Taylor Swift, Messi, and Writers Strike

Hello everybody. Welcome to the Mike Andes podcast where we share lectures, discussions and insights on scaling your home service businesses. In today's episode of C Suite Unfiltered, we're going to be talking about Taylor Swift. Apparently some of her fans wear diapers at their shows so they don't miss a song. We'll be talking about Messi, one of the most famous soccer players in the world. And we're also going to be talking about the writers strike that's been happening for some months now. Listening to the episodes and our virtual content is one thing, but hearing Mike and other successful multi million dollar business owners sharing their industry secrets in person is a game changer. Over the past five years, we fine tuned Landscape Summit to bring you the biggest names in the home service industry and provide you with essential knowledge to taking your business to the next level. This October, on the 16th and the 17th, we're going to be in Louisville, Kentucky right next to Equip Expo at the Omni Hotel. Make sure to get your tickets and book your stay@mikeandys.com summit. Let's jump into today's episode. Taylor Swift, Messi and the writers strike.

Yeah, we're good dude.

Sweet.

Back in the studio after a week off in Nampa. Napa Valley, baby.

Napa Valley, California. Yeah, you know me, didn't do any wine tasting. I went for the sun and the Gulf.

No, you went for the wine tasting. There was no wine tasting to be had because there's too many reservations.

Yeah. So not financial advice. If anyone listening wants to go with their significant other to Napa Valley, California, book your wine tastings like a week or two in advance. Did not know that. So we didn't taste any wine. But we did go to the Mariners game. Mariners were playing at the San Francisco.

Oh, that's pretty cool.

Yeah. So on the 4th of July.

Oh, that's awesome.

Yeah, it was super cool. Yeah, so that was very American.

Speaking of Seattle, you have the hat on. They had a really good wild card weekend.

Yeah, the All Star game or All Star.

What did I say?

Wild cards. Yeah. All Star. They crushed it, man.

It was a good, good showing.

I thought from a media perspective they made it like a whole two week long like celebration. Leading up to it, they were doing free movies in the parks. They did like the sand a lot and like all sorts.

Seattle does a good job. I feel like sometimes it's like we feel like the kind of lost city because we're so far away from everyone else. A lot of big events don't Come our way.

Right.

So even like Taylor Swift is coming and the entire county is calling it like a week of Taylor Swift. It's like everything in the whole county, all the cities are like doing stuff for it. I feel like we do a good job because we don't get very many big events. And it's kind of true because like even like landscaping events, there's never anything up here. And that's why for a while we did landscape a business course is like there's nothing on the west coast coast.

Yeah.

So yeah.

Funny note. On the Taylor Swift thing, I saw something on Instagram was crazy. It was like give credit where credit's due for these tours. And it showed the stadium that she had just finished in I don't know what city, but inside of like a football stadium there were 27 full size semi trucks fully loaded. That's all the gear for her tour is 27 semi trucks full.

They were, they were measuring the economic impact of this tour. They think for GDP is like $5 billion. Because like the just in, in Seattle, they're plan whole week thing, they think the economic impact is gonna be over half a billion, like 500 something million dollars.

That's nuts. Yeah. That's so cool.

It's crazy.

Yeah, that is really cool. It's cool that people are interested in that. Like, I mean I'm not a. Are you a concert person?

Yeah.

Well, I guess you're not really like a music.

Not music or anything but. But, but I'm interested in the whole business of it. Right. Promotion setup. Like you have, let's call it an event that you do two or three dice in a row and then you gotta go on the road and take it with you and do it over and over and over again. And. And yes, there's always little, you know, hiccups along the way. But the fact that like you get through all that without a massive media like backlash of something wrong happening or like you showing up late night right now, like that's the popular thing is if you show up late, everyone like booze you out. So it's very interesting. Like she has an incredible PR like team around her and like making sure things go well in that regard. Like I don't listen to her music, can never tell you who's her song. Nothing of that. But like it's very interesting to me like the whole production now in that that's the way music is going. And I think it's really separated like the winners versus like everyone else is who can go on tour. And just draw massive crowds. Because now with music being digital, it's just. You can share it. So the hearing of it, you don't make money when you go on tour. They expect her to make over a billion dollars in profit.

That's crazy. That's so crazy. I saw another stat too, just kind of interesting. They said she's basically doing a half marathon to a marathon every concert. It's four hours long.

Oh, it's incredible, dude. Like, that is also like, the stamina of her as an actor or any is doing that much movement for that long and then on the road and doing it night after night. And then like, it's like what Michael Jordan said. Like, what if someone's coming and watching and they spent their last dollar of their paycheck to be here? Like, I'm gonna put all on the. On the field kind of thing. Like, that person shows up and they're expect. They don't care about your tour. Yeah. They want that night to be the best.

Yeah.

And so that's. It's just like the level of pressure on that. Like, everyone's obviously gonna jump on. Like, it should be making. Like, I looked at some of the comments. Like, making this money is crazy. Like, okay, you go try to do one. Yeah, one song. You go try to do, like, one event and then get people to come back and want to be spending thousands of dollars to show up again. Like, it's. It's an exceptional. It takes an exceptional team to do that same thing.

Kind of parallels. As soon as Messi announced. Right. Did you know this? Messi announced he's playing for Inter Miami now in the mls? I'm not going to lie. I said. And I went and looked at the Sounder schedule. I was like, if Messi comes to Seattle, like, I'd go. And they said, like, tickets on average went up like 4, 400.

Yeah.

For to see Messi, I'm like, oh, my gosh, that's cool.

Though the terms of his deal is pretty cool, too. But the fact that I saw a couple commentaries I thought was interesting. Like, the person was saying is down the road, there'll probably be a time when we say pre messy and post messy soccer.

