Returning Employees, Responding to the Backlash, Building a Team

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 growing your small business. You might find yourself someday in the situation where you're thinking about hiring back an employee that used to work for you. We'll find out what Mike thinks about that and why it's very important to not let your personal pride get in the way of making a good business decision. Next up, Mike responds to some huge backlash we received over one of our previous videos. Mike stands up for what he said, but we have a little bit of explaining to do. Finally, it's super important to make sure your employees are operating as a team and how to make sure that things go smoothly in your business when your back is turned. As always, you can get the lectures, interviews, and more over on the Mike Andy's YouTube channel. Let's get started and see what to consider when thinking about hiring back an employee that used to work for you.

Okay, so I'm running out of command center. Have my massive jug filled with water, dropped it completely busted, soaked me, and I'm going into interview.

Let's go.

Today's Friday, so I had to anytime fitness meeting that we have every single week. We got a new office manager starting on Monday. That's awesome. Gonna get trained up over the next few weeks. Let's talk about hiring someone who left your business in the past, because that's what's happening. They went and left. And do you hire them back? I'd love to know your thoughts in the comments. If someone leaves, not under bad circumstances, they don't say anything negative, but do you have them back? What's the requirement? What's the prison that you would look through the questions you'd be asking? So we're gonna see if we give this person another shot, or is this a matter of like, hey, you left us when we needed you. It was nothing negative. It was just you left us. Is that just a pride thing that I, as an owner would think about, or is that.

That'S their right? They can do whatever they want, and if they come back, it's up to me if I think they're of value. Like, what's the question you ask yourself and what's the question you ask them when it comes to someone who left you when you kind of needed them and then they want to come back? And there was no hard feelings or negativity in the process?

Things like, this is kind of like one of the most stressful parts of what I do and most business owners have, and that is when you're dealing with multiple situations. And each of those situations require different parties to be brought in and communicated with. So when you have multiple middle level managers, you can't just make calls without bringing people into the equation and getting their opinion, synthesizing that, talking about it with them, working through certain things. If you disagree on stuff and then making decisions and then you gotta like bring different parties in. So for example, with the one situation I just mentioned with the employee that wants to come back, it's like, well, I got to talk to managers, I need to talk to the team, I need to talk to other managers, get their feedback and bounce things off of them. So I don't make calls behind someone's back. So sometimes that can get a little much when you're trying to get stuff done. Because it's like right now there's three of those things happening where different situations, completely different people you're trying to bring in. And you're kind of like the control center for all that stuff happening. But that's this business that's just, you know, every single business owner has that, whether it be at a larger scale or smaller sale, another, another situation, just a financial thing. Like someone just needs help with their finances and trying to walk them through the process, scaling. And when you do that, you are running low on cash, you need to have certain steps and you got to bring other people into the equation. So things like that, that's what is pressure sometimes, I guess.

So it's actually Friday evening right now and it's the fifth of the month, which typically means I look back at the previous month, at all the financials inside of all the businesses, and it's my time to kind of just take a snapshot of all the companies. And that's also when I determine profit sharing. So every single one of my businesses besides the media group, I do some form of profit sharing. And so whether that be the gym or each of the locations that have GMs on them, or the franchise or command center or whatever it is, I do all those numbers myself. Now it probably takes me a couple hours, but that's like my time to lock in on each of the companies and know the numbers really, really well. So even though down the road, like you'd have a finance team doing this sort of thing, it's my like only time to really think about the numbers. I don't think a lot about the defenses. A train really. I don't Think a lot about the defensive measures of the business, like numbers and things like that. But for this, maybe a couple hours a month. So that's what I'm determining right now. Profit sharing for the different companies and just how July went and yeah, super exciting.

Man, guys, I wish I would have got this on film. I had my phone in my pocket and I almost was able to get it out and get some video, but I wasn't able to catch it. But this is what happened. So I own these 10 unit, a 10 unit apartment complex. But the neighbor next door has always complained about our floodlights going into her bedroom window. So we actually put on the light. We had our handyman go up like 30 foot pole and put this shade so it doesn't, it doesn't shine towards her side of the property. Well then now she's complaining about these motion detecting lights that are on each of the properties front doors to prevent theft, et cetera. So we used to have problems with people breaking into their cars and stuff. Like, so we put these motion detecting lights, they're really bright LEDs, right? And now she's complaining about those. So she comes over, she's walking her dog and her husband and they're walking by and Liz is there because she was cleaning the Airbnb. And you know, neighbor comes strutting over and like, hey, are you the property manager? And then she comes and talks to me like, are you the owner? And I was like, no, I'm just one of the tenants because I do live there. So I'm like, I'm one of the tenants here. And so I was just taking it back. She asked, are you an owner? I said, I'm one of the tenants because I am one of the tenants. I didn't say I was not the owner. Anyways, so then she proceeds to go into my unit because she's mad. She's like, I'm going, goes inside my unit. I'm like, hey, excuse me. Like, having lights on your property is not a felony or any sort of issue legally, but you can have legal recourse for trespassing and walking into somebody's house. So I, I so wish I would have got my camera out and filmed it. She was all mad. I was like, seriously lady, get a life. Like just. We literally tried to fix the floodlight issue and if you have an issue with the other lights, let us know. But she's been like calling command center demanding to talk to Liz because she knows that she's the property manager and it's just like Seriously, lady, catch a lot.

