The Advice You’ll Need at Every Stage of Growth | Jonathan Pototschnik

I just look at some of these businesses and think they're one bad year away of going under.

Number one reasons Augusta lawn care locations close is because of divorce.

It never solves the problem of bad management.

This is an honest conversation I recently had in person with Jonathan Patosnik. Jonathan has ran a $10 million lawn care business, multimillion dollar cleaning business as well as ran service autopilot and exited the business about six years ago. Now we're going to be talking about everything from getting started and choosing a market to to marketing and advertising, finding great managers as well as all the way up to a 10 million plus dollar business where we start thinking about things outside of just the business and how to actually be successful in life and wait till the end because I asked some more selfish questions of things that I just want to know from Jonathan. He has poured so much into my life and the life of many people in the green industry and was a huge inspiration as to why I started Homeworks after he left Service Autopilot to be able to make sure there was a founder led software business in the green industry and in home services. Without any further delay, let's fly out to Texas, sit down with Jonathan and see if we can't learn something from the OG himself. Thanks for having us out.

Absolutely.

And I wanted to do a little bit of a different sequence. I wanted to make sure that we kind of hit everyone that's listening from starting out to 10 million plus. And I want to ask questions at each stage of business.

Okay.

And then I'm going to ask selfless questions, things I just want to know from you personally. And so the first question I want to talk about is someone starting from zero is choosing a market. It's one thing that I heard you say years ago and I thought was really interesting is like if you have these intentions of growing a bigger business, the market does start to matter in terms of how big of a business can this market actually accommodate. And last week I had Jonas from Pest Badger out and he was talking about how they like to go around a major city and mostly cause it's faster to be able to get on SEO and rank well and become a bigger name in a smaller market. What's your take for someone that's starting out and they're thinking like hey, I'm willing to move. What are the things that you're taking into consideration in terms of where they should move a home service business to get started?

Yeah, I think there's lots of ways you can play this strategy and you're a marketing guy. So the point is like so important for people to understand when you think about marketing, if you send a postcard to somebody that doesn't have any money, couldn't possibly buy your thing, you're completely wasting your money. Whereas if you send a postcard to somebody who lives in a million and a half dollar house, makes 600,000 a year, isn't going to take care of any of this stuff. They are for sure a buyer. It's just a question of will they buy from you. And so that is one of the single most important concepts to understand. And so when you think about where do I want to go, first and foremost you're thinking about, do these people have the money to buy my thing? They may have a problem, they may want this solved, they may want somebody to do pest control and fertilization, weed control and mow the lawn, but they don't. They can't afford it no matter how much they want it. So when I think about a market, I'm thinking about is it a market where people have enough disposable income that they are buying these types of services and not just 10% of the street or 20% of the street buys these services, but a big percentage of the street buys these services? And that's like top level. I'm thinking about the other thing I'm really thinking about. Is this a dying market or a growing market? So another concept in business that I really believe in. Sure, you believe it too. The more you can hop on a trend and ride the trend, some people will call it riding a wave the better. Because it's the concept of rising tide lifts all boats. So if you're going into a market and that market has people moving out of that market, that is a negative. It's just, it's. You've got this headwind that makes it hard to grow a business there. Whereas if you're moving into a market where new homes are being built all the time, it's growing, people are moving, their businesses are moving, their life in general is getting better. For people, that's a really important sign. So I want to go somewhere where the market's growing, the long term prospects are great, where people have money. If it's a younger clientele, I know there's a ton of opportunity to sell to people that are retiring because they can't do their own work. And that's a great market too. But I have to say I kind of like a market where people are more savvy with technology and more Capable. Because if you think about how we want to market to them and get in front of them through digital marketing, if how do I want to sell to them and get paid? I want to get paid with credit cards. I want them to be a little more technical. Also, if they're a little bit younger, that's good for the area. They've got kids, they're busy or it's good for the market. That market will grow versus eventually if you got a lot of older, people will die. Those are some of the super top level things I'm thinking about. So there's two concepts here. One is when you're getting started and let's say you're living in a town, it's not the best town to start in. The reality of you picking up and moving to this ideal market, it's probably not going to happen. We could say you should do that, but the reality is you're probably not going to do it. That's a big lift, very expensive. So there's this idea where you just start where you are and learn. Like get in the game. That's one of my favorite things. Just get in the game and quit talking about it. Just get started, learn the lessons and then if you discover you love this thing, then you might think about making the move at a later time.

Yeah. Like years ago when we first started Gusta, I was of the thing. Like it really doesn't matter where it's at. The market is basically irrelevant. We can always carve a niche. As long as other competent competitors, we can steal some of their clients.

Right. You'll.

And I think what's changed over the course of time is realizing that although that may be true, it can be significantly easier if there's people moving in. All the house prices are going through the roof. So people have equity and they feel rich.

Yeah.

Like if their biggest net worth is their house and that's going up in value and they get a line of credit, they're definitely going to be preserving the house, maintaining that house, adding to that house. And so we've seen a huge increase in the past couple of years. We do a huge report in every single market and the biggest one is like population moving in. Usually that drives housing prices up. Usually that means that there are headquarters businesses moving. It's one of the things that more recently I'm looking at is the business climate. Are they bringing the new tech workers? Because a 30, 40 year old that has discretionary income is not moving to a place where there's not work.

Yeah.

And so where are the big corporations moving and then bringing that talent along?

Yeah, I agree. And I agree with your statement that you can, you can outdo the competition in every market. The reality is most of the time when we're a newbie company, we're not outdoing the competition. We got a lot to learn if we're honest. Quality is not that great yet because we haven't figured out the right people. You know, customer service is okay, but it's all on us. So we drop the ball sometimes. It's, you know. So the other thing is, you know, again, in a small market, as long as it's a good market, I have no issue with that because I'm in Dallas and I wouldn't say that Dallas is an easy market. There is unlimited competition here. I mean, unlimited. And so you don't need to go to a Dallas or Chicago or one of the giant markets of the United States, but you just want to go to a good market as I kind of talked about. And then you can always add, you can always add and expand over time.

Yeah. When it comes to pricing going into that market, we were talking earlier and you're saying, hey, if I ever did something again, maybe I'd go way premium.

Yeah.

If someone's has that mentality that was

in the software side.

True. I'm just saying on home services, if they have that same mentality, hey, I'm not going cheap. I'm not going to start out at the lower end and then move up as I hit capacity or raise prices. How should they be looking at it? They want to go very premium. And I'm seeing more of these people thinking this way. It's like, hey, I'm not going to touch your property unless I'm doing five services. Yeah, I'm not touching it unless it's very expensive. It's very white gloved. Is that something someone should be starting with, do you think? Or should that be something they move into as they learn the services in that area?

I think move into. I don't know if that's necessarily correct. It really depends on your experience level. If I think back to me, if we had gone super premium from the beginning. Well, actually we had in the very beginning of the business, I sold some very premium, multi, multi million dollar properties way back in the day where we took care of everything for them. It was the bane of all my problems because I was doing too many services. I wasn't good at a lot of stuff. I mean, I just remember dumb things like I never did the work in the field, but I was selling it, and then I'd kind of have to manage it. And I just remember I didn't even really know how you keep all the weeds out of the flower beds. I mean, I knew you could spray them, I knew you could hand weed them. But like you're trying to figure out, okay, is it a good idea to lay down that. That. What do you ever call that fabric? Is that a good idea? Like, you've got, Is it a good idea to till the thing up a couple inches? I remember trying to figure out all this stuff that I didn't know the answer to. But we weren't ready to be premium. And so there was a lot of experimentation done with those early clients. And so I, based on my experience being a total newbie, premium wasn't the way to go. Go get your feet wet. Learn it. Figure out who your ideal client is. Who do you most like working with? What's your ideal property? Is it a big property? Is it a small property? Once you figure that out, you can pivot that business. That's not very hard. So that's what I would gravitate towards

as someone kind of figures out that first couple of services. Starting to grow the business now they're surpassing a million and beyond. Couple questions. So one thing you said about a year ago, one of your videos, it got clipped three different times and sent to me.

