"The last 3 weeks have been hell." - Episode 050

Yeah, dude, kick us off.

Well, yeah, right on. Well, welcome back, everyone. Another episode C Suite Unfiltered. I'm Lee Park. This is my candies.

Stole my desk, bro.

I'm at. Yes. So, yeah, this is that. So that is my YouTube subscription plaque for C suite, actually. Yeah. So I'm at your desk. You're snowed in. So, yeah, it's kind of nuts, I guess. Shout out to all the snow warriors in our industry. Prayers. You guys are safe, warm. I know we have a few in Augusta. Nick Davidson, his crews have been doing some crazy nights. They're on like the eye of the storm in Michigan. So shout out all the snow dogs out there.

Absolutely.

Well, I know it's been a few weeks and to be 100 honest, I don't have a ton to go over, but I figure since it's been a few weeks, I'm sure people want updates on, you know, co pilot, you know, 20, 24, goals, vision, hopes, dreams. So figured we could just do kind of a. Let's look back at the last couple weeks, maybe talk a little internally about Augusta. You know, you switched all of Augusta over to Copilot. So it was basically as of January 1st, we are all switching over to Copilot. Any initial thoughts, reactions, hurdles that you didn't see? Like, what are some of your thoughts?

It's been hell.

So yeah, like the main thing was that, you know, the last week of December we more than doubled our users in Copilot. It was great because we, it was allowed us to basically get to being cash flow positive and not burning money, which is important because we don't have backing in terms of funding or loans, etc. So that was all fine and dandy. However, in doing that, it raised all sorts of issues, not so much honestly, with our code as much as all the integrations. And when you're talking about a CRM, really a CRM is a agglomeration of a whole bunch of integrations for things to work. Like, we obviously don't have our own maps. We use Google Maps, we don't use our own routing features, we use Trimble Maps. We don't have our own texting platform, we use Twilio. We don't have our own email. We use like four different email providers now. And so when, when all of a sudden the users double and then all the stress on each of those integrations, like, doesn't just double because everyone that was joining was the larger companies. These were companies that were waiting to get the price lock guarantee and then when, when literally the first week of January came, it just hit our system so hard. Almost every single integration had some sort of problem. Most of them just locked stuff and said, hey, we need to make sure you're valid and this isn't like some sort of weird scam thing and we need to fill out this documentation or like upgrade your account. Well, upgrading your account is not like click a button and pay more money because if that button existed I would have clicked it 10 times. But it was more a matter of like when you upgrade something it's like, okay, this is going to take a week of the devs to actually integrate this specific thing now into our software. And so yeah, everything was breaking. It's been hell. Yesterday we finally got Twilio back on track but they locked our account, said hey, you're going to have to do all this registration stuff. We might make all of your users do registration. And we were like no, please don't make us do that. So Mandrel was our old email provider, had to move away from them. We've now distributed between three different mail providers and that's wrapping up today. Yeah, Google cloud, they're like 4x the amount of load on it. So they had issues. So it's just been really hell to be perfectly honest. And it is somewhat self inflicted for two reasons. One, I did the price out guarantee which is great in theory and all but the reason that doesn't work is, is because I almost, I knew it was, I knew, I kind of suspected something that was gonna happen the last week of December when all of a sudden so many people started joining. I was like, hey, this can't be good for our system. And so I had a lot of things in place to make sure like our systems were fine. I just didn't think about like the downstream effects of like all these integrations and what's happening because we use a lot of these other software providers for things like Sequence Automations. Well if you go from a hundred triggers an hour to a thousand triggers an hour because you have people using it, these, these Sequence Automations way more and at the same time we drop way more functionality around Sequence Automations. All of a sudden these services start thinking that like these are weird levels of usage.

All of that say I'm responsible because I did the price guarantee. I considered that last week, stopping and not allowing people to join because I kind of anticipated, okay, if this much people are coming in we're going to have some issues and I didn't want that to happen. But I Also knew that if I would cancel and I would try to protect all of our users inside of Copilot, I'd say, hey, no more joining. You know, you can't, you cannot join because there's just too many people joining. Then it would have been a PR nightmare because people would be saying, you said you're going to do a price out guarantee and then you told us we can't join.

