The Future of the Lawn Care Industry (Interview with Jonathan Pototschnik)

Welcome back to the Mike Andes Podcast where we discuss the ins and outs of owning a small business. If you're new here, the Mike Andes Podcast is all about taking your business to the next level. This might be what you've been waiting for. We have the full interview with Jonathan Patosnik for you today. We featured a small clip of this interview a couple episodes ago, but now get ready to dive headfirst into the future of the lawn care industry. Mike and Jonathan are going to discuss what they predict landscaping is going to look like in five years, all the way into the not so distant future. Also some talk about marketing techniques and which softwares to use to run their businesses. As always, you can find all this and more over at the Mike Andy's YouTube channel. Without further ado, this is Mike and Jonathan conversation. Here we go.

Let's start off with the past. Obviously you've moved on from a lot of the different ventures you've started and I really want to dive not just into lawn care specifically, but into the evolution of you as an entrepreneur. So maybe just start off though how you did get started in cleaning and lawn care. I know those, those are two industries you were kind of got started in. And how did you get into it and how that evolved.

I basically from 14 on have been working probably like you, at least that's what I remember of you. You're always hustling. So early on I started mowing lawns and I went to college, got a degree in computer information systems. Whole time I worked at vending machines, lawn care, did all this stuff. I never wanted to be in that stuff again. I wanted to be in tech. Started my first software company when I was 23 with my business partner who in service autopilot. Didn't make it after two years. We were trying to build something incredibly complex mapping based system before Google. Well, we ultimately threw in the towel. And the reason I tell you that is because when I threw in the towel on that, we were like, what the heck do we do? And he went and got a job. I want to be on my own. And I started doing consulting, tech consulting, and a buddy of mine from way back basically just did me this massive favor in life and I was just trying to figure out what to do. He's like, hey, come help me out at my cleaning company, pay 1500 bucks a month, just do whatever needs to. I need a website, I need a bookkeeper, that kind of thing. Ultimately ended up partnering up with them on that business. That's how I ended up in cleaning I always wanted to be back in tech. I in the whole time I was doing that, I kept doing tech consulting, programming consulting and then in 05, I don't remember exactly when started City Turf and that was a total fluke. Didn't think I was ever going to be back in the lawn care business, but still I'm doing tech consulting. Seafur has never been anything but part time for me. I've never worked it full time and I was really doing the tech thing and I did some other tech stuff. And then through the cleaning business and through City Turf, John and I kept talking, we weren't working together anymore and I was like, man, I think I've got the idea. He's always pitching me tech ideas. Let's start this tech company, start that tech company. I just never could get quite excited. I think I got the idea there's a massive opportunity in the, in the services space to have a full on web platform. And so this was about 2010 and we were talking about 2009 and that launched Service Autopilot. And I've skipped some other stuff I did. I did a software company in the healthcare space from my consulting clients. They brought me in and gave them some equity in the business to help them get off the ground. So I've done a variety of other things, but that's kind of the gist of my past.

And so obviously you start with the cleaning side. What was that business model looking like when you exited and kind of the evolution of that even. Was it mostly subcontracting? If I remember correctly, you're mostly doing movie theaters.

Yeah.

What was that model when it came to cleaning specifically?

You kind of alluded to it. And also, by the way, I don't, you know, I don't know what this story is because I don't talk about that one. I actually walked away from that business. I didn't sell it. So I don't know if that's when you said exit. I just want to make sure people didn't think I walked away. The gist of that is at that time I had four things and I just, I had to get it down to two. I had two little kids, I had a wife. I was just, it was too much. I had to get it down to two and it wasn't completely fair to those business partners. Just a variety of things. And so I picked the two things I thought I had the best shot. City Turf and Service Autopilot. And so I also ended up exiting another tech company.

So just anyway, that's Kind of story. So that model on that business was we would go win the contracts at. It eventually became just theaters and we would go win contracts at those theaters to clean their properties and then we would find the people to clean them. So imagine that you win a movie theater like Cinemark movie theaters in Ohio. We're Texas based company. We have guys that their sole purpose is to get on an airplane a week before we have to take over the cleaning of that property every single night. And they go find seven people to clean that theater every night. And they, when they find that person, one of them, you know, we, you start out with 30, you find 30 people to have seven or 35 and you get it down to, let's call it seven or if it's smaller theater, maybe three. It just, it varied. We were, we were in 22 states, all the major movie theater chains. And then by the end you're down to your seven or whatever number. You're like, do you want to own a company? We'll help you own a company. You guys all work for this guy now, that kind of a thing. And so that's what we did all over the country. And then ultimately you added in all kinds of services. Where we had carpet cleaning trucks in Florida and Texas, they go through Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, they were cleaning carpet in theaters. We were cleaning screens and theaters, cleaning wall carpets. And we called that special projects, all kinds of stuff like that. But that stuff was all employee based. All the cleaning was contractor based.

Interesting. Some people don't know is that actually the second year of doing Augusta Lawn Care? I actually started Augusta Cleaning Services. Very quickly I realized that I couldn't get the same margin just because I couldn't get the same hourly rate. What was the reasoning for you to get to city turf over the cleaning? Was it simply that or was there something else that was playing into that factor?

There were a number of things. It wasn't. I didn't start that business. I got brought in when it was really, really small. It was, you know, the guys I was partners with were awesome guys. It just wasn't really my business. It was their business more than mine. I was a partner with them, but it was their business. And I was never passionate about the cleaning business. I liked it. I learned a lot. I want to be in technology. I mean, I just knew that you had to get really focused. So that was one of the reasons. The other reason was I do not like businesses that have a few customers. And in the movie theater industry, even in the time I was in it, it just kept consolidating down. It was already very consolidated. Cinemark, Regal, amc. You know, there used to be movie code in Florida, then Cinemark bought them and Cinemark bought this, this 30 chain prop.

Theater group in California. And so, you know, you'd go from having, I don't remember our numbers, but eight clients to four. Well, when you have four, one, any one client, that's millions and millions of dollars a year. That's kind of scary. I didn't like that. I didn't like contractors. You know, I didn't, I like, I didn't like it because that game is tough politically from, we're not seeing it now, but from one political environment to the other. Sometimes they're hard on contractors, sometimes they're not. Sometimes they're hard on, you know, out of the country labor. Sometimes they're not. Just it's a, this ever moving target that you're trying to build a, you can't build a big business around something when there's not some level of stability. And I didn't think there was stability in labor. I could just keep going on and on. And so I accidentally ended up back in the lawn care business. And I started City Turf as commercial. And.

