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

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Mike Andy show. We have episode 50 of C Suite unfiltered. The last three weeks have been hell. Mike's gonna give some updates on copilot and the stress that he's under. He's also gonna talk about language, which some might call masturbation. More so talking about the proper ways to communicate and encourage without negating your previous sentences using but must have.

Mike's looking to cut all those things out. Next we're gonna talk about landscape summit. We have officially picked a location and it is given away further in the episode, the topics of snow flurries, doors blowing off, planes, baristas and bikinis also talked about if you're a landscaper, then listen up. You could be making over $100,000 every single month. Go to landscapebusinesscourse.com to get a step by step guide on how to build a successful lawn care company. There are over 60 hours of in depth lectures available right now. Join over 250 students and gain nine years of landscaping knowledge condensed into one course. Enroll today@landscapebusinesscourse.com. i think that's about everything. Without further ado, I bring you Mike and Lee.

Yeah, dude, kick us off.

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 happy. 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 in like the eye of the storm in Michigan. So yeah, 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, 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 the main thing was that the last week of December we more than doubled our users in copilot. It was great because it 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, et cetera. 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 conglomeration 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. Right. 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 on track but they locked our account, said hey, you're gonna 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 literally like 4x the amount of load on it. So they had issues. So it's just been really hell to be perfectly honest. And, 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 because I almost, I knew it was, I knew, I kind of suspected something 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 100 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 there 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's been hell. So I'm hoping that hell is about finished and we're cleaning up some of these things with 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've 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.

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.

And 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.

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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 to 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 at least damage 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 errors 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.

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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, 100 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 and 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. And a. A little birdie also told me that someone on the co pilot team might have even 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. In the mission and the vision, which is great, but there is a point where you reach burnout. There is a point where sometimes you have to say, no more new users or no new onboarding this week or whatever. And this is analogy I've used with you in. 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 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 different earlier. I haven't really thought through like it's in the past. 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 like it shouldn't have been that immediate cause it just led to a massive rush. I should not have promised and I 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 17th. 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, 2024, 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, like, I am 100% controlled by. If I'm letting people down, I feel horrible. And so I know it's because I care, and so 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.

It doesn't help that in 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? 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 like, for now, for now it is like, stay focused on Augusta. Stay focused on Copilot. And in terms of like, what I'm going with 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 helping a lot. So 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 button 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 is words mean stuff, man. And I think, I know, I know it's something I talked about the leadership team before is 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 to 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, oh gosh, I wanna, I wanna 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 gonna 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 gotta 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. So.

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 gonna 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 gonna use that. Oh, I think I know. Okay. All right. We're good. We're good. I think I know. All right. Yeah. The other thing. Oh, what you said that. Oh. A lot of times you guys drop the word but completely. This is what I, I've 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.

I 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, that 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 next. 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 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 close, too close to New Year's, can't go too far away from New Year's because then it gets too close to spring rush. So gonna make someone mad. But I don't like it as, 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 the goal.

Security coming or are you 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, I'd rather just get. Go through the form, go through the way. And I like to use that method. Because you're like, I, I can use. What's it called though when you're like 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 oh, wow, I forget the word. Basically. Yeah. Nepotism. Yeah. 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 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'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 it was something else.

I may have to throw my hat 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, you know, take on some new challenges and new avenues to express our talents. And Dave feels like, you know, Bar is now back under his control and he'll just get a CEO that's more in line with just kind of letting him run the ship, whereas she always let him just run the content side of things. But she was the mastermind behind their massive growth over the last few years. So it was just interesting. It was interesting story to kind of look at the growth that she had with the business and how they went public and then Dave bought it back. There are some really interesting articles out there. So I was just letting you know if I, if I see a job posting, you know.

I thought you were, I thought you were going completely different direction.

No, you're good.

Yeah, I thought you're. I thought you were going to give a. A personal Update.

But no, no, no.

For later on down.

No, we'll, we'll leave that for later.

Okay, cool.

Yeah, so it's just interesting. But it's, it's. I, I was looking at it, I was like from a, from a content perspective, like, do you feel like you'll have like the Mike Andy's content brand that will have its own like CEO coo or will that always just be like a branch of everything you're doing and you'll always be in control of it or like what is your thought process on that? Like, because, because I was thinking about like, okay, well, Dave was a content guy, right? You are, you're more of a product, right? You have Augusta, you have Copilot and you do content. Right. But you're, you're trying to drive products. Well, Dave was always trying to drive content. So he brought in a business minded CEO that knew how to drive product and let him run content. Now do you feel like you'd bring someone in that allows you to, to focus on driving product and then they will just shape your content? Like have you thought about that kind of juxtaposition or what that's going to look like for you long term?

