STOP TRYING NEW IDEAS - Episode 105

Welcome back to the pod. Mike Circle does not have financial advice. He's got a jocko go going. I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna start with Celsius this morning. Let's go ahead.

And.

There you go. Asmr.

Crap.

All right.

Welcome back. Another episode, C Suite Unfiltered with Mike Andes. A little bit of an inconsistent schedule. Apologies to anyone. You know, all the true fans out there that want us to release on a regular basis. We're just busy. We're busy guys and we, you know, we prioritize and execute. So, yeah, I want to dive right in. I just sent you a screenshot of a linked post that I saw. So we're not doing any fluff. We're going straight to the content today. And this is from a gentleman named Jack Carr. Now, I didn't really do my research on who this guy is, but on his LinkedIn profile he says buying and building premier home service portfolios. So that's kind of his description on LinkedIn. And I'm just going to read through it super quick. Feel free to cut me off. And then I wanted to ask you some questions about it. So he posted. I keep hearing it. Once you hit 3 to 5 million, that's when you add the second vertical. H vac to plumbing, plumbing to H vac. It's sold like a magic trick. Smooth out seasonality, diversify revenue. I did it. And speaking from experience, it doesn't. It bleeds. Focus, people and cash. It doesn't calm the shoulder or it doesn't calm the shoulder season. It just creates two mediocre businesses to stress over. And let's be real, most owners don't add a second vertical because they're bored. They do it because they got stuck. They hit a ceiling in their core business. And instead of figuring out how to scale the 10, 15, 20 million, they go back to what's comfortable, starting over, building another small business instead of learning how to make their existing one big. It's not diversification, it's avoidance. If you want easier, bigger and more valuable, stop defaulting to new vertical and start getting serious about scaling the one that you already own. This message is brought to you by your local owner, operator Jack, who made this mistake so you don't have to. What is your initial reaction to this post?

Yeah, I think in spirit, I agree. I think that to every piece of advice like this, you can also have an example of a company that has done vertical integration really well and took 10 years of building infrastructure and then had outcomes that were outsized because they did create all the channels required to be able to scale a multichannel approach. So, for example, like Tesla, there is certainly an idea that like, okay, they've stopped being able to grow their car business. So what they do, they pivoted and we're doing robots now. And so should they have just. Should they just double down and make more cars, make them better, make them cheaper and focus on that? They should, should they pivot into this robot thing? Well, the robot thing probably makes up half their valuation now or more. Well, now the stock's known, it's probably more. And Robo Taxis, for example, well, Robo Taxi is probably in between the two. Right. So it just, it's a function of.

It took 15 years of building the vertical integration of like the, the machines, the warehouses and like the manufacturing capabilities, the controls and the software and all of those specific verticals you could actually look at as a distraction from their core thing, which is selling cars or electrification or energy, electrical storage of energy. So I don't know. I think, I think I agree 100% in premise, which is we, we usually hit a bottleneck and we switch to something else. And so this is something I had a huge debate in myself a couple years ago when it came to copilot, is like, is this just simply me being like, okay, we got to 100 locations and now I just want to go do something new? Or is this a function of, oh, this is the thing that I will have to work on for three years, but when I finish this, like, when I'm able to get this to a certain point, it'll allow the franchise to just double or triple. And so, like, that was a very much of a weighing decision. And I talked a lot with Dr. Tiashi of like, is this, is this something that is like, I should be not focusing on? And I think that it'll take three to five years for me to actually see the output of the quote, unquote distraction. And so I think long, the longer term horizon, you have, the more leeway, I would say, to be able to build out more verticals, multiple offerings, etc. I think in the short term, let's just call it three to 10 years, you probably have a better likelihood of just focusing on the one thing. And so everyone says, oh yeah, I have long, long term vision. But then they just, the track record is like so against them in terms of them hopping from thing to thing. But everyone starts off like, yeah, this is my thing I'm doing for the next 20 years. And so for that reason, everyone then goes and starts multiple businesses. Like, oh, if I'm on their property and I'm mowing their grass, I should also these five other things because it also has to do with grass when it is multiple businesses. And I've said this before, I'd rather have one business that has one. One very simple thing like let's just call it mowing grass, for example, making 600 grand a year. Then a business that has 3 million a year, but it has 15 different businesses. I have different departments, different department heads, different admin people that answer the phone differently, five different ways to split a phone call because of different ways of how that call could be handled. I'd rather just have the one business versus 10 or 15 wrapped up inside of one. And really it's just a whole bunch of businesses wrapped up with one entity. It's like, yes, it is one business. Now Therefore we need 3 million. In reality, we need $250,000 across 12 different services.