It was a interesting business. But I kept running numbers like, what if I could have a thousand residential clients? And eventually my ambitions grew past that. And I just love the model of diversified, a very diversified business across thousands and thousands of clients. The same thing, same concept with service, autopilot. I wanted thousands and thousands of diversified clients across different industries. I love that model. I think there's a tremendous amount of safety. It's like the same way I've invested since I was 20 years old. I like a level of diversification in investments as well. You know, you don't get as rich in some sense, like you don't have the run up in your investments, but you also, it's, it's a lot safer and you get very steady growth. Well, I think, you know, the same can be said in a business. You see some of these guys in commercial, they get in with a property management company and they just blow up. But they're now beholden to the property management company. I'm not insinuating commercial is not good. Commercial is awesome. But this is true in cleaning, it's true in a lawn or green. It's true in all these segments. Like it can be the rocket ship that helps you go because you got in with the right group. It also can be the very same thing that brings you back down on the other side. And so I love volume and diversification.

Well, I'm glad you were in the cleaning business for movie theaters in 2020.

Brutal place to be now, I'm sure.

What was that like transitioning now from a commercial to the residential side? So in just a few more minutes on the kind of level of your entrepreneurial journey. But like, what was that deciding factor? And you know, that transition? I know some people, maybe they're going the opposite way, residential to commercial, trying to make that decision. What was the deciding factor though, outside of just the diversification? A higher price point that can be charged in a premium price. Were there other factors that went into that play and how did that transition go?

Yeah, I believed I could make double the profit margins was my general belief. And so that was incredibly interesting to me. I also believed that the competition level to go big into the 10, $20 million range was there was less competition, sophisticated competition in residential. Right or wrong. That was my belief. I believe that, and I believe this more than I've ever believed it, that the homeowner is a great market, like the home services space, and the homeowner market is a great market. I also, as I was switching and I was still living in commercial and residential, one of the greatest pain points I encountered was we'd figured out how to acquire clients in commercial by just selling. But I couldn't acquire clients in residential by just pure sales efforts. I had to become a marketing engine and machine. And that was painful at first, and then that was like, boom, this is, this is what I want. If I can acquire clients through marketing, this is magic because I don't have to scale up this ma, this massive force of sales force of people. There's just a whole ton of things I liked about marketing. A marketing driven organization over a sales driven organization. And I felt I could do that in residential more than I could do that in commercial. And so it was, you know, a few things initially that started with diversification, more profit. I thought it's where a big long term opportunity is at. And then as I got into it, I discovered all these other things that I liked about residential.

Now I'm going to come back to kind of your role with City Turpin as it evolved. But before I do that, like, obviously you're doing cleaning, you're doing lawn care, not what you're actually passionate about. In terms of the technology side, what would you say to someone that is also trying to use a home improvement industry type business to kind of grow the capital required to Go do something they actually love. Like, I'm assuming that's the kind of money you needed to start service autopilot, get it off the ground, have a bit of a Runway. What was your thought process during that time? Doing the cleaning, doing, you know, city turf? I'm assuming not super passionate about necessarily the service itself, but really just trying to create that financial pillar.

Yeah, I wasn't passionate about the service, but I do have this general belief that when you get good at something and you get into it, you can find more passion in it. So I've become much more passionate about, say, city turf as an example or home service. I would. I would have zero desire to sell that company. Zero. Actually, I was more passionate about service autopilot. And I guess everybody kind of knows I sold that. That was a different factor. There's a different reason. But. So I just realized what I said might. Might sound a little strange, but I was very passionate. I became passionate about city turf. I like the client that we serve, so I don't think you have to be just incredibly passionate about something. Two thoughts came to mind as you were saying it. One, I see a ton of individuals trying to leave home services too early to move to their next thing. And an add on to that is the beauty of building a home services business, or frankly any business that you just stick with for a long period of time is you learn the skill set to go build whatever the other business is. So, you know, I've had a technology companies, I've had services companies, and at the end of the day, it's still all about people. That's the entire game of business is about building out your leadership team. It's building out management, it's about coaching, it's about training, it's about all. It's all people. And so there's a lot of individuals that want to build, let's call it the services company, get to the next thing and you know, they hit, we'll call it a half a million bucks. And they're like, I'm out, I'm ready, or whatever the number is. No, you're not, dude. I mean, like, maybe you are because you. I'm not saying you can't go start another thing. Absolutely can. But you haven't really learned the game yet. And so as you get that thing bigger and you encounter more problems and you build a bigger team and you have to build a bigger marketing engine and a sales engine, like those skills are so unbelievably valuable if you'll stay in the game and build the bigger thing. You could take all that to whatever's next. And so all I'm trying to say here is that it doesn't really matter what you're in. The game is business. The game is not home services. It's not software, it's not retail, it's not. It's not real estate. It's none of the game is business. Being an operator. I mean, the first thing you'll realize if you, you know, for those that as you accumulate a lot of money and you're like, where the heck do I deploy money over the years? As you take money out of your business and you deploy it, you're like, okay, go put it in public markets and go put it in real estate. I can go put in bonds, I can go put in versions of insurance. I can put it in all these things. The best place to deploy is right back into business because that's where the best you can get the best yield on your money. So if you have the skill to build something, you have one of the most valuable skills that exist, period. And so stay in the game long enough to really build that skill set. And then, then you could become an investor, then you could become an operator of all kinds of different things. And so that would be what I. That would be the single most important point I would make to someone that's wanting to just pivot quickly to the next thing or they only see this as this temporary thing, is like, stay in the game long enough to really get good because it will set you up to go way faster in the next endeavor that you start. Did that make sense the way I worded that?

Absolutely. And I think, I think one thing that's beautiful about the home improvement businesses, if a brand is created, is that in times like we're in now with high inflation, that it's one of the products and services that can actually ramp up with inflation if you've created that brand. And that's where I see a lot of the commercial guys having trouble right now when. And it is dollar versus dollar compared to, hey, if I'm gonna raise cost per cut by $10 on a $50 lawn, now all of a sudden I have a 20% price increase and most people are gonna stick with me.

Yeah, there's a lot of price elasticity in the home services space that people just don't realize.

Absolutely. Before I move on to service autopilot, I wanna talk a little bit more about city turf and what your role is there now. Obviously, probably different, varying levels of Involvement. And what's your role now with City Turf? And partly I. That's what the Internet wants to know. The lawn care millionaire hasn't been making any videos recently. So what's your current role, kind of at City Turf? Just for those that are listening.

I don't really have a role. I mean, honestly, I don't. I haven't had a role for years. The only way I know to describe it is that.

Big strategic stuff. Directionally, where are we going? What's the future opportunity for that business like? I'm very interested in robotics. I do probably think most about robotics stuff.

It's that stuff. It's. It's that I actually have a desire to be more involved in the business and I will get a little bit more involved for a period of time here. At some point it's going to be a bit. But my involvement is near. Probably drives them nuts, but near zero. So.