That's right.

So I knew it was going to be kind of a lose lose in that scenario. And so long story short, we are trying to pick up the pieces the past three weeks since the last pod essentially. Yeah. And it, it's been hell. So yeah, I'm hoping that hell is about finished and we're cleaning up some of these things with the, all these software companies and then I'm looking forward to February because we have increased the size of the team significantly, especially in the pre planning and development of features. So we already have all the layout of chemical applications, programming, wait list, all that's been like really well thought and documented and so I'm looking forward to that. But we are like almost a month behind like our, our planned releases of stuff like the offline mode for the app and, and several other dispatch board upgrades. So it's just you know, a little bit of stress.

Yes.

And it's. And hey, it 10x's because everyone in Augusta is using it and my locations are using it. So it literally 10x is the stress.

Yeah, totally. Totally. Yeah. And I feel like a couple of thoughts. Well, number one, you did not turn off people joining Copilot, is that correct?

Correct. Right.

Yeah. So you didn't have that cardinal sin hanging over your head that you tell all the small business owners that listen to you never turn off leads. Right.

I was very close to doing it and I would have, except there was two reasons why I didn't. Well, there's a few. But first was I had specifically stated the date and made that public. This is another thing I have learned is I will never do this again in terms of publicizing dates around features. So like I have said March 1, we're going to get all the chemical stuff done. We are going to. However, by doing that much pressure on the team to get features done, it means that all these issues that we're currently facing with like these problems from the software integrations is them now taking either time away from that or we got to put bugs on the sidelines. So like they're being stretched in like three different spots right now. And so I won't do that again. In terms of promising features, like never again. I will in the Future, like, hey, Q1, Q2, next year you will never hear me yet again say by March 1st or this specific date we will have stuff done because it puts way too much pressure on the team. And then people join and then by so many people joining, we have all of these sort of pains. So we're trying to build like even though the past few weeks have been like in fire mode, it's also a matter of like, I don't want to do this again. And so we are trying to build it that like for the next 10 years, like we can easily 20x the amount of users and we won't have to change email providers. Like it's really, really bad. I don't care how many good features you have. If you can't send emails from a CRM and your text messages are getting throttled, like that's a big, big problem. And so we can talk about features until we're blue in the face, but if the emails don't go through, like it's, it's really, really, really bad. Like I can talk about getting to getting the customers properties really fast and getting the estimate sent to the customer, but if our email providers throttling everyone's email by four or five hours, it's stupid. So I feel like, like when that's happening to you, I feel like such a failure. I feel so bad I can't sleep. So I'm coming out of those few weeks knowing that I still have a couple more weeks of it to go. But we've at least damaged, controlled some of the bigger issues like emails and text messages, but like merge tags and sequence automations, there's been some issues there because those same providers that are tracking all that stuff have given us issues. So we just gotta clean it up. I also know that like spring rush is, you know, six to eight weeks away and so we have to get those features done and we need to make sure these little nuisances are figured out. Yeah.

So how do you balance that with your team? Right, Because a lot of owners go through that. Let's just say, you know, in our industry specifically, right, you have equipment maintenance, but also like we got to get door hangers up, but also we have to mow lawns. Right. And it sounds like you're going through a lot of that where it's like, well, we have to do bugs, but we also have features that we have timelines and then we also have onboarding and then we have new, new users and their heirs. And all this issue, all these issues, like, how do you manage your team and balance that? Like, what does that look like from your perspective? And, and how, and how is your team doing?

Yeah, the team is doing good. They're rock stars. Like, people working like all hours in the night, weekends with me, like, I worked all Saturday and Sunday. I woke up every 90 minutes to check on the emails to make sure they were going through, which I did 90. I did 95 minutes because I knew I could get a sleep cycle in 90 minutes. There you go. Yeah.

I made sure I did that. I knew they were working all night so I could touch base with them.

Sleep hacking with Mike Andes. Follow me for more tips.

