The moral fabrics of society. - Episode 049

Have we talked about this pod church and all that sort of thing?

I mean, just.

Okay. My opinion is that the moral fabric of the country is. Did you know that old wiki building where Value Village used to be?

Yes.

It's for sale. Oh, I'm so tempted, but I'm not going to.

I mean, that's like.

I know I'd regret it.

It's prime real estate.

It's prime real estate. But no one's gonna buy it because Office. Because it used to be wiki's old call center.

Corporate.

Yeah, same. So they moved to Bellwether. Okay. And so like, it's available. Just saying.

Just throwing it out there.

5 million.

Just some not financial advice.

Oh, yeah, dude. It's five million. I would probably offer three and see what they do. I think they take four. If I could redo everything, I would not have bought, like, if I would have known that it would take us four or five years to get into the building, I would have just bought something.

You wouldn't have bought property and built. You would have just bought an. Already.

Yeah. And then what we would have done for debris is like done like dumpsters or something.

Yeah.

And just haul that out of there.

That makes sense because they have a.

Shop space with three bays. And it would have been perfect for Bellingham. Yeah. We could have fenced it off. Yeah. Like, Bellingham could have still been there. Had a massive parking lot. And then like they over improved. Like everything is like dial like a grade. And they're charging like $150 a square foot. Even at 5 million, it's not a bad idea.

Let's see. How do I. How do we find this?

Just look up you. I don't mind you keeping this in pod.

I was gonna say.

Yeah, yeah.

We're just jumping in.

Just look at.

Is it on. What listing site is Loop?

It's on loop net. Just do loop net. Office under office in Bellingham.

Yeah.

Has 28,000 square feet. The shop. Yeah.

Office.

So basically Valley village built in 1970. They spent probably, I would guess 5 million. Just repairing. Has massive generated backup. Like it's like grade A bank material. Like slate in the bathrooms, everything. And if I could redo it all, I would not have bought that land. And we would have bought that building.

Bought that.

Now it's not the great like the. There's not. There's a lot of downsize too, but yeah, that's.

Yeah. So 4.95, dude.

$180 square square foot. I think I get that down to 150. Like any. Like, get it for, like, four. I think four they would take. And I would offer three, though, if I get that for three, be a steal. But even, like, it's just annoying with this property. Dude.

Do they have any interior pictures? Oh, here we go.

This property is, like, just. It's just annoying. It doesn't even take a lot of my time now because I'm literally just waiting on the county and, like. No. The contractor's dealing with.

Oh. So that auxiliary building comes with it.

Dude, it's pure beautiful.

Yeah.

It's three bays. Go to the next. Keep going. That's inside. This is inside now. But the very first picture, you can see that the shop looks like would be totally fine for Bellingham shop. And we put a fence around it to include, like, just the trucks.

Yeah.

So.

Yeah.

Oh, wow. Yeah.

I would never thought it was that nice inside there.

It's so nice inside. They over improved it. It's a bank.

Yeah.

That's what they do. Yeah. They spend way too much money. But it is like. Yeah. Oh, I know. The conference room and, like, the. The break room, like, everything is just gorgeous.

You can have our leadership meetings at that circular.

That's nuts.

And then there's some small offices.

It's perfect for us.

No. And if. If we wouldn't have bought the land and everything, I would literally buy this. I think I could swing it with cash if I could get a good deal on it. Like, that's a big generator in the back. That's the shot.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

It would be perfect for Bellingham.

Sweet.

But, man, I know we're too deep in the project. We have, like, literally everything done. The question is, should I get both?

That's kind of our. I was like, well, I mean, that'd be nice.

So the problem is, we're gonna move into the. Into the new shop, and it's. We're literally gonna be overfilled.

Yeah.

Because now the media team, we're expanding that copilot. They're expanding like crazy. Like, we're hiring, like, left. Like, we're literally just slowing down enough on hiring just so we don't, like, overwhelm the team. Kind of like what command center went through, like, last year.

Yeah. Yeah.