Oh.

And it was basically saying, you really start the business and it really takes a whole nother level at that 3 million and kind of beyond level, it really becomes something different. It's usually something that can live without you. You have a management team, et cetera,

and has the potential to. If you're doing it right.

Correct. It can also be like the worst thing. You don't. Assuming it's done right, should that be the goal for everyone, or should they stop at certain periods along the way and get more profit? I see some people going for that too soon. And just like we just left someone the other day having hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, too low of margins. Do you see it as more of an incremental? Like that is something that over the course of time I get to. Or should I shoot straight for it? No. Okay.

Build, build and clean up. Build, clean up, build, clean up. If for no other reason. You're just learning so much over time, at least that's been my experience. I gotta imagine it's been yours. So if you just keep your foot on the gas all the time, whatever you're doing Wrong. And whatever the mess is continues because you're just keeping up all the time. You let your foot off the gas, maybe you get out of the weeds just a little bit, you have more, you can breathe a bit, you can think about the business a little bit more. That's when you realize I'm pricing wrong. I'm carrying a lot of people I shouldn't be carrying. I'm doing all these things wrong. Let's clean that stuff up. There's that kind of cleanup and then there's also this cleanup where growth is expensive, whether it be the marketing side or whether it be the capex adding trucks and equipment. And by letting off the gas a bit, bringing down those expenses, people can pay down debt, they can build up cash. And so I'm a huge believer in this whole concept of you go hard for a period of time and then you clean up things and then you go hard again. And their seasons, you know, in the city turf business, we went through a whole season of multiple years where we really barely grew the business. But we went from being a mowing company to now we're really a fertilization, weed control, pest control, tree company.

And was it more contract or contracted? Or didn't you have a lot of immigrant workers for a period of time at the beginning? Or is that not the case in

the beginning of city turf? Yeah, immigrant as in like H2B visa. We still have them.

Oh, you do?

Okay. We still use them. It's an absolute nightmare. So you may or may not get them all. Even though the same team members always come back and have been coming back forever. But we still use that program.

Mostly the shift was the services side.

In that kind of level was the services side.

And how long did those years take? Like how long do you.

I can't remember. I was very distracted with service autopilot. So I wasn't. I can't remember now. But I would say that was probably a three year journey, if I was

just guessing, migrating over.

The business kept growing, but it was really growing slow. But we changed. I call it the quality of the revenue, the structure of the revenue completely changed in the business. And so that's another example of cleanup. There's lots of versions of cleanup. Like you. I've seen so many companies and debt is a real problem for a lot of people, or they're just living on a razor thin edge of they have no money. And maybe it's just because I'm so conservative financially and always have been and way too conservative for frankly, but I Just look at some of these businesses and think they're one bad year away of going under. I still to this day will argue that a massive percentage of our industry got bailed out by the ERC money. These companies, I saw so many problems in these businesses because I've seen so many businesses and a lot of balance sheets got cleaned up. They completely. But they never learned lessons. But they got bailed out of lines of credit, too much debt, bad pricing, so many things. They also got bailed out because in Covid everybody started raising their pricing which gave people cover to raise their pricing. Which they would have never done it otherwise.

And so leads were pouring because everyone had money.

Yeah. And so that's back to your point. Like this idea of taking a breather and cleaning. I love it.

Yeah. At the million dollar market, going to the 3 million, a lot of times I think see a lot of people struggling with is you now need mid level managers. It's not going to be usually depending on the industry, the owner and technicians.

Yeah.

There's gonna be. Whether it be admin workers and office people or estimators and salespeople or operations managers. I see a lot of times that's the skill people lack. But very few people have the ability to say I do not lack the skill of leadership. And they keep running up against this invisible wall of 1.52 million. No one sticks around for operations managers or general managers or people in the office. There's like this churn, like the technician part. They figure it out. And I've always really. It's found. I found it interesting that being a manager of managers is a different skill than a manager of technicians. And just because you're a great manager. Technicians where many times like do these tasks, take this photo, click yes, do this form. And it is much more regimented versus where now I need the autonomy of a general manager. An operations manager can think on the fly, make decisions without me. Unless I'm going to become just a, you know, micromanager.

Yeah.

What do you see as the difference between someone who does good at that transition. What Versus someone who doesn't. And I asked this question because this is the biggest reason at Augusta and a lot of people that I see getting past a million, they hit this wall is because they do not have the ability or skill to lead leaders.

Yeah.

And the reason I mentioned it specifically is you have to do that at city turf so you could go focus on something else. And from the outside looking in and from what I've heard from you talking together you have a really good relationship with the people and the management at City Turf, even though you haven't been in the daily operations for a long time.

Yeah.

So what do you think is the difference maker for a great manager of managers versus someone who hits that and is falling apart?

Yeah, I think one, the first thing that comes to mind is the story you're telling yourself. So somebody might tell themselves the story that they want a big business, but they also tell themselves the story that I hate managing people, I hate employees, I hate doing this stuff. I wish it was just, I wish it could just be me and a truck. But I want the business to be bigger because my friends have bigger businesses or I want to make more money or my spouse is like, we need vacations. The kids have got to go to college. Like, we need to do more. You know, it's like, ah, fine, you know, and so they're building this bigger thing, but they haven't changed the narrative in their mind that, hey, I, this is who, this is my new identity. I am no longer Bob the hardscape guy, Bob the landscape guy, Bob running a really great lawn mowing business. And I love my guys that I work with on the truck to. I'm Bob the business owner. I'm Bob the builder of a thing. And telling themselves this new narrative that the entire game of business is people. I am now a person that builds people and leads people. That is the entire game of business. And until you accept that and also become excited about that future, you, you're not going to learn all the lessons you need to learn. You're not gonna be open to criticism, you're not gonna embrace maybe getting coaching. You're not gonna do all the things that you and I and so many other people are super successful have done. You've done coaching, I've been in coaching. We've read a bunch of books. We've talked to a million people. We're willing to listen to other people and say in our team and say, what am I doing wrong? How could I be better? Whenever something's not going wrong with a team member, my first thought isn't the team member's a horrible human being. My first thought is, where did I not communicate enough? What am I getting wrong? I. Eventually we'll find out if they're, you know, if I get get that if I'm sure I'm communicating properly, I'm coaching properly, then I know the problem is them and not me. But my first thought is, it's probably me and it's that kind of a thinking. If you. I just think most people tell themselves a narrative. Team members are bad, there are no good people. And so when you're approaching it like that, you'll never be a good leader. And that's a super high level way to think about it. Having done the academy at service all padded academy business for a while and talking to other people about coaching people just see this idea of spending hundreds, let's just call it $500 a month is that's a scam, it's a ripoff. Those people are just making lots of money for themselves. But universally, I think learning from other people, whether you're in a coaching group or you've got a mentor, is the fastest track to a version of success where you're learning how to grow yourself into this person. You have to be of the mindset that I am now, this person, this is what I do in the business. How can I become the best at being a leader, the best at being a coach, the best at growing people, the best at recruiting people? That's what you have to get your mindset to. And then that's what you have to observe on your calendar that you're spending the majority of your time actually doing.

If you can remember back to when you started to have to do that for your first mid level manager, what was some of the tensions internally even that you had to kind of overcome, or what were the skills you were learning to make sure that you could hand things off and you could go do something else?