A little bit.

Like the media is important and drives kind of like all our top line revenue.

But it also makes revenue like.

Right.

So like the unique thing about creating a content branch is if you can do well at it is. It is a cost in terms of marketing, but it also can make money. And so you can basically make your marketing like there's a, I think it's called Story Brand, a really good book about this. Basically how do you turn your marketing into a revenue stream like Red Bull? Their marketing is like stunts and entertainment and sports and they've turned that whole media arm into an actual like the money making machine of Red Bull. When it's actually marketing a drink. Right? Yep. So in the long term the media will become huge. You know, we're not like in a rush to build it. So like I'm not like dumping tons of money into it. It's more or less like, hey, as revenue comes in, we know we're spending it on, on the media. And so the media team keeps growing. We now have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, develop six team members full time on editing. Starting next week we have the 6:1 starting. So Zach's kind of like my head of ops there and kind of been doing the hiring and firing and stuff like that. You know, in the long term, you know, I, I want like a network I want to do it more like a lot of these episodes for the turnarounds, obviously there'll be the book, there'll be a lot more stuff around the media side. And they're growing really, really fast, just like in terms of revenue and the team and everything. So you know, how I kind of look at it is like you have media, you have Augusta, you have copilot down the road. Whether or not I remain CEO of all of them, I don't really care, right? I need to be fully in control. And that's like, that's what.

Whatever his face barstool dude, Dave Fortnite. Dave is looking for is like, there's different types of CEOs. There's ones that want to fully run the ship, and there's other ones that need a founder above them and then who still owns the business. Like a CEO is an employee. And whether or not I need to be the employee inside my business as CEO or I need to be the founder is. It really depends on like, what the dynamic between CEO and founder is. And a lot of times the founder and CEO is the same person, but does not necessarily need to be the case. That's why, like, when Elon comes into most businesses, he buys them or builds them up and then he puts someone in as a CEO, but really he's calling all the shots. So he's looking for someone that's more of an operator, does more operational stuff, and then he can determine the vision of the business, have full control. I haven't really determined which of those I'm gonna go down. I think, you know, in three to five years, that'll be like a big thing in my brain is like, which way am I gonna take this? It'll mostly depend on, like, what those CEOs, you know, what the people are involved in that. Like, if there's someone phenomenal that could run either any of the businesses better than I can as a CEO, I would roll with it, assuming that I have full control and I can still do what I want. And it's not to say that you need a lesser of a CEO. You just need to work well with them and like have a dynamic where it's like, hey, the founder, this is a founder led company, does not necessarily mean the founder needs to be the CEO. And so it's just important that they stay on the same page. That's why I don't think that the current CEO of, of Twitter, now known as X, will stick around very long. I. I predict within a year she'll be kicked out.

Okay. Any particular reasoning?

She's really bad communicator. She does not jive with what I think Elon's vision of. Not vision as much as his leadership style. Like, I, I would put a lot of money on that. She will not last long at Twitter, now known as X. Also because she has a lot of baggage as of being an executive at a company that was not founder led. And so there, there's like, these are, these are things I will dig into massively probably in three to five years when I have to start thinking about this. Because like, I right now can handle being CEO of like multiple companies. But there comes a point and if Elon can't do it, I can't do. I can guarantee you that. And that's like effectively serve as CEO to each organization.

And so whether or not I remain CEO and then cut and delegate every other little thing in my life that I do for the business, including media, or do I focus on top line brand and like the media side and then I have CEOs to operationalize things in the business and like, I have the vision. I don't know. I don't know which direction I go. I still enjoy being in operations and like understanding where all the businesses are at and having my hand a little bit dirty. Whether or not that's the most valuable thing for me in the long run, I don't know. But the same thing is, like, I look at Elon a lot because he has had multiple business and does have a lot of. He's worn multiple, multiple CEO hats, but he still enjoys when like, when things go really bad, he still jumps in and gets his hands dirty. You can't do that if you're a founder that's completely relegated to a CEO and you're looking at more of a spreadsheet style. And I never want to get there. I do want to have the ability to jump in. Like I have the past few weeks, as horrible as it's been, like, it's a founder like company. If there's fires, I'm jumping in and I know what's going on at any point in time. And so I think I'll always be that way. But like, there'll have to come a time I think that either a, I delegate a lot of the stuff that's not CEO driven or I get a CEO and I, I provide more or less the, the vision and like, here's the roadmap, go execute on it. And then I'm looking for someone that's really good Executor and not just super visionary.

