of great employees, there's something key that's getting in your way and you might just need to change your mindset to find out why.

We are still in need of an office manage for anytime Fitness Boy. We had someone scheduled and ready to roll and they called and said they found something else. So the search continues. That's what I'm doing today. A couple interviews before our team meeting.

At the gym. We just got this new cooler. It's actually super cool. It's super awesome. What they do is they just scan the QR code over here and that lets them buy the drink without having to have a staff member here. Actually really looking forward to it.

When I do coaching calls with our franchisees or business owners in general, I would say that 80% of the issues are mental.

Mental stuff.

And things that happen in people's lives that cause them to go defensive and start to shrink and start to be afraid. And very rare is it actually financial and marketing and those sort of things. It's usually psychological mental blocks and hurdles. So this coaching call specifically is with one of our owners, and I was just trying to get him past a mental block in his mind. I actually was speaking with him and his wife. Great people. I love them a lot. And just wanting to help them get to the next level by getting through some of these barriers. And so.

And the change part won't be comfortable. I understand that. Whether it be hiring when you feel like you don't need it, whether that be marketing when we don't feel like we should be. I understand it, but it's the mindset of we have to. To break out of whatever happened in July. You've also got to realize that as an owner, you've got to reach out for help, and you've got to be like, hey, this is not working, and don't feel like anyone's going to look at you negatively. There's owners every single day contact us and are like, I'm on my last dollar.

And then like, I don't have a single dollar.

I got to get collections. I've got to get jobs. And my. None of my employees showed up. It happens every day, right? And so you're not an island to yourself. And if you need help with something, they can give it, right? But they're gonna push you. They're gonna push you, right? Because they want to see you succeed, and they know what it takes to get there. And so I understand getting employee right now feels uncomfortable.

I know.

Understand that once you get a good employee, it's like, okay, how do I get jobs? You're. We're gonna go figure it out.

We're gonna go get jobs.

We're gonna knock on doors, we're gonna close better by calling on people, getting estimates out faster, getting on the schedule faster.

What I'm hearing you saying from what you're saying is that he. It's okay if we need to change that mentality of, like, let's save the budget, let's just do what we got to do and hire the people that we need in order to shift gears, for lack of better word. You know, so maybe that's. That's the part that pack. He reached out. The tone would have been a little different because I'm hearing that the Numbers are important, but it's not more important than your mindset of how you're going to go forward.

Right now we're assuming you're assuming, assuming.

That you're going to find this amazing.

Employee and that you're not going to have any work for them. And we haven't crossed the first bridge and that's finding a great employee. Right, let's do that. And then like, worst case scenario, we don't have enough work for them. Like, sorry, we only have 25 hours worth of work this week for you. Like, that's worst case scenario. But we haven't even crossed the first bridge of finding a good employee. And so I feel like when someone has a mindset that they're crossing the bridges way too soon, you're crossing the bridge of that conversation with them, that you don't have enough work for them. Them prior to finding them. And it's prohibiting you from crossing the first bridge of finding a good person. Because you're going into an interview and.

You'Re literally like, I don't know if.

I can keep this person busy.

Yeah, yeah.

And so you gotta have that confidence. And that's why they're gonna treat you that way. They're not gonna treat you as like.

Hey, like, how are you feeling?

Like, what's, you know, what's gonna. Like, let's just get this done. Like, let's do this. And that's the kind of mentality we have here. Because I need you to cross the first bridge before we even start thinking about the second bridge. We keep worrying about the third and the fourth and the fifth bridge. And what happens when we have five trucks?

You're never gonna take any action.

You know, just.

Just get comfortable with being uncomfortable over.

The next six months. Because if, if we're gonna have it that year, next year, it's. The next six months are gonna be where we've got to get uncomfortable. And honestly, getting uncomfortable is a lot easier than having to stress. You've had the past two or three.

Weeks probably of just like, like, what.

Is Mike thinking about me? And like, you know, when I'm gonna get fired? Like, that needs to be.

I'm an owner. I own this thing.

I'm gonna take this thing over, right? Because it'll affect the way you interview, it'll affect the way you work, it'll affect the way you sell. If your mindset is constantly in a state of fear instead of expansion.

Thank you for that.

Let's.

Let's go execute.

Let's execute.

Stay in Touch.