Just handing things off. I think for me, and I think this is probably true for a lot of people, you feel you've been doing it for a while, it's your business, you feel like you're the best at it, you know how to do this thing, they're not doing it the way you would do it. It just drives you nuts. And so there's this element of just this underlying frustration with the other party thinking they're too slow, they're not getting this, they're not doing it the way I would do it, they're not doing it good enough. And so you don't delegate. And the reality is unless you delegate and then also explain and teach how to do this thing, they're never going to be able to run with the ball. And then if you also don't accept that there are multiple ways to get things done, are we getting the outcome that we want? And their process for accomplishing this thing is different than mine, but might be totally fine. And so I found for Me, and I think this is, again, true for a lot of people, really struggle with that. So what happens is you just hang on to things. You don't delegate to people, or you do delegate to people, but you treat them more like a robot. I'd like to think I didn't do this, but I probably accidentally did it. You treat them more like a robot and you don't give them a why. Part of this growing a person is it's not just saying, do this thing and replicate. Keep doing this thing day after day. It's like, here's why we do this, here's how we're thinking about it and why we do this thing. This is how the customer's thinking about this experience. You're giving them all the whys and perspectives so that they start to learn the business, the organization, so that when they understand the concepts, then they can apply their own skill set and come up with their own ideas and say and observe what needs to be done inside the business. I don't know if I'm wording that clearly, but I think oftentimes we view delegation as something we don't trust a person to do, so we don't delegate. And then when we do delegate, we delegate like people are robots and we don't delegate like they're really people that are going to own this thing. And so they never end up owning the role. They just become a task person, and then we're not happy with them. And so I think that's one of the areas where I grew tremendously as I started to do a better job of explaining the why, bringing the person in to fully understand what we're trying to accomplish, understand how the client thinks, have them give them things and just let them fail. Give them a budget, let them waste the money, which is painful, but that's how they learn a lesson. And you've got to sort of release people to go prove that they can or can't do a thing. But most of us don't really do that.

One thing I found a lot of times it's the financial stress that comes with letting them fail on your dime.

It's very hard.

Pulls you back into micromanagement or something, stepping on their toes. Because you're like, I can't afford this job to go bad. I can't afford a hundred thousand dollars losses before I go get another gm.

Yeah.

And so a lot of times I see sometimes, like, fix the business so that when you hand it off, it can. It can afford a couple mistakes.

Yeah.

And sometimes in that pursuit of grow, grow, grow. And you get middle managers all over the place and all of a sudden you're mad at everyone because not because they're doing a bad job, but because you have no money in the bank. Yeah, it's financially stressful.

I also think that a thing that we can do inadvertently and if you go too far with what I'm about to say, you can never fix the situation. So you hire an individual, you say, hey, I want you to be my operations manager. I want you to find issues, I want you to fix them. I want you to optimize the business. I want you to do all these things. They do a thing and you immediately like, no, we don't do it that way here. Oh no, you should do it this way. We constantly put our foot on them. In a sense, they spend some money and they make a mistake. For 250 bucks you come down on them versus just say, oh man, I've done that a million times. Here's what I've learned that solves for that problem. If you step on a person enough and stop them, they just quit putting themselves out there. And then what you end up with is a leader that will never go out on their own. They will never streamline on their own because they live in fear. They need your permission all the time. At a subconscious level, they live in fear. And then you've completely destroyed the future potential of that person inside your organization by constantly putting the brakes on every. Like the one I think of a lot is somebody comes to you and says, hey, I think we should try this thing. And your first reaction or our first reaction is, yeah, try that three times. That doesn't work. And if every time somebody comes to you with an idea, you're like, oh, we tried that five years ago. That doesn't work. Oh no, that won't work. No, I just. Clients are never going to go for that. And you just literally kill every idea. Why should they ever come to you with ideas? And that's a really hard behavior to change if you're doing that. But I think it's one of the really critical things to help people grow and feel the confidence to run inside your organization in 2026.

We're trying to give away 100,000 copies of the copy and paste millionaire book that I recently wrote. It's the blueprint from getting from zero to $3 million in annual revenue for any home service business. Now, as part of the hundred thousand book challenge that we're trying to give away, we have two ways to be able to take advantage. You can get the free audiobook, ebook, the course and a physical copy of the book sent to you for free without paying shipping. If you go to mikeandys.com cpmcourse now if you're like, I don't wanna take a course. I just want the book shipped to me right away. You can go pay for the shipping at $6.50 for a $35 book. I'll cover everything else. Just go to mikeandys.com 100k Our goal is to get this book in the hands of 100,000 home service business owners. I see kind of as you get to 5 million and now growing that a lot of times it becomes how do I figure out the compensation model for those managers or department heads or division leaders? However it's broken up the organization. What has worked for you and what do you see working in home services when it comes to either compensation or bonuses? And what has kind of been a tried and true model for someone who is trying to delegate and maybe conceptually can do that, maybe has the money, the business is doing well, was like, how do I make sure that, that when it hurts the business, it's hurting the person and they care enough so I don't have to jump in and they're on some just cushy salary?

You know, unfortunately, I don't have a good answer for this one. I don't think we've really done a great job figuring out the compensation models. I think what we've done, and I'm a fan of that and it's really hard work to figure it out and even to craft compensation models specific to people. That's the so inside the city turf business. That's not something I've personally worked on. It's not something that we've really done. I would say the approach we've taken, and I really like the compensation model approach paired with what I'm about to say. I think we've taken more of a really strong management. So from a management standpoint, we have really been hardcore about kind of push, push, push, go, go, go. And we've sort of powered through and we've done less around incentives. We've definitely done incentives. And I have, I've done incentives around compensation around money extracted from the business. You know, there was a times like, okay, incentives around the growing of the cash pool in the business and the incentives around the money extracted out of the business. But that's at the very, very highest level. We really, we've done pay for performance Stuff we've gone to pay for performance. This is getting below management now. We've moved towards it, we've moved away from it, we've done, we've done those kind of things. But at a true management level of like your top, top people, it's been more muscle through it with management. So I wouldn't say I'm the best person to advise on this. I would say.

And when you say that, just to clarify is that like when you say it's like more or less good salary but These are the KPIs. It's more of a KPI. Got it.

We're trying to hit these numbers, we're trying to get these things done. And then also you can create a culture of pushing. So sometimes I think people want to do pay for performance and again I'm not saying anything negative or compensation plans because it's going to, they think it's going to magically solve all their problems and it never solves the problem of bad management. And so just because you throw money at somebody for whatever the scenario is, you're, I believe the whole world runs on incentives. And so you're incentivizing a behavior. So if I'm now incentivizing whatever that behavior is through this compensation model, I'll probably get a negative on the other side. And so a lot of times when people try to solve all problems with compensation or compensation models, they just create a different problem. And so compensation models paired with really strong management. Back to data, back to. We are a culture of go, go, go, push, push, push. We're a little more than a 9 to 5 culture. Like it's like we're a culture of we take care of the client no matter what. That's all management to me. And that can't be fixed with compensation. You can't just throw money at people and magically they talk to the client. Right. They serve the client right. They bend over backwards to do things for the client. They fight hard to make sure we don't get negative reviews. People don't just naturally do all the right things because you throw money at them. So that's where I'm saying I think we've been a little more on the

management side like talent acquisition being the focus. Like this person either cares for these customers or they don't.

Right person in the right environment manage to the outcomes we want to get. And that works magically or works great. If you compare that with a really great compensation model, incentives, then I think you can get even more. We just haven't been good at that. I also have tried incentives, and they don't always work. So for somebody, what I mean by that is you might say, well, I'm going to incentivize this person to make more money. And more money isn't necessarily the motivator. I've really failed quite a few times in incentives where the person hasn't really changed behavior just to make more money. The thing that has maybe changed their behavior is this feeling of their reputation on the line and pride. Like they're a person that's wired to do the right thing for their coworkers, to do the right thing for the client. And so throwing more money at them won't make them go faster because they might think, well, by going faster, I do less quality. That reflects poorly on me. And so the money doesn't get you the outcome you want. Because their real motivation is their personal pride and the look and outcome of their work, whether that be at a management level or at a production level. Does that make sense? And so, boy, it's tough. Like either person. The other thing is, again, this is a service all pilot example. Because I wasn't doing city turf at service autopilot. I did some compensations, but I personally, I never loved just giving people a check. I liked giving people a thing. So I was trying to figure out, like, okay, she wants to go to Japan, she wants to go to Thailand, he wants wheels for his car. I was always trying to think of those kinds of things. Nobody in the company knew we were doing these things. That person that got these things knew we were doing those things. And so instead of saying, hey, if you do this, you're going to get an extra 5,000 bucks. I was always more excited about, like, we need you to do this. And then you would gift them, surprise them with this thing. And I just always felt I had so many ways to do this, but I felt like I had really good success with that. It was more exciting for me, but it really made a person buy even more into the company when they're getting this thing. You know, I've also, I love giving people money. But the other thing I've never loved about some of the, like, if you're giving them an extra couple thousand bucks, like, that's just going to pay down the credit card, which is great. I think people should pay down their credit card. It's just that money's going to disappear. But if they get a experience, if they get a thing, I just think it bonds them more to you. And the Company. So that's more the kind of stuff I've done. And we've done bonuses and all the other stuff too. But yeah, it's funny because it's tough. That's all I'm trying to say.