Yeah, that makes sense. And so like to, to really over aggressively simplify, what you're saying is like you can build, to vertically integrate or you can build one business very simplistically, very focused in one discipline. And from there it's like, then you can diversify. Whether it's diversifying inside of it or actually just like build a different business and let that machine that you've built that now you can put $1 into and get a $10 out, you leave that thing alone and then go start something separate. Is that kind of what you're saying? Like if I were to oversimplify it, you can either build to vertically integrate or you can build something on one way of doing things and keep them kind of separate. Like, don't blur those lines.

Yeah, I think the longer term horizon, you look out, usually that's when vertical integration start to actually pay off. But in the short term, like again, three to 10 years, you'd probably just be better off focusing on that one thing. And the question becomes like, is that one thing? Is there anyone else that has built the size of business you want to build doing just that one thing? There are companies that do 10 million in revenue just installing mulch and they get the whole blower truck thing and they like really nail that one small vertical. And so for you to think I need mulch and I need weed and feed and I need treatments and I need pest control and I need mowing and I need like to build a million dollar business is crazy. It is simply a lack of focus and so this was the huge debate I had in my mind a couple years ago. And I just realized that like when we started running the math, we were going to hit this huge bottleneck from between 300 and 500 locations if we didn't build out software. And we just knew that based upon the math of where the pricing was going for these different softwares, we would not be able to get franchisees because we would have like 50 to 60% of their fees would be going to a software provider that we are trying to customize our entire process around. And so we just knew eventually that would become the bottleneck. But we haven't even hit it. That's why there's not pain right now even it's a function of. We knew we would hit it between 300, 500 locations when I ran the math with Dr. Kash. And it's like, so let's, we're going to have to figure that out now. So in three to five years when we hit that bottleneck, we'll actually be able to keep scaling through it. But it's just not that the process in between is very, very painful.

Yeah, that's fair. And kind of jumping back to the LinkedIn post and really zooming in on this because I like that he kind of used specific numbers. And I don't know if you've seen this. You know, it says once you hit 3 to 5 million, that's when you add the second vertical. And obviously, you know, know I'm from lawn care discipline background, but home services in general, you know, if you're looking at plumbing or H vac, these are higher ticket jobs, right? They're, they're larger installs, they're going to be, you know, a lot of material costs as well as the labor costs. Whereas you know, lawn care and simple services, it's primarily labor costs. So hitting that 3 to 5 million, getting to that point on one discipline, if you will. So plumbing is the example that we're using here. Like what do you do if you do have that proverbial off season, but you don't necessarily want to vertically integrate, you don't want to add H Vac, you're fine just being a plumbing company, but you do have an off season. You don't necessarily have as much of a recurring basis of work. Right. It's one time installs, emergencies, fixes, leaks, things of that nature. Like what is something that a business owner could do to like stable, stabilize year round revenue, year round consistency without adding a second vertical. Like what does that look like, what would be your advice kind of to give the opposite of this perspective on this LinkedIn post?