Yeah.

In the US because if he really comes and then brings that much attention and because where money is, attention follows. And so if that much people get involved with it, man, like, it could really make soccer or, you know, football in a really important sport in the US which would be interesting. Yeah, I think it'd be great. I think soccer is a Very healthy sport.

Yeah.

Because there's lots of running and for kids to get involved in. It's super healthy. I think. So I'm a big fan of it.

One is a low barrier to entry for kids as well.

Money and stuff like that.

You need a ball on a field.

Football and like ice hockey, for example. Extremely expensive. Like lots of gear, huge amounts of equipment. And so, yeah, soccer is. I love it.

And very selective. Like, you can't just go to a hockey rink. Like we have one in Bellingham and we have like almost 3,000 people in our county. Or 300,000.

Yeah, well. And they talk like. Like the Dominican, for example. Why there's so many people in the MLB from Dominican and like those countries is because it doesn't cost a lot to do. So you can like, you know, lift weights with rocks. You can do whatever you need if you're, you know, just, you know, barely have any money. So.

Yeah, that's cool. I think David Beckham walked so Messi could run. Oh, look at you.

Yeah.

Because David Beckham did bring like some allure to it. But I think as a whole, soccer still wasn't that big. I think he signed with like LA Galaxy in like the early 2000s. Right. So Sock. The MLS was still young, relatively speaking, in terms of professional sports. But then Messi coming. Okay, MLS has been expanding. There have been like three or four new teams in the last couple years. I think, like you said, I think there is going to be a pre messy MLS and a post and I'm here for it, dude.

Now did they.

I just love sports.

They pull a. The Saudi come in here and buy out the mls. That's the question. Like they do with live golf.

That'd be nuts.

That'd be crazy.

That's wild too, man. We're getting on a lot of tangents, but did you see Rory. Rory said if live golf was the last place I could play competitively, I would retire.

Yeah.

That's huge. He's like the biggest name in golf right now, arguably. I mean, obviously Tiger woods, but he's not in every event.

Yeah.

So it's really Rory kind of as the main face.

Yeah. No, it's crazy, man.

Nuts. So anyways, well, welcome back. We're in the studio. Some wild tangents, but that's what we do. So copilot, actually we haven't really talked about in a while since you've been gone focused on the 30 day challenge, focused on Augusta, how you. How you're growing personally as a leader and all the drama there. But Co pilot has had some very cool updates recently. You've had Christian on your team who's been helping you do more demos and obviously you have the 747s with Stephen, George and Christian. But you guys have been recently talking about automated scheduling. So I'm just gonna leave that open ended. What, what is the, what is the main goal of automated scheduling? Like, where are we going?

Yes. Like in the more short term.

We'Ve been actually focusing mostly on stability. It's kind of a weird spot right now cause I have this time crunch of like when we need to get certain features done. But then also like we've been really trying to do more stability stuff and I was, it kind of comes back like I was reading this book about like because I'm trying to learn like how to build a SaaS company here, right? So I've been reading lots of books for several years as like we were doing P4P and stuff but like now obviously it's a much larger org so I'm trying to just like be the best executive I can for a technology company. So I was listening to the book and it talked out like Maslow's hierarchy of needs and then it related it to SaaS. And so for SaaS, it's like features is not the most like the foundational level, right? It is like can I log in? Like, is it on?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so like that's important. Then the next one was like speed, like you got to have it fast. And like features are like fourth like on the hierarchy of needs. And so what's weird right now is like we need, we do need certain features, especially for larger companies. But on the flip side like I have to think about like retention of our, of our, of our users and like their overall satisfaction. And so one of the big things we did or we've done the past month is completely changed our testing method. So there's been way less bugs introduced in the past month, like I'd say about half. To reduce that even more is we are going to be doing where we basically launch all of our features and bug fixes to like 10 users. Okay. And it's delayed like a week before it goes into production. So not a fan of that because it slows us down a little bit. However, it'll prevent 99% of users from ever seeing a bug that would otherwise been released into the public.

Okay.

And there'll still be some get through because you can only have so many use cases with testing. So then only so many Use cases with like 10 users. But what we're trying to do is like get a group of 10 people that are like kind of using it from all different angles and services and ways they do it, et cetera. So hopefully they'll break anything before it gets into production.

Do those 10 people know you're doing it?

Oh yeah, a hundred percent.

Are they like volunteer? Volunteer accounts.

Okay, cool.

Yeah, I figured. But I was like, how do you select them? Is it voluntary? Is it something.

Yeah, so we're selecting it mostly based upon like we already know which users are most communicative. We already know which ones are okay with feature releases having some bugs and are really good about giving us feedback. They're the ones like have done lots of zoom calls, they've given us a list and they're, they're usually pretty technical too. And then so that's the first thing we're doing. The second thing we're doing is we got to switch all our server base over to aws. So when we first originally did the code base switch from Lawn Pro over to Copilot, we stayed on their servers. Not their servers, but like with their company that does their servers. And the name of that company is Liquid Web and they're a much smaller company. Like they are probably 1% the size of AWS. AWS is the go to standard industry for the industry. So Liquid Web recently, cause Lawn Pro is still on it just decided to move their servers. It put them down for almost three days. And the amount of pain that caused like basically three nights of no sleep for Patrick and like there wasn't anything he could do. There's literally like you're just waiting for them to move the code base and like watching it upload because there's so much data, it takes days to literally upload a new server. And they just like told them it was going to happen. There was like, it was really, really bad. And so I'm like, if that ever happened to us, like my life would be like horrible.

That'd be nuts.