And so. So. So you mentioned there about robotics. I know that you were, I believe, on the. On the board, our chairman on Robin and what they were working on. Is that still something that is evolving and comments. Is developing the technology or is it more. They're focusing on the service side of robotics and just leveraging manufacturers, current technology.

I'd say they're working. They're on all. They're trying to be on all sides of it right now. It's a very evolving industry, or we'll call robotics the industry. It's very evolving. It's a difficult and interesting time in that space right now. And there is no winner. I would say they're winning in terms of the. What they're doing. There's, you know, there's some pretty. Like Husqvarna is doing really well in the residential side, smaller properties, you know, and you've got all these other brands that are popping up. But, you know, even with Husqvarna, it kind of feels like in some ways winning in that space. They've been in it longer.

You know, there's no just obvious winner at all. It's a wide open space and there's a lot of the big brands that, you know, we have all used or use in our businesses that feel they have that, I would say have virtually no presence in robotics and that will change. They're going to go buy stuff. And so it's kind of, to me, the wild west right now and everybody's just trying to figure it out. So when you ask, hey, what's Robin doing? Well, Robin's in the middle of helping everybody figure it out. And so that means that they have to be involved in lots of different aspects of the robotic space.

Now, poke holes in this theory of mine, because this is how I think robotics might actually have some legs or create traction. Right. Just the theory, probably wrong. But like Roomba was just bought out by Amazon right inside the house, they're able to now get quite a bit of data in terms of square footage, et cetera, potentially to target someone better when it comes to their purchasing decisions. Would it be too outlandish or crazy for you to think that a prime member gets a free lawnmower? And like the whole mail package theft thing is solved by, hey, we now have this GPS track device. You throw the package in there, it's not going to get stolen off your front porch. And it potentially now has. It can measure the property, potentially have ring integration in terms of video cameras and security dogs, things like that. Is that something that you like? I personally feel like a massive player like that coming in, willing to have billions of dollars worth of losses as a loss leader for their other products. Potentially might be the start of this actually getting traction more in the market. Or do you see it from a different angle or a different player in the market?

Yeah, my perspectives evolved. So in 18, I think it was 2018, at the SA conference, I gave a talk and I specifically mentioned Amazon and robotics, robotic mowers. And I thought about that quite a bit. Now that I'm closer to it, I think that's further out and the reason. But I, I wouldn't put it out of the realm of possibility, out into the future. But I think Amazon's very sophisticated. They'll swoop in when the time is right. And the time is still quite a ways off. So I wouldn't say it's impossible. I'd just say it's going to be a long, longer period of time. If that were to happen, it's going to be longer than we might guess. And the reason for that is the challenge on the robotics right now is you need all these different techniques. You can't really depend on any one technology. So as an example, a lot of the robotics have a guide wire. A guide wire plus a line, like an invisible dog fence. That technology is okay, but because of that technology, it necessitates the need to bounce them around in a random pattern like a Roomba. And there's some more. There's. Because usually they're using GPS plus that technology. And that's not good enough to get, say, straight line mowing to a large degree. So then there, so then you can bring in some other technologies on that piece of equipment to try to get so that you can do straight line pattern mowing and so that the GPS signal is more adequate under when buildings are close or when there's large tree cover. So now you've got to employ another technology. Well then, okay, that's good, that gets you another step closer and. But then you might need lineups, you might need a. I won't go into all the technical stuff, but you might then need a few more technologies on this one piece of equipment at some point so that it's actually good enough that you could drop that piece of equipment on a property it could just mow. And that's the reason why I don't think Amazon could accomplish this in this scenario and the reason why many of us aren't adopting in mass scale right now is because there's really not any mowers that are ready for production that have all those technologies on them where you can set it on the property or just take it around the edge on the property and it really works everywhere. A lot of them that look like they're working are pretty exciting. You'll notice they're almost always in big open areas. They're not under tree cover, they're not close to building. As soon as you do that, most of this stuff kind of blows up. And so we're just not there. So an Amazon would have to. If they gave you a motor, it's like, okay, you'll have to put in a guide wire. You're going to have to do this. You're going to have to. It's not ready for prime time yet. And that you need the homeowner. It's got to be so simple. You just set this in the property or maybe you go around the perimeter and that's all you got to do and it figures it out. So all I'm saying here is that it's going to be a while. It's going to be a while for the technology to iterate to get the mower to that point. But that's what everybody's working on. That's where everybody. Well, not. I think most companies are marching in.

That direction for the actual lawn care professionals and business owners out there in terms of using in their businesses and not necessarily the use case of one mower per lawn. Do you think there's ever a chance of having something like a lidar package being put on an existing mower and being.

Yes, that's one of those technologies. Wasn't going into. But yes. Yeah.

Okay. And is it really just price? Really that has to come down to the point where it makes economic sense.

Then.

This is total speculation. It's, it's going to definitely be partially price. It's, it's companies getting more and more because you know, the technology, the hardware is one piece. Then you got to write all the technology and troubleshoot it and deal with all the exception errors that, that thing works in a reliable enough fashion that you can actually deploy it into production. So it's scale of people inside these companies to write the code and do the testing and iterate and such. And that's the second. And then a third would be, It's. Well, that's probably the, the other one is, it's the same. All these companies right now, they're all saying, well, hey, I'm going to do this. I'm going to use this technology or this technology or these two technologies. It's just the industry as a whole continuing to iterate and learn from each other and figure out what are the best technologies that we need to, to put on the equipment. So not everybody's trying to do that right now because it's expensive, because you need the teams. And so it is one of the technologies that might move this forward. It's just going to take years for it to work its way through the engineering departments of all these robotic companies where they have the people and the budget and then they believe they could sell the equipment at the price point with all these technologies on it that anybody will actually buy it. No.

I could talk hours, I could talk about hours about that side. So I, I talk. So let's go back.

I'm optimistic. I'll leave everybody with. I'm optimistic. But it's gonna, it's just, it's not gonna be here tomorrow. It's, it's. I know you want to move on. I'll tell you one thing. I thought that there might be this last first mover advantage, right? The first mover advantage doesn't exist in my belief right now, meaning that if you don't deploy immediately, you're not at risk. But what I will tell you and what I do believe is that if you don't start testing or paying attention or trying things by the time that your brain says, ah, I should have done this, it's going to take you two more years to have any significant number of robots deployed in your business. So you're better off starting sooner than later just to start learning the game and thinking about and figuring it out than you are to wait two years from now or three years from now and then I'm going to predict at least two years after that you'll have any meaningful deployment. So while it's going to take a while, it's worth thinking about sooner than later. It's coming.

Do you think that the self driving aspect for cars for example, needs to be figured out and then the technology trickle down to other industries like lawn care that don't have the market cap or you know, Wall street doesn't have the appetite?