Yeah, like, that's why, like, when we run, we did the off season book, I gave the five, and like, we don't even talk about the first one, which is lockdown mode. But it's actually really useful in some industries. In home services, we don't talk about it because we have lower ticket. We can do recurring services, we can easily do adjacent services. But like, going from H Vac to plumbing is such massively different trades, people, like usually do it. So it's like, we all think it's the same, but like, we're talking about going for from like heaters and air conditioning units to toilets and pipes. Like, it's very, very different actually. But most time these are, these are services combined together. And. And I would also say, for example, with H Vac, there is already an ability to be able to have a seasonal fix of like, heating and air conditioning. Hot, cold. When it's cold, we sell hot. When it's hot, we sell cold. Like, there's already plenty of opportunity to solve the off season. I will also say the reason 3 to 5 million is so true after you pass 3 million is usually when the owner can actually step out of daily operations. Now, I don't mean like, step off of the truck or get out of the field. I think that happens more around 800,000 to a million. But like, at 3 million plus, you have an operations manager, you have a salesperson or sales manager, you have an admin person or an office manager. Like, the three departments of the business have leaders that report to you and you can leave for a week or two and be just fine. And so that's what he said there is really correct in my opinion. Like, we just get bored. It's like I kind of conquered the hill. I'm making, let's just call it 300,000 to $600,000 in free cash flow. What do I do next? And I have a friend of mine that does this for roofing. And like, he literally was on vacation here, like a week, just playing golf every single day. And he's like, I just don't know what I want to do. Like, I'm making good money. I don't want to break anything. I don't want to step in. Like, I'm out of daily operations, but, like, I don't know what to do next. And so the things that he was like, pitching me his ideas was in my brain, like, oh, that's a distraction. Oh, that's a distraction. Oh, this distraction. And it's in part because he's conquered this big thing and now he's trying to move on the next thing. But the next thing is like very much probably a distraction. And you just want to be careful once you've, hey, look, no one's complaining when you're making 600, $700,000 in free cash flow a year doing basically nothing. No one's complaining, no one's crying for you. But when you're trying to build the next thing, you want to be careful. Like, and it's like I told him, like, look, why don't you make, take this to 100 million, like just double down, like, get back in the weeds of the business and build the next layer of leadership that allows you to go to a hundred million versus like, let's go figure out like building these things. It's like, whoa, whoa, that's manufacturing. You're in the service industry.

So anyways, yeah, that's fair. And I'm going to make, I'm going to make some aggressive assumptions here as well as give a little bit of my thought process and how I kind of view business ownership and entrepreneurs. Not being a business owner, right? Not being an entrepreneur, but the vast majority of my time is spent talking to and helping business owners and entrepreneurs and kind of assuming here and not to use the person that you're talking about, but let's just say hypothetical entrepreneur, right? They built a $5 million business and they're able to take out distributions comfortably and they don't need to be there. Like, is that kind of where there's almost like a distinction between an entrepreneur and a business owner, meaning an entrepreneur like kind of can't sit still. They need to do something, they need to build another business, they need to scale that up, they need to build that vertical versus a business owner. And I don't use this in a negative way. A business owner could like have a goal, hit the goal and be happy to hit the goal and like exit, exit day to day operations, exit by selling the company, whatever it is. Like, I think about that like, if I could build a $10 million business tomorrow, like, I don't know if I'd want to build two or three more. I think I'd just be happy with the one like. But that's just how my brain works. And obviously I'm speaking very hypothetically here, but what are your, what's your thought process on that? When they kind of reach that mountaintop, the decision to expand to Diversify or to just do nothing.

Yeah, I don't think it has anything to do with whether or not I'd label someone entrepreneur. I think it's more a matter of one person has defined goals that are just lower than the others. And people that jump from like 10 million, I gotta build 100 million, they'll hit 100, they want to go to a billion. Like, that is more or less as you love the game. But like, there's also a huge amount of kudos that you be like, no, I just need a $10 million business so I can get $800,000 in distributions. And once that happens, I'm, I've won, I'm done, I'm content. Like, that's all I need. That person's won the game too. So, like, just because you build a bigger business doesn't necessarily make you more successful if your definition of success revolves more around contentment than numbers on a spreadsheet. And so I don't think it's more or less of an entrepreneur for someone who just defines, this is the size of business I need. If I get here, I'm not going to keep growing. Like, I'm really like, there are owners inside of Augusta that have one location and just every year just make it more, more and more profitable. And they just go from like 650 to 700 to 740 to 820. And all that incremental increase is just price increases that are going straight to their bottom line. And like they make more money than a lot of people have two or three locations that are just like pouring the money in and there's constant stress and you're trying to figure out general managers. Like, it's very appealing. And so it's not a function of one or other being incorrect. It's just a function of what do you want from the business intent to 15 years, that first person that is just constantly doing one location, they're never going to have a $5 million house sitting on, you know, sitting on a beach somewhere. They're just not. But they don't need it and they determine that. Whereas the other person, like, if I don't have a 50 million dollar business, I am a loser. Okay, well then yes, you need to be plowing and investing every dollar back into the business for the next 10 to 20 years if you're ever going to achieve that. And so I think just a matter of goal definition. And then I don't think there's anything to do with whether or not someone entrepreneur or not because entrepreneurship, in my opinion, just simply you're risking time, you're risking capital, and you are trying to build something from nothing. And so whether that something is a hut or it is a mansion, you know, doesn't define change the definition of like, the contractor still had to show up.