So so basically we're going to make that switch over. So we're doing a whole bunch of stuff where we got to copy the code base in aws, then we got a mirror it, then we're going to like soft bring some people over, make sure it's good and then bring everyone over. So we shouldn't even really have any downtime and if we do it'd be like one or two hours in the middle of the night and we could schedule it. Yeah, but the reason we're doing that mostly because the same thing happens. Aws, they go down occasionally. Usually once a year they go down and like if you, I don't know if you Remember when like WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram went down for like four hours. Yep. It was because AWS went down. Right. But the nice thing is if all of those other big companies are going down at the same time we're going down, people have more grace for us.

Yeah.

Versus, you know, it went off happening and they're like, it's, it's you guys. Yeah. And they're more, more, you know, finger pointing at that, at that point. So from a stability standpoint, we're really trying to do all these things to really make it really stable. And then, you know, speed is also something we're thinking about. Those are like the boring parts of the software side. But we have a lot of features we're working on now in the long term, like 2024. Automated scheduling is super important. There's really three different things you got to think about when it comes to automated scheduling. And that is when someone accepts an estimate, how do you get them on the schedule without any human being having to be like, oh, we can put them on this specific day. And so you have three different really main types of visits. One is estimates. So like, how do you automatically schedule an estimate? Two is recurring visits, like a mowing route, for example, how do you schedule that? And three is one off projects. And so I can't go into too much depth because I actually feel like this is somewhat proprietary in terms of like how we're figuring a lot of this stuff out. But I'll give you the general thesis of this. So for estimates, the challenging part is you don't want someone driving all over the city. You can't just look at time. You do need to look at, look at proximity to the previous scheduled visit. Right. So that's a little bit different. Mm. And so we're doing a several things around that you would put basically your. It's sync obviously with the schedule. And then, you know, it knows how, you know, if you give it an hour long windows of time or two hours or whatever, it would be able to do all that. But the hard part is figuring out, okay, what is the level of distance you are willing to put up with between visits for estimating. So that's the first part. The second one is projects that's mostly governed by budget hours. And based upon what we're doing already with like the budget hour capacity and having budget hours on each week. We could probably do that much sooner. That one's pretty easy compared to what estimating for example is. Then the third type of visit is recurring. And that one's pretty easy too because you can just go based upon the GPS coordinates and say, okay, this area of the map, if someone accepts a recurring visit, I want you to put it on Mondays, this area of the map, Tuesdays, et cetera. So the goal is that when someone click accept immediately, they get an email or even a pop up that says thank you for accepting. You know, thank you for putting your credit card on file. The date of next date of service is going to be X and you can expect us to be coming. And like then someone could put in their, their information there.

I have a thought on the estimate side of things because, because I, when I think automated scheduling, I'm thinking about just jobs, right? Like let's get the jobs on the schedule. Let's get the customer confirmed date so that way they're not waiting in limbo. Right? That, that's the official close. We are doing business together. But for estimates, do you think you could ever get copilot to a point where maybe the customer could log into? Well, I guess you're not doing like a customer dashboard, are you? Yeah, so are you.

So right now we already with, you could technically already integrate with, with Calendly. Okay, Right. So that's kind of already there and I want to be careful because like I know how much pain Calendar has gone through to build their product and I don't want to try to try to go down their path. They've, they've perfected it and it's very difficult. Like they've done a lot of stuff. So my philosophy is like, if someone wants to drill down really, really far in terms of like having like a round robin between estimators and all that sort of thing, you just need to go integrate with Calendly. Ours would be a little bit more basic at first and that is like based upon timing, based upon skill set of the user and then based upon proximity to the previous estimate. So for example, if someone's on, on the east side of the, of the territory. Territory, yes, there's availability tomorrow, but we also, the next day there's an estimate close to them. So we're going to schedule them in the morning of the next day, for example.

That's kind of what I'm thinking to finish. My thought was like, like if you're reserving a haircut online or something of that nature. Right. You can Go and just say what day you want. And then there are filters that will, you know or I guess better maybe would be like say like a spa. Right. Because you go in and they have all these appointments and they have walk ins. But it's like, well, I want this type of treatment done well then all of a sudden your appointments go from that to that. If you could train it to essentially eliminate based on proximity, based on time, that would be really cool. Then you have to have the customer call or email. It's just like I'm going to go online and book my appointment. That would be cool.

Yeah. There it just. Yeah, we can absolutely do that would be the goal. The challenging part is like for example, if the day is open, what are the parameters that are set? Do you prioritize left to right? Do you prioritize the north side of your territory?

Or is it just a free for all for the first person?

Then you've really got a bacon territory maps and service areas. So if someone can someone just come on and anyone can put it. And then you just call people that are not. Well, probably not. You don't want that. That's not automated. You need to do it based upon geographical location. Like there's so many layers when you start peeling back the onion on it. And so everyone's like, why is an automated schedule happening? As I've gotten to the technical side, it's tough.

Yeah.

So I'm very confident on one time projects. And so our goal is that as we keep integrating budget hours more and more and more into the software, it will be basically like switch a button on and we'll be able to do it then recurring. I feel like we can knock that one out as well. Early, early 2024 is the estimating that is tough. Yeah. Because you want the ability for the customer to schedule it on their end.

I would argue just as a former office manager operations manager, that the project is harder than scheduling recurring. Because recurring it's like we know what part of town we're in every day of the week. Just put it on the schedule. Whereas one time projects you can the computer based on whatever their parameters are. Is it just budgeted hours? Okay, well there's enough budget hours. Let's put it on this Tuesday. Well what if that Tuesday already has like three very technical projects on it And I don't have four technical project managers. I only have three now that the automated scheduling can't go on that Tuesday because I don't have a fourth project manager. Right. I could see that being A hitch in the programming.