Oh, man. So team's doing good. You know, I am basically doing everything I possibly can to solve these problems. And if it was a money thing, I would push that button, like I said a hundred times. But it's not because if you just add more team members during a time when you're firefighting, it slows down the existing team members. And that's the problem we face in any industry, especially during spring rush. It's like, oh, I can go hire a bunch of people. Well, if you do that when everyone's behind, it's gonna actually slow them down in the short term. So then what you're trying to balance out is what do I need long term? But then what in the next two to three weeks from a firefighting perspective, must I focus on? Because what could actually be the best thing for the team is you actually cut your low performers and then let your high performers go into overdrive for a couple weeks to get you out of fire mode. And then you focus on long term hiring. So, for example, like next week we have two really good dev starting, several people in support, etc, which will all be helpful. But I didn't do that the last few weeks because, like, in the moment, adding more team members could potentially slow us down during that critical period of time. But it's also a matter of like, okay, what? It's like, there's bugs, Great. Why are the bugs being caused? And so finding that is important. However, usually the systems required to solve that root problem could take months to implement. For example, quality control and automated testing. Like, those are things that could take like six to eight months for us to build really solid automated tests across our system. And we're working on it and we should be done the first round of them in February. However, I can't stop everything like, oh, what's causing automated. What's causing these bugs is automated testing. Let's focus on automated testing. Well, what are we going to do? Not have emails go out for three weeks? Like, that's not gonna work. So it's that balance, like firefighting promised features, which is my fault. And then having a massive load of new users joining because, again, to my chagrin, my problem. I promised a certain date that they could get a discount. So I'm just learning, dude. I just feel like. I honestly feel the worst. I'll just be honest about members of Augusta because they have to switch over in order to use command center. And it was a band aid we had to pull off. We knew it wouldn't be easy, but it just so happened that the same time that I required that is when every public user jumped into copilot and has caused. Not caused these problems.

The systems, the infrastructure was currently in place, could not handle it. And so I just feel. That's the one I feel worst about. And it's one of those things. It's like, I can't go back on it. I feel bad because we are somewhat forcing them, like, they don't have to use copilot, but if they want to use command center, they do have to use copilot.

Right.

And so that's the one that hurts me the most because like anyone else, it's like, hey, if it's bad for you, I'll give you your money back. I'm sorry. Come back, you know, in next year, in a few months, and we'll make sure these things are ironed out. But honestly, for Augusta, like, Augusta is why I started co pilot, because I want to make sure that we're ahead of the curve. And I. Consino was doing it. And so when I have everyone in there and then really my fault. My problems are affecting their business, like, it just kills me, dude. I can't. Like, it just. It's super debilitating.

Yeah, yeah. No, it's got to be a tough spot to be in. And a little birdie also told me that someone on the co pilot team might have been working from the hospital. I don't know if I should say that, but I feel like there's also credit where credits do. Right? So clearly you guys believe in the mission and the vision, which is great, but there is a point where you reach burnout. There is a point where, like, sometimes you have to say, no more new users or no new onboarding this week or whatever. And this is an analogy I've used With you in some pretty tense meetings before of like, hey, what. What do we do in X situation? Like, what. What is Y and X? And the analogy is, you know, sometimes when you have those conversations when tough decisions need to be made, a lot of people want to talk about surgery. This is. I use a medical analogy, like they want to talk about in surgery. This is what we're going to do. We're going to cut here, we're going to move this piece, we're going to replace this. And I'm like, well, we got to talk about. We're in the trauma room right now. We're not in the operating room. Like, we just got to find where the bleeding is coming from. And like, we got to figure that out. So what would you say in copilot, like right now is like this part of co pilot's in the trauma room. And I'm not trying to use negative language, but like, what part of copilot's in the trauma room? Like, you guys just have to get it figured out and what parts? Like, hey, once we get the patient stable, we can take them to the OR and focus on what we need to operate on.

Yeah. Like, to use your analogy, the thing that makes this more stressful for me is the fact that the person in the trauma room that needs operating has also promised that in six weeks they're going to be running a marathon. And they. They have promised to people that. And that's the thing we're. We're faced up against. Right. So it's like immediacy. Then it's like the operating room. What do we need to get fixed to actually make sure that things working. And then promise of features, I. E. We're running a marathon.

Yeah. And so you gotta add PT in there. Some physical therapy.