That's fair. And me making that comment was to intentionally kind of be divisive, right? In the sense of like, well, they're not really entrepreneurs. Because like, you know, people say like, entrepreneurs, and you, you've said this though about yourself, is like, there's something like sometimes off with like high performer entrepreneurs where, like, they have to keep moving, they have to keep progressing. And I think I like your analogy better. And like I said, I was intentionally being divisive there. Your analogy better of we'll just defining the rules of the game. Like, what game do you want to play? It's so that one person's a more real entrepreneur than the other. An entrepreneur is someone that invests their capital to build a business. Right. In a basic sense. Right. I'm sure there's a better definition. It doesn't necessarily mean that an entrepreneur has to build a certain size of business or has to work a certain amount of hours. It's just, what are your goals? And I think that, you know, people defining those and going back to that LinkedIn post is like, is your goal to build a $5 million plumbing business that you're really happy with and you love your team and you can take a really good paycheck and you just want to cap it there and consistently raise prices, or do you want to build this massive $50 million home service, H vac, plumbing, roofing, everything business? Okay, well, great. Like, it's just a different game that you want to play. But I guess getting to like, the core of this and the post and what you're saying is like, think about the game long term and what the end destination is and then ultimately decide, like, what is the path to get there? Is it more vertical integration or is it one discipline? Is that kind of like a good way to put a bow on all of that?

Yes, absolutely. Thank you for serving your role as the. The prodder on the pod.

Yeah, that's really my job at the end of the day, so. Right on. Well, yeah, I mean, I didn't know if you had any other thoughts on that, but I thought it was really cool. I just thought it was an interesting perspective and I liked how he was like, you know, at the end he's like, this message is brought to you by your owner operator. I made mistakes so you don't have to. So I just thought that was really cool that, like, hey, like, you don't necessarily have to do this, even if people are telling you that you have to do this. And I think too kind of stemming from a conversation we had this morning off the pod as Alex recently going back to the well, Alex recently dropped a video called Win Violently. And he was talking about really that discipline of like, more better versus new. And I think that kind of applies to this conversation. So natural kind of segue into that is do you think more entrepreneurs need to just focus on more better? Like, do I make my plumbing business bigger? Do I make it better? Do I make it more operational or do I do new, I. E. Plug in an H Vac onto my existing business? Right. And I think let's just, let's zoom into Augusta here. Let's get real, very real world with it. We focus pretty heavily on more better with our owners. Hey, we're going to do more of the same services. We're going to do it better than everyone else. But at the same time, kind of seems like, and this is me being devil's advocate speaking out of both sides of your mouth when you also offer new Christmas lights. So how do you balance that of like, do more better but also do some new. Like, what would be your response to that?

Yeah, like first, when it comes to Christmas lights, we look at the main objective is to solve the off season. And I think that too many people jump first to new before better and more. And that's why when we talk about the off season cures, we Talked about Cure 2. The first one is more, the second, the third one is better. And then we move on to recurring service. Then we move on to new new brand. And how I pitch it in the book is like, if you can't do number two, you move to number three. If you can't do number three, you move to number four. If you can't do number four, you move on to number five. Number five is last for a very specific reason. And that is it is going to take the most change in the business to be able to accommodate a new service or new brand during the off season. But the ultimate thing is that I need to solve that problem. And so for the H Vac to plumbing example, I don't think you need to switch either of those services to solve the off season. And I've said like, the only reason to start a new brand or start a new service is to Be able to solve the off season, period, if it doesn't. If you can do it otherwise, you should not offer the new service. And so I think we've been pretty clear about that part.

I was gonna say something else, and now I'm just blanking on it. But.

Like.

There is still more juice to squeeze on more and better when it comes to Augusta. And next year's gonna be a huge, big focus on this part because we get so much traffic to our website for treatments, and only about 20 to 30% of our locations do treatments. And so it's like, can we just do more and better without having someone who doesn't want to do Christmas lights? And we still have about, you know, 30, 40% of locations that don't do Christmas lights, including my location. Because, like, we can solve the off season. We can be profitable every quarter of the month. So I'm not going to go to Cure5. And it was a very big debate because, like, I should just do it my locations. It's like, why do it? Like, the whole premise is, don't do it unless you can't. It cannot solve it using more and better. And so we can, like, we. We can be profitable every quarter at my locations because we're in a climate where I can do winter services and I do not need to. I can't mow, but I can do winter services, which is cure for. And so, yeah, that was a big debate.