Yeah. Like the big thing with automated scheduling is you have to have. The user has to be.

Has to have certain skill sets. So for example, in your case, what you're talking about there is in the user settings is about what skills can this person do, right. Can they do mowing by themselves, et cetera. And then it takes their budget hours and only uses those budget hours towards availability if there are certain skills, right? Yeah, it is difficult. But the thing is, like, recurring is very easy, like based upon how we use it for mowing. Right. Mowing is pretty basic because we already know if someone accepts the first thing we're doing, where are they at in the territory based on that immediately going to that day. There's no question. Right. We don't even look at budget hours. Yeah. And so, but what we only use it for mowing. There's other people that do it for like, for example, like, okay, you got to have the same route every single time with one person. So now if I put this recurring visit on this person's schedule is overbooked. There's like other things that people are going to use it for, but in front of how we do recurring. Very basic.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like that. Will it have? Because one thing that you've said as you've been developing software that was really kind of a guiding light for my education with AI and software is it's limited by its inputs, right? Its outputs are limited by its inputs. So will we be able to give it inputs that allow it to give us outputs of. Hey, you're scheduling a lot of jobs consistently on Thursdays. Maybe you should flip your schedule around and make your Thursday route your Tuesday route. Now, because you seem to be growing a lot in the territory that you service on Thursdays, you're not growing a lot in the territory you service on Tuesdays. Should you flip it, do you think that down the road it could have that. Yeah, like output.

Yeah, 100%. It's like the inputs of us knowing what they like in terms of schedule, like where they like their estimates, where they like their recurring visits, where they like their project, and what skill, for example, down the road I'll be able to say, hey, I think your next hire should have these skills. Right? Because these are the skills like we keep having to book what you weigh out for. Whereas like these other skills, you're not as booked out on. And so people don't think about, about that. Right now I'm booked out three weeks. Well, you might be booked out five Weeks for paver patio and one week for bush trimming. Well, it's probably a good idea to get more people that are on their team that have the skills of the former. Right. So those are the type things we can eventually drill into it, just how we use it. Things make sense. And then you start thinking about, okay, like other services, other industries, other markets where, for example, they know that there's a bridge and they got to do more jobs on Thursday, even though it's making everyone work overtime. And because otherwise on Monday and Tuesday that bridge is blocked or whatever.

Yeah.

So it just becomes so many variables. You'll be careful. Because the last thing I want to do is tell someone to do something in their business that's wrong. Totally. You have to like, have so many parameters to be correct before you make a decision. And so the value of all these inputs, like when do you like things scheduled, gives us even more ability to do what you said.

That's why I guess all I'm saying is you have to be careful about what all inputs you allow.

Right.

Because then it will start spitting out bad decisions. So we know. And this is something that you and I have loosely talked about before. Like I've talked about with your new general manager at Bellingham. We're probably going to flip the mowing route next year.

Yeah, he was. He mentioned that when you were out of the training.

So. Yeah, I haven't really got over it with you, but it. But it makes sense. Like, and that's where the inputs for me are. I'm like, I know where we've grown drastically over the last three years at Bellingham, So we need to start servicing those people earlier in the week so as to not always be having this rush on Thursdays and Fridays to get.

Everyone out, because we used to do it opposite because we were mostly centralized on the north side. Gotcha.

So that's where. If you like, the inputs that I have are three years of experience, seeing where we're growing, seeing how many budget hours we have in certain parts of our territory. So my new output is next year. We need to flip our schedule. Right, right, right.

Yeah. So things like that would. Yeah, like.

Like how do you train AI to do that?

It's.

Yeah, it's tough.

Well, like, in the past few months are really our big focus. Have been getting better inputs of budget hours right down the road. As you start getting things about like inputs around scheduling inputs around user skills, there's so much you can do in terms of AI. So yeah, it's. It's going to be a lot of fun. Like end of 2024 is where I think that will become really really cool. Like fall of this year will introduce 3D notifications data driven decisions which will be more basic like based on close ratio based on which customers you raise prices on who should work with who. That's going to be relatively easy.

But yeah when we start getting even more and more inputs even in terms of job costing. So when that's done and you have the all the cost of your products and services in there and it's doing your price matrices like the amount of information you tell like hey, you should raise your overhead recovery on this product. Like it's not high enough. We can do that.

Yeah.

So it'll be fun.

And will it be like real time profit margins like job versus job.

That's cool. Several companies already have this.

Yeah.

You know, 737 Max has it. LMN has it element I think does the probably the best job in my opinion of job costing. And so we're kind of look basing on kind of what they're doing and trying to get as close to that but then taking that information and being a little bit more decision based down the road and taking you know, connecting some of the dots.

Cool. I love it.

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The other thing I want to mention with Copilot and this is obviously a smaller feature set but I really like it is I call it the scheduling thermometer. What are you guys calling it? Where it basically tells you how full you are in terms of budget hour capacity.

Yeah, budget hour capacity chart.

Budget hour capacity chart. I can just call it scheduling thermometer. That's the nickname I'm giving it because it looks like a thermometer. Right. It goes up and down.

Yeah.

I think that's really cool because it gives you just a snapshot of all the weeks ahead. If people don't know what I'm talking about, just check it out on one of the recent 747s. But I really like that just from once again having run a large company. I hate having to look weeks in the future to see how far booked out I am. What's my capacity for next week? Next week. And it fluctuates all the time because a customer switches to bi weekly. They cancel a project, they move it back a week, they move it forward a week. Right. You don't know all those things when you're running a massive company. So I just like that thermometer. That's all I was going to say. I think it's cool.

We'll keep refining, like, even right now, I know that we need to add one more week onto that on that chart, and that is the existing week.