Before we even did P4P, I still remember this one year. We were struggling at the time, and I just determined, hey, we have a little money left over. We'll get turkeys, hams, pumpkin pie, apple pie, and an apple cider for everyone. Every person for Thanksgiving. So the guys came back to the shop and like, the whole place just filled with food. Right. And a couple years later, there was kind of like a mutiny somewhat. I had now moved on out of the company. It switched to P4P. And there's kind of a mutiny, guys. Kind of one change inside the organ was against the GM and stuff like that. So I came, I showed up. And what was interesting is the. It was kind of snuffed out by the crew that had been there. And they mentioned one thing. They said, no, Mike, and the team cares. Cause they got us this Thanksgiving thing. And in my mind I'm like, that was a couple, you know, maybe $3,000. And over here at that time, I was stressed out. How can even 50 cents or a dollar more raised to be competitive, et cetera. But like a dollar raise is $2,000 per person per year, plus taxes. And I was out stressing all that when they just wanted something they could put their finger on. And to your point, the dollar raise would have disappeared and I didn't even have it, but I could take what I did have and. And make more meaningful impact.

Yeah. Yeah. So when you talk about compensation models, I think it can take a lot of forms and it takes a lot of work, a lot of brain power, a lot of thinking, and it's almost an. It's to a degree, an individualized thing if you're going to do it at the highest level. And then there's the whole other problem of if you get it wrong, you can kiss that employee goodbye. It's like, oh, wow, I gave them way too much. And if we get to this size, they're going to. Yeah. They might as well own this company. Like, I really screwed this up. You can't unwind that they're going to leave.

Yeah.

And so it's. It's tough. And you got to be very, very thoughtful and careful.

Yeah. As a company now growing past 5 million, going towards 10.

Yeah.

One thing you said in our last interview, I think it was our last interview. Together years ago, we were remote. And you said that one line. And Lee is the VP of sales Augusta he uses in every single one of our trainings.

Oh, interesting.

Okay. He puts it up on the board, put your name, picture a screenshot. Ok. And then has this quote and it's basically in essence saying a lot of people get out of home services too soon because of some other shiny thing.

Yes.

Right.

Start a new business, new industry, real estate.

I'm gonna go do car stuff or whatever. Too soon. That was the part he zeroed in on. Mostly. He does that at the very last wrap up with all the owners before they leave. Mostly so that when they start growing and scaling, you get locations doing good. It's like, oh, I gotta move on to something else. And how I've always thought about it and how he talks about it is you're like the 98th, 99th percentile in this industry. If you can have a business that runs without you, has mid level management, is profitable by 20, 30%, why would you go do something where you're maybe an average investor or an average person getting started in that industry versus just doubling down and doing more of what's already working?

Yeah.

Can you speak a little bit more to that? Yeah, I think it's powerful for that size of business that it's doing good, that you have, you have money now. Like things are better. A lot of home service business owners that started from nothing, this is the most money they've ever had. Yeah. But like they go do something else hurts the first business and then the other business they started, they realize isn't all that it was made out to be.

Yeah. I mean there's several directions here. So number one is if I've got something that's just, we'll call it a $2 million business, it's making money. Maybe it's not making as much money as I want yet. It's not perfect.

That's a great point.

To go from 2 million to 5 or go from 0 to 2 million. Just think back about how and you could say, well, I've done it before. It's going to be a lot easier. Really? It's still really hard. It's still really hard. I just, I don't care what experience you have. I think everything takes a solid five years. If you're going really hard, all in. It takes a solid five years to get to a place where you're like, okay, this is going to, this is going to work out. Okay, this is going to work. It's just all Hard. And that's what I think. That's the story of almost everybody. And so this one concept is, why would you abandon the thing that has momentum? And, like, I sold service. Autopilot.

Oh, that was very.

Yeah, I'm coming back. I have no executive assistant. I have no recruiter. I have no marketing cmo. I have nothing. It is painful. Everything about it is terrible. Every day I'm like. I think to myself, jonathan, you are doing 5 million things you should not be doing. Like, you don't need to do any of this stuff. Why are you doing this?

Dying back your time is just like beating you over the head.

I have lost every advantage, and I have to rebuild it all. And. And I. Okay, tomorrow I could go get a recruiter, I could go get an executive assistant. I could go hire all these people, and I'll be burning $750,000 a year for who knows how long. It's like, okay, so it's really nice to have a team and have people that can help you do things that makes your life better. So, number one, would it be easier just to go from 2 to 5 or 5 to 10? For sure. I mean, if really, for me, I just. Right now, even where I'm at, there's really nothing I should do other than just build City Turf. The most giant company I could build it to is the single highest leverage thing I could possibly do. And I am. That's all I'm doing right now is working on City Turf. But I want to do other things, and so I'm going to do those other things because I just want to. So there's that argument. But there's no doubt that it's easier to take what you've already got and go bigger. That's one. The other one is, why do people really jump? People really jump because it got hard. Like, okay, growth is stalling. I don't know why it's growing. Marketing doesn't work. There are no good people in this industry. This isn't that good of an industry. Blah, blah, blah. Whatever the excuse is. That is what every single person in every single industry is whining about. I mean, you've done software. You've done like. Software isn't exactly easy. Would you agree?

100%.

It's brutal. Almost everybody I know that has sold their software companies, and it's a small number of people that have had that outcome. They. I mean, it's like the universal conversation. I don't think I'm going to do software again. In fact, I don't want to put their names out there because there's some pretty big name. People have told me I am taking my software money and I'm moving it to buying home services companies. And I just sit there and listen like, cool, you think this is going to be easy and software is hard. Everybody in the soft on the services side thinks, oh, wow, I should have owned a service autopilot or copilot, new name homeworks. They all think they should be on that or I should all be in coaching. That's so it's all so much easier than this thing I'm doing. This is what everybody's saying in every single industry. It's all hard. And so my other argument is, you're leaving because something got hard. Marketing is not is hard. Management is hard. Cash flow is hard. Recruiting is hard. Something's hard. Why would it be different in any other business? They still involve humans, they still involve money, they still involve sales and marketing. It's all the same problem. So stay in the game longer, learn those skills, get really good at the core of business. Bringing in clients, bringing in people to do the work, managing the whole thing. Because those skills transfer to every single business. Software, coaching, health care. You could pick any industry. And so why would you say, I've learned like 20% of what I could learn, I'm going to leave this thing, I'm going to go start from scratch. I still haven't learned any of the lessons. Why was that going to go better? And so I was like, hey, you've got this incredible vehicle. We live in this incredible moment in time where all the money is saying, oh, home services looks pretty good. Companies are getting great valuations. Technology will bring more and more efficiencies to these companies. That could bring in higher margins. Why would you leave this? These are great businesses with a great potential. Grow these businesses bigger and learn everything you can to be a great leader, great business owner. And then in the future, if you want to do something else, you've got money and you've got experience and it will be way faster doing the next thing. The last thing I'll say is it's just universal. I see everybody, they're doing, maybe they don't leave home services, but they add services. So what I generally see is like, you had a mowing, we'll just use mowing. You had a mowing and bed and bush business. I was doing some ancillary services. You got to 1.2. It's doing okay. You start first, that gets to about 300. You start pest control, that gets to about 150. It's just this cascading series of poorer and poorer and poor results. There's almost. There's very few people that defy that.

Right.

I mean, it's just very few.