How does someone, and this is not speaking about Augusta. How does someone determine? And I know you wrote a whole book on it, but, like, give me the short version of determining, oh, these cures don't work for me. So I have to add a new service because I think we see businesses jump to that very quickly. So what is the like, oh, I can't. That doesn't work in my market, so I need to do new. Like, what is the short definition of that?

Yeah, like, I drew this out recently on a mastermind for Augusta and that was, like, the reason I would, like, actually think it through mathematically. Why do people switch to new? And it's because the rate of change and the rate of progress is so much higher when you switch to something new. So we talked about how, like, over the course of five weeks, you could get your logo set up, your llc, set up insurance, wrap your truck, like, look very legit for a new service. Within five weeks, a new website, everything looking great, you get 80% of what a professional business, professional service in that industry is offering. The challenging part is all the profits are Made in the last 10 to 15% of the market, like that's in most home services. Most profits are made by that last 15 to 20%. But the thing is, five weeks is what it takes to get to 80% of what those people are at in terms of look, feel, rent a shop space, put a sign up, let's go. The challenging part is take five years to enter that last 20% of mastery. And so when you break down the rate of change going in five weeks, 80%, that's 14% of incremental progress or rate of change per week. And now then you enter this phase with the next five years, you're going to master this service. You take five years, 260 weeks, you take 20%, that's like 0.08% per week. So the rate of change dropped from 14% to 0.08%. So that's why it feels slower. Like new or new feels so much more efficient. It feels so much more like you're making way more progress. And so because we've been optimizing for time and we've been optimizing for efficiency, like, well, I am making way more progress adding this new service because I haven't done plumbing before and I've got learning all this new stuff and I'm putting up a website and all of this stuff is so much, not only more fun and exciting, it also feels like you're being more efficient. And so under the guise of efficiency, time management, all these things, we now convince ourselves that we're actually making more progress in the business by doing new. And it feels that way because the rate of change is so much higher than just taking the exact same thing, doing it for five years. But that's where all the profits are at. And so a lot of us also misinterpreted better, more and better. When we're actually doing new things, it's like, oh, I'm just, like, I'm just optimizing my system. It's like, no, no, no, you added a new service. I'm just increasing the lifetime value of the customer. No, no, you added a new service. And it is going to require new branding now, co branding, it's going to require a change of training your team members. And like, we can sometimes sell ourselves that we're doing more and better when reality we're doing new. And this is when, like, when we were talking about Copilot a couple years ago, myself and Dr. Kashi, I was like, this is new. And I'm labeling this as new. This is not me trying to make franchise more and better. Now in five years, there's gonna be a lot of symmetries between these two things and synergies between the two. And we will need this to solve a bottleneck. But this is a new thing and it will take my attention away. And I think the reason it's important to distinguish new is realizing that this rate of change is gonna be very, very high versus and like this, that will take my attention, that will make me feel good. But knowing that in the short term, the more and better part does get sidelined. Like the reason, like you adding another service means you don't train, you don't improve your onboarding process for your team members. You don't create things like the stages of success we did for Augusta. And so like, one of the biggest things when I started Copilot was like, okay, this does not come at the cost of all that we're trying to improve in the franchise. And like that roadmap. And so it was really, really trying to be intentional. Like, if we're going to own a success manager, these certain things I know need to be fixed and that we're going to do those things. And it's not going to come at the cost of us trying to chase this new thing that will serve us in five years, but it's going to take a long time to get there. So don't know if that answers your.

Question, but no, it's really good. I almost want to just zoom in and see like, you personally, what are the checks that you have? What's the gut check? What's the one or two questions that you ask before you do new. And I know you just gave like the long form answer, which is great and that's right answer. But let's, you know, what I, what I would like to do is effectively just oversimplify it, right. What is the one or two gut checks that you use personally when there's a new opportunity, a new shiny thing that you could do in the business, but you need to check to see if that even fits with what you're trying to do.