So this is what's called a quit claim deed. And basically what you do is you're putting property from your personal name into an llc. So what you have to do is file this with an auditor's office as well as the treasurer's office. So that first part is the auditor. This part is for real estate excise tax. There is, it's just a mere, what's called a mere change in identity. So essentially there is no taxable event here. I'm simply changing it for, from my personal name into my llc. So that's what this document's all about. And I gotta file this with the appropriate offices.

It's pretty late at night here, but I was just watching this video of Dave Ramsey. I want to take, I want you to go ahead and take a look at it. It's like a minute long. It was titled like the shortest Dave Ramsey call in show ever. But I actually think it's fundamentally flawed for most small business owners, entrepreneurs and people who actually want to build a lot of wealth. And it's really built for just someone who is in the middle class or lower middle class and someone who's never going to really double down on growing to become a millionaire or beyond. So let me go ahead and watch the whole clip, which is a minute and then let me give my take on it. I have a mortgage just about ready to pay it. All good. But I'm a real estate agent and you know, with a real estate agent you got to kind of go get it. And I love going to get it, but it's a big chunk. So what do you owe on it? Oh, 95. How much cash do you have? 2 11. Good Lord. Pay it off. Pay it off. What are you doing? Pay it off today. Okay, so I want to break this down because I actually think this is completely wrong information. If you are a small business owner or an entrepreneur, if you are the average person that is putting a couple thousand dollars away every year and you are plugging away at your mortgage for 30 years, etc. Probably good advice. If you are an entrepreneur and over the next 10, 15 years you want to become a millionaire, you want to have multiple streams of income, multiple businesses and generate a massive amount of wealth, this is the wrong information. Do let me give you the numbers. Okay, so $96,000 in debt. Okay, let's assume that this person got a refinance just within the past couple of years and could have easily gotten 3% or 2 1/2% on their mortgage. That's very, very possible. And so if you run, let's just assume it's $100,000. Listen, they're like a two and a half percent interest rate. So if you do the math and that, that's like it's basically going to be 20, $400 a year in interest. So that's $200 a month in interest that they're going to be paying. Okay? That is the cost of this extra debt they have is $200 a month. Okay. Theoretically, if you can pay your interest and some you should go invest the money instead of paying off any debt. If you have 30 year fixed debt on your mortgage and you recently, in the past couple years got a mortgage for 2 and a half, 3, 3 and a half percent, I would highly recommend, when inflation is at 8, 9, 10%, that you do not pay off that debt. Your, your interest is less than the rate of inflation. So that's a dumb move. Here's why. $200 per month, okay, is what you're paying in interest. Now what if you took that $211,000 and instead of going and paying off debt that you're paying $200 a month on interest, go put that towards a real estate deal where you're going to put 20% down. You're going to buy a property that's worth a million dollars. You have $211,000. You're going to go buy properties for a million. You're not going to pay property mortgage insurance. You're going to get a conventional loan because it's a four unit apartment complex or fourplex. So you get a 30 year fixed mortgage. I truly believe you can absolutely cash flow 1,000 to $1,500 a month from day one. And furthermore, in a couple of years you're probably going to be making two or three thousand dollars a month in rental income in addition to the, the mortgage that you're paying on this fourplex. Okay? So now instead of saving yourself $200 a month on interest by paying off this loan, you've got to now bought an asset in a couple years, you're probably literally going to make a couple thousand dollars in monthly income. And it's an asset that goes up in value because guess what, your loan doesn't go up in value. It just stays the same. It constantly goes down as you pay it off. So why would I pay that off if it's fixed 21 a half, 3% interest rate? If I can go get $2,000 a month or even $1,000 a month in income, rental income in an excess of a mortgage that I'm paying on that fourplex. That is how you build wealth. Because now that fourplex goes up in value, my rents go up and my cash flow improves. So I think it's bad advice by Dave for a small business or entrepreneur, it's probably a good thing if someone struggles with saving and struggles with investing. But if this person has $211,000, I don't think they fall into that category. And this person should be investing their money assuming that they have 30 year fixed like real estate. Debt is fantastic debt. If you have any debt right now and you're paying under 5%, you're literally paying less interest than what the current rate of inflation is, which typically means your asset is going to go up higher than the interest rate you're paying. So you should get as much of that and keep it as much as long as possible. That's why no one is selling real estate right now and no one wants to sell their house because they are locked in at these two and a half, three, three and a half percent interest rates and now interest rates are five, six percent. No one wants to sell. Keep that debt. Invest and build wealth. Stop trying to pinch your pennies and pay off every single debt when in three years you could literally build a million dollar net worth, taking that $200,000, investing it and having a cash flowing asset that is appreciating in value.