Because.

And why? Because they never mastered recruit sales and marketing. They say sales and marketing doesn't work. Digital doesn't work anymore. Print doesn't work anymore. Nothing works anymore. No, it does.

Yeah.

And. Or they say, there are no good people. I can't find anybody. And so that. So what's going to be different? As I said, in any of the

other businesses you mentioned, valuations. A lot of money going from private equity into home services now. I think a lot of people getting started. That is almost a notion of, I'm going to sell this thing one day.

Yeah.

I still remember one video you made. I don't know if it was most recent or way back. And that was about the percentage of businesses that actually sell being tiny. Tiny. And so with that in mind, the other part I also think about, and I think you mentioned it in your video, is, so let's say you sell it. What are you doing with the money if you're not gonna. 50% of it whacked by the government.

Yeah.

And I thought that was a really good frame for myself. Even as, like, we're growing and things like, okay, this valuation, whatever, but if I sell that, I'm just gonna like, oh, I'm gonna buy real estate. For what? Like that. I basically be betting on real estate over the thing that I'm building.

Just a new business you have no experience in.

Exactly.

So you get to spend the next 10 years learning that business.

Yeah. So I've always. I've always. People recently have said, like, I'm gonna build this, this, this, and I sell it. I'm gonna try to get this multiple. And they're conservative, but. Okay, great. But then what? Like, where are you gonna put that money now? Now your job becomes money manager.

Yeah. And that's a whole new skill set. Not to mention it's almost. Most people can't handle it mentally. So I'll give you an example. You've heard that the S and P or the stock market returns, on average, 9% a year. Whatever. 7, 9%, depending on whatever timeframe you're looking at. You're like, okay, I got X pile of money. I'll just put it all in the stock market. I'll make 9% a year. Okay, that sounds wonderful. Until Covid happens, 2007 happens. Or a big drawdown happens and then you totally panic.

Yeah. You got 50% haircut on the taxes, you put the 15% in and then

now that you sell and or you or it's down for extended period of years. Yeah. And you're not getting your 9% because it doesn't ever actually return. 9% returns 18 or 2. It's all over the board. So not only do you have to learn how to invest, then you have to learn incredible calm and mental strength. I would argue a lot of entrepreneurs really struggle with mental strength. And they're very mentally strong, but they're not unemotional. I know a lot of entrepreneurs, it can be kind of emotional, just the way they're kind of wired in the. I was always a big thing in Colby. It assesses people. A lot of these entrepreneurs love living in the future. They love change, they love new ideas. That's what got them here. It also can create emotion because it's like there's highs and lows and so it's like you're really excited about the future, then the future's bad. So now you're down, you're concerned. What happens in the markets all the time. It happens investments. So what I've learned, a lot of people like private equity and don't feel safe in the stock market. They like real estate, but they don't feel safe in the stock market. At the end of the day, the stock market drives all valuations. If the stock market collapses and stays down, your private equity investments collapse, your real estate investments are screwed. Everything's bad. It's all bad. Maybe gold is non correlated, maybe, you know, go in a different direction. But otherwise if the market's down for an extended period of time, it's all

down, it's all bitcoin.

Yeah. Well, that's definitely a risk on asset that that'll go first and then the market will go anyway. My point is that, my point in that is you've lived in a world of owning a business where every single day they're not doing what's called mark to market. You don't know your valuation. Every day your company is like, okay, my company's worth 4 million, my company's worth 2 and a half, my company's worth 5. If that was happening to you every day, you'd be a wreck. People that invest in private equity, same thing, they don't know the value they invested, they're stuck in the investment for 10 years. They don't know how that investment is constantly fluctuating. Whereas in the stock market or Bitcoin, you're seeing those fluctuations every day. People are not used to that coming from business. In business, they have this stability. Now, when you're an investor, you don't have any of that stability. It's hard. A whole new thing that I've heard people say it takes about five years to train yourself to get comfortable with it, and a lot of mistakes are made. So, yeah, I kind of went off on a tangent. I love this topic. And so you're exactly right. Like this idea of selling and now you have no income. You're burnt. You've paid all this taxes, you're burning down your savings. You're investing in stuff that is great when it's going up and scary when it's not. That's a toe. That's tough. That's really, really tough for people.

I think that brings up a really good point, though, in terms of something I've always admired about you, and that is your demeanor, not being too high and not being too low. It's something I thought a lot about during what we call bugh back in 2024. And I remember at the time, we weren't as close and we hadn't talked as much, but I remember just from afar at Service, Autopilot Conference, etc. Knowing just from your demeanor, like the low highs and high lows. So this is actually. First time I ever said this is like, it's a big deal we talk about in Augusta. That actually came from me looking and observing you.

Oh, wow. Okay.

And it was like, he's the type of person that has lower highs and higher lows. And I know that it's certainly a skill you probably had to develop over time. What. What exactly do you think caused that or what have you done to cultivate that? Because that was something that I had to learn. It was so hard because Very hard. Every mad person I was, I would be, like, not be able to sleep. I would have. I could literally feel like, cortisol pumping through my veins. I'd be mad. I would be. I'd be reactive to things. I would want to get my opinion on everything. And now, like, I find myself more and more just saying, like, let's just not make any decision for a couple days.

Yeah.

And I've gotten better. But it's something that I've always admired about you. And I wanted to hear from yourself what you either did or were there times where you recognize this has to change in order for me to continue growing the businesses?

Yes. I can't Point to a moment that it changed. It's been a journey and for me it's been getting older and having more. It basically comes down to experience. You start to see a pattern. It's like you know what, we figure it out. I used to love to say like we, we eventually learn that we can engineer solutions to things. No matter what you throw at us, we're going to get through this thing. And so it's this element of confidence where you, you build this muscle of. Because you're looking back and saying well that didn't take us down. And that was pretty bad. That didn't take us down. I thought everybody was going to hate us there. They forgave us. We survived it like. And so you, you, you, you look back and you're like okay. You gain the confidence. It allows you to be calm. And then it's this hyper awareness that everybody is looking to you like and I, I, everybody's looking at you to figure out in the organization to figure out how they should feel in your, in your. When you have little kids and you have a wife, they're looking at you to know how she we should feel. Everybody's looking at you and so who do you want to show up as? I want to show up as the calmest guy. And I, a long time ago I came to that conclusion and I have worked so hard on that. I don't know exactly what I've done other than to constantly have a lot of self talk. Some of the self talk was built on this. Seeing that we've always engineered a solution. We've always figured it out. I think we can figure this out. Nothing's going to take us down. It'll work out. You know, constantly reminding yourself of that working out. It's like the single most. I mean when it's a story I haven't told much. I'm not going to go into it now but when I was, I had one hundred and something thousand dollars saved when I was twenty years old. And that was a lot of money back in the day. And I got a completely frivolous lawsuit that ultimately we all walked away from. I can tell the story another time. I lost basically all my money fighting that lawsuit. I would run for nine miles at one o' clock in the morning with my boxer. Just one. She'd be on the leash and I'd be running. That was the only thing I could do to calm myself because we, we. It was such a scam of a lawsuit and it was dropped and restarted three times just to Destroy us financially. That. And then ultimately just walked away from. And you have no control. And so it's. I tell that story to say that was a. I was 23 actually when that happened. And so that's what got. Because I had always wanted to be in technology. That. That was my first technology business. That's what took me out technology and got me into services. I got wiped out. And so my point is, it's that example and then the example of building businesses where over time you stack these challenging things and you look. If you're reflective and you look back, you say, hey, it works out, it's okay. I learned to just call that my SMU law education. I paid essentially for a law degree in that lawsuit. And it. And you know, I learned things from it. And then the other one is I always. I had this kind of thing I'd learned to do a long time ago to. Because your brain. My brain will just cycle.

Yeah.

All the problems just cycle.

Yeah.

Like, wait, my brain's worked on this already 90,000 times. Nothing's new, nothing's different. I just.

They just.