Yeah, like I've. The last new thing was Copilot. Like everything else needs to be just more and better. And honestly, like now we have a very clear path in terms of what we're trying to do with the, the investments. It is only these two things. Media, software, franchise. That's it. And so I've actually been pruning out a lot of the other stuff, like whether it be real estate stuff and Like, I've been very tempted to sell the gym, but it just is, like, so hands off and pays for all my personal expenses. So again, like, kind of benefits the holding company. I don't have to take a salary. So, like.

Again, like, that's probably me selling myself and, like, just keep other things around. But I've been actively trying to, like, sell stuff off, cut, like, prune all of my attention. And even Nick did it earlier this year. Like, him, same thing. Like, just trying to prune everything else. Like, we can just focus on this one thing. But new opportunities now, to me, like, it's not even on the radar. It's not even like, we're not even thinking about it. It's like, if it doesn't improve the lies of Augusta Nation, I'm like, just so out.

And so, yeah, every day there's just so many new things that are put on my plate and good ideas, like people with software stuff or ideas around AI things or like, this tool. And, like, look, there just has never historically been a one singular thing that someone does that's new that just takes the whole business to the next level. It's been incremental little changes that then one day look like, oh, they. They got this new thing. And, like, I do believe that in five years, that's what's gonna happen. People are like, oh, my word. They figure out this software thing, and now they have, like, this monopoly on being able to, like, get leads for, like, way cheaper than everyone else. And I'll just be like, look, this was just us, like, doing this over the course of years and years and years trying to, like, incrementally make things better. And it's very difficult. It's very difficult to stay. Like, the size of an opportunities of new things gets better and better the bigger business gets, and the more and more sense they make. Like, Like, I can't say that.

There is something that I've been asked for years to build that I know we could immediately print seven figures and we're not going to do it, but we're going to do a version of it for Augusta lawn care because everyone's been asking for it forever. And so I will never take that to the public because I just know, like, that would be such a distraction. But I'm. I've never wanted to do it because it's a horrible service and horrible industry to get into. But everyone's always asked for. I'm like, okay, does this serve the actual greater vision for Augusta lawn care? And it does. So it's like okay, can we break this chunk off of what is a new thing but serve more and better Because I know if it can serve the owners I can then focus on them growing and scaling unit economics inside their locations, solving off season for them. Like okay, I'll just say it's basically lead generation like actually where people pay us to do their ads. I've been asked that from day one because we built the whole business off the back of Facebook ads. But I will never get in that business for the public. But I'm able to carve off a piece of new and say can this serve the more and better by us just focusing on Augusta long hair? I only. So like that's the current like hill that we're conquering.

Yeah. I don't know if I should ask a follow up question to that if you're how much you're willing to share. But there you go. I'll leave it as a teaser. I'll leave it as a teaser that yeah. Another exclusive feature that Mike Andes has been asked to build will only be available to owners in Augusta. So you heard it here first.

Book a call with me today. No, it's a function too of like we were building everything for the infrastructure of it around it. And so it was a, it's not a huge lift for us to actually move into it now because like we have a 15 person media team that creates content every day. Videos, graphics can pump these things out like crazy. So like I know I can, I can compete with any other ad agency that will never create creative for you because they can't. And so like there's actual operating leverage to vertical integration. So like this is again like it's been five years of building a media team. So that way I am able to create a social media like ads agency for the owners that no one can like no one will make your ads for you. Pictures and video organic content, test it and then be able to run it on your platform. No one will do that especially for the price point we're going to be able offered at. No one like no one will even manage your ads let alone actually create the creative for you for what we're going to be charging. And again this is coming out conference. That's why I'm kind of like.

Gray on some of these areas.

Yeah, yeah, we're teasing it so yeah, all right. I know. I appreciate the teaser and we won't get into it. We'll do the full release here in a couple of months. This is a side note to this Whole conversation is, I'm assuming you read Alex's 100 million dollar money models Listen.

I don't read. Yes, I listen.

Well, yes, you listen. I count listening as reading. If you're actually digesting and engaging, not passively actively listening, I count that as reading. Did you, Was it hard for you to listen to that and not think new, new, new, new, new? Like, how did you digest that information?