Whether it's hiring back previous employees or ensuring that your best talent doesn't leave in the first place. Mike has developed that rewards workers based on their performance and promotes efficiency in your business. We call it P4P. That's pay for performance. Pay your employees the smart way. With our new P4P software, you'll get automatic updating efficiency, numbers, real time project tracking and individual employee metrics on a daily basis. Learn more today@p4psoftware.com now if you've seen he was two minutes late on our YouTube channel or on Facebook, you'll know that we have some responding to do. Learn why Mike actually stands behind what he said in this next clip.

Today I'm gonna be showing and responding to several comments that were really, really negative about me as an employer in relation to a video I made a couple of weeks ago showing that someone was two minutes late to their interview and for that reason I didn't hire them. I'm gonna show you a couple of clips from that video so you get some context and we're gonna jump right in the comments and it's gonna get pretty fun. Okay, 9:30 interview. Showing up at 9:32. They're not gonna get no interview. How's it going? Are you serious? What actually happened is this video is a few days old. However, 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 are really, really negative about me. So I want to go through those and actually address them because I don't. There's really nothing to hide and I want to talk about them. And maybe I'm wrong on a couple things. So we're going to through those comments. But I want to make a couple things really clear up front. And that is first and foremost, I'm not surprised by the feedback, the negative feedback. I actually am going to show you a picture here of a text that I sent to our media team prior to this video being released. So typically how this works is the day before I see the thumbnail, the title, and then that evening we'll watch the video, but it goes up the next morning. So usually if I want to make a change in the video, it means we're getting someone to come work after hours to like make a change and fix it and re export, et cetera. But I usually definitely look at the thumbnail and title at least the evening before is launched. So that is what, as you can see on my screen, I saw and I screenshot it and I sent it to our team and I said, if we didn't use this thumbnail or title combo, what would we do? I don't like making people look dumb, especially because we cut the you serious part of the video out of context. I will likely roll with the thumbnail and title, but I also don't want to make people look bad. So I'm not going to try to use this, you know, say, oh, I didn't know that this was going to be controversial or I didn't know that this video would spark this kind of response. I know that I take full responsibility for the fact that I allowed it to be cut this way. Ultimately though, I made a decision not to pull them back in evening to re cut the video. And their job as the media team is to ensure that the videos that I make have the most wide audience and wide appeal. And that means making a thumbnail and title that's going to draw an audience and cut the video in a certain way that is going to garner views. And if you think that's really bad, every single creator does this, as well as a news outlet, every single website that's looking for clicks. This is the name of the media game. So I went ahead and left it. Now in these comments, I've scrolled through maybe 10 or 20 of them. There's hundreds of them. But I got a pretty good gist of what we're going to be seeing. And one of the things that kept popping up is like this person to be a horrible person to work for. I'm sure he doesn't pay them a single penny above minimum wage. I bet that he has no benefits, et cetera. Let me be really clear. In order to expel that myth, I'm actually going to show you the month to date numbers of the location in question and what those employees are making. Let me also be clear that the location I'm showing you has paid time off. Two weeks of paid time off every single year. This is for frontline entry level workers. They have paid time off. They have medical benefits where the best plan gets 90% of it paid for. We don't do like 50, 50 splits like a really good medical plan. We also allow them to have profit sharing on a quarterly basis, which last year that was 600 $1,1200 in cash for three to three of the quarters. And now I'm actually going to show you what they're making per hour again as frontline team members mowing lawns, installing mulch, trimming bushes. We don't do excavation, we don't do hardscaping, we don't do construction. And 90% of the people that come work for us don't have any prior experience. So let me go ahead and show you this location. This one has about 15 employees out in the field working every single day. And the reason I'm not showing you the one LOC where I was actually doing the interviewing that day is because there's at the time only one or two employees. So it's not a good sample set for you to actually see how much people get paid at Augusta Lawn Care. And so let's go ahead and jump into what we call P4P. It's something that we do pay for performance. And in pay for performance, the employee gets a percentage of the labor revenue that they earn for the business every single day. And again, when I talk about that, people immediately think like, oh, you're just trying to scam employees and it's a horrible system and all the rest of it. Let me show you the numbers. Okay, let's go ahead and jump into the location specifically that I'm an owner of it and is the closest to the Mountain Vernon location that I was doing. And that is the Whatcom county or Bellingham location. Now I'm going to blur out the names of the people in this, but you can see here the dollars per hour earned. Their high, the highest is around $31. And if you scroll down here, this is every single employee I'm showing you, every single employee is approximately 21, 22, 23, all the way to 31, 30, 29, 29, 28, 27. So this is what people are making at this location. Now the very bottom here is a brand new employee just started last week, as well as someone that only does the base pay of $18 per hour. So they any less than 18, it's impossible. And so that $18 per hour person is someone who comes in on the weekends and cleans the trucks, fuels up the gas, et cetera. But every other employee that has worked for us for more than two weeks is making a minimum of $21 per hour. And that doesn't include profit sharing, paid time off, medical benefits and the other packages that we offer in terms of things like gas cards, if they just show up on time for a month and