And it's like you're hiring so many people that you've got just, like, you've got to throttle. Not because of lack of demand. Like, you don't work for them because, like, if you hire too many people at the same time, they become ineffective. So that's where we're at with copilot. Yeah.

Good stuff. Well, welcome back. Another episode.

You had a lousy morning just over in general. And then I have this thing. I don't know if you guys can see this. You open up a can, it's all jacked up because it was in the freezer. You're not supposed to put cans in the freezer. I accidentally did it in like my little tiny fridge, but. All right, well.

Well, since you're having a rough morning.

Yeah, I'm hoping this picks up.

We'll try to pick you up a little bit. This is. This is another email from. From an Aussie and hopefully it'll pick you up.

We got our first franchisee.

Yes, we did. Y shout out Will and George Box Hill. Yep, Box Hill. So suburb of Melbourne. So very excited about that.

Yeah.

Yeah. So this is from Sophia and Dave and they're up in Darwin, so they're on the north coast of Australia.

Oh, wow. Wow.

Yeah. Yeah.

I've never been up there.

Yeah. So I'll just jump in. I'll just read this. This will hopefully make you feel better.

Oh, wow.

So they said they watched the podcast the last weeks and they said they wanted to thank. Thank us for uploading all that information. Just sharing our thoughts candidly about Australia and gyms and everything going on over there. They said we want to see our business grow. As I mentioned, we turned over 150k with a crew of four plus Dave this year and want to be able to grow bigger and better. And we know we can do this with Augusta at the moment. If one, if it's one thing we're lacking at system systems and yes, we have improved massively over the 18 months of watching Mike, but I know it's just the start and we can get better. We are very well known here in Darwin. Our brand is everywhere. Our business is built around looking after our staff with P4P profit sharing and our system that we have used like copilot. And we're so excited to start the process and join Augusta. We live and breathe Mike's content on the daily. We listen to the podcast while mowing. I listen to the podcast while I do my scheduling and Friday night movie with our kids ages 15, 12, 10, 9, 8 and 5. They all like to listen to the Mike Andy's podcast and my 5 year old son Will say, dad, does Mike have any new shows on? And so they said they look forward to the next step of joining Augusta and they'd love to be able to be part of it in Australia and they just, you know, wanted to thank you for all the content you've put out. And so I said, well, what's your five year old son's name? His name is Jordan. So I said, maybe I'll see if I can get a shout out from the man himself. So if you want to give Jordan a shout out, Jordan, we look forward.

To working with you, bro.

Yeah, so, yeah, but you know, those stories are really cool. That and I think that's, you know, maybe why, why you keep doing content, right, Is that this isn't necessarily the conversation I wanted to have today, but something end of the year sometimes we look back, you know, so why, why did you do content this year? Be. Is it because of stories like that? Like, you know, you're helping small business owners. You had so much on your plate with Augusta, with Co pilot, with everything you're trying to do, like, why keep doing content?

Well, from a business perspective, like the content drives all the other businesses. Like I'm not oblivious to the fact that is our marketing engine and we spend over a million dollars a year on quote unquote marketing, which is the media team.

Yes.

Unfortunately, the thing is now defining more of my time. Uh, so now it's a matter of like crafting my schedule around these turnarounds so that it's literally only taking the three or four hours actually on site with the owners. And then that is a good exchange of value. It's not a great exchange of value if I'm taking an entire day and like I can't get anything else done. It's like optimization of travel time and admins and all the other stuff to be able to make sure I can still get everything else done for Augusta and Copilot and stuff. I will say the media though, because this year we switched to much more of a story format. It, it does bring in, it does make the audience, younger audience where they can still listen and understand pieces and parts even if they don't get the whole story. Because they're not going to watch me just sit down in front of a microphone or a whiteboard and talk about business. But they will like, oh, like cool trucks and like see people and like some drama. So even though I went most recent or not most recent, but the last turnaround down in Tennessee, Johnson City, Tennessee, there was a, a longer business. We went and it'll be coming on the show here probably in a month or two. But his little girls, they were like, I want to say 3 and 6. They both wrote me cards When I showed up and like drew pictures of me and like it was so cute. So it's cool, it's cool to see the younger ones. But I think the content though, because it's real life, it also, it can also scale to like people that have been in business for 10 or 15 years, especially the ones who are struggling. And it's always amazing to me the people that reach out and like that you think are actually doing good and then they actually show your numbers like, oh man. Like they're really struggling. And so hopefully like by having the turnaround show it not normalizes failure but like it recognize that other people are struggling too. Yeah. But there's always a way out. There's always a recipe to fix it. And so yeah, that's, that's, it's, it's fun.