Yeah, no, that makes sense. I think sometimes you need like something complementary to your skills, and I feel like that's what, you know, going back to like Dave and Erica, I think that's what they found in their business relationship was that Dave was like the driver of content and Erica was the clear driver of the business decisions and the execution of monetizing said content and products. And then you look at Elon, to use your example, right? He's CTO of SpaceX. Right. So he's chief technical officer. He knows that's the role that he fits in and he needs someone else to be the executor of that, of that branch, right?

Yep. 100%.

Yeah.

Cool.

I mean, that's, honestly, I think all I got. Unless you want to talk about doors blowing off planes. But.

You know, as, as you, as, as you say that literally, I just got an email from the, like a mass email to all customers of Alaska Airlines. Because of that, the CEO just sent an email out to everybody.

Oh, Ben. Yeah.

Where did it go? Oh, sorry, I'm drowning. An email. One second. There it is. Video update from Ben Miniskiny.

Whatever.

Next steps with the Boeing 739, 7Max and aircraft quality assurance. This will be an interesting watch. And even the way they did this email is important because they want you to watch this video because they don't put anything in text. So that's an important move. And I think that's, that's a good move when you need to apologize for something to your team. Use video, not text.

Yeah, they, they already announced, obviously, and in joint efforts with Boeing, they have an internal review board and you know, all that course. But it's just interesting to see like the fallout. Did you see how much they offered passengers that were on that plane?

1500 bucks. Yeah, 1500 bucks.

What are you, what are your thoughts on that?

I think that's like, look, if someone got hurt, it's different. But like, stuff like this happens. You got on a plane. Like, I, I usually just take more responsibility. Like, hey, look, like, this is how I think if I would have been on that plane. I'm like, sick. I should have blind flown private. Like, shame on me for not making enough money to. I could fly private and control this stuff. But even if you fly private, it's actually higher risk than commercial airlines. Totally. So yeah.

What was I going to say?

You take responsibility if you are on airplane.

I would say they were too slow. Like, why did this email take a week and a half to get crafted. I think this is a next day situation. And so.

Like I, I would, I would guess. Let me check. I'm gonna do this live.

Sorry.

If I look at. So it was 8:17, so that's like an hour ago. Let's see what's going on. Let me go to Alaska.

Airlines.

So they're down 2% today. They've been down 8% their stock for the past week. They're down 12 for the month.

They're essentially hitting some pretty lows. Almost back to what they were at Cove during COVID.

I think that within 24 hours of a situation like this, you got to have a response. Yes, a more button down response like this can be sent out a week and a half later. I haven't watched it, but talk about review boards and all the rest within 24 hours. You need to tell like customers number one, we're really sorry. Like, yeah, obviously they're not trying to do this. Like if you actually think they're trying to hurt people, you shouldn't be flying on their planes. Like the first thing, Sorry, like we did not, you know, we're working with Boeing. We're going to figure this out immediately. Here's the steps we're taking. Like, I just think that within 24 hours of a big, big calamity, in order to win trust is effectively communicate quickly. Obviously I'm not going to tell them how to run a business because they're much larger and like obviously have a lot more experience than me. So having a more button down response is probably what they're going for because that's important when you're talking about safety. So I see the valid points of that. I typically respond quicker when I need to apologize or when we've made a mistake because I just think that getting as close to the problem as possible in terms of speed of communication is, helps this problem because all the past week and a half, if you can control the narrative of like, hey, this is a horrible thing that happened, we're doing everything possible to drive the, the safety of air, air travel forward by doing these steps over the next couple weeks. And we're going to get an update to you within two weeks of exactly what we're doing to make sure this is not, this is prevented in the future, I think that would do more. But again, me over here with probably 2% of their workforce and 1% of their revenues. So I'm not going to say much.

Yeah, yeah, fair enough. Yeah. I just thought it was interesting. Like the fallout. I Would say this is not necessarily going into. Not financial advice, but not financial advice. They might. They might be a buy right now. They might be.

I don't know, man, Too thin of margins. Airliners, like, dude, they're just too thin of margins.

Yeah, fair enough.