All right. So came down to the Airbnb this evening just to take a look around and actually ordered everything on Amazon. So $3,000 is what I spend spent to basically fully furnish this whole thing. So we got to get the wiring done. That's why the panels off there. But you got to really simplify things when it comes to a tiny house because every single square foot needs to be thought about. So for example, like the TV is going to be up on that wall. Obviously these are removable ladder. And then there'll be a couch here and everything's going really tight. So up here we'll have a queen size bed. We have everything cleaned up. Get some blinds on these windows. It's a fan here, so keep good circulation. There's also AC and heating. We'll put another queen size bed up there. So theoretically we're going to say that we can house four people, honestly, comfortably, I'd say 90% of the time there's going to be only two people here, but it's looking pretty good. We got to do quite a bit of work on this place though. Like right now this is a matte finish on the wall and that just shows every single like, you know, piece of dust and etc. So we're gonna paint the whole thing with semi gloss. We're also going to stain this butcher block so that way it doesn't it's not as porous to someone's cooking. And then like something's wrong with this stove. I think the back corner there's a leg that's broken, so gotta fix that. But yeah, a lot of the cleaning just because all the windows are obviously new. But most importantly is this matte finish on any sort of a rental property is bad news. You gotta do semi gloss in order just to make it where you don't see every single smudge. You can even see on the stairs going up to the loft. Like every single little piece of dirt and dust is gonna be able to be seen, especially with people's feet knocking up against it. So you gotta do semi glass, it's easy to wipe down. Really simple. So right now in terms of the investment in this $74,000 here delivered, includes taxes and everything like that, $3,000 to furnish it. And I'm probably looking at another probably five to $10,000 to get the water hooked up, the electric hooked up, deck put in, and then down the road I'll probably install the hot tub for, you know, four or $5,000. Get a really nice one because I truly Believe we can get 250, $300 dollars per night. And if you get 20 nights in a month, that's $6,000 of revenue. So you literally could pay this thing off in one year, maybe 15 months if you can just market it correctly. So that's the goal now stepping out of the Airbnb, out of the tiny house here. Really cool to know to just found out that the neighbor of this property is actually one of the followers of the show and the videos and actually knew who I was.

So that was really cool.

So shout out to Marvin. He's watching. I was just able to talk to him across the way. So that's really cool. He actually started his lawn care and landscape business last year because of the channel. So shout out to Marvin. Marvin's Gardens. That was the name of the video of the company. So shout out to you Marvin. And looking forward to being a great neighbor. Okay, it's 8:30 in the evening. I'm headed back home and wrapping up the the week. I was looking at some of my YouTube comments and someone in the YouTube comments said hey, the comments in this.

Section are so nice to you, but.

On Facebook people like chewing you out. And it was about the video that I made a couple weeks back when an employee was two minutes or an applicant I should say was two minutes late to their interview and I basically said hey, like you're not gonna work here.

And people tore into me in this video, tore into me on Facebook. So make sure you watch the video that I made as a reaction to.

All the comments because I got called everywhere like every which name you could.

Possibly think of and I wanted to give more clarity information and maybe some insight is maybe I was wrong on a couple things. So on the end screen of this.

Video, make sure you check out that.

Video with some more explanation and color.

To what actually happened.

Now that you've heard what Mike's consulting calls are like, you might be thinking to yourself, if only I could get advice from Mike on my business. If you find yourself in a business dilemma, Mike Andes is directly available for one on one coaching sessions. However, please do not buy this call if you have not watched all of his free content. Mike gives away most of his industry knowledge through YouTube, podcasts and online courses, which are much cheaper by the way. This call is absolutely overpriced and continues to go up in cost, but is the only feasible way to get meaningful one on one advice directly from Mike. If this sounds like what you need, head over to mikeandies.com call to book your coaching call today. We're down to the bottom of our show now, and this last topic might be the hardest pill to swallow. The best leaders, they know when to admit they're wr.

It is Monday morning. The team's not here quite yet. We're gonna have a team meeting. And honestly, I don't think it'll ever get old coming out here to this farm and having the smell of manure, the bleeding of goats and cows. It's. It's awesome. Got the fence rails in it looks like. So we putting up the panels today and tomorrow getting ready to roll out of here.

This thing popped off. That stinks.

So this 20 foot storage container here is basically filled up with just, you know, a couple zero turns and mowers.

And a little bit of supplies.

So what we're gonna do is we're going to put a 40 foot box at this location once we move from the Bellingham shop. Because right now the Bellingham shop has three 40 foot containers. And once we move to the new headquarters next spring, they won't need any of them. So we'll just bring one or two of them down here and give them a lot more space. But right now those 40 foot containers are like four to five times more expensive than they were three or four years ago. So it's nuts. Now, I used to always recommend these storage containers because this one, for example, was like $2,000, which is a great deal. It's super. You know, they're really great in the elements. They're great to lock up and have great storage. But now I'm not gonna pay 8, $9000 for one of these things. It's just ridiculous.