things like that. So we do a bunch of bonuses around. If they get referrals, if they get reviews, there's like $50 cash. We hand out thousands of dollars every single month in just cash bonuses. Not even mentioning. Now the reason I'm showing you that too is because a big reason why being late is such a bad thing for our company is the fact that on P4P or pay for performance, they are splitting the revenue with whoever's on their crew. So what that, what that means is someone shows up at 7:30 and they get the truck ready and they get all the equipment ready. And then someone else shows up late and they're showing up at 8:05, someone else is waiting around doing nothing for 20, 30 minutes and that is costing them money. So on P4P, if someone's showing up late, it's not just affecting the business, it's affecting the paycheck of their fellow coworkers. And that is why I, I make sure I'm so against people being late because it affects the paychecks of their other employees. And I understand that those standards are very, very high, especially in a very entry level position like mowing lawns and trimming bushes. I understand that. However, I also realize that the average pay that we give is substantially higher than the average pay of our competition locally. As well as most other landscaping companies that are taking entry level workers and doing mowing and landscaping. They are not offering 25, 26, 27, $28 per hour plus benefits and paid time off and all the things that we. And so because I require someone to be on time, have that extra level of not having drugs, et cetera, that I mentioned in the video, that is why we're able to pay a higher wage. And I know that I will need to pay that higher wage in order to get the talent that we want. And you say, well that's so bad that you would penalize someone for being on pot or being on drugs. Look, we are around trucks, equipment and things that could damage property and hurt other employees. And there was one specific time where we had one employee that was driving under the influence of pot and the other employees that were in that vehicle came back to the shop and basically said we are never working with him because when he drives we feel like we're in danger. And I'm not going to have any of the employees that work for Augusta Lawn Care feel like they're in danger of their lives because someone else is under the influence. And it's putting the customer's property at risk. It's putting the employees lives at risk. And that's why we have drug tests and we don't allow it. And I understand that this is a very high standard and that is why the compensation package is built the way it is. Because we do require that we also charge a premium price to the customers in order to be able to afford that level of expectations from our employees. Because they are back background checked. They are. They do have drug tests. Those are things that are, I understand in most entry level positions not going to be afforded or the standard of the organization. But in most entry level lawn care companies, you also don't have the opportunity to make $30 an hour pushing a lawnmower. So let's go ahead and jump into the video. You can see here I'm on Facebook and I just this evening started looking at these comments. I've looked at several like I've already mentioned. Let's just go ahead and start scrolling through some of these and see what we can't learn. And maybe I can expound on because this is the major thing. Let. If you watch the first few seconds of this video, the initial cut is taken out of context because we've watched this. Go ahead and watch this video again and it'll. It'll sound like I step out of the office and say, are you serious? As if he's two minutes late. I see him driving in. I stepped out and said that, okay, 9:30 interview. Showing up at 9:32. They're not gonna get no interview. How's it going? Are you serious? However, realized I did multiple interviews in that day and for one of the other applicants that wanted to work, they were driving up and their name was spelled like serious, but their actual name was Cyrus. So when I stepped out of the office and said, are you serious? It wasn't like I was mad at them. And so yes, the media team cut that out of context in order to be able to grab the views and be able to retain the audience 100%. And I ultimately decided that it was fine and not worth pulling them after work to cut that out. Okay. So I'm gonna go ahead and just sort this by most relevant and I think that'll probably us the comments that are most liked or upvoted so hard enough to find people who actually want to work nowadays. Stop trying to build your perfect little team and be happy with what you have. I get where this is coming from. It's like, hey, it's hard to find employees. Just be happy with what you get. I understand that. Again, we have high standards. We also have higher than normal compensation. And we actually encourage our employees not to work with us for more than two or three years because we want them to move on and do something else. Whether it become a manager, take the skills. We have open book management, we teach all about business management and training and we want them to go do something, something other, something else. And I actually encourage them to go start their own business and compete with me for all I care. But go get skills while you're working here and go do something else. All right, next comment says, so this 12 year old boy thinks, yes, I'm 12 years old. I might look like I'm 12 years old. I'm 26 years old. When I was 12 though, I was just starting getting mowing lawns. And then When I was 13 I started going to college and that's how I went all the way through mowing lawns. And there's a couple other comments saying I had no idea what I'm doing in this industry. I've probably never worked a day in my life. I probably was giving this to my parents, all that fun jazz. But guess what? I was when I was 12, when I was 12 years old. Although I might look at now, but when I was 12, 12 years old, I was pushing a lawnmower. And I really did that probably all the way up until the age of 2021 when I started working on the business and then finally now have more than 90 plus locations around North America. So I am not impressed. This guy told him why he was fired and frustrated at his job up front about weed. Two minutes late and can't have an interview. This little boy could be overlooking great employees. Let me just be very clear again, I disagree with the fact that if someone is late to an interview that they are a great employee. If someone would have called me, let's say there's something at home or they hit a train and they're waiting on the train, just give me a call. I had been