I'm just not making sense that I can buy a ticket to fly across the country. Let's just say there's. Let's just say there's 150 people on a plane and they're all paying 200 for a flight. Okay. That's 30 grand if I'm doing my math correctly.

Like, the fuel on that plane is going to cost you at least half of that. Then you got the wages of the staff. Then you have the cost of landing in an airport and like, the fees for that. Then you have all the employees, you have to load and unload the plane, the ticketing agents, all the online. Like, they have an entire software system behind all of this running like the infrastructure required on airlines is phenomenal, and that's why they all operate on these tiny, thin, inconsequential, stupidly low margins.

Yeah.

And they're all in debt. It's not a business I want to be in, dude. It's literally a glamour business. It looks super cool to have an airline for. You can buy one for five, $10 billion and get in the game. You can go start with less if you do like 10 or 15 planes, get started for a billion bucks. So that's the popular, fun, cool, shiny thing to do is like, I have my own airline. But, dude, this is a bad business model, dude. You know, doing like something that could kill people every single day multiple times at thin, razor thin margins. It just, in an industry, it's completely commoditized.

Yeah, Well, I mean, Alaska was cutting costs, you know, on maintenance. They were making a little more money.

So, you know. Yeah, there are ways you risk people's lives by trying to make money. I don't like that business, dude.

Yeah, no, it's. It's nuts. It's crazy. So, yeah, just. I just wondered if you had any thoughts on that. But weird situation overall for him.

I feel bad. Like, hey, emails going out, not going out, been killing me, dude. People flying outside of planes, your customers. That's a problem, bro. Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, man, you can't imagine.

Yeah, that's true. That's fair. Their flights are real cheap right now. I did go price, price checking all Alaska flights.

Tomorrow, dude. Let's go.

Perfect. Nice.

Give a if as you walk by the exit row, just Give a couple, you know, taps.

As you're getting on the plane, going to the jet bridge. Just kind of like look down and pat it a little bit. Yeah, just tighten up the screws. You come on with it. You just come up with a screwdriver. Secure is like. No, no, no, no. This is a safety precaution.

This is for me.

Oh, that's awesome. Cool. All right, well, that's really all I got. Unless you have anything. I mean, we could jump straight to non financial advice.

Go for it, dude.

All right. I got some not financial advice. I hope I'm not stealing yours, because it was.

You're gonna steal it.

It was a compliment given to you.

Oh, no, go ahead.

Oh, perfect. It was a compliment given to you. Here's my non financial advice. Okay. Be a foxhole guy.

Oh, dude, that was a high compliment coming from him.

Yeah, Mike was given a compliment by Matt, who's one of the owners inside of Augusta, and he told Mike to be a foxhole guy. And he gave Mike the definition, and he said a foxhole guy is somebody that you generally trust or would rely upon. If you were in a foxhole. Taking Gren, you would want this person to be with you. So I would agree with Matt's assessment. Mike, you're a foxhole guy. And that's my financial advice to everyone out there. Be a foxhole guy.

Embody reason that. The reason that is high praise coming from Matt is because he was a green Beret. And so someone saying that, I would be like, thank you. Cool. Him saying that, I was like, it came like a really, really bad moment in time for me, and I was like, I appreciate that. It meant a lot. So I don't know if you knew.

If you knew the context even further of his story. It's very high price. So that's my not financial advice. Be a foxhole guy. Be so good of a foxhole guy that a member of the military tells you you're a foxhole guy.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Yes, man, that was a good one. Because you, like, backhandedly gave me a compliment, so. Well, so thank you.

Okay. Mine's not that good.

Let me think. So my. My non financial advice actually comes from the franchise advisory Council. And if you ever visit Washington state, just be careful of which espresso stands you go to.

Because you're in Washington state. Bikini. What are they called? Bikini baristas. They're allowed. They're allowed to operate in our state. And so, you know, some of our owners came this past week to be trained in coaching and they went to, they, they were naive enough to go to a ladybug. Ladybug coffee stand, and they got a.

Little innocent seeming name. Innocent seeming name?

Yeah, 100. And you know, they were a little shocked with what went down. So just a little warning, if you come for training, you know, don't go to those. Just stick with the main one, Starbucks, woods, coffee, big brands. You want to stick with those bad boys.

So, yeah, if it's, if it's in like a small, oddly colored shack in a gas station parking lot, like, maybe, just. Maybe just go somewhere else. Oh, man. Yeah.

Yeah, that's the pond, like. And subscribe. Appreciate you. Thank you, sir.

See ya.