Yeah. Why do you think, and this is just a general question, why do you think people are so drawn to like communities where they can hear those stories?

Right.

It feels like BNI groups or like business owner groups. Someone asked on a mastermind, like, should I join this private business group? It's $1,000 a year. And you're like, well, it's not really about the thousand dollars, but it's the return on the investment in terms of the time. Like what are the meetings? What do you have to participate in? So why do you feel like people want to be a part of those groups?

Well, okay, it's a little granular, but I always think in terms of like value per minute. So like if you're at an event for two hours, what's the value as well as like psychologically when you're trying to just network of per minute of time like that. So I said like $1,000 is inconsequential.

Yeah.

And even when it comes to coaching, most times it's not actually the dollar amount you need to focus on. It's like the time that you spend on executing against this, this information. Like, what's that going to cost you? Yeah. And so if you can go to watch a 15 minute video and get like valuable insights to change your business. Extreme high levels of value per minute.

Right.

Um, if you go to a conference like this, we, we kind of try to jam stuff in. The reason for that is I'm always thinking like value per minute. Yeah. Like I don't want anyone to be like, oh, I can check out for the next few hours. Like it's like, you know, salesy or it's like not related to me or like there's no one in this room that I can actually relate to or network with and gain value from. So, you know, the reason I think that social media does so well is like the people who create the most value per minute are the ones that retain the audience, therefore create affinity with the audience. The their audience gets to see results and then just kind of grows from there. So any sort of networking I just look at in terms of like, are you producing value and what is that per minute? And then it's like, is that a better exchange than spending that one minute working inside your business or going to a dinner or working with your family or whatever? Yeah, like it's always like value per minute.

So do you think that like business owners sometimes feel like that maybe they're.

And I.

And I'm not a business owner so I can't necessarily speak to this, but I work with a lot of business owners. Do you think that sometimes it can feel like you're isolated on an island so you need to find a group of like minded people to be a part of?

Yeah, a hundred percent. Like we're always looking for community. And like the problem with businesses, typically we feel like we're on an island mostly because competitors don't talk to each other in the same industry. And then the problem is what happens if you create a network with like BNI or whatever. Like a lot of times those people, what they actually do is exactly opposite of what the best benefit is, which is okay, once someone's in, no another competition can join.

Right.

It's like that's fine. But the value you get when you have networking with people that are using similar systems and in the same industry as you is exponentially higher than if you just go do regular networking. So for example, I'm part of like several groups. I pay way too much money for one of them because it is specifically for software as a service. Businesses. Yeah. So like I could go talk to other entrepreneurs. I can other business owners. Like I know in that group I'm talking to people that are literally trying to do the same thing as me and they're like their language, they're speaking the same, we're speaking the same language. Turn to me is same thing to them. Like when I'm looking for an executive, I know what they're going through. Like it's like the same language. Yeah, yeah. And I would pay probably three times as much or five times as much if I found a group that was doing SAS just for CRMs.

Okay.

Yeah. Because now it's like even more refined. And so when you look at communities like, yes, like, networking is. Is fun and good, like locally, whatever. But like, if you can get inside of a group of people that are doing the exact same net like industry as you, it's far more valuable than. Then you take it to another level. And this is where you need to almost always have to pay to get inside. Yeah. And that is like joining, whether it be a course or a franchise or whatever, is get people that are using the same systems as you. Because if they're ever all using the same systems, now you speak the same language as all of your competition and you actually, like, exponentially can increase the amount of learning. And so almost all of those are behind paywalls because you have to limit who gets in and out of that group. And that's like, basically like, if you look at the franchise as more of a community, which that's kind of my mentality. Cause we're not trying to sell it or anything. So it's like, this is a community and like, in order to get inside this, you gotta pay money. You have to like, live by the laws of Augusta Nation and you have to contribute to the community and you have to like, be on daily masterminds, like all these other things. And you have to use these systems so that when we speak about pay for performance, we are all on the same page.