Yeah.

Like right now we have the four following weeks we need to add this week. So there's a few technical issues with that too. So we'll figure it out.

The weekly thermometer.

Yeah, There you go.

There's. There's something you can use also something that we could have started the pod with. Maybe thanks to your month away, we hit 500 subscribers.

Really?

Oh, yeah. Like around 520 right now. So thank you, everyone, for liking and subscribing. Let's switch gears completely. Okay, so I. I briefly mentioned. I wanted to talk about this. So not sure if you're going to be interested or not because I know you're not a big media guy in terms of what entertainment, what, what the world is paying attention to, but you'd have to be living under a rock to not know that Hollywood writers are on strike. I don't know what their specific union is called. I'm sure you could look it up. But the reason I want to talk about on this podcast at time of recording two days ago, the actors have now joined them. So the biggest actors guild in Hollywood said, yeah, we're on strike with the writers now. What. What do you know about this so far?

I don't know. A ton.

Yeah.

But I do know what's going on in terms of, like, they're not getting paid enough. It's hard to track their quote, unquote performance because of the streaming networks. And we kind of talked about this already and you said it's kind of like a black box in terms of what those metrics look like. And they're not shared very openly to the internal staff after they go from box office to streaming. This is my opinion.

Yeah.

An uneducated opinion doesn't throw it out. And that is like, this is the problem with unions.

Okay.

Because they can only collectively bargain.

Big CEO guy over here supporting the CEOs.

Well, this is the thing. If you think you're such a good Writer.

Yeah.

And we open up the market. Guess who's going to want to bid you up? Every single streaming network.

Right.

And so. And they will either do it based upon commission, like opening up the numbers or profit sharing, or just offer you gobs of money like they have done to actors that also act independently and make sure that they get lots of money to be able to act. They're all like, okay, everyone together. We're getting the same amount. Like, I would just rather have it where it's like, if I'm really good, I want to be able to go to my boss. Like, I want more money. They say, no, great. I got five other offers that are offering me way more. Like, why not just open it up to the market like everyone else? And guess what? If writing is so important, which it is to, you know, these industries, they'll get more money. The best ones will. And so if you think you're so good, then, like, open up the free. Let the free market do its thing. The best companies with the best money will get the best writers and they will pay them way more. Yes. That means that the bottom 50% will make less. But that's just me speaking as a free market capitalist.

No, that's fair. So what you were alluding to is. Yeah, I watched from the Nerdist on YouTube, big entertainment news YouTube channel, and he did a full, like, 15 minute, like, expose, basically breaking down the whole situation. And he said that black box you're alluding to is essentially, streaming companies, unlike former network television companies, can essentially hide their numbers. The reason they will hide their numbers in terms of show performance is because it won't impact their stock market price.

Right.

It will, like, sorry, it would. Yeah. So they're like, oh, let's just hide it over here. Now, it won't impact subscribers to their network because they're. Because they're. They're looking at subscription numbers.

Right.

That's the biggest draw in terms of them as a publicly traded company, not necessarily the individual numbers of the highest performing shows. So the writers are now upset because they're like, well, we want to know the numbers of individually performing shows because we want to get paid based on their performance. So this is where I do kind of agree. Not a big union guy. I agree with you, general free market capitalist. But I do agree that one of the things that the Writers Guild is standing on is that they want essentially a profit sharing program. And I'm like, I like that book manager. Like, I like.

Also, we're like, I feel like if you Open up the market. What the CEOs would start doing, they would be okay, Forget that whole black box thing. We will show the numbers we need to attract the best talent. And the talent pool is demanding that we show them these numbers and we can have them sign NDA so it doesn't affect our stock price. But when you're dealing with a, a union, you're not dealing with an individual. You're now dealing with an entire organization. And it moves, everything moves way slower. And so like their, their pay, I saw a chart like their pay versus inflation and it's like below inflation. Like they're not making enough money. But like, if you just take away, like let the free market do its thing, the best mark, the best writers will go negotiate the cs. Like, I want these numbers. Oh, you don't want to show me that. Great. I'll go to so and so who does. And they're going to pay me way more. And so I think just like the whole union thing just slows everything down like that. Like when I saw that graph, I was like, that is the result of no one being able to mark their price up because you can't, you can't pay them more.

Right.

Am I, am I correct in saying that you can't pay a writer more?

Well, in theory, that's, that's where they're saying the way that like contracts have been done historically. So, so we kind of jumped straight into the union conversation, which is a big part of it. But the issue is that streaming platforms have completely upended the way writers have been paid historically. So that's why now we're seeing a rise in writers being upset is because what did writers used to rely on heavily when they were network television writers? Residuals. Right. So residuals were the checks they would get in the mail every month, every quarter, every year for when an episode was rerun, when a new network picked up an episode, when something went to the big screen, whatever, they would get residual checks. Now, with streaming platforms, they essentially have their black box of numbers, and now they don't necessarily provide residuals. And, and I've heard that a lot of streaming platforms in my research only do residuals once a year. And you never know what that amount of money is going to be. So they're hiding the numbers, essentially. Whereas network television had the FCC and third party verification companies that would know what the numbers were for episodes, how much companies were making per episode, and then writers knew based on their contracts how much they could expect in a residual blow up.

The unions and then allow the writers to go negotiate. The fact that they see these numbers or the residuals or just huge salaries.