texting them that morning. Just text me, say, hey, I'm waiting a train, I'm on my way, I'm going to be a couple minutes late. I would not have an issue with that. I would 100%. I have hired people to have done that. But to not say anything, just show up to an interview and not even say like, oh, I'm late for whatever reason, not even get an excuse. Like, I don't believe I disagree with that. Being a great employee and. And we can just agree to disagree on that one. No, I have never talked bad about a previous employer. No, I have never been late to an interview. I have have owned my own company. I have always been a long term employee. But I have had coworkers that you think, nope, won't last. And they ended up being amazing. This child needs to grow up. Okay, maybe I do. What a clown. Probably always blaming turnover and his employees would have given him my two cents before walking out of that interview. So again, you got to remember that the video is being cut up in a very different way and that these are multiple interviews and they took one little section where I said, are you serious? And it may sound like I went out of the office and just told him to le. Did not do that. I talked to him very nicely out at his car and kind of gave a quick interview and basically said that, you know, being late is something that really hold is really important to us. And it was very cordial. Very, very cordial. And now that I'm looking at this, we have over 215000 views on this video so I'm sure there's gonna be more comments if you go check this out yourself. Let's go through a couple more. Let's see here. Someone is very self assured. I love his attempt at reading body language. People also cross their arms when they have something to say. It's uncomfortable as self comforting method but not necessarily because they're lying. This little pip squeeze week gets off on doing interviews, pretending he's an expert at all things life and judging the shit out of everyone for all their perceived flaws. He may be the boss but he damn sure doesn't present himself as a good leader. As part of what I do on the daily for many years now it's easy to see see there sucks being judged from just a few minutes. Hey. Okay, so first of all I don't really do a lot of interviews. This is probably the first time I've done interviews consistently for price 6 to 12 months and I very rarely do them. This was a matter of being able to video this in order to be able to train other landscaper and other home improvement industries. What is potentially something that's very important inside of interview, what to look for and what not to look for. No one else gives this kind of information. And I understand that I'm going to be criticized when you put this on the Internet. And so this is why I realized when I told the media team I think people aren't going to like this, I understood that. I have full knowledge of that. But I also understand there's people who have no idea how to do an interview and they don't know what to look for or what the red, red signals are. And because of that they hire 20 people and all 20 people don't work out. And then they think that they're just going to work as a solo entrepreneur the rest of their life because quote unquote they can't find good employees and they just don't have the information of how to what to look for in a potential applicant. So I'm trying to offer my perspective. Maybe it's wrong. Probably is probably not the perfect way to do an interview. But potentially it's a conversation that is had and someone else can kind of see what works for them. Oh maybe I haven't thought about that. And they start to improve. Here's one person they said GMs go to franchise training. Basically that means you don't know about your own franchise. Let me be very clear. I started the franchise, I started the first location and this Is I think location like I don't know, 90 something. We just started recently and that's why I was there to help. You didn't establish this. Oh yes I did. You didn't start this. You just bought this. Nope, that's not true. He isn't sketchy, can't send angry face, only stars, blah blah blah. Okay, Scott Thompson. I got a guy that shows up one to three minutes late about four days a week. He's the only person I have that's willing to work through his paid break or lunch or work late to get a job done. He's never called in sick and doesn't ask off and is almost always able to work his day off if needed. His work is also top notch. Do you think I should fire him because he is continuously late? My other guys are always on time, never miss a break, won't work late or days off. Their work is also good. So here's the thing. If someone's working by themselves, being late isn't a huge impact. But at our company, when they're getting a paid a percentage of the revenue they bring into the business, they can make significantly more. But if they're teamed up with someone who's showing up late, it can actually damage their own paycheck. And so that creates friction inside the business. If someone shows up 30 minutes early and someone else shows up 10 minutes late, now the other person is waiting around, they've prepared the truck, got everything ready. And that's why we are so stickler on people showing up early. It doesn't really affect the business as much. If they just went out and like you said, worked really hard throughout the day, it wouldn't affect the business. But it's going to affect the person that does show up early, does get all the trucks equipment ready to go and is sitting there waiting for them to show. Show up. As a PM that hires staff, there is no way I would ever work for you. Just based on your, on your couple of minutes. You selectively edit to show how you treat potential employees. Yeah, so this is another point of thing is like this is a 25 to 30 minute interview, the one that was filmed and cut down about 20 or 30 seconds simply to show a couple points that the editing team and myself thought were, were important to be able to show. At the beginning he was very, very nervous. He wouldn't look at me in the eye and he was just. It wasn't because he was being sketchy, he was just not comfortable. Notice after I crossed my leg and leaned back and what took a much more casual approach is when he leaned back and started opening up and talking about Pratic's past experiences and being able to have eye contact and actually communicate very well. All right. And then I don't know how much you kind of saw on our job posting, but any question you had for me in terms of kind of what we do here or anything like that. I did have a question. Actually it was about the pre employment drug test. So I did unfortunately smoke weed like a week or two ago.