Right.

And like, when we start, say, like open book management, there's like, explanation of that needed. And it's not a matter of like, trying to transpose information from one industry to another. I can just take the. Take the information and be like, okay, that directly correlates my business because they're using the same systems in the same industry. And I think people are afraid to pay for that sort of access to community. But, like, you need to pay the money. Like the money is required in order to keep the community healthy. I think why we all pay taxes so that roads can be built. Like, do I want to pay taxes? No. Do I want to pay a franchise fee?

Don't.

No. Do I want to pay for coaching? No. Do I want to pay for. To be in that side of Facebook group for $3,000 a month? No. But I'm willing to do that because that is what it pays for the infrastructure for the group to operate effectively. And I don't really talk about it a lot. Like, I truly believe the reason you join Augusta is the community. Like, everyone joins for what the fine people from Australia mentioned, like, systems. And I wanted to get more leads and I want to grow and command center I want software. Look, that's fine, but you join Augusta for the community and the twelve hundred dollars per month, everyone, I always have to break it down by dollars and cents because we as owners think that way. But like twelve hundred dollars a month for joining the community is the price tag. That is what you're actually getting.

And coming from myself, where I'm spending way gobs more than that on multiple other communities and seeing the value, like that's why I'm confident in like what Augusta has. Because like, yes, you get all these actual tangible things like free software for pay for performance and access to command center, all these other things, but you also get the community, which is actually the thing that matters. Right. Because I truly believe that the level of learning inside of a peer group that is in the same industry and using same systems is like exponentially higher. So anyways, no, that's good. So for example, I said it, so that's Fine is the name. Okay, so this, this Facebook group that I'm in, you know, for example, they had the founder of another CRM speak do two keynotes and that CRM is another one of our competitors. And so I was able to literally learn all the behind the scenes secrets of another competitor of stuff that they don't want me to know because I'm inside this group. The same thing is true when you join a group and you can learn like a certain sales model or sales tactic that like people in your competition are using but you just don't know about. And so anyways, it's so worth it. Like you get to this point where you start realizing that like a dollar spent can literally mean a hundred dollars in return when it comes to just knowledge, like just knowing something, knowledge.

Like, yeah.

And unfortunately it's just been so misused, like paying for access to things that, you know, courses get demonized and all the rest of it. It's like also though, people pay $40,000 a year to go to a school, you know, university, and then they never use that education. Like, I think that's kind of a scam. But yet we all think that's like so great. And we cheer and we all get together and like throw hats and like go up on stage and get a little piece of paper. It's like, you spent $40,000 for that. Yeah. And it didn't do you any good and you're literally going and doing a completely different job.

Yeah.

And it just boggles my mind that we somehow have place like, you know, credit on that, unfortunately, because there's no accreditation. And there is bad actors that get into like online courses and communities. It kind of ruins it. Same thing with franchising.

Yeah.

Like, if everyone could just the bad actors, you get them out. Like, I believe franchising would like solve 90% of problems because you have a whole bunch of people on the same brands using the same systems. Like, I believe so much in franchising, it's not even, it's not even funny. Just unfortunately the same way I do with like training and education, etc. But like, it just. You get bad actors in there and messes everything. Right. So.

Yeah, well, that's, that's a. Interesting point because we did have this question on our last video and I said I'd ask you. Is from Urban roots, Dylan Moye.

Oh yeah.

He said, can Mike list his favorite five to 10 online courses? So are there any courses you've taken or maybe any courses you would recommend if you haven't taken?

Dude, I've even taken bad courses. Like courses that I knew were scams.

Yeah, yeah. Because as like a learning experience.

Oh, yeah. Like, what do I need to do to not look like this guy?

Yeah, yeah, right.