No, I had a theory one time around that too and I don't think so anything. I think this is now. I think that the amount of capital that has come into robotics, we're talking about mowing robotics in the last two years is finally will make you. Makes me feel like, okay, now we're seeing action, we're seeing acquisitions, we're seeing investment capital. It's like, okay, now we're moving forward and I think it can move forward in spite of what's happening in the automobile industry and waiting for that technology. We need similar technologies. But there are legitimate differences. And so this will iterate on its own cycle separate. And so I don't think we have to wait.

Okay, we're going to stop that rabbit trail. So back to city turf real quick. I know that there was a lot of transition at least several years back in terms of subcontracting model pay for performance. I don't know how involved you know I am with P4P. We have software now around pay for performance. But I know you all were doing that. I heard a rumor. Rumors happen and that is that city turf no longer does P4P.

That's not true.

Okay, lies. So tell me a little bit though about why you moved then towards P4P and what services worked well and did not work well potentially.

We moved like eight years ago, a long time ago.

I don't remember when we moved. Could have been more than eight years ago. We moved a long time ago.

And I couldn't really tell you.

I couldn't really tell you everything we're doing. I'm not involved. But I know you know. So I could be giving you some inaccurate information now, but I know back in the day and I have no reason to think it's changed. It was for sure mowing. That's where it first implemented it was fertilization and weed control. We never implemented it on tree and shrub care to my knowledge. We never and we may or may not have. I don't know, I haven't been involved in building out that side of business in any way. So the arbor side, I haven't been involved in that pest control side. I feel like we were doing it, but I can't remember. So. But those, those are actual segments though, that in my opinion, work for paper performance. I find, you know, from my experience, pay for performance was more difficult and say bed and bush work, hand weeding and trimming the bushes and ornamentals and things of that sort. But generally I think it works in almost every area. But you have to, you know, step one is you figure out the pay for performance plan I'm overly simplifying. And then step two is you fix all the bad stuff that happens because you implemented a pay for performance plan in terms of people rushing through the job or things of that sort. And so there's things you have to then implement to overcome the negatives of pay for performance. But when you do it all right, it's a massive win. It was a big win for us. And so we, you know, we, I would. We felt that we were probably one of the better managed businesses in our space and in terms of just managing people and inspecting work and training people. And I think that was a legitimate belief that we had. And we had really good people. Like people don't leave our business or historically haven't. And so we would have people that have been with us for years and years. And so we didn't think way back when we implemented pay for performance that we were going to see a big bump. And we still saw a big bump. It was like, huh, okay. In spite of doing the management right, in spite of all the training, in spite of everything else, you know what? People really are motivated in life by incentives. That's how the world works. And it works. Pay for performance. So I don't know that I'm giving you all the details you were looking for, but I'll tell you that we had it implemented across a whole number of segments of the business. I just don't know for sure if we pulled it back in some areas, but I know for a fact we have not eliminated it for from the business.

That's right. Jonathan also uses P4P to motivate his employees to work efficiently. The P4Pmodel rewards workers based on their performance and promotes efficiency in your business by design. Now you can pay your employees to SmartWay with our new P4P software. You'll get automatic updating efficiency numbers, real time project tracking and individual employee metrics on a day to Day basis. If you want to learn more about P4P book A Call with Brad, our in house CPA today at P4P software.com.

Training over the past three to four years. How is the labor? You know, let's just call it labor crisis affected C turf disaster in the past. In the past administration and with immigration H2B program a lot of pivots had to be made. What has that meant for such a large company in Texas using that program? What does that have to change and evolve over the past few years we've.

Let thousands and thousands of mowing clients go and pivoted the business into other stuff and we haven't got our people two years, two times and we're talking 100 and something people each time. It's disastrous because we don't use undocumented team members. We follow all the rules. We do insurance 401k. We do the whole like we are 100% legit. We don't cut, we don't play any games. We don't pay in cash. We pay, we do everything 100%. I mean to building sustainable long term businesses. And so.

When you're trying to do that it's really hard. So disaster is the best word I can come up with. It's been very hard on the business. We're, we're not, we're half the size we should be. We're bigger than we keep growing each year but we've essentially reinvented the underlying business. So we used to be a ton of mowing and now our biggest revenue side of our business, fertilization, weed control. We do a ton of bed and bush work. We do a lot of arbor, a lot of a smaller amount of pests. I mean we just, we do a bunch of irrigation and mowing still one of the bigger services but it's, it's a shell of and it's to me it's a shell of what it, it would have been otherwise. And the margins have come down in, in mowing even in spite of price increases and everything. The margins are not even in the close to what they used to be.

Got it. We got to move on from that one because I'm already overtime so give me a few more minutes.

Oh sure, sure. I'm fine. I don't have anything to do. Okay.

So the, the transition into service all obviously that was your passion. I still remember as that was happening I did not know is the beginning years of service. Autopilot2009 2010 I think for most people probably watching up to this point. They were those original listeners on Lawn Care Millionaire listening to those original videos. How has it changed in terms of marketing? Let's just take that segment for a second.

How is what changed the marketing, the.

Marketing side of things. When you know, I go back and watch a lot of your videos from 2009, 2010, a lot of talk about flyers, door hangers, etc.

In service autopilot, city turf. How has it changed just home home.

Improvement in businesses in general. When I go back and watch the videos that you made, not about service autopilot necessary, but just home improvement in general, has that evolved and changed or do you think those same methods are applicable to today?

Yeah, it's both. It's both. My early model was I built and said don't anybody do this now it's a terrible model, but back in the day it made sense. I built 30 or 40 websites for city turf and so that was a digital model. It casted a wide net. We are doing search engine optimization to go capture a wide net of clients and then when we get them, we would market more services back to them. Now the strategy is one site. You build one site, you put all your effort into that one site and you try to capture as much organic traffic as you can. So that's similar but different. Then when you get a client, you try to grow the value of the client over time and you grow the value of the client by marketing back into them. We used to do hard mailers or offline marketing as you might call it. Basically print still works, absolutely works. So that hadn't necessarily changed. But you know what's. What maybe you do more of now is you might do more email or text marketing into that client instead of as print marketing. But it doesn't mean you don't do all of it. The print marketing works. And so that's kind of changed. But also kind of the same.