Okay.

So I won't be able to pass that. Cool. All right. Another non verbal that I picked up on is when he talked about the drugs, he did cross his arms, which typically if people draw the things into themselves or cross their arms, they're usually restricting something or hiding something. And so there's a very good chance, chance that he is actually an avid drug user and uses it normally. And so even though he said it was, he used it like a couple weeks back. I can almost guarantee you use it every single day because the way that he presented that information was not in a very open manner. If you're trying to communicate something very sensitive, it's a really good idea to open up your palms and open up your hands as soon as you do this and cross your arms immediately. People just have that sense that you are hiding things from them or withholding holding information. Very good chance. That's what was happening there too. Keep in mind, there was a lot of other things said that I did not put in there that were much more what you could say I was trying to embarrass him about and I didn't even put it in there. Him talking about other employees and other business owners that he's worked for, I didn't want to put that in there. I was simply trying to make a point. A couple other topics, but you're 100% right. I took a 25 to 30 minute interview and cut that down to probably 30 to 40 seconds. Carl says, how many stacks of concrete have you carried? How many loads of shingles? How many many sheets of 4 by 8 plywood or sheetrock? To be perfectly honest, not very many of any of those things because I've never done roofing or concrete or built things. I'm actually really not that great at any of those things. But I do know how to mow a lawn and do landscaping and I've done it since I was 11 years old. This one was funny. Someone got bullied as a little kid. I was sheltered. I actually did homeschooling for one year for everyone. I was like, as soon as I said homeschooling, like, go to the comments. Let's type out. It's like, look, it was for one year. I did grade 9 and 10 in one year. So, yes, I'm a sheltered child, and that's why I am now retaliating to the employees. Okay, so here's one. Calvin says, what a clown this guy is. Did you even let the applicant know that you were taping this job interview? Guaranteed. The reason bossman acts like this is because he was bullied severely from middle school until he graduated high school. Oh, man. So, first of all, in terms of filming, that's a really good question. So typically, when I have a video of somebody, I will ask them if I can record it for training purposes. And also, all of our applicants and employees actually sign off on. On us being able to use them in video pictures, et cetera, because we have the social media and because I do use so much of what they do as a way to train other people in the industry. And if you watch that video, no one besides that applicant would ever know who that person was. We took out all names, all names of the businesses he worked for. We blurred out his face. And so ultimately, no one, absolutely no one besides him would know who that is. And that's why I didn't make the media team go back and change the clip or switch out the part that was taken out of context with me walking out and saying, are you serious? Because we took out so much other stuff that he said that could have been made him look way worse. It was all taken out of the interview, and it was only cut down to the part that I thought would be helpful for other people that are doing interviews. And, hey, maybe I'm wrong. I'm not the best interviewer. I don't do this often. This is actually not my job title. I was going down to help this location, and I'm sure I can improve. So I think that's kind of enough. There's hundreds of other ones if you want to jump into the discussion. Absolutely. Feel free. I think the big eye opener for me was the fact that people on YouTube that have followed me for years, they kind of got where I was coming from. The people on Facebook, obviously. I get it first inclination when that clickbait of three. The first five seconds is in there where it says, this person is two minutes late. And then I'm. It's sounds like I'm walking out on. On the front porch and saying, are you serious that I completely can understand why so many of these comments are like this. And if you look at the the curve of retention on the video, most people only made it through the first 10 seconds. So in that little short window of time they would immediately be thinking that this person is a jerk. And I get where they're coming from. But it doesn't mean that I back up on anything I said in the video because I have hired enough employees, hundreds of them, to know that if someone is late to their interview and they don't give notice or let you know at least a beforehand and telling you why that they are not going to show up on time when they actually start working working for you. And if that affects the other employees, it is your job and your position as a leader and as the owner of the business to make sure that they do not come into the business because it will affect the paychecks as well as the livelihoods and the morale of the other team member.