And usually it's pretty easy. A lot of times the ones that are bad, they recite generic information. This is why I want you, like, I, I encourage everyone. You pay for education that is as specific and niche as possible. Right. Like, don't get a how to do, how to start a business course. It almost will never do you any good. And you can get that stuff online. But what you're. You should be willing to pay for is how I did X, Y and Z. This business in this amount of time, I'm gonna give this step by step and it's like gonna go laser like, focus. That's what you're paying for. You're paying for what otherwise been a hundred hours worth of trying to find all these videos and piece them all together in one spot. That's what you're paying for. And so like when I wanted to go into real estate, like, I bought all sorts of courses and some of them are horrible. Like, some of them like, dude, I could just watch this on YouTube. Other ones is like, okay. He literally told me the specific type of luxury lvp, luxury vinyl plank flooring to use. He told me what color of paint I should use and why I should use matte instead of semi gloss and all this other stuff. And yes, I could find that all online, but he just condensed 100 hours down to four hours for me. I just got 96 hours. Well, times it by my hourly rate. Now all of a sudden, this is a great return on investment. Yeah. And not only the time saved, but then what if I didn't know that and I went out and did something different and then I have to pay for it all to be redone. Something like construction can save you tens of thousands of dollars. So I've done courses for real estate. I've done a bunch of courses in generic ones that I knew were bad. So I did Grant Cardone's. I did like all these ones like Tai Lopez I usually get on their free stuff. So this is a tell tall sign that something is a scam. Is they crash sales of free. So if you're willing to give me Cardone Cap. Cardone. What's it called?

Well, Cardone Capital University. University.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. University. If you're willing to give that to me for free, but then charge someone next week for six grand, I have a problem with that.

That's fair.

It usually is a tell tall sign. It's a scam. And sure enough, like, I got into Cardone University and I was like, okay, this is like, some of this content is 20 years old. We're talking about, like, faxing. And this is like, not relevant. And there's a lot of repurposed content from his live webinars that are free on YouTube.

Okay. Yeah.

And so, like, I'm like, if I would have paid six grand for this, yeah, I would have definitely thought this was a scam. I got in here for free. Yeah. And I got like, I think it was 15 days access for free. And those are the ones I like to jump in on and like, see what happens. But I have paid gobs of money for some of the ones that I thought were a rip off. And I totally see why that would, like, hurt and prevent you from joining communities, et cetera. But I'm also, as I am saying these words, I paid $3,000 to be in a Facebook group and signed a contract long term that I can't leave. And there's no real, like, extra, like one on one value. I get to come to a conference and I get to have a Facebook group. That's like, kind of it. Yeah. But it's like exponential amounts of, like, return on that $3,000 a month. If I get one thing that can change my business. Yeah.

So, yeah, well, and if you're running in a software company, because it scales so massively, like, yeah, okay, let's. Let's spend $36,000 a year for this community, let's just put the full value on it. But if you make a decision that's going to impact your bottom line, 10x that. Well, now it's a $300,000 decision.

Yeah.

But it gets even bigger with software.

Yeah. Yeah. But be careful with it. So this is something that I, I used to think the same thought. And there's like, software, like, makes everything bigger, right? Yeah. I can make sense of things because, like, oh, it scales infinitely. It is so much just as true for, like, any other business. Like, if you can figure out how to have a better hiring system and you have 10 employees, well, you could double your business if you had 20 employees hiring that, having got that one hiring system, could literally unlock double your potential.

Yeah.

So I'm always very careful because, like, I used to fall in this trap. Like, oh, software so different. And there's definitely unit economics around.

Yeah.

The fact that there's no very, like, very little variable cost in software, so. But, like, the same principles apply, baby.

Yeah.

The thing is, when you're able to join a group, like a guy have, it's like, I literally have a roadmap to grow, to grow the business. I know exactly what system they should be using. I know exactly what roadblock I'm going to hit every single stage of business. And it's literally kind of like joining a franchise. It's expensive, but, like, it will save us years of development. And I'm comparing myself against someone else that I know really well that has built a CRM in the industry and, like, I'm able to track, like, their growth versus ours and, like, what mistakes they made early on that they regret. And like, okay, we can, we can avoid that. Let's go. And that's a huge advantage. The ability to talk to other people have done exactly what you have done and get advice from them is like, you are saving years of your life and, like, that's the only finite resource you have is time.