Physical offline marketing to a street that you want to build density in, which was our model way back. You know, we cast a wide net with organic. This is before we started using pay per click. You cast a wide net with organic or capturing organic through for. If people don't know what I mean, basically you're just getting your website optimized so people find you online through Google, Bing, whatever, search and then they come to your website and then your website converts them. They buy well so that just. I call that a wide net because you're going to just get people all over town and then then you build density by going direct to the streets that they live on. Well, the game is really still the same. If you want to build the density, you got to go directly to them. And you can't go to a street level with pay per click. Whether it be Facebook or Google or whatever. You still got to go with print. And so that still works. You know, so what's changed is that now what I would think of is what search engine optimization used to be now is to me more of a content strategy today. And that's a big change. Another change is that, and this change happened years ago, but you really start spending on pay per click with Google and with Facebook you're running your digital ads. I mean without question, you up your social game. Those things have all changed and evolved over time. Door knocking still works. I mean so it's, it's a story of every door. Hangers still work without question. You just, you know, a lot of cities block them, but they work and they, you know, and so I think all of it still works. It's just a matter of figuring out where you want to allocate financial resources and time resources and then getting really good at that thing. And so did, did that answer your question?

Absolutely. So in, in terms of those are the beginning days, I was watching those videos, I saw the subliminal messaging of service autopilot.

Sh. Absolutely.

Jonathan Patosnik. So I was like, I should check that out. That was great, great marketing, I love it. And so I think a lot of members that joined service all probably saw those videos and it was very lawn care centric. Again outsiders, just outsider looking in. Probably a lot of lawn care professionals on the software. Again, if you don't haven't heard of service off. It's a CRM for home improvement businesses. What was that discussions like and thought process in terms of okay, we got to get away from just lawn care because that's where your, your network was from the videos and your audience. And how do we get this to become more service based for all home improvement businesses? I'm in a similar position now. Even when it comes to content is like, hey, lawn care landscaper guys, most of my audience, what happens the next chapter of content when I go after more other industries. What was that thought process for you though when it came to service autopilot specifically?

Yeah, so that was a tough one. And so interestingly, I don't think a lot of people know this. We actually when we were starting service allpilot thought we were best actually starting H Vac and plumbing. We thought they had more money Higher ticket. Yep. But what ended up happening is we concluded that we looked at a lot of different service spaces and we concluded that.

When you want to sell something, you think in terms of pain. I'm fixing, I'm solving for pain. So we felt that in the green industry, they had the most pain because, like I took like, say, city turf, we could mow 30 yards a day per crew as an example. So whereas a plumber might do one or two jobs a day. So they could put that in a calendar, they could put that on paper, but 30 yards a day, or think about a fertilization, weed control business that is not going to run on paper very well. There's. And then you got to bill all that. It's a lot of pain. So we actually decided that while the green industry has less money, they have more pain, and we would start there. So if you had talked to me in 2009 before we were starting the business, I would have said we're still going to be in h vac by 2012. It was a pipe dream. And so what happened is it just, you know, you just never stop putting resources into building the technology. And if you get to know your client, we called our clients members. As you get to know your members better, it's like they got this problem, this problem, you have this pain. How can I help them solve as much as possible? So we just stayed in the green industry and stayed in the green industry. So we didn't really even start getting to cleaning, if I remember correctly, till, say, 15 and 15. Cleaning had just been one of the services on the roadmap. And so to step back real quick, Long Care Millionaire was created to be a marketing channel for service autopilot. And that's what the whole thing was. And so I, I just started in the green industry and I had always thought I was going to go start a channel in the cleaning industry, and then I started a channel in the H Vac industry. I thought then I'd start bringing in guest people in. That's what I'd always planned to do. I mean, but what happened is we just, I mean, we just, we blew past 10 million bucks with roughly the green industry, just the green industry. And it just kept. The business just kept going and going. And so, you know, the company's a lot bigger than that today, and the green industry is still a big part of that huge part of that business. And so what happened over time is the green industry just kept adopting more and more software and we were able to move up the food chain in the industry and sell to bigger and bigger clients. And we have a lot of clients that pay 30, 40,000. You know, I don't know all the numbers today, but we paid a lot when I was running the business. Paid us a lot of money because they're big companies and with hundreds of people using the software. And so we ended up not moving out the space as fast. And what we did is we started building mini low call them like tripwires or mini trainings that you wouldn't see like a lawn care millionaire channel. But we'd create trainings and other things that we were using to get into some of the other industries. But we still continue to spend the bulk of our money on green, a little bit on cleaning. And then all the other people, they just naturally found us and so that's kind of how it works. So we never ended up pivoting to. And to this day the business still hasn't gone after H vac or plumbing. It doesn't need to. These industries are so big and they're getting bigger that we can stay in those lanes.

Okay, I wanted to pack a bunch of stuff there, I'd have to come back to it. But I'm going to stay in this vein and that is that being the content that drove a lot of leads to service Autopilot and you being the face of that content and that brand, was it difficult now fast forwarding a little bit years later now when you sell the company to have that association still with service Auto putt and the lawn care millionaire and you personally and then you having to remove yourself from that. Has that been a difficult transition for you?

No, it wasn't a problem whatsoever. It's only been difficult for me because I have, I'm so passionate about the industry and I have so many friends and so that. And I was just very passionate about moving forward the knowledge level in the, in the industry and I was passionate about like companies getting bigger and building bigger businesses and just us helping them. That's really been the hardest thing, just a personal thing for me. I miss that. Like my friends, I got tons of friends in the industry. I talked to to this day and I will always talk to so that's been more difficult. I miss the teaching side. I loved Academy is probably the thing I was most passionate about that I've ever done. I miss that. But in terms of it causing any problems with the transaction on the business or anything of that sort, no, it hasn't caused it. It was a not complete non issue.

Now you you don't have to answer these things if you're not allowed to. So you can just say there are.

Some things I'm not allowed to.

But yeah, okay, 100% I get because.

I'm kind of an open book. I just have to be careful not to be too 100% agree.

Totally get it. It's an existing company and now you're not involved. But was it, how was it when once you sold and I don't even know the the details of that but like once you've sold your stake in ownership and yet you were.

I didn't sell the whole thing. I sold part.

Okay, but still the CEO was that difficult to do. I know I don't I'm guessing maybe a year, year and a half where you were in that role where you sold but you were still CEO. Then we come into Covid 2020 and all that craziness happens. What was it like now trying to run a company you co founded but now didn't own the majority stake ownership?

I think I was an outlier on in this situation. I was okay with it. I would say that 95% of people are not okay with it. The reason I and I've been told by several people that I was unusual to work with. The reason for that is because.