And historically speaking, and this was like a long form piece I watched done by Vox, Very, very well done, whatever your politics are on vox. But there was a writer, he's like, I've been a Hollywood writer for like 40 years. Like, older guy. He was like, when I used to do Law and Order svu. Love that show, by the way. He was like, we were always set for a 22 plus episode season. It would start in September and it would end in May. Right. That was traditional. Network television is when school started. It's when advertisers, cars, you name it. We're doing a lot of their new marketing campaigns in the fall. So I knew I was guaranteed 22 episodes. That's about 30 to 40 weeks of work a year. And I would get my residuals after it. Now when writers sign up with a streaming platform, they could be signing up for an episode, a miniseries that's six episodes long, one hour episodes, no commercial breaks. And then the residuals are completely hidden. They have no idea how much money they're going to make based on that negotiation.

But why don't we treat them like every other employee on set and every other actor? It's like we negotiate with them. If they're really good, I might put them on salary regardless of the size of the project. And they just work for me. And I. It's a competitive environment because if they do a great job, they're going to want people. Other people are going to pay more.

So I don't, I don't know enough about this. I've been really trying to educate myself, but it seems like the union, the writers union, they're kind of talking out of both sides of their mouth because they're like, we want more pay. We want a profit sharing program, whatever it may be. But then on the flip side, they're saying, well, we want to be paid like network television. When it was like predictable, I knew I had a long work schedule and streaming has completely upset that. And they don't know what their work schedule is going to be. They don't know if they're guaranteed 22 episodes, 30, 40 weeks of work a year. And now it's like, you'll work on a project for a couple of weeks and then you have no job, and then you have no idea what your residuals are going to be.

Just crazy me, man.

Yeah, so I get it. But it's like they're talking on Two sides of their mouth. They're like, they're upset that streaming has upended the way writers have always been paid. But it's like, that's what. What we want as consumers. So I get. I think I'm like. What I'm saying is, like, I'm not a big union guy. I'm not a big strike guy, but it kind of makes sense that they want to renegotiate how they get paid.

Oh, I agree. I disagree with the way they've been paying paid. My question is, why do we need the union to make that pay when the free market would. Would basically this would happen. Right. Because the best writers would demand it or get paid gobs of money or pre put on salary. So there's not this whole, like, freelance thing going on. It's like, oh, you're a great writer. I'll offer you 150 grand because you just create. You great, great bangers.

Yeah.

Come on board. And even if. And then. No, I want to see the numbers. Okay, great. We'll share the numbers of whatever you produce.

Whatever.

Right. I don't know. I just. Unions move so slowly. When technology has moved as fast as it had it, they can't stay up.

Yeah. This is the first time that I thought this was an interesting piece. This is the first time that the writers Guild and then the main actors union have co. Been on a co strike in 63 years. And based on what you're saying, maybe it's the last time.

Yeah.

Like, maybe we just need to disband unions altogether in terms of entertainment and allow them to have a more free open market.

Couldn't a. A production company be like, okay, we're not doing this whole union thing and we're like, we're going to hire writers full time on salary. Is that the whole problem is that the union kind of takes care of the writers when they're between jobs?

Yeah, well, the union takes care of them and then helps set up their contracts.

Oh, brother.

But ultimately with streaming services, the contracts are not.

No, but that middleman is usually super slow and takes extra cost. That's why, like, now you got sports agencies that are getting disbanded because the A player's like, I'll negotiate this, thank you very much. Where you have an open market, it's like, if you play really good, you're gonna be able to come to the negotiating table and demand more money. Like, why would a writer not want to do that? Right. I could. It could. Could I be like, I'm going to start Mike Andy's you know, media.

Oh yeah.

Well, I'm going to make these, I'm going to make movies. And I know like Netflix knows they're making X amount of shows a year. Like it's not like they don't know if they have another show for a writer to be on. Or is it the fact that like a writer is so niche to a certain. Maybe they only do have one movie or a series occasionally.

I think what they're arguing for is they want like fair compensation, stability. When and that, that guy who'd been in the industry for 40 years, he's like back in the day, 20 to 30 new shows would release. Like, he's like, when I first started as a Hollywood writer, every year 20 to 30 new shows would start. He's like, on average, with Every streaming service 500 shows, new shows start every year. And so. And you don't know how long those are going to run. You don't know what you're going to get paid up front. You don't know if you're going to get a full season or not. And then it goes back to the residuals. They don't know what they're going to get paid after the project is finished.

It blows my mind, dude. I think it just like hire writers full time. You know, you have 500 shows, you know you're gonna need them and then you'd be able to pay way more than and you'd attract the best talent.

Yeah. One of the writers who basically was like, yeah, I did a big network television, great numbers. They were like, my first residual check was $12,000 first. And they said, then I did a really popular streaming services TV show and their first residual check was $27. So they're like, there's a clear discrepancy in terms of how we're getting paid. And it's because these streaming services don't have to share their numbers with the writers.

It is unfortunate you need unions to even negotiate the fact that like open book management and profit sharing should be commonplace. Right?

Yeah. And that's where like I agree with them. Like, yeah, it should be profit sharing. If more people are watching the show, you should get paid more because it's a great piece of entertainment. Right. If the show gets more awards, you should get paid more because it's winning more awards and it's gaining more popularity.

But if you don't have an open market, there's no incentive for the company to open up their books because it becomes of us versus them thing. It's like, well, we don't want to give them too much information, so we're going to withhold that. That's why I just think, like, open up the market, man. Yeah. Yes. You're gonna have one third of writers go out of, like, not have a job. The other two thirds are gonna get gobs of money, and it's gonna become a race to who can get the best writers.

Yeah.

Because the writing is so important to the show. People will pay a lot of money to hire, and, like, they'll hire you full time. Like, no, I don't want to be on contract. I want to be salary.

Yeah.

And I want a piece of, you know, all my stuff in future. Okay, well, then we're gonna bring your salary down. It's a negotiation now.

Yeah.

Instead of, like, this third arbiter in between.