It's so hard to get my brain to be quiet. So I really. Years, 15, 20 years ago, at least 15 years ago, especially because of service all pilot early days. I'd say maybe this was a early day service autopilot 201112 thing where it's like, okay, what is the solution? What is the. What's the outcome I want? What is the very next action I need to take? And I would constantly. My brain say, because my brain's cycling and there's a million variations, a million ways this can go. Have I thought about what the next action is? Yes. Am I doing the next action? Yes. Be quiet. Like I constantly do that in my brain. And so that helps me also come to calm. So exercise a realization that we do figure this stuff out. Knowing that I have to appear calm to the team and then having that self talk of trying to quiet my brain and calm my brain and saying, am I doing the right thing? Those are some of the things that have really helped me. And it's just practice, you know, the negative. I've joked about this. My wife would say, I'm too calm. I'm too. She wants a little more emotion. I've heard her say this enough time. I'd just like you to be a little more emotional. I have worked on this so hard. I don't know how to be that person. I am just so. Even now. But I am convinced it's one of the great Skills of business.

Yeah. Yeah.

So I highly recommend working on it.

I still remember we just started using service Autopilot and I think it went down for about a day and a half and nothing was working and everyone was freaking out on Facebook group and you were quiet the whole time and then. But when you came on, I remember the shift in everyone, the talk and what people were saying. But I remember succinctly because, like, back then I was just starting my longer business. I didn't know what was going on, like, down the road. But like, I remember and I distinctly remembered it during our bug hell. And I remember making those videos where you stand up in front of everyone and say, yes, we are wrong, we are sorry. Here's how this works without going into a bunch of techno jargon. And I. I'm doing everything I possibly can here. You just gotta trust me here. And I still remember playing that over my mind, doing multiples of those. And especially that year, 2024. And your level of. Even the pace at which you talked was something I recognized. Interesting as gave me concept like confidence that, like, he's in control.

That's good to hear.

And I learned a lot from that.

That's good to hear. Yeah. It's not been accidental.

No.

But I think it's. It's. It's what you've been through in its time and then being reflective on these things.

Yeah.

And I don't. I think that's one thing a lot of people don't do, is they're not reflective. They're not reflective. They just live in a constant state of emotion, and that is a very dangerous place to live. And so there's this element of. It's back to the early part of the conversation, like how do you get a little bit out of the weeds? It's why you want to grow your business to a place where you have other people helping you. It's why you want to let off the gas sometimes so you can have this moment of being reflective and in learning some things. And learning in this example would be like, hey, you know, it generally works out. We haven't died yet. We haven't ran out of money yet. We're smart enough, the team's smart enough. We'll figure this thing out. And that gives you a peace of mind.

Yeah, Yeah. I want to. Before we end the podcast, I want to ask some personal questions or I should say more selfish questions.

Okay.

Things that I've thought about. And I think so I talked to Brianna, made sure she was okay with some of These. And then also I thought maybe tomorrow night we'll talk more about some of them more personal. But I want to talk briefly on this one, but your relationship personally with money over time. Mostly because, like, when I first started my longer business, it came from a place of desperation and lack. And because we didn't have money. And I thought that solving every problem was just everything just came out of more money.

Yeah.

Because like, if we couldn't get food, it was like we didn't have money. Like, we can't do that trip. Like, I can't go to that camp. I can't go play that baseball team. It's always money. Always money was the problem. And so I came, the first part of my career very much out of the place of this is the only way to solve this pain. As you have now eclipsed many levels of entrepreneurship and the, the monetary side, and that's gone. What has your relationship with money sort of turned into?

Like, what is it like now? Yeah, the underlying wiring is still there. And I, for some reason, have a scarcity. I have a. I have a. I need a safety net. I don't know where it comes from. I don't know. I think I have theories on where it comes from, but I feel like I've long. Two things have driven me from a financial standpoint. One is when I was 10, I saw a Ferrari and I'm like, I want that in life. Yeah. And so I always wanted cars, and I'm into cars. I race cars, do all that stuff. So that, that's been there. I want these things that I would never let myself get. You know, I guess I got them pretty young, but given where we were financially, I was ridiculously conservative. That was there. But the much, much more powerful wiring was this fear that something's going to go wrong in life, something's going to go sideways, and I need a massive safety net. It's going to go bad, and I need to protect it. And so save, save, save, build money. And so for that reason, I've been investing since I was 20. I've been very conservative to this day. I'm unbelievably conservative compared to the life that we could live. And I think it goes back to that. And so I've had to try to unwire that stuff. I had to. And I didn't understand that I needed this safety till later in life. I was just, as I've observed, like, okay, this is. I think what's been my driver in life is I need to build, build, build, because I need. And I need to save, save, save. Because I need some safety for some reason. And I think some of comes from several places, but some of it may come from the fact that my dad's an artist. And when I was young, he's a very successful artist and that's a very difficult career to build. And my mom never, she stayed home with us. So money was very tight. He was building his art career. So I probably grew up in a time where money was very tight. And so that's probably a little bit of it. So as my life got better and better financially, I still really worried this program ran in my head that was just complete and utter nonsense that wasted brain cycles around save, save, save, grow, grow, grow. And it became a measuring stick for me in lots of ways. So the biggest change, it's not that I've won that battle, it's that I've worked all the time to unravel it. I'm always trying to or unwind it or stop that behavior and allow myself to one, spend more money or quit thinking about this stuff or be more aware of why I'm making certain decisions. If I'm just optimizing to make more money because I'm trying to build more safety, which is silly. I don't know if I. That's a long answer. I don't know if that answers your question. It's not that I've won this battle, it's just that I've observed that this is the challenge for me, this need for safety. And it's trying to get rid of that self talk in my head.

And what are you trying to solve for that? Is it a matter of being able to feel free to send the money? Or is it a matter of increasing joyment and happiness? Cause you have it and it's not you can't take it with you.

I spend. I mean, I live an incredible life and so. And we've been living a phenomenal life for a very long time. So I have really done a good job of being willing to spend the money. Now friends that know my situation might say, well, why don't you own all this other stuff? And I don't own the other stuff because I think stuff complicates your life and that just creates a different kind of problem. And so I don't really feel like I'm struggling so much with this. I'm not spending enough or living a big enough life. That's not it. It's more of the noise that plays in my brain. It's so My relationship with money has evolved in that that noise is dampened and quiet, but that's still playing there. It's like where you feel like you need more. And I think that goes back to a safety thing.

One thing you said, just as a side note in one of your videos that also impacted me is about second homes and how you had talked to so many people and so many regretted it later on. Mostly it's just a mind space, right, of like this other piece of real estate and like maintaining it and the maintenance and all this other stuff. And what's funny is I had a little tiny house that on a secondary property I was renting out, I put a little tiny house. And that was like my escape, right? Especially before I got married, I'd go there especially on the weekend when I was working. But it became that, like, if I was out of town on the weekend, I'm like, wait a second, that it's sitting there like, and it's got to be maintained. There's a hot tub. And it became this thing that sapped my energy as another thing to manage. And so hearing you say that, even about other things that you could be

adding on cars, everything, everything comes with a cost. The house thing is this funny little money thing for me too. Where I was always going to buy. When the kids got a little older, we were always planning to buy a home in Colorado. In fact, what we never expected to sell service all pilot. I went to Boulder and looked at real estate while we had service autopilot. And John and I were like, let's open a new office kind of in Colorado somewhere. Because we both wanted to live in Colorado and that would. We could build an office there. It's a great place to recruit tech people. And so it would give us an opportunity to live between the two places. That was. We had talked about it, I'd looked there and then. So I was certain as soon as my kids were a little older, after we sold the business, I was gonna buy something. It was really more about them being where we could spend time there. And so this house conversation. I've had this house conversation with everybody and I can't. This is another loop that plays in my head. I can't. I know it makes zero sense to own a house, but now my problem is I have had this goal for so long. I just wanted to own a house and Telluride that now it's like, well, this box isn't checked. I gotta check this success box. But it makes zero sense to check it. So those Money things are my funny little loops. I know what to do, and I keep myself from doing them, but that noise is quieting.