You might remember from last week when I was filling out documents for a quick claim deed as basically you're switching ownership of a property from your personal entity into an llc. And so now I gotta actually file that today with the treasurer's office down here in the county.

All right.

The deed has. Has quite literally been done, in case you're wondering. Why I would take a property and move it from my personal name into a entity structure like an LLC is really just to protect myself from the liability of a renter or somebody trying to sue me personally and then affecting all my other businesses. And so every single entity that I have and the real estate is kept in separate LLCs and separate entities and corporations to make sure if someone tries to tear me down, they won't affect the other businesses. And my biggest fear is it affecting the jobs of the employees that I have. And because of my own investing or real estate or any other business venture affecting them. Because all of a sudden someone's trying to sue us for all the assets that I'm connected to. So keeping my real estate and all my different businesses in separate entities helps a little bit with preventing that liability. Now make sure, if you're going to try to do this, you've got to make sure that all your bank accounts stay separate, all your credit cards stay separate. Everything cannot be co mingled between entities.

Otherwise in a court of law, if.

You are getting sealed, dude, they'll still be able to come after you personally because you've breached the veil of the corporation.

Let's talk about employee Orientation day.

Now I didn't employ orientation wrong for.

A very long time. And yes, this is max dangle it.com got some of these bad boys. If you're like most landscapers, if you're like most home improvement business owners, the.

First day of work for an employee.

Typically consists of something along the lines of here's the keys to the truck.

Here'S your uniform, jump in the truck.

And you'll learn on the job.

And honestly, it's just not a great experience for an employee when their first.

Day of work they just changed occupations.

They literally are now trusting you to provide for their family and their livelihood. And you're just taking it so nonchalantly.

It's like, oh, we'll just try you out and you'll like learn on the job.

And I understand that a lot of times, a lot of the work that we do is taught by hands on training, but it doesn't take away from the importance of that orientation and actually establishing what the rules and regulations and how to win inside the organization are. We've always ensured that the general manager takes some time on their first morning to just show them around the shop, show them where the mowers are at.

Show them where to put the keys.

Just showing them where things are at is helpful so they don't feel awkward or strange their first few days when they don't know where anything's at beyond that. We also have a training guide and a manual that'll allows them to know exactly what task and skill they're going to be required to know over the first two weeks of them being employed. Now, the mistake I was making in the past was I left a lot of the rules, the regulations and what was required of them in their employee handbook, which is like a 30 page document that's signed virtually digitally, but there's definitely some core pieces of that document that they need to know. And I want them to actually sign off on in front of a general manager. So over the weekend, I actually create a four page document that's a kind of a summary of the employee handbook, but it's gonna actually be read with a manager and employee in person on their first day of work. And it goes over things like, what is being late? Like, what's the definition of that? How do I get ahead in my career at this company? At Augusta Nation? What is the 3F program?

Franchise fee forgiveness program?

What is P4P? What is the yellow slip and why do we have them? These are all things that we have in that four page document. It's gonna be read with the manager and then sign off from the manager and the employee that it was comprehended. And at every single section seem like, hey, do you understand that? Do you have any questions about that? Great. The document also goes over how they can make more money outside of just pay for performance and their hourly wage. It's like, there's profit sharing, there's a hundred dollar bonus, there's $10 bonus for upsell, there's $50 bonuses for a new referral of a new customer. There's a $500 bonus to be able to bring a new employee into the team. These are all things that people usually figure out after months of being in a job. But if you give that information up front, it equips them to be able to be a longer tenant employee and hopefully stay on longer and get ahead more in their career. We've actually given the steps and made it very clear as to what is expected of them and how they can get ahead.

I understand algorithms and clickbait.

Like, apparently not.

I feel like it fell down like a rabbit hole.

Yes.

You can see in a retention graph, like only the first, like 20 seconds. Are people listening to it. Like, the obvious retention on that video.

Is like, it's just plump to that.

First five seconds where it's like he's two seconds late, two minutes late. And then like, yeah, are you serious? Are you serious? How's it going? Are you serious?

So I get.

I wonder if we should put the extended clip of that section specifically in the explanation. Explanation.

Him trying to pronounce somebody's name.

And then he's like, no, it's sire, it's Cyrus.