Yeah.

So I don't know.

Yeah. So would you. Do you have any courses you'd recommend for people in general?

Okay. If you're getting a real estate meet Kevin's is definitely worth it. The property management one. It is good, but only if you're gonna do real estate hardcore. If you're gonna do real estate, like one or two properties, don't get it. Please don't. But, like, for myself, I went from 0 to 23 units really fast and I knew I was gonna do that and I was gonna flip those and use them for the Headquarters. Now the headquarters is just sitting there. And so. Yeah, whatever. But. But it was, it was worth it, you know, a couple thousand dollars I spent on several of his courses. That being said, another one of his course, like the YouTube course was not worth it. I knew all the information. It was definitely like a beginner's type course. It was not useful. Yeah.

Other courses that I would recommend.

The other one took his stock course.

Yeah, I took all his courses. Yeah, I think I took all his courses besides the more recent ones where I know he's just kind of like cutting up his big courses into smaller chunks. But like his property manager one, the stocks one. But even the stocks one, like, I felt like he's a beginner at that when he made that course. Yes. And he was learning it and he's really good at putting that information out. But what I felt like was most valuable was the property manager because he had done it for a long time, his wife had done it for a long time, and his in laws had done it for a long time. And property management is one of those things, like you can make big mistakes, whereas with stocks you can kind of play with it and see what works and what's not. Like you can get a lot of information. And I felt like it was much more of a collection of tips versus, like, here's the structure, here's exactly what I do. Whereas when it comes to stocks, like, that's considered financial advice. And so you can't actually go get a course, buy this and buy this and buy this and it's gonna work. Right. Whereas real estate, it's like, okay, we've done this gazillion times. If you paint it this way, you advertise this way, and you did this, that's the most value in a course for me, is where they can actually tell you what to do. And that's why when someone comes to Augusta, it's like, I'm gonna tell you exactly what to do. I'm not going to just beat around the bush, like talk about general business principles and like, yeah, you can kind of do this and this kind of works. And like, here's exactly what to happen and like what you should do. That's where the real value of education lies. And so creating more frameworks and the groups I've joined, the ones that are most valuable are the ones like, here's exactly what you do. When this problem happens. There's no grade. It's like, this is exactly what you do. And then I have trust in this person because they've done it before, and I just do it, and I'm like, oh, it worked.

Yeah.

But off the top of my head, other courses.

Even pieces of cardone or, like, ties are, like, good. It's just, I would not say, like, it's worth the money.

It really has told me, like, what not to do. Right. It's like, don't do these things. And, like, don't put content in here that is, like, very generic because it makes the person feel like, oh, I could just gotten this on YouTube. Like, that's why I've been putting, like, consulting calls and, like, very more specific things in landscape, business course and MBA for entrepreneurs. It's like, this is, like, very detailed, like, in the weeds stuff. That's what usually good behind a paywall because it doesn't do well on social media. Right. So I'll have to think about it. I've taken so many courses, dude, it's, like, not even funny. Yeah. And, like, again, every single one, even the ones that weren't good in terms of education, I learned something. Like, I learned what not to do. Like, there's a very valuable skill. It's like, why do people feel like this person a scam? Oh, they have paid for something and felt let down in the past. So, yeah, you're gonna always have this attribute this person as a scam. If you pay $6,000 and then you get this.

Mm.

Or you see the next week they're giving away for free, that's gonna make you feel weird. Like, I've fallen this trap before, too. Like, when I've done promotions and, like, you get the first month free or you get, like, a discount and like, oh, man, I bought last week. And we almost always just honor it because I'm like, I don't want that feeling of the user being like, oh, man. Like, this feels weird. This feels bad. And so, yeah, anyways. Yeah.

So I think Dylan just joined Augusta.