Yeah. And then Matt Damon. I don't know how much of his popular actor.

Yeah.

I don't know how much his politics, you know, but he did his grade A virtue, signaling where he was like, this is the difference between a writer having health care or not. And I'm like, dude, you make millions of dollars. Like, chill out. Like, you're just. But.

But it goes to show. Like, if someone's a W2. And then, like, these networks would go have to get employees and put them on W and get health care and benefits, and then it becomes. It just becomes a race. Right. Every other thing that they're doing, like, how do you get the best editors? You pay them more money.

Yeah.

How do you get the best, like, all this other. Like, surely there's. I'm. I would also assume there's a whole bunch of other unions in this industry.

Yeah.

See, that's.

These are, like, the two big ones.

That's crazy.

So this is like the main.

Just open it up, man. Make it a negotiation. The best will get paid really well. And if you're not good enough, you're out. Yeah.

Instead of how I feel. Okay, so switch it. Same topic. So this is Sean Gunn. He is a brother of James Gunn, who's a very popular director. And Sean Gunn has been in recent movies with Marvel and Disney. So he's in Guardians of the Galaxy. Great movies. Personally, I love him. And he was on the picket line, and we're gonna watch his TikTok. I'll stitch it into the podcast. But he's going right at Bob Iger while on the picket line.

So I think that when Bob Iger talks about what a shame it is, he needs to remember that in 1980 CEOs like him made 30 times what the worker with their lowest worker was making. Now Bob Iger makes 400 times what his lowest worker is. And I think that's a shame, Bob. And maybe you should take a look in the mirror and ask yourself, why is that? And not only why is that, is it okay? Is it morally okay? Is it ethically okay that you make that much more than your lowest worker? And if so, why? Why is that okay? If your response is that that's just the way business is done now, that's just the way corporations work now, well, that sucks. And that makes you a person, if that's your answer. So you should come up with a better answer than that.

The answer, the true answer to that, in my opinion, is that's what the free market does. It rewards the best.

Right.

And so if they thought they could pay a CEO less and get the highest quality talent, they could. And so if you want to be paid like the CEO, get rid of your union and get off the picket line and start opening it all, all of this up. Because what will happen is the best will get paid more and more and more. And yes, that will create inequality within your sector. It'll be based upon performance. Like, if a company really thought they could attract a Tim Cook for a million dollars, they would do it.

Yeah.

But if they, they're not going to because there's a free market. And that is, if he can make more somewhere else, he'll go there. Yeah.

There's not a CEO union.

Right.

Like a union pool of CEOs all across America. And they're like, well, no, we'll get paid around the same. Like, we'll, you know, negotiate our contracts together.

Yeah. It's not fair that a CEO gets paid 400 or 500 times more. The bottom line is it's supply and demand. What. What percentage of human beings would be able to run Disney? What percentage of people will be able to run these organizations? It's so small, the talent pool, the supply is so low, the cost goes through the roof.

Yeah.

And so it's a complete supply and demand issue. If there was a thousand Bob Igers in the world, he'd be basically worth 100 grand. But because there's not that has that industry level experience and the ability to lead that size of company. Yes, the price goes through the roof. So if you really want the price of a CEO to go down, be better leaders and be better business people that would be able to take his spot for a lower price and be able to Perform at his level.

But they're relying on the union to do that for them, which is ultimately handicapping them. Is that what you're saying? It's a little reduction.

I understand unions a whole lot. I think overall it handicaps the employees from being able to go like the best ones, the mediocre, pathetic employees that is like, along for the ride. They usually get towed along and then they're happy. And they're all the ones that like, happy to pay their dues. Whereas the top of the top, the cream, they would be the Bob Igers inside of the writing world and we would know their names. They'd create brands around them as writers.

But it's almost like they, and this could be an overstep here, are almost getting bullied into joining the union because they have to be one of the riders.

Yeah, I know. It's so stupid. And then. And then because they're paid so low, the executives at these networking agents. Yeah, we'll have the union because they're so cheap. But in reality, the best product for the both the company and for the employee is that it's like, okay, whoever's the best here, we will pay more. Right. That's how it should work. It would be better for the company. It'd be better for the employee and ultimately the end user. What if you had like the best writers always working together and it wasn't this one off stuff. They actually create symmetry, synergies between each other and actors always knowing which writers are on set. And like, it's always working together. I think you create better product.

Yeah. So I agree. It's. It's funny because I just get mad.

At the whole 400 times CEO thing because I agree with it. But then what people get mad at is it should just be like artificially changed. When it's like, that's what a free market does. Yeah. And if you artificially change this, guess what? Bob Iger won't want to work and see what will happen. There'll be a less qualified person in that role and the company will do less good. Well, that's good that Disney doesn't do. Okay, great. What about all these employees that will get laid off because of that poor decision?

Yeah, I. And also to my gut reaction that I was like. And just from strictly from a value perspective, I'm like, Bob Iger only brings in 400 times more value than his lowest employee. I feel like it's thousands of times more value. Not from a monetary standpoint, but just the value, the skill set, the Experience the, the tactfulness, the strategy, everything he brings to the table. I'm like, it's only 400 times more than his lowest employee. Yeah, I feel like it's more than that.

Yeah.

I'm just saying.

But there's so many other perks too. Like the fact that he, like, probably took a company jet out to Sun Valley and all the rest.

Yeah.

So.

Well, and that's why he's getting the backlash. Right. I guess I didn't preface that tick tock is because he's in Sun Valley with all these other major, major CEOs, Mark Zuckerberg, you name them, they all do their little billionaire summer camp. And he did an exclusive interview with, I think CNBC and basically was like, what the writers are asking for at Disney and in the unions is unrealistic. And they're like, really, dude? Like, you're sitting at a private resort, fluent on your private jet, like you're an idiot. And then you get those responses.