Yeah, no, that's good. Okay. I want to get to some of these other questions I had. So this term post economic kind of where, theoretically speaking, after you've made money and you can literally, you could put that money in an S&P 500 and basically never think about money again. Once you've hit that, what have you found helpful in terms of finding the next goal or problem to solve or the quest that you kind of create meaning still in life other than it's just sitting there, or is that in and of itself sufficient enough for you to be able to go and just enjoy life without having another thing to conquer?

It's not enough. And I don't. I think the vast majority of entrepreneurial friends that have had massive outcomes, I don't think. I think everybody just tells themselves a new narrative and they all just go for more money and stuff. And sometimes it's not really the money. They're just going for that next accomplishment. So my narrative for myself that I've had to work through, I took a break, a long sabbatical over three years now, or it had been probably three years or so. That was one of the best things I did. And almost nobody does that. I think it's one of the greatest things I've ever done. It does feel like I got a little behind, you know, for what. It's just this scorecard that, you know, I'm keeping in my brain cell. Stupid. And so but I. I. What I constantly remind myself of is a life well lived is not a life where I'm thinking about optimizing. For me, every day, my life is spent optimizing for other people. And so when I think about what I'm doing next, I'm doing City turf because I'm working on City turf exclusively right now because it's my baby. I started it. I got very distracted from it. I was building service all by. I love the business, I love the team. And I think about in two ways. One, it's fun. So my. That's one of my core things. Is this fun. It's fun for me to get back into the business for a while, not forever. And then two, it allows me to help my partner and my team have an even more successful outcome. So that feels like it's not about me completely. It accomplishes the fun thing. So that's cool. Riley has every chat. I'm not really helping him much with It But I would like to help him more with it. Spending any amount of time helping my boys get to where they want to go in life. Since I've already built a software business, I can help Riley shortcut some stuff. If he wants to help, I'm there to help him. That feels like a great use of my time. I get help Riley engage. Not going to do it for them. They don't want me to do it for them. They're their own people. But how can I help them get to where they want to go? That feels incredibly rewarding to me. So that feels like on track. And then as I think about what I do in a career, it has to. Whatever I start next has to be completely focused on other people. And so I don't know if that's quite answering the question, but that's how I'm thinking about this idea of just building another software company, another service autopilot to have another big outcome. It like I wanted to fix all the stuff we got wrong in service autopilot. So it was exciting to do such a thing like to maybe do another service autopilot. I loved that business. It'd be exciting to rebuild it. But it I could help a lot of people. But I felt like there's that was more motivated around just making money. And so that's how I'm thinking about where am I going to have fun and where am I going to be able to serve other people. And that's what I want to do next. And I feel like I see a lot of other entrepreneurs, they sell their thing, they are immediately bored. They immediately jump into several other things and those things, there's nothing wrong with making more money. I'm all for it, but it's really just a great business idea that will make more money. And I just don't see that as the most rewarding way to live the next chapter of life. And so I'm trying to fight against that and be thoughtful in the way I just described. Did I answer the question you were asking?

Absolutely. Absolutely. I wanted to. Last question. This is very selfish and I made sure I got passed from Bree to ask this one. I know it was something that you and I kind of mentioned or talked a little bit about a year or so ago. And that is having the successful outcome you have had being married to a partner that wasn't involved as a business partnership in those businesses. How do. How have you navigated having a spouse that also needs to have their own thing and their own goals and things that they're going for while you were a. In that grow phase and very concentrate on growing the business. And it was doing successful. But then even after that, after the exit, the ability to allow them to thrive and have things that they still are trying to go for when from a financial perspective, there's no need.

Yeah. So, yeah, that's. This is a tough one. I actually think it was good for Tiffany and I that she wasn't in the businesses now. When we started City Turf, she was folding lead letters and door. Getting door hangers or not door hangers, postcards out and doing mailers while, you know, the kids would be at school or kids would come home. She was doing that kind of stuff. And then she did the books for City Turf for a while, and then she did the books for service autopilot for a while. They were all pretty simple. So she did some stuff like that. But it was really good that she wasn't in the business, I think, for us, because the conversations were not about the business. So there was this very clear line of Jonathan works and then Jonathan is home. And we're not having dinner conversations about work all the time. We're having dinner conversations about the family and the future and the kids and all that kind of stuff. I think that was really good for us. And so I like that division that we happened into. And so tell me, let me. Help me expand on this a little bit. Where do you want me to go from here? Because I feel like I'm. I don't want to go in the wrong direction.

No, totally. I think for a lot of people, I'll take the home services generically. Mostly the guy makes the money. The. The. The spouse. The wife is at home raising the children. The business now is becoming successful. There's money to be had. The kids are now moved out, and

now they're out of the house.

Correct.

Okay.

And the business is now mature. We're past like, a $10 million business. Now. I'm talking to that size of business owner, and maybe the. Their spouse doesn't feel like they've gone and gone in the workforce. Or is it. Was it more a matter of conveying to Tiffany her value in what you were doing as a family and as a unit, as a team? Or was it a function of, like, also stepping back and being sensitive to. She might need to scratch that itch professionally.

So I could. So this is where everybody's different. So Tiffany was a teacher until Riley was born, and then she stayed home with the kids. Tiffany does not feel the need to scratch the itch of working. And that's where we're a little different. I'm the one that's like, hey, I don't want her to work. But a life well lived is having a purpose.

Yeah, yeah.

And she's like, I just wanted to be a mom and I wanted to be a good mom and I wanted to do these other things in life and I've got to do those things. And I. That's. That was the life I wanted. And so her challenge is she would like to do more volunteering. But we travel all the time and we're gone six months of the year. How do you do? How does anybody rely on you? So this is a conversation in our family that's been had for years that we haven't quite figured out. I will say rewinding. When the kids were little and she felt like she needed more. When she was in her late 20s, early 30s, she was doing. We didn't need to do it for the money, but she wanted to do fitness boxing with women. She had ran marathons. She got into fitness boxing. Not like fighting, but she does the workout boxing stuff. And it just, it really helped her in so many ways. So she started doing personal training. And she had her thing that she felt like she needed something more than just the kids, but it's just something she could do out of the house. And so she kind of. She did a variety of things like that. She did volunteering. She was involved in school. Then as the boys got older and they got cars and you're no longer driving them to sports. That was when the big change happened.

Got it.

And that's when our conversations really started changing more and more about what could you be doing. And so she's done other things like being involved in church and Bible study. Some things like that she got more involved in or she'll do more volunteering. She's gone and done some trips, like to Mexico and things, volunteering. And she loves that stuff and she'd like to do more of it. And I think that would, in her world, would perfectly satisfy it. In someone else's world where the spouse feels like they've missed the career, that's just not Tiffany. And I think in that case, you try to engineer that. I don't know how to answer it. I think you do become hyper aware of that. You try to engineer so that the spouse gets what they need.

Taking a step back for a moment, last question for the audience. And one thing I've always talked about. Brianna kind of still staying on the relationship side of things is I'm very grateful that she didn't come into my life. When I was in the grind phase,

Tiffany went through the grind.

Yeah. And that's what I want to ask because I think most young guys, they're torn between I need to be a good provider. I also need a good husband. And these things come in conflict with each other because I'm working from 7am till 9pm every single day. And if I don't, I don't know if we'll be able to make the mortgage. What can you say to that? Because I actually can't speak to that person because I don't know what it's like to have a dependent and someone that I'm supposed to be pouring into when I could be very selfish in my 20s and just pour all of me into the business.

Yeah, I would say the 20078 range were very, very hard for us. I was before service autopilot, but I had a bunch of other thing businesses I was working all the time. I had two little, little boys. It was really, really tough and I was, it was, it just, it created a lot of stress inside the marriage because I'm just gone all the time. And then I used. I used to be a partner in a cleaning company. So back then we cleaned movie theaters. And so I'm in, I'm traveling for that. I was writing code, I was doing contract programming and still probably billing 100 grand a year doing that back then. So that was a pretty significant amount of hours plus the cleaning thing. Then city turf and like it's so. And then one of my clients basically raised a bunch of cash, gave me equity in a health care company that I helped get off the ground. Soft healthcare software company. I had four things going. It was insanity.