I've service all Pilot was my passion and I did it for reasons other than just money. Of course I want to make money, but it was my thing and so I'll do something else. I'll do more stuff because I don't need the money. I just like the game. And the reason I'm telling you this is so I'm just wired. I want to learn everything I can because I want to keep playing a bigger and bigger game. And so whenever we did the transaction I was like, this is going to be a whole new world. I'm going to sit in a whole level different level of board meetings, you know, that are, you know, at the top level that you know because service all pilots in a world of businesses now. So I'm going to sit, you know, at a higher level in those board meetings and make some acquisitions. I will see how they run their budgeting and how they run their planning and like things that I'm, I we were wanting to build a bigger outbound sales team at service autopilot. We already we had somebody on the team but we were, we were needing to move that along faster. That was one of the things that I was telling everybody when we were working on our transaction. I'm looking for a partner that's going to help us build a big outbound sales team. So I wanted to learn from that. So there are all these, there's this, all this stuff I wanted to learn. I wanted to see what it looked like to live inside a multi hundred million dollar organization and what do I not know? That kind of thing. And so I would say that I went into it with a very open mind, you know, and you know, frankly, the big businesses are not as entrepreneurial. There's just no getting around it. And I don't love that, you know that. But I liked and like the people that I worked with a lot. There were a lot of really smart people there and I learned a number of things and saw a bunch of stuff and a bunch of stuff was demystified. Like there's just a lot of stuff I thought, oh, this is going to be like when I get in this world, it's going to be like, oh my gosh. I never thought of that. There wasn't a lot of that. It was just like a bigger version of what I was already doing. But I did learn, one of the biggest things I learned is around budgeting and planning. We were crappy at it. Like it's hardcore. They run it like a public company, budgeting, planning. So I learned those things. So the summary would be I was sort of a sponge coming into this thing. And while I didn't love everything about it, I was a lot more meetings. I loved seeing a different world because I can take the good and apply it to my next thing. And the stuff I don't like, like, well, I'm trying to be cognizant of that and avoid that if I build something much bigger in the future. So that's how I thought about. So I would not say it was all negative. I think a lot of people will tell you it's all negative because they come into it, in my opinion, with the wrong mindset. And, and so yeah, it's not going to be the same. Somebody's paid you a lot of money. You don't get to do everything exactly the way you did it before. They're the owner. You're not going to, you know, you got to be okay with that. That was the trade you made to get some money. And I'm not making this sound like just a transaction, but, but that is what's happening. If you bought my city turf business, then I have no right to be upset if you say, hey, we need to go in this direction or we need to spend a little Less here and more there. That's your prerogative. You bought the company. And so people get upset because they don't understand why somebody's making changes, but yet you're not the owner or the full owner anymore. And so I think it's a mindset problem that a lot of entrepreneurs have. So it was a good experience for me.

For someone on the other side of the table that potentially might be doing acquisitions and going after companies like Service all pot in the SaaS or potentially even home improvement, what would your recommendation be them when taking over a company like happened there or any, any business really, to retain the leadership, retain the culture. I know that some people that would say negativity about what happened with Service Autopilot in your transition would say there's a loss of leadership, the founder is gone. Like, who's, where's the direct. Where's the boat going? What would someone that is doing an acquisition do to prevent that from potentially being alarming to their clients or members?

Yeah, I, boy, we could do a whole session on this and I would need to think about it a little bit. But I will tell you that.

This is a tough one. If you're buying a small business.

There'S a high probability that people. This was not what was going on with Service Autopilot. But if you're buying a small business.

Okay, if you're buying a big, like if you're buying Service Autopilot, that is a company with a legit leadership team, there's a lot of good stuff happening. You can sort of let that company keep doing what it's doing. It was big enough that, you know, we're growing that business at 39%, 40% top line growth every year. You can let that business run and you just want to give it more fuel. Okay, that's, that's. And so if you're, this is why it's not an easy question to answer. If you're buying a business that's truly structured where it can keep running, then you want to not go get in the way. And that's one of the, you can help, but you do not want to come in there and get in the way. I think the language you use when you buy a company and how you talk to the people when you're coming in is, can be really good or really bad because everybody, as soon as that company sold is going to believe it's all going to be really bad. And so you've got to use language that makes them feel comfortable and be honest and then actually Live it.

Because I remember the service, auto, Facebook group, hundreds of comments underneath the announcements of all this sort of thing. And then you came back and added clarity and things like that. But go ahead. Sorry.

Yeah. In the beginning. Well, yeah. And so the.

If you're buying something of size and you're buying a really quality asset, you should let that thing run and be additive to it. What happens? I believe, boy, this is where. I don't know how to be really brief in my explanation. What happens. There is. Variables could change.

Dang. I don't know how to describe this other than to say it's very easy for people to start messing with that thing that's working really well. Maybe they want to save a point of profit, make a point more of profit here, or they want to go this direction, or they want a family member to now be in the business, or there's a million variables that just slowly start to jack that thing up. You got to be really careful to protect that thing and let that team run. But the reality is that most of the acquisitions that most individuals will make that can afford that will not be the kind of business you're buying. And the reality is what you're buying does need to get shaken up a little bit. And so I have a theory that what you do is you come into that business and you just be completely honest. I mean, I think that is the key to everything in life, is just, you know, you say the truth and you live it out. And when things change, you have a frank, honest conversation about there's new information. I didn't know this is how it was going to be. But because of what I've learned or we've experienced or what's happened, we need to make these changes go in a slightly different direction. I originally told you, okay, you just got to be very transparent and upfront. Not going to necessarily make people happen. But what happens in a lot of these transactions is communication is lousy. And then people are left to imagine their own narratives. And everybody is constantly making up their own narrative about how they're going to get screwed, they're going to get fired, a million things. And so when you're not communicating and you're not there and you're not visible, everybody's creating a narrative. And so I would say one of the first things I would do is be highly transparent, highly honest about the good and the bad. And I would be very. I would communicate constantly with that team. I would let that team run for a period of time, and who are my winners or who in this business has skill? Who's in this business that's in a role because the previous owner and almost all small businesses do this. They're not getting people out of their organizations that shouldn't be there. Because that person has been with me for five years, because that person's my friend, because that person works for my, you know, is my brother in law, whatever. And so you slowly deteriorate the business over time by letting the wrong people stay inside the organization. Well, until you let that business just run for a period of time, you don't know if you've got some of those people or you don't know if you've got some people that are underperforming, that are just in the wrong position, need to be moved. You don't know who your performers are that have been held back. You don't know anything. So I believe if I was making an acquisition, I would be very present, communicate a ton and I would be looking for who my future stars are, who can rise up and take, take over more inside the business. And then I would be very clear on with the like. Let's say you want to retain the founder. What is your unique ability that you're good at that you love doing that you could keep showing up every day. What do you hate about this business? Why did you sell this business? Like, what is all that stuff? Okay, who do we need to hire to get that off your plate? Even if I have to put more money in the business, I'm putting more money in the business getting all that stuff off their plate because then I have a better chance of keeping that. And I'm going to then think about that very same thing throughout the organization with the leaders of the business. I got to get them in the right seats. So I could talk for another hour on this, but I would start there. It's communication. The whole game of business is people. So do I have the right people on the team? Do I have some people that need to get off the team? Got some people in the wrong seats that aren't, you know, living in up to their best skill set or living in the highest level of energy they could because they're simply in the wrong place or they're being held back to. I'd analyze all that and then I, I'd see what I have after a period of time and then I'd start making my changes. And you could come in and add like data and finance to the company. You could come in and help them scale marketing. You can do all that stuff pretty quick. Now that will scare a lot of people because they'll think I'm going to get pushed out or things are changing too fast. But there will be a period of quiet there where we're figuring it out and then there will be a period of making a plan and then there will be a period of execution and just tremendous communication needs to happen so people understand why we're making these changes.