So that's the. It's all. It's all my fault because, like, I shouldn't have done the date thing for. I should. I should have done something differently or I haven't really thought through. Like, it's in the past, so I can't fix it. So I haven't thought about it. I should have something done differently around the whole like end of December price lock guarantee thing. I just should have done something different. I don't know what. But. But like, it shouldn't have been that immediate. Cause it just led to a massive rush. I should not have promised and never will again a specific date as to when features will be completed. Because if you go in the trauma room and you're like, hey, whenever you're ready we'll go into the operating room and whenever you're done in the operating room, we will then get you back onto the path to recovery and then you can run your marathon whenever. That'd be much more healthy. And so I don't know what your question was. Oh yeah. What's in the trauma room right now? It's in the trauma room.

Okay.

So currently what's left, just left the trauma room and is now in operation is the emails and text messages.

And so when I say that it's like first off they need to be sent and not throttled by our email providers. So we have to switch providers. The next stage, like the operating room is building filters and systems and like layers of dependency for emails. So now we have three different email providers based upon the whether they're mass emails, automations, one on one emails, like directly to customer.

And there's like five different ways emails go out inside of our system. And so those are different levels as well as new users are segmented differently than people have proven that they don't send out spammy emails because we need to protect domain authority and make sure people are getting into inboxes instead of spam filters all the time. So that's like surgery and I think surgery on that will take four weeks. But in terms of like the, the, the trauma room, we're out of that for email and text messaging. What's currently in trauma and hopefully going to be going into operating room soon, to use your analogy, is merge tags and automations. Like, and we're just, just for the listener, we're recording this on January 17, so by the time you listen to this, hopefully those things have already been like patched up.

We're good.

And now we're working on encoding. The operating room is usually refactoring and rebuilding the code, but you need it to like the trauma room is like, it needs to work as anticipated by the user and then we will figure out how do we make this so it doesn't break again, how do we make it so that our third party providers don't throw flags at us when it gets used 10,000 times more?

And then yeah, that's kind of what's currently on the docket in terms of trauma room and operating room. And then it's a matter of like, we need to get those things in place. But that's taking the team away from, you know, training for the marathon. So.

Yeah, good. All right, cool. I like it. Well, that's really all I had on co pilot. Unless there's Anything else you wanted to talk about? I wanted to switch gears a little bit. I'm sure people will want to know. It's just, you know, 20, 24, you know, it's, it's, it's early in the year. You said January 17th. So what are the goals for Mike Andes? I know it's obviously going heavily revolve around co pilot, but I'm sure people want to know, like, what is your focus? Do you have Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4? Do you just have a year end goal? Do you just have a next month goal? Like, what does that look like for you? How are you planning and we'll go from there?

Yeah, like I have some rough plans. Like what I think we're going to do in terms of revenues and stuff like that and for each quarter and stuff like that. But like really the bulk of it is like I am focused on two things, Copilot and Augusta Lawn Care. Anything that doesn't rhyme with those two things is out the door. Like I need to work out, I need to focus on Copa, I need to focus on Augusta Lawn Care. If it literally does not do those things. It's just kind of sidelined and it's a season and I know everyone's like, oh, you gotta make sure you're healthy and take care of stuff. And I, I am like I'm trying to, but the season right now is I must focus on these things. And literally everything in life is being optimized currently for those things. And you know, seasons change and things will happen and change, you know, down the road maybe I'll be, I'll index more of my attention towards other stuff. But like right now I have cut businesses out, I have cut myself out of teams. I am focused exclusively on these two things. And it's what I talk about all the time is like focusing on the thing that's working and not being distracted with a hundred other different little things that are good opportunities. Like turning away a million dollar opportunity is not easy. But, but like is that distracting you from another opportunity that down the road is 100 million opportunity? And so that's really what I'm focused on right now.

And then you have to still pay the bills. Like we run everything so thin and like so redlining everything that like that's, it's not like a stress, okay. It's a stress just like making sure that like all the businesses we can hit payroll, we can make money, we can keep hiring people. Like we're hiring 50 people at command center, which is Great and all, but like they're not going to make real revenue for the business for two months. Right. That's a lot of payroll copilot. Like especially now, like I'm hiring so many people. Like, you know, I need another December for us to get back to profitability. So I'm not, I'm not complaining, I'm very thankful. But it's just a matter of, you know, when we run the businesses so thin, I don't, we don't have debt, we don't have backers, we don't have investors. So when you're running the company and you're adding millions of dollars in revenue, that means more team members, I'm looking more offices because the stupid HQ isn't being built. So I'm like, these are just, you know, first world problems that I'm very thankful to have and I'm very grateful every day that these are the problems I face instead of having to look for food and water. But you know, it's stressful because the. I have a high expectation of myself and I don't like disappointing people. And my goals for this year.