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A team.

Will start moving stuff over to the new shop. It's like only five minutes from here. I put the address on the team chat last Thursday, but I'll make sure everyone has it again today. We'll probably end the day there and then we'll have someone help drive us back Today they're getting like boxes over there, dumpsters, movie over there, toilets over there. All that fun.

Here out of the property. Today everything's starting to get moved over so I am marking the whole lines for the fence. It's the orange. So the trash bin is going to be mark that out. Over here is where the tiny home is going to go. It's going to get delivered here in the next few minutes and over there is where the box is going to be. So I'm just kind of measuring and marking Everything just so we're clear and I'm not going to be here next few days when they actually move. So here, for example, let's go ahead and do a gate.

This way we can actually get to the office area.

Cool. So send us the guys doing the fence and everything should be going the next few days, so should be good.

So the team meeting I had this morning with the location down in Mount Vernon was important because it's a relatively small team. Just like probably three, four people now, probably get up to maybe five this year and then maybe six or seven next spring. But it was important conversation to have because that location is now just over two months old. And I've been spending quite a bit of time down there. Once or twice a week going there to help out because the manager still has not come yet for training. They'll be having it in a few weeks and they'll be able to take a little, be a little more autonomous down there. However, I also wanted them to realize that I really need them gel as a team. I look at as much more of a team sport here in Mount Vernon because we don't have a person in the office all day long. We all will have to work together in order for this to work. I really can't be down here a lot. We have 100 other locations. I feel very responsible, make sure they're doing well and I'm investing time with them. Over the past of years, couple months, I've been down here a lot more because we're trying to turn everything around and change everything up. But ultimately I need the team here to gel and come together and support each other and be able to be taken account for what's going on down here in terms of equipment and trucks and the estimates have to be done and all these other things. It's going to be a team game here and they've gone through a lot of transition and trying to get new team members and everything like that. But I really need them to gel as a team support the general manager. And I really just wanted to catch a vision of what Augusta is all about in terms of the future. And I don't want them to stay there for a long time as well. That's something that's semi controversial that I tell most team members at Augusta Nation that are frontline staff. I tell them I don't want you to stay here for five, 10 years and ultimately like I tell the guys all the time, like I don't want you to be here in three or four years. I don't want you to be mowing lawns. I don't want you installing lawns. In three to four years, I want you to be doing something else. Whether that be at Augusta. Great. No, I want to start two more locations about 15 to 20 minutes away from here next spring. That's the goal. I. I want someone to be that gm. I want someone to be able to take that spot. And maybe it's someone here, maybe it's someone that comes up as an employee. I'd rather hire from inside of our team. But also, if you do your own thing, whether it be at Augusta or doing something completely different like fencing or roofing or whatever, the goal is to get the skills required to be able to do that while you're here. I want you to get skills and then move on in your career. Go do something cool. Whether it be inside of Augusta as like a general manager or owning your own franchise under the franchise franchise fee forgiveness program, whatever it is, or if you go do something else, go to another company and use the skills that we talk about at P4P and open book management and how to lead people and the audio programs and go do something cool. I hope that maybe, you know, this position like Caleb, down the road, you can have another location or go start your own. They have what we call a 3F program. If you work somewhere for two years, you don't have to start, have any franchise fees to get started your own location. And we hope you get started. Please just get some skills and learn some about money and managing people and leadership. It'll serve you so much better than how to mow grass. I started mowing lawns when I was really a young kid. And like, I use lawn care as a way to hopefully help other people do the same thing in terms of, like, get out of whatever situation you're in and go do something cool. I want you to make more money, be able to provide, be able to do better for yourself. And