And.

And so I was always present at dinners if I was in town. And I always put the kids to bed. Tiffany would say, you're a better dad than a husband. Because it was all back to work. I was just trying to hang on and just build these things. And I had too many things going. And so I think it's brutal. It's brutal. And I think relationships get destroyed at that period of time. The reason why most people that came to know me when they knew me only did two things. City turf and service. All pie starting in 10. And that is a direct result of all the other things I had going. I literally gave all my equity away in two companies to just completely walk away. I quit doing all tech consulting and I just said, what are the two things I'm most excited about in life. And they were. And which meant no income for me which was city turf and service all by. I went to zero income, got out of everything else, gave up and to do those things because I felt that that was critical to my future marriage. And I also thought it was going to be better business wise in the long term. But it wasn't obvious at the time. But that was directly because of my. What I felt was not ideal from marriage and a kid's standpoint. And it was just too much. And I think we are very fortunate that we navigated everything went okay. But I think most people do so much destruction and damage to their marriages that it's. There are so many negative feelings harbored long term they never really recover. And I'm just very grateful that didn't happen to us. Things are great and I think you have to be. You have to protect that more than anything else. Which is why I made the business decision decisions I made which were brutally difficult. Some of the hardest decisions I've made in my entire life to walk away from things that were very successful. But I think at the end of the day the single most important thing in life is your kids and your spouse. And so that's what I did. And I felt like there's one other thing I wanted to say about it. Oh. It's also why I think that she not being very involved in the businesses were critical. Had we been going through all that and then every time we had dinners or we went on a date night because my mom would come watch the kids. Thank goodness that was so important. Dinner at 6:30 every night was so critical. I look back on those things. Tiffany as a spouse being you said you were gonna be home on Fridays nights or you know, for dinner or you said you're gonna be home on the weekend nights for dinner. And just holding me accountable versus a lot of spouses who are a little like Tiffany's a process person. So she would hold me to the process. I'm so thankful because I think a lot of spouses will. The husband will use the guy in this. It will overpower the situation. Say we've got to do this, we got to do this. I'm not going to be home tonight. I got to work the whole night. And the breakdown happens. We don't do date nights. We don't have dinners together. I'm not with the kids and my spouse. I would encourage spouses to be hardcore and know you're doing the right thing for Your husband. If it's a husband situation, it could go the other way, too. Or you're doing the right thing for the marriage. And ultimately, I think you're also doing the right thing for the business. You have to keep these boundaries, or what have you gained in life? Great, you're rich. Great. You get a brag that you have a $10 million business. Who cares? Because you can't be a happy person when you can't look at how you've raised your kids and how your kids see you and feel pride. And when you can't look at your marriage and say, this is a good marriage. If you can't do that, I don't care what else you have, you can't be completely happy. So you need a spouse that has been given permission, Meaning you're on the same page. Permission is what I mean. And you respect that spouse enough to listen to them and shut it down when they say, this is what we agreed to. This is how we're going to live our lives. And that's what I did, because Tiffany would let me off the hook. And I give her incredible kudos for that. And so back to my last thing. I think it was a real blessing that she wasn't in the business, because if we were going through all this, all I do is work. And then when I come home, all I do is talk about the business and the problems and the clients and the partners. And that's all we do on a date night or at a dinner. Then we have no marriage. You have to have all that other stuff. So I think it's really cool to have them. Like, I think it would be really awesome to be married to a spouse that was like, we'll use Alex and Layla. Like, combine me with an operational person. That's absolutely killer. That could be a coo. That sounds really cool and like, wow, what you could do. But I also see massive negatives. Massive negatives. Like, I don't want to just be a business partnership. I want to be a relationship. I'm not saying it doesn't work, but for me, I'm really thankful that I didn't have a partner in my businesses or a partner that was so involved in the business we talked about all the time. I think it was really healthy for our marriage. That's a lot. Like, my normal answer is fairly long. But I. I think you also get me going here because I think this is one of the fastest ways to destroy your life.

One of the number one way. Number one reasons Augusta Lawn Care locations Close is because of divorce.

I believe it. When I did academy, I don't know how well you would know. You know, 50% of the score in our competition at the end of the year was how did you change your personal life? Like it just a life would. I think about everything through the lens of when I'm 90. I'm looking at. Back at life. A life well lived is not making another. Whatever amount of money. That's only a little piece of the entire puzzle. And it's a very important piece of the puzzle to me because more than money, I get like you and like so many entrepreneurs, we get real outcome and benefits and confidence and happiness from building things, from creating, from like imagining something and then making it happen. That's a very important part of our lives that can't be diminished. And our spouses have to let us do that. If they don't, we can't be a full person. But that's still just part of it. If you, if it's important to you to be married, if it's important you have children, that's another part of it. And then I think the physical element of the body, like the health side is another element. There's all. There's. I could keep going. And if you, if you don't. That's why the academy was 50%, that if you don't get that other stuff right, that's not a life well lived. It's just not. And so this is a big topic that I think people talk a big game and they set goals every year and they say I'm guilty of all kinds of things. I say I'm going to change and I don't change. We all do it, but it never changes. And then it's just. It doesn't. It's not a great life and it's so destructive.

I think that is a great way to end it. Five for 50, though.

Yeah.

I know you've taken a sabbatical from the YouTube channel, but that really leans into this whole idea of five years being able to really focus on the business, grow something that over the next 50 is enjoyed, has benefits to others and yourself, your family. And so very shortly, maybe just plug that, but also just kind of speak to that being sort of the mission behind what you're trying to do now with the education side of things.

And I'm starting it back up. Let's go. Yeah, I, I just. And I actually just recorded a video about this, but I, I've been following my advice. I have been 100% focused every day working on the city turf business. And I've been, we've talked about this. You gave me a lot of advice on building out a team. And so I finally found video person and I've, I've still got more to do. And so until I could just get some of that dialed in, I just like put a temporary pause. But I'm coming back to 5 for 50. 5 for 50 is just my general belief that people beat. There's, there's two ways to look at it. There's young individuals today that think that they should immediately have an incredible outcome. I start this thing, I should be rich. I start this thing, it should be big. And why? Because that's the BS baloney you see on social media. That's not real. I know too many people that I'm. That I also that I know on social media and I know them in real life. And it really makes you pessimistic. It just isn't the way most people portray it. And I've known too many marketing guru guys that we know, all the big names that have had big rises, giant falls, big rises, giant falls. Life is not what people think it is. And so they beat themselves up and they get discouraged and they get out of the game. As a young individual when, my goodness, what a gift you've been given. If you can start young and learn all the lessons, become a good marketer, become a good leader, if you can learn that stuff now, you are going to kill it in life financially. And so I'm just really all in on young people going all in and knowing this is going to be a very hard five years. But if you do this, you will probably get to live a life unlike everyone else and you'll probably have additional five year journeys along the way, getting to the next level and the next level where you're growing yourself into a completely different kind of person. So. And Also, the 5 for 50 also comes from this belief that in every business I've owned, and I've owned a bunch and everybody I've known, it seems to somehow always take a good solid five years. It just always does.

I was talking to Josh, our VP product the other day. Same exact thing. I'm like, okay, Augusta Media, okay, now it's homework. It's the same, always the same amount of years.

You can have money, talent, knowledge, you could even have the right people hired. It's still just as hard. And so that's the basis of where the 5 for 50 comes from. I want to encourage people to go all in. Grow yourself into somebody that is incredibly unusual compared to the rest of the world, and you will win for the rest of your life. You will get to live life unlike everybody else for the rest of your life.

Awesome. Well, I want to say on behalf of everyone in the home service industry, thank you, specifically the green industry, for everything you made years ago. For myself, I remember watching the videos in my truck between estimates being lost and finding a lot of answers in what you said. And so I want to say thank you. And I hope that the next leg of the media side will also be something that people like myself can learn from.

Cool. Well, thank you. You're killing it, so thank you.