Aside from just being focused on those two things, I would say I need to do a better job of compartmentalizing. When I am stressed out, it's like I don't sleep, I don't. It's not good. And so I can do a better job of that. But ultimately I am 100% controlled by if I'm letting people down, I feel horrible. And so I know it's because I care. I know it's because I love the business owners and I want them to succeed. And so if I am having a detrimental impact on them, I feel horrible. However, I have to survive my life and if I'm going to constantly push the envelope like that, that will become debilitating. And it is very debilitating. Like, it's really bad when like, like I can't look at like my, my, like the Facebook group when I know there's problems because I know like my, I have a heart. Like I can feel it in my heart and it's not good. So, you know, I'm young so we can get through this. But like at 40, 50 years old, you'll probably have a heart attack if you have that kind of thing happening all the time. So anyways, sorry.

No, no, you're good.

It doesn't help that the past couple weeks, like all the team getting sick, going to the hospital, having children, I. E. Being out and leave, it was just chaos.

Yeah, yeah.

So a lot of stuff was falling back on me, which is not good, but just a matter of where we're at with the business. And everyone's maxed out and they come in stressed and they leave stressed, and it's. It's an environment you try to protect them from and. But if you protect your team from stuff, a lot of times it just falls back on you and you can only take that for so long.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, if it's any consolation to you, I mean, I. Over the last couple weeks, I've had some sleepless nights too, so.

So, you know, we've had some fun recently. I'm sure you've seen a couple of my emails you've been cc'd on and you're like, wait, this is kind of late for Lee to be sending an email. Oh, yeah, that's why.

So how does your coach feel about this? Like, has your coach asked you, like, what. What your goals are? Have you expressed what that is to him? Like, what are his. Some of his thoughts? And I know you want to keep that as something that, like, you do for you, but if I may pull back the curtain a little, like, what is your coach?

I haven't really gone over goals and stuff with him. I could, but, like, I. I don't think it's super beneficial. Like, I just know, like, I can only control, like, one strength. I was thinking about the other day because, like, Liz always talks about franchisee train. Like, what's your superpower? Yeah, I do think I have two superpowers. One is discipline. The second is being in the moment. And I don't get too far ahead of myself and I don't think about the past at all. And so when it comes to goals, as much as, like, I think it's important from a financial perspective to have projections, budgets, etc, and like, now I'm getting like, you know, CFO and stuff like that to make sure that sort of stuff is done.

As much as that's important, I think that it's more a matter of, like, what can I do today that will I know beyond the shadow about get me closer to my goals. And for now, it is like, stay focused on Augusta. Stay focused on Copilot. And in terms of like, what I'm going to my coach here, I can actually have my coaches call today so I can read you through the notes. I'm going to talk about. One second. Okay. I gotta be careful with some of this stuff.

Okay. Okay.

The book update. So I'm gonna go over that with him. Nice we figured out kind of like what the best method for getting the manuscript made is. And I got an editor and stuff like that. I am going to go over what's going on at Copilot just to give. Bring him up to speed because he usually has a good, like, thought that I had never thought about. And then we have someone from ebay that's like their chief product officer that's like, mentoring our team that just. That is. I'm going to go over that. I'm going to talk about how using but in a sentence. I've. I have really caught myself a lot this week after hearing this at a book. When you say, for example, I'd be like, you know, Lee's an. Lee is an awesome employee. I love him so much. He works so hard for the company. But I think that X, Y and Z. Yes, right. As soon as you throw the word but in there, you just disqualify everything you said, regardless of however good it was. And so, man, I've been catching myself a lot. So buts and shoulds and musts. And so have you seen the old.

Hormozi video on that?

No.

Alex Hormozi talks about this. The power of using but and flipping it.