Dude, you know what's crazy? Dr. Kashi did a phenomenal job of helping me in my book without telling anything about the money models. But it is money models. And looking back, I remember him like when I was first presenting the idea of him like, and him just chuckling throughout the whole time. And I think what he was thinking was like, oh my word. This is basically money models for home services. Because if you actually look at the five, if you look at the five cures. And he never brought it up. Like, he never brought up, he defended. I would never do that. I'm like, dude, I want to share. So. But he did a great job of not saying anything. But when you look at like, you know, the introductory offers, for example, but like cross sells upsells, that's more and better. Like we went through the five cures basically and that's what the off season was. But it was very tailored to home services and trying to fix the off season problem. But no, I wasn't thinking new, new, new. Throughout reading it, a lot of it was like, I was actually trying to label things that we do. So there's already stuff that we've done. For example, like the give back program, the 3F program, the 100% money back guarantee. If someone comes to training and doesn't want it, like, great, I'll give you money back. Like, we do a lot of those things already to de risk things, etc. One of the things that we struggle with is we look so different from other franchisors that sometimes people don't think it's either true or they think that there's some other agenda we have. And that's actually what even this morning you were like, we should probably just raise the additional fee so that we look like other people so they don't think that we're somehow lower quality due to the fact that we already do everything they do and more.

So I don't know where I was going with that, but oh yeah, the introductory offer, like, sometimes your offer can be so good. It's like people actually are like, this could like, is something off? Is something strange here? And it's not a matter of, like, oh, it's a high ticket price product. Because that offer can be so good. True. So good to be true that people say, can't help with saying yes to it. I get that. But when you're asking someone to change their brand, like Augusta, like, redo your trucks, redo everything, basically convert everything over legally, that's such a huge ask. If the offer is too good, it can actually cause doubt on, like, is this valid? And so that's actually what we kind of run up against a lot on the sales process is like, okay, let me get this straight. It's only flat fee. You keep adding value. It never goes up. That fee has never gone up. Okay, all right, you can. I can leave anytime. And I get to take my customers. Like, it gets so to the point where they're like, what's the catch? And we don't look like anyone else because it's so much cheaper to join. Like, our. Our $24,000 initial fee.

I.

Sorry, this sounds like a promotion, but, like, we're just talking. The 24,000 fee is like 50% less than a lot of other very comparable franchises that do less than half of what we do for the owners. So it's sometimes just an education process. And it's like, we've had this recent push, like, just talk to other owners, please. Just go talk to other owners. Because, like, us just talking about it seems like a sales pitch.

And so anyways, yeah, no, I appreciate that. I'll give my two cents there. While listening, reading to $100 million money models, I. I had to turn it off halfway through. I haven't finished it yet because I was getting distracted. I was thinking of all these new ways, and I was. I was identifying, like, things that we are doing inside of Augusta, things that I'm specifically doing inside of, like, the franchise sales side of things. But I. I, like, had to turn it off. I was like, I'm getting too many ideas and I don't need new right now. Like, I. I don't. And so, yeah, I. That was like, I don't know when it released a month or two ago at this point, but I listened to it, like, the week it came out, I was, like, listening to it. I was like, halfway through and I was just. And I haven't listened to it since.

I just want to make a point. I just want to make a point. The week it came, the day it came out. On the leadership team chat, Nick and Lee are like, you know, look out. Monday morning, Mike's going to come up blazing. I didn't do anything new. Nothing changed. It was completely the same. Let's go.

Yeah. What did I say? I want to. I want to see if I can find it. Maybe I can screenshot it and send it to you.

I thought it was Nick. I thought one of you was basically like, oh, no, Mike's hearing that. Money, everything changes Monday.

I'll put it on the screen. Everyone brace yourselves. Mosey is about to launch $100 million money models. Be ready for all the changes coming Monday with a salute emoji. Yeah.