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I want to follow up on that just a second in terms of the from the founder side, but before I do, and this can be a quick answer in terms of was there ever a time or a world where you thought to yourself that you would stay with service autopilot and be the CEO or no? Okay, so it was a, it was a transition and you moved on.

Yeah, we never had a earn out or we never had to stay. I stayed as long as I did because I wanted to. But no, I knew that I would move on.

Moving back to more from the founder side because you said 95% of the time when that happens, it's a negative thing. You were part of the 5%. Now if you were speaking to a founder that potentially is being bought out, I think a lot of times the two biggest concerns a founder has when they're being bought out is one, what the employees are going to think and then number two, what are the clients are going to think about this transition? How did you handle it, if you don't mind sharing some internally to tell the team that the acquisition had taken place and that you were going to be, you know, sunsetting your involvement.

I didn't tell them I was going to be sun setting my involvement because I had no idea how long I was going to stick around.

I had intended to stay for some time. I had no idea. Covid changed a bunch of stuff and so a number of the things that I wanted to execute on that got me really excited about the deal. They just all changed because of COVID It changed so many things. And so I was very. I was never deceiving the team in any way that I was going to. I never told them I was moving on because I had no data in my mind of when that happened, because I was going to. I was planning to stick around for a while. I wanted to learn as much as I could, and I wanted to make sure. I wanted the company to transition as successful as possible for the team and for our members. And so I was very concerned about that. So I wanted to stay as long as I could to make sure that happened to my satisfaction. So. So it never necessitated a conversation about moving on. I don't remember exactly what you asked, but I would. And so you may have to remind me, but I'll. I will say that, you know, my desire, if I was acquiring a company, would be that the founder that I, you know, assuming that I want to keep the founder, my desire would be that they have enough skin in the game that they stay. And I would. I think there's something to be said for staying. If you. If you still have some skin in the game, maybe you still own some equity, that'd be one way. Or maybe the compensation model could be set up in such a way that you benefit significantly enough that's worth your while to stay. And I would, you know, the. The ideal would be. And again, I. This is just from my perspective, if I could acquire a business and take a, say, a controlling stake in the business to leave enough skin in the game for the founder, that I would like them to make more money with the remaining equity than the money they took off the table initially, because I'm going to help them quadruple the thing that they have. And I want them. And I, you know, this is why I've told my service all by team, my entire career at Service all by. You are not going to stay with me forever. I am grateful for the time that you're on my team and we get to work together, but what I want is, in 10 years, I want you to. To be able to look back and say, my career is better and my life's better because I worked at Service autopilot. I have no illusions you're staying with me forever. I believe that to my core with anybody ever works with me, they need to go do what's right for them in life. They need to grow their careers, they need to take great care of their families. I hope I can provide that. But if they get excited about something else, they should go do it. I don't want to lose them, but they should go do it. Well, that's exactly the same way I would think if I bought a company. I want to give that founder enough reasons to stay with me. I want them to see an example. How do we run a company, how do we build management teams, how do we build leadership teams, how do we market, how do we look at data, how do we raise prices, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Because their journey is probably not over. They're going to go build another thing. So come with me on this ride. I want to get everything off your plate that you hate in life. I'll get somebody else to do that stuff. I want you to live in your favorite place in the business that you could keep doing this. I want to leave enough equity on the table for you so that you make more money than you just made just now. And let's go on this ride together and I hope you stick with me for some number of years and when you're, when it's done, it's done. And let's, you know, let's take really good care of the team. That's how I think about. So I think about it. What do the incentives need to be for them that this is a dream come true outcome for them, not just the initial money, but the second exit, the set in this, the period of time they stay with me. There are founders that stay with companies for years and it's wonderful. The problem is a lot of companies, in my opinion, get shortsighted and they try to wake one more or two more points of profit to the detriment of everybody else. And then they start living in quarterly plans, which you have to live in quarterly plans to some degree, but they start living in quarterly plans where everybody just has to hit the number. And there's no appetite to test, there's no appetite to try anything, there's no appetite to take any risks because nobody's going to risk their job by missing a number. And the businesses just get more and more and more short sighted. Nobody wants to live in that world. That's corporate America. Nobody wants to be in it. So if you can put an entrepreneur in a world where, hey, yeah, we do live by goals, we do need to hit some numbers at the same time. We got freedom to go try and fail and we're going to make sure you're doing what you love doing. People want to live in that world. Like that's a hard place, that's a hard company. To go work for. So those are some of the things I'd be thinking about and talking to them about to try to help them see this vision of why you want to stay with me and go on this journey with me and why I want to be your partner.

Can a venture backed company that has a majority stake ownership held out with fund managers or investors be as innovative as a founder led company, in your opinion?

No. I don't know. I feel no.

But that may be unfair because I have a limited amount of experience. I mean I don't think so, but a lot of times it's tough. I mean my brain's going like 10 different directions here because also on a, sometimes a founder can't be as innovative either because they just don't have enough capital. And so there's that as well that it, that with, with the right partner you can be even more creative. So I think it depends. I, I think what happens is again I am at risk of being inaccurate here because I don't have enough experience. But I think as the businesses get bigger and bigger, there's more and more risk that they're financially engineered and you can't be quite as innovative.

But, but you know, the re. The but I would contradict all of that and say that there have been some pretty incredible companies that have been financed from the built beginning and are public organizations now. So I feel like I'm, I'm inaccurate in what I'm saying. I just think it's difficult, it's a very difficult line to tow and, and so I don't think I quite know the answer. But I feel that if you're a company that's blessed that you're entrepreneurial, the founders are still in place, you have enough money and you're wired to be willing to let your team run, that's a hard, hard organization to beat. But they usually don't long term win because they don't have the capital. I mean that's one of the things I thought about in the service autopilot world I was the only guy with no capital. I mean I had my own capital, we were in good shape, we're profitable. But I was the only non funded company left that mattered in any way. And in service autotype, which it didn't work out but service titan was coming to our space, you know, that was. So you're thinking about coming as a billion years, raised a billion bucks. I mean I was very aware that you can be the most innovative, you can be very innovative, you can be very entrepreneurial. But if somebody can spend two years of revenue to acquire a client, those are not economics that make sense in my world. How do I compete with that long term and become $100 million business? That's just a little bit of one of the things I was thinking about. And so you know, again I'm refuting what I just said there, there's a, there's a point where even if you're entrepreneurial and you can move fast, doesn't mean you win. Those companies often don't win in the long, long term unless they're just have such incredible profit margins that they can make it work. Mailchimp is an example of. I believe they for the most part avoided funding. I believe. But there's few stories of a company that's got that big especially in technology and I was kind of in the technology. I was wearing my technology hat as we were just talking here. You know in the technology space are so expensive to build. These companies that you see very, very few that ever get really big that didn't get funding. Got it.