Oh, really? Yeah. I haven't heard that, but he got it from a book that was. It's called what get what got you here won't get you there. It's really good for, like, just, like, leadership and, like, just communicating with people.

It's a little bit in the weeds, but it's good. And then. But the one thing that. That Dr. Cashier always talked about is masturbation. And so it's like, you must do this. And so, dude, once you start hearing shoulds, must and buts, like, you really have to rethink your vocabulary. So. Yeah. And what's interesting is, to Alex's credit, like you just mentioned, he did say in a recent interview, someone asked him, like, how. How have you been able to kind of, like, get past, like, what people think about you online and, like, people saying negative stuff? He's like, well, I try my best not to tell people what they should do, and I stay away from shoulds. And. And that's true. And so instead of saying, you should do this, you say based upon my, you know, my experience, or I think this, but never saying I think you should. It's like, I think X, Y and Z. And for example, I could say, Lee is a fantastic employee. He works really hard. And. And then I could say something else, but now I Haven't disqualified by saying. But everything I said before that. So little stuff like that, it's his words mean stuff, man. And I think. I know, I know. It's something I talked about the leadership team before. Like, words mean things and if they don't mean things, don't use them. And, you know, Alex is a good representation of that. And it's because he's been coached so well and I shouldn't give all the credit, but I think a lot of that is, is due to him. And so I've been just trying to be more careful. Even the script the other day for the videos, it's tough because I'm going these turnarounds and I'm telling people what they should do. And so it's easy in the post edit, like when I'm doing in studio stuff to be like, he should do this and they should do that. It's like, whoa, whoa. That comes across as like, I am the end all, be all God of business, which is not true. And it's going to be also put reflective for people. Push away what I'm saying instead of saying, okay, I'm going to listen and I'm going to receive this based upon the credibility that Mike has built these businesses. And I think that's what I need to fall back more on. And it just, it's a matter of like, that's what's in my head sometimes. But like, what you say means something. And so I'm trying to get better at that.

Yeah, good. I was looking down. I wasn't ignoring you. I was trying to find a post I recently liked. And I'm actually going to use this phrase basically verbatim in a meeting I'm having tomorrow. But it's from Adam Grant. He wrote the book Think again. It's in our Audible account. Great book. But he said, and I'm just recapping the post here, so I say it right, he said, I give you these. I give you these very high expectations.

Not because, gosh, I want to. I want to see the post. It's a video.

Okay, I'll stall for you. Other things I'm talking about with my coach today are a little about conference, that we are going to rebrand it from Landscape Summit to Home Service Summit.

And then about the speakers that are coming to conference, I would. I am, I'm shooting for some, some big names. And so I want to go over that with him and then got to go over some, like, internal firings and stuff like that. I just want to get his opinion on some stuff. And that's about it.

All right, I got it here. Yes. I got it here. It was just a video, so I had to like re. Re watch it. So what he said. So Adam Grant said he's used this very successfully in lots of teams meetings. Lots of one on ones meetings. He says, I am giving you this feedback because I have very high expectations and I'm confident you can reach them.

Instead of being like, like adding a but. But we aren't there yet. But clearly our projections don't show we're there but xyz but X metric. Right. He's saying like, I'm giving you this feedback because I have very high expectations and I'm very confident you can achieve it. And I, I just kind of like, like that flip that play on words of because we've all. You've given me feedback. I've given feedback. I've gotten feedback from peers and. And bosses and employees. And it's the. The delivery is so important. So when you were talking about how you're changing your phrasing of but should, could, would. It triggered that post that I liked the other day. I was like, oh, yeah, I'm going to try to use that phrase tomorrow in a team meeting. So.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Now I'm just curious as to which meaning you're going to use that. Oh, I think I know. Okay. All right, we're good. We're good. I think I know.

Yeah.

The other thing. Oh, you said that now. Oh, a lot of times you guys drop the word but completely. This is what I have noticed. Like, you can literally have the exact sentence you want to say. Like, I could say.

Lee is a great employee, hardworking, really cares about the team, really cares about the team, really cares. The team works hard, period. He needs to improve at. And it works just fine. Totally can say one thing and then the second thing is still valid. But I haven't invalidated the first thing.