Nope, didn't change a single thing. I went into it already being like, okay, I generally know what the book is about. I already kind of know a lot of it is in the offseason book, and we've already implemented a lot of it. And I was like, I will not change anything or add anything new because of this book. And I didn't. I haven't changed anything new, anything different. Well, now what has been really helpful is the owners of Augusta, all watching that are listening to it, have been very good at refining their messaging for their ads. So I feel like we're recruiting. I can see across the platform, like, so, like, they're messaging for Christmas lights is better than ever before. And I like that because in the past, almost all of them had to go to agencies and spend a lot of money on ads. Whereas I think, what if it did anything? It really honed introductory offers and nailing that messaging. And I think it's gonna really help for Christmas lights this year. So I was very happy about that. I've seen a lot of them get very creative with the packaging, like fall cleanups, packaging, winterizations, packaging their spring cleanups into, like, figuring out the off season or like, hey, pay in full for the whole off seasons of winter services and get this thing for free. Like, there are so many ways to package winter services, and a lot of it just comes down to a money model. To use that terminology is like, you've just got to sell it in a certain way, whether that be upfront trying to collect that cash up front. And I think that one of the things that we've always talked about, like, upsell, maximize lifetime value. Being able to have some terminology for people like, oh, I need to get the money within 30 days of. Of acquiring the customer. I didn't get that money back to me. Oh, okay. That's a great use case and a great way to think about it because if you can figure that out, you will spend more money on ads. And so we've always said, like I have always said, most entrepreneurs don't hit their goals because of their ideas die in obscurity. No one knows about them, no one knows who their brand is. The vast majority of big businesses just simply spent more on marketing, advertising and getting their name out there so that people can know about them. And so it's like on big businesses they went and bought billboards, they went and run ads. No, like they became big because they put their name out there and they spent money on ads and they figured out a way to be able to create that engine of I spend money in and I get money out. And so the money model, quote unquote is like, I put money in, I get money out and I need to get the money out as fast as possible. So I need to create an offer that I'm able to get as much cash upfront as possible. So it's very helpful to be able to create. And that's what Alex is so good at is like defining terms in order for people to like very clearly understand what their offer needs to look like and what the metrics are they're trying to hit. And it's a lot of it is just stuff that we've talked about like, like upsell stuff like goodness. Get everyone in the door with an introductory offer of mowing. Get as easy as possible and then make sure you grease the gears to upsell them. But don't wait till your next one month text blast. Do it right after the first service. Like there's all these little things that we just kind of had to tighten up. And so I think that's been really helpful for owners and even for me just to be able like use that terminology knowing they have it and use him as an authority. Be like, hey, like don't wait until next month to send your first upsell. Do it after the very first visit and they making a five star survey. And then you go in for the kill and get the 30 days, you know, within 30 days, recoup the cost of an annual subscription to your treatment package for 500 bucks, for example.

Yeah. Awesome. I love it. Fantastic. Well, any not financial advice for the people, we can wrap it up here.

I'll let you, I'll let you go ahead. And then I do have non financial advice because I literally made note of it.

All right, so I made note of some as well. Now this is, I'm, I'm coining this as a leism now. It is not official, not financial advice, but it is for today. And this is something I said the other day. So a track record is just a list of things you've done. Want to change how you're perceived, do more things.

That's it. Like, it's like, like I'm trying to think more like Hormozi. It's like if you're worried about your track record or what it looks like from the outside looking in, like, just do more things and that changes your track record. So my two cents? Do more.

Let's go. Keep swinging. Let's go. All right.

This book is really good. If anyone wants to read it, the Art of Spending Money. It's really good. There's one part in there I never heard quite like this. And that was like how over the course, the past, like 100 years, things like college used to be for rich people, a yard, like having a grass yard was. Was for rich people.

All these, like, niceties, like having a personal vehicle that was like a nicety for like the rich. And so as time goes on, these things that are considered luxuries just slowly filter down to being more common. And that's why it feels like a treadmill is because you constantly have to keep upgrading in order to appear like you are wealthy. Very interesting. So we, we have decided we're going to stay in our two bedroom, 1,000 square foot apartment longer than we anticipate anticipated so that we can invest in a workout room. So that is our. That's what I got out of the book so far.

Nice. Yeah.

So it will save money. We figured as long as we stay like four to six extra months in our current apartment, pays for all of the equipment. But yeah, that, that was my current takeaway. And this book, by the way, is just overall very good. It's just good in general. If you're trying to build wealth. How to think about money, what actually bring, like figuring out what actually derives happiness from the money, how to spend it, where to spend it, are you actually buying status or using it like a tool? I do recommend. Nice.

I like that. A workout room in the new place. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay, okay, okay. I just wanted to clarify.

Hey, we have two bedroom. One, one bedroom. And now the next one, instead of my office, it's gonna be a workout room. But we're gonna get nice equipment because I get like 50% off from anytime fitness for nice gym equipment. So we're gonna get a Stairmaster and a treadmill. And between the two of those things, we'll be happy.

Dude, I love that. That's awesome. All right, well, that is the pod. Like and subscribe as always. And thank you for your time, sir.