And over the past few years. I'll wrap this up here a second but over the past few years I feel like there's been a lot of innovation in these spaces where a lot of money has gone. Especially because everyone moved online so quickly. You know, whether it be ServiceNow, Salesforce creating small business tools, these massive multibillion dollar companies moving into this space. And just from a user's perspective, I fear service autopilot's ability to be able to compete and innovate and create the, you know, automations when it came out to me as a user was revolutionary really in terms of that access to a small business owner now that's becoming very commonplace. How does it, whether it be service all part any technology or firm that sees the competition coming on behind them, how do they continue to innovate? Because I as a service all part user, fear lest that potentially could be the downfall as so much money has moved into this space. And they are the David Many Goliaths.

Service All Pilot is just, just from.

An outsider's point of view.

Okay, I was gonna say Service All Pilot's a lot bigger than I think people realize. I hear all these crazy stories about service all by it and I think there's a massive misconception that business is much bigger than I think people realize and growing much faster than people realize. The.

The thing about. Well since it's. I don't, you know, I'm not involved in essay but I will just say it since it's still my baby. The thing I would tell you is that there's a little difference with Service Autopilot than the other businesses in the space right now in that that business intends to be owned forever by the group that owns it. Right now all the other businesses are owned by private equity companies that will be sold as soon as the stock market comes back up. I mean I'm speaking very broadly, but that's, that's their plan. So those companies have zero interest in product iteration. And I'm again, I am, I am at risk of being a little unfair and a little dramatic here. But, but if you just think about incentives, the incentives are generally to grow that thing as fast as you can and sell it to the next group. The service autopilot world. This is why we did the deal that we did is because in that world they will own this business forever and they won't sell it to another. I mean something I guess could happen but the plan is it would not be sold to another company. And so they have a vested interest that they have to innovate, get faster innovating all kinds of things over time. I would just say that about that business. So, so think about incentives now. I do think. Can you restate your question? I just wanted to clarify that because I noticed there's a massive misconception on Service Autopilot. People have told me some crazy things.

Where do you think the whole CRM for service based businesses, that software, that technology. Where is the next frontier of innovation? As I kind of felt like the last five years has been automation and that side of things. Where, where are we going in terms of technological, technological innovation in those spaces.

I don't know who's going there right away but my belief has long been and this is where we were going to take service all pipe scheduling automation. Again you go back to pain. It's a very hard problem to solve and it's an expensive problem to solve. But if you go back to pain.

Where'S the pain? The fact is even with Service Autopilot that can handle, you know, a company like mine that does thousands and thousands of jobs a day.

You. It's still a lot of decision making that happens. And service all pipes in my opinion still better than MO when you get to maintenance. Maintenance it's still for the company has a lot transaction still better than the other stuff out there and, but that still creates a lot of pain. You've got to have people in the organization that have learned how to figure out the. You got the routing tools. But figure out the most efficient route, who's going to do the work, what days it's going to be on.

All these most expensive person typically doing that job too.

Yes. And you. And so the future of this industry and where this tech has to go and where I believe it will go is when Ms. Smith calls in and you put in an address, it figures everything out. That is a very hard problem to solve, but that is the future and that's where I believe it will go. It'll be true scheduling automation. It'll figure out who's going to do the work, what day they're going to do the work on, when it needs to be on what recurring schedule, if it's one time, when to fit it in. And it's a black box in a sense. And that's where it will go. That's what has to be built. And somebody like service all applied is positioned to do something like that. You're just going to have to make a pretty big investment to do it.

You've been very generous, generous with your time. I really appreciate it. But speaking of the future and things, what is your next horizon? Obviously we're talking now because I think next couple days you're going to go on vacation for a couple months out of eight months.

But what's your kind of what's your next horizon is another software something you're building and obviously if there's something on the wraps, don't tell us. But what's kind of your plans now?

I don't know. I'm trying to figure it out. I'll just give you most likely what it'll be.

I'm trying to force myself to take a bit of a break here and get like I thought I was going to be helping out city turf right now because I'm pretty passionate about getting involved in city turf. Like I'm forcing myself not to right now. I'm trying to just take a break and get bored enough that I'm super passionate about something. I will probably the thing I probably will most do or most likely to do. And this is not a money thing as I want to most likely will work with high school and college kids on entrepreneurship. That's the thing I'm most passionate about. I think entrepreneurs change the world and if you become an entrepreneur, it forces you to change your skill set. If you're going to grow, anything of significance changes, forces you to change your mindset, your skill set forces you to be a different kind of person and example. It just moves the world forward. And so I'm passionate about young individuals becoming entrepreneurs and building stuff. So that is something I will, I put like a 95 chance that I'm going to do something in that space.

And then the other two, the other items are probably pretty closely related. I'm interested in.

Acquiring companies and building out a mini private equity model with my own money and acquiring companies and having a team that provides marketing services and, and across home services, stay in home services plumbing, H Vac green and building a portfolio of companies. I think it's one of the best places to deploy money with my skill set and just hold them long term. The other thing is continued investment in home services technology, learning the services companies themselves. So probably I'll probably stay in this space in some way. I'm pretty passionate about it. I think the long term prospects are incredibly good. I don't think it's, while it might be disrupted to some degree by robotics mowers, it's not going to be disrupted by robots in general anytime real soon. So I think there's just tremendous opportunity and there's a lot of margin. There potentially can be a lot of margin in these businesses. So I'll probably stay pretty close to the industry. But you know, if I could figure out something in robotics I could just go straight down the robotics thing and be right back into that. I don't know, you know, I, I, I'm open to anything really, but those are the things I'm most likely to do. Long answer to tell you, those are things I'm most likely to do. But the thing I'm certain I'll do is something with young entrepreneurs.

This has been the Mike Andes podcast. Now you have some ideas on how to take your business to the next level. If you like what you heard, we have tons of lectures, interviews and more over at The Mike Gandies YouTube channel that will be right up your alley. That's all we have for you today. We'll see you next time.

Sam.