Yeah, it doesn't negate.

Yeah. Or you can use the word and. And so, you know, I don't like to like, overthink things because in general that's actually my flaw that overthink stuff. But when it comes to words, man, it means a lot. So.

Yeah, totally. Yeah, I've been trying to get better about that too. I know there are some things like you said internally, certain words and phrases that you want, you know, your leadership team, myself and Liz to kind of focus on using more or maybe eliminate other words. And I think obviously words are powerful and the more we can Be aware of that. It's very important. So conference. Though I did want to ask because we aren't recording. We aren't recording next week, so we'll have another two week break. So I apologize to everyone out there, but we are going to go down and check out some venues. So do you. Do we want to loosely announce where it's going to be? I feel like you've basically said, right, yeah.

So we're going to do it in Seattle. There's five different venues we're going to look at together.

My goal is that it's not in a really expensive place because it just makes it too difficult for people to be there and it makes it unattainable. Also, don't want to do it way up in Bellingham because that's an extra hour and a half drive for people from the airport. Right. But also don't want to do it as early as we did last year because it's too early in the. It's still like the mowing season, leaf season. Don't want to get out of that. But then you're going to go into snow season, so you make some people mad. Can't go too close to Christmas, can't go too close to New Year's, can't go too far away from New Year's because I think it gets too close, close, the spring rush. So it's gonna make someone mad. But I don't like it as early as it was last year because it affects everybody versus like 50 of people for snow. So probably more in December, January. But a lot of it depends on who I get to come speak. So with a C, I'm looking for some. I'm looking for some heavy hitters. And when you get to this level, it's like, it's extremely expensive and it's a matter of like, you do anything to get them. And so you, you know, whatever I gotta do in terms of providing security, whatever I need to do, I'm willing to get you here, but I need your back from you so I can confirm these dates. So we'll see about the venues, but it'll be in Seattle and close to the airport. That'll be kind of cool.

Security coming or you're trying to get like Barack Obama or something.

Which would be awesome. Honestly.

I would like, I would like to get the hormozies, but we'll see.

And obviously I have a way in. And Dr. Cash is like, hey, I can say something. I'm like, no, let's hold off. And then we'll go from there.

Cool. That's sweet, man.

I don't like to use those other venues. Like I have their emails. I've communicated before, but I'd rather just go through the form, go through the way. And I like to use that method because I can use. What's it called though, when you're family related? It's like, what's the word?

Like a referral or kind of.

What's it called when you use family related stuff? Like.

I forget the word basically. Yeah. Nepotism. Yeah. Okay. He's like, yeah, we can use that. I'm like, no, like just let's hold off. So we'll see. It really comes down to scheduling though, I'm sure for them though. And then, then we'll have to make sense of it financially somehow.

Yeah, we'll figure it out. So now that'd be exciting. I'd love to get some heavy hitters. I was thinking for that day we're going down to look at the venues. I was think and I might do it like vlog style if you want me to vlog it. It's kind of thinking, make it an.

Episode even just the stories on the chat, on the. On social will be fun.

Yeah. Yeah. So anyways, very cool. Another topic I had. Well, this isn't much of a topic, but just a point of discussion. So, you know, I'm saying it on the pod, so it's not that serious. So don't freak out by the next sentence I'm gonna say. But I may. I may. Oh, yeah.

I know exactly what you're gonna say. I know exactly what you're gonna say. I'm gonna.

I'm gonna throw my hat in the ring. You know, I may apply if there's a job opening. Do you know where I'm going?

Not now. I thought something else.

I may have to throw my hand in the ring. I may have to apply. Erica Ayers, CEO of Barstool Sports, is stepping down.

Mutually. So, you know, I might, you know, if they put up a job posting.

You know, my head was going completely different direction. Okay. I was way off, dude. Yeah.

No, so she stepped down as the CEO of Barstool Sports. In her eight years, almost eight years as CEO, they grew top line revenue by almost 5,000%. Like nuts. She came in with a clear strategy, clear goals, and now that Dave has sole ownership of Barstool again and doesn't want to go public, you know, they just feel like it's best for her to move on to something else where she can go and take on some new challenges and new avenues to express our talents. And Dave.