I just got a YouTube comment. I was scrolling through there, saw one that said, hey, people are really positive on this video about you, but if you go check Facebook, people are just bashing you and so sure enough, I went to Facebook page. I never ever look at my Facebook page. And I started going through some of the comments on this video and there's like over 200,000 views and hundreds of comments and 95% of them were really, really negative about me. I wish I would have filmed what I went and did. Like, I went out and talked to the guy who was late and did a quick interview. I was nice to him. I was like, hey, look, you're late, aren't gonna hire you. There's no way you show an interview and get everyone to love you no matter what you say. Yeah.

Unless you're like, I hired him for more than he was asking.

I hired for more than asking. I didn't care about all his personal drama and all his fun firings. I'll just like, let's give it a shot, buddy. We'll see how much Steven leaves in from the actual video. Because you'll see me like introduce myself. Talk about, hey, we're film for educational purposes. But that's not going to do well if I show a 30 minute video. But the extremes are where you get attention. So that's like. Same thing with the comments though, right? Whoever like says the most outlandish and horrible thing about me is probably gonna get the most likes. But my clarification video says this. Like, look, if someone was late their interview, I'm okay with it. But call ahead just like, hey, I, I, I, I didn't hit a train or like my kid, you know, didn't wake up. Right. Whatever. And just, just let me know and that's totally fine.

I have a hangover.

My kid has a hangover.

I have a hangover right now. Can I come a little later? Got a headache.

It's a communication right off the back. Like, they can't just like ghost you.

Here's the balance to, to prove myself wrong though. For example, when we were quote unquote late to Jaden's interview the first time she came in.

Oh yeah, right.

Well then we don't deserve an employee.

She almost didn't give you another shot.

I know.

She actually turned it down like coming in and I was like, dude, just give a shot. Like, you know, so.

But the thing is, the employee, they don't get to tell their side of the story either. Yeah, that's the whole point.

It's not fair. People don't like things when they're not fair.

Yeah, I think as long as you go. He had noticed that like, hey, I'm late for X, Y and Z reason or I'm just gonna be late, I'm on my way though I would be totally fine.

Any reason. It's like whatever but just that communication. I think it's like, hey.

Just made a video for our command center. We do a lot of our meetings on video because we have a virtual team and then we really can't have all hands meetings at the office office because someone's ought to be answering the phone and answering web chats, et cetera. So typically when I have an announcement I actually do it in video and then we share it. So I just made a video because at our off site meeting we do peer reviews but also there's anonymous reviews for management and like areas that can be improved or made better. And so I made a pretty open discussion about like compensation and wages and different levels of compensation throughout the company. But I definitely had to apologize. Apologize for one thing I said during the off site and it was just a dumb thing I said because it was a question and I obviously didn't have time to prepare for the questions. This cute live Q A. But one of them was basically kind of comparing the P4P of the guys out in the field like working, doing lawn care, landscaping versus the P4P at Command Center. And I said something stupid. I was basically like, you know, if you think they're making too much money on the field comparatively to us, like you should go work one day out in the field. And it was a dumb thing to say because even though, though it's, it's like my point was they do really hard work and they deserve every single dollar of it. And the fact that if they don't work out in the field doing actual work like lawn care and landscaping, there's no work for us to do at command center. There's no phones that are going to ring, there's no emails, there's no estimates to be done if the work isn't getting done. That was what I was trying to say did not come across that way. It was bad. So I had to apologize. It was by no means demeaning their job or saying it was less than because honestly if you put someone in the field in command centers issues, answering phones, dealing with hard customers, they'd also fall flat in their face as well. So it was a misrepresentation and a bad characterization on my part. So I had to apologize for that as well.

Another thing that I mentioned in the video for the team was in relation to firing, someone had said, hey, like it seems like firing just seems like A somewhat on a whim or there's really no clear direction on it. And I said, look, like, I hate drama. And so if someone is fired, sometimes we will let everyone know why, just so there's not all like the murmurings or like the stories of why that potentially might have happened. But then secondarily, if someone's fired and they have a whole bunch of friends and people that they've made acquaintance with.

At work, we also are going to.

Throw them under the bus and tell about all the things that happened and the things they did wrong and they're low performance. So there's a balance, like a case by case basis, as to whether or not all the details are shared after firing. But I tried to make it clear that, look, if you're gonna get fired, you're gonna know prior, you're gonna have meetings before, you're gonna have numbers that are shown to you. And it's not like it's some massive surprise. And honestly, the last thing you want to be doing is going to work every single day worried that you're gonna get fired.

This has been the Mike Andes Podcast. Lots of tough scenarios today, but now you have the knowledge to navigate through these situations when they come up in your business. If you liked what you heard. We have tons more lectures, interviews and more over on the Mike Andy's YouTube channel. But that's all we got for you today. We'll see you next time.