so, and so I just really want to inspire them because I. I'm gonna have to start stepping back as they get more established and they have their own location. And this is something my regional manager next year will kind of do more for me, and that is manage the managers. And hopefully as new team members are added over the next few weeks, they can really gel together as a team and make that location something special and really prove out what I'm wanting to do with multiple of our locations, which is what's called the working GM model. Right now, we're kind of in the Stage where like we need about three or four team members just to kind of get the mowing done. But the goal here at this location is to grow. It is to have at least 6, 7 team members by next spring. And really the whole goal of this location specifically is actually approve something that we work with our franchisees on. And that's what we call a working GM model where someone is the gm, the general manager is still out in the field working three to four days a week. That way it's very easy to be to recover their overhead of their salary. And then command center takes a lot of the load in terms of emails and phone calls and sales and just lets the working GM be on the field with three, four, maybe five employees. I think it's a good model. As we start more locations, the goal is to be able to have what we call a working gm instead of someone who has a whole bunch of management experience and a bunch of money and is able to come in and buy a bunch of trucks and all the rest of it is they'll take someone who just needs to know how to do the work. And that's basically what Caleb, you know, he has never been trained on the management side or hiring or marketing or the rest of it, but he's able to step in, be a working gm, which means three to three, four days out of the week you're out in the field, still working, but you're in contact with command center who's doing all the calls and the office work and all the rest of IT in Ferndale, 5 to 600,000 annual revenue, 5, 6 employees out in the field and then have someone that doesn't have a client of management experience and own businesses before be able to be the general manager. We're already doing a couple of our locations that I own. And I wanted this to be a further expression and a further proof that that is a really good way to do it. If your goals are 5, 600,000 in revenue and not a million, 2 million, etc. Now that model requires though, a lot more support and teamwork. So here it's going to really require people to be much more self directed. If you have a flat tire, if you text Caleb, you might not get it for 30 minutes because he's out mowing a lawn, right? So you might have to go, okay, where's the closest place to get this fixed? Can I get this fixed myself? And figure out things on your own? So it's gonna be a little bit of a different dynamic. The reason I want to Prove this is because I feel like a lot of guys in the field, they're never gonna be able to manage a 15, 20 person crew like Daniel. They're not gonna have the skills or they don't even want to. But I feel like a lot of guys could manage four, five, six guys and run a very profitable business at a smaller scale.

All right, the tiny house is being delivered. So turns out it's a little bit strange, but they did not send me the one I bought. They randomly upgraded me slightly without telling me and then gave me this one. So I might paint this one because it's not really the colors I'm looking for, but, you know, gave me an extra few feet, like six feet extra. All right, so we got it in here. Let's go ahead and take a quick peek inside. All right, so inside now. And this is the tiny house. So we got AC unit, got a remote there. Got lots of windows, lots of light coming in. Got some steps up to this loft here. And then that loft will have that ladder hook right onto the pipe there. That's pretty cool. Fan.

Nice finishes. We got washer, dryer, combo, freezer, fridge. And then we got to the bathroom. So got the full deal there, shower and everything. Let's go. All right. And there she is. Got one piece of wood that came off during the trip. Part of the deal is they're not responsible for any damage during transport. So got a little bit there. And then it looks like they might have hit something a tiny bit on the roof, the metal roof there. But we'll fix it up. It'll look good.

I always know it's gonna be a really long night when I show up at command center and it's 3:20 in the afternoon. I'm just getting here, so. Yeah, just finished an interview, podcast interview with Tommy mello. He owns A1 garage doors. They do like $150 million in revenue. It's gonna be a full interview here in a week or two, so keep your eyes peeled for that.

This has been the Mike Gandies podcast. We hope to empower your business to be the best they do. It can be if you like what you heard. We have tons more lectures, interviews and more over on the Mike Andy's YouTube channel. That's all we got for you today. We'll see you next time.