It's a great talking point. Like, everyone always gets mad about that. I think, though, if you step back, it is. If you really tear it back, it's like, how are we educating the working class to be able to become the next Bob Iger? Because if you create more Bob Igers, his pay would come down. If you increase supply, the price will come down.

Yeah.

And so how do we create better business schools? How do we create better education, whether it be online or in the public school system? Like, if the public school system cannot train our kids to be frontline workers, let alone leaders, then, yeah, the people who actually figure that out, which, a lot of them are immigrants because they go through tough stuff. They're the ones that are going to make tons of money because they're in such short supply.

Yeah. I think it's kind of an interesting paradox, though, with. Within a free market is like, the writers need the. The massive corporations funding these projects, but the massive corporations need writers to come up with content. So it's like, but.

But do they. Because, see, think about this. If you were a writer that was compensated and you, you were so incredibly amazing and you create the best of the best, I truly believe you'd be able to create a brand for yourself. You'd be able to go raise funding from a VC or a grade A actor and be like, hey, let's go produce this thing and let's just go do our own thing. But you can't, because now you're inside of this, you know, union that says, like, we're all getting paid the same. And we're on these contracts and you can't go outside of it and do something without being shamed. I think that's horrible.

Yeah. I agree with that point 100%. So I don't know, it's just interesting. Like I said, I don't know a ton. I did try to do as much research as I could. But it is interesting when I, you know, something historical does happen. Right. First time in 63 years. Writers and actors unions are striking against the corporations. That would be Hollywood.

Yeah. I just think that open book management and profit sharing and pay for performance of some sort can replace a union. Right. Everything that a union wants, which is openness, transparency, fair pay could be done if you had open trans. In transparent communication from the top, up and down the chain of command. Right. Where employees could say what they think and then owners be like, okay, A, we can't afford that for X, Y and Z. Oh, and here are the numbers. And that's what they're ultimately asking for. We want to know the numbers and we want some sort of performance based pay system. Yeah. Right. And we have profit sharing. Like that's exactly what they're asking. Right. And so.

Which is good.

I know. But it is a shame that most companies don't do it. Right. Because if they did, there would be no need for a union. Yeah. If they, if a company can't afford to offer extra benefits or more pay or whatever, they should be able to substantiate that with, here are the numbers. Like, we can't. We are showing you exactly what we're making. And so that makes a lot of sense to me. It's just weird when they're making tons of money and then now it's flipped. You don't. You have this weird barrier between the two. Yeah.

It's interesting. You're going to go see Oppenheimer.

I have no idea what Oppenheimer is.

It's the story of the nuclear bomb. It's Christopher Nolan's new movie. It's coming out in like a week. That, that's what the, the actors like walked out of the premiere.

Oppenheimer.

Oppenheimer.

What's it about?

It's the guy who helped develop the nuclear bomb. I don't know his first name. That's his last name. Oppenheimer. Because it was like him and Albert Einstein. Yeah. So it's going to be big. It's coming out the same day as the new Barbie movie. This is hilarious. No, this is hilarious. AMC the movie. The movie theater company said 20,000 of its members. Right. Because you can be an AMC member. You get discounts on tickets, popcorn, that kind of stuff. 20,000 of its members have bought a Barbie ticket and an Oppenheimer ticket same day.

Wow.

People are doing a double feature. They're gonna go to the Barbie movie and then a movie about developing the nuclear bomb.

You're gonna spend a whole day in an alternate universe.

Yeah, I've heard the Oppenheimer movie was like three and a half hours. I know you're not a movie guy. I'll probably see it.

I don't think I'll see it. You know, I would be a fan of is being able to watch movies in 2X. Like, if I could watch that movie in an hour and a half, I might do it.

Oh, yeah. Just wait for a pirated copy.

Yeah. Like, imagine inside of like, an imac thing and you see it faster.

That's true.

Yeah.

You would hate, like, dramatic movies. That's one thing that I love is I love a good, like, drama. Like, not like. Not like.

You also like pitcher duels at baseball games, which is ludicrous. Yeah, that's the Mariners game I went.

To on the 4th of July. Our pitcher threw a complete game shut out. So the San Francisco Giants didn't score a single run.

Oh, man, I love that dude. I want at least 15 points between the two teams.

Yeah, I love a good drama. Oppenheimer's gonna be good, but I thought it was funny. That's coming out the same day as Barbie. The Barbie movie.

Okay, well, my non financial advice is just to wait for the movie to drop into the pirated copy so you can watch it at 1 1/2 to 2x speed.

Perfect. Yeah. It's not. And that is not financial advice.

Yeah, it's definitely not. Don't do it.

We're not saying watch pirate movies. We're not saying it. I would never do that. My not financial advice is actually. I already kind of said it at the beginning, but it is if you're gonna go on vacation. Maybe if it's, say, a blue state. Yeah. They blame everything on Covid restrictions, and they're just sticking to it. So just make reservations everywhere you go. So especially if you're going to California. Everywhere we went on our vacation.

Basing it on Covid restrictions.

Yeah. They're like, yo, well, since COVID we always had to do reservations and everything. So we're just gonna keep it that way. Like, there's nothing is like, in. In the areas of California I was in, nothing is just, like, walk in anymore. So if you're gonna go on vacation, California or maybe other blue states, do your research, make reservations. That's my not financial advice. It was. It was rough, dude. We couldn't go, like, anywhere we thought we could. So for in and out.

Love in and out. It's great for.

Oh, man. All right, cool.

That's a pod. Let's go like and subscribe.

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