Oh, Dylan should definitely join Augusta. Dylan knows it. He would do very well inside of Augusta. He also has a bunch of owners around him that would really support him. And I'm very. There's a few people that, like, I know part of the community. I'm like, I'm very confident in saying they should 100% join Augusta. They would. They would. They would. They would gain as much as they give. And the reason I say that is because I know they would give. Like, I know someone like Dylan would be very giving in the community. Sorry, Dylan just took it on.

Yeah.

Like, people like Dylan, I know they would be given the community to help other people. But I also know that that support is exactly what he needs to stay in the game. And that is honestly the main thing that you get in the community is it is reinforces you that when you're low, you stay inside the game, and you just need to stay in the game in business. And so if most people have stayed in business long enough, they'd win, they'd actually be successful. But they don't get through years five and six and seven when it's lonely, it's tough, and they don't get to, like, years 7 and 8 and 9 when it's, like, they're actually doing good and now they're getting bored and they go to try something else because they don't have that community to stick things together, like, start duplicating and, like, learning how to invest the money and all this sort of thing. So Dylan should definitely join Augusta. I'm very confident in saying this. When I went and talked to him in this turnaround, he was. I know he's playing with the idea, and I don't like to, you know, like, sell it. So it's just, like, you know, talk to other owners. He's already talked to, like, yeah, everybody. But the reason I'm more confident as well is I know he has, like, three or four owners around him, though. He's super, like, gel with him. Like, Marcus is there. Nick is there, like, everyone around Thomas. They all would just, like. They're such a tight group there.

So anyways, so one question that came up while you were talking, but I didn't want to go on a. On a rabbit trail. Is me, Kevin, still coming up here to what?

Oh, he's supposed to come up here. Yeah. That was when his jet went down because he had a crack to the windshield or whatever. Yeah. But, no, he's probably not coming up. I went down. I ended up going down there. Right. I remember that. So. But no, you were supposed to have.

Him come up here, and it was like a crash.

Yeah, he's. He's focusing on house hack, buying more in different markets. Markets. So they never end up coming up here, which I get why, but I think Bellingham is a great market to buy real estate in. If we ever had a crash and I had capital sitting around, like, will probably never happen.

Just buy up a bunch of stuff.

I would buy stuff in Bellingham. It's a good. It's a great market. It's a good market because it's, like, right between two really good spots Vancouver and Seattle. It's. It's like, not urban, but it has enough amenities. It's just a great market. I think it's a really good market. It's expensive. Like $5 million here. That would buy a skyscraper in parts of Texas. Yeah. But anyways.

Yeah.

All right.

One other thought I had. Or, excuse me, an article. So this is. This is recent news. California announced that next year they're raising minimum wage for fast food workers from $16 an hour to $20 an hour almost immediately. Did you hear what happened?

No.

Pizza Hut is going to lay off all their delivery drivers starting February of next year.

So people didn't believe in the free market.

As soon as this was announced, Pizza Hut and then the Southern California Pizza Company also announced they would be laying off all their drivers. So basically, in the matter of a minute, 2,000 jobs were lost. How does this make you feel?

It just. It's political. Yeah. It's as good politics for 80% of the population to say that you're raising my minimum wage.

Yeah, but not for those 2,000 people. That.

Yeah, but that. The other. The other 10 million people voting on who's going to be the person in. That's governor for the state. They think it's a good deal.

Yeah.

So it is a complete. Actually, it's stupid. It's ridiculously insane. It's so dumb. Like, it's so bad for the middle class. It's so bad for the working class. And unfortunately, the working class will vote for the person that asks for minimum wage. And because they. In the short term, like, oh, this is great. Whenever you interfere with the free market, you're going to mess stuff up. And so you go by like, McDonald's did the same thing when they started instituting minimum wage hikes. And that is. Oh, like, you're gonna go to McDonald's and have a menu that is like a board, and you're not gonna talk to anybody until you pick up your food. And even that's gonna eventually be robotized. So the fact is you're basically, there's a metric at which, okay, cost to build a robot and the time it takes to recoup the cost based upon the wages saved. If you increase wages, you're just moving this number up. And eventually robots and technology in general is deflationary. It's coming down. And if you're increasing wages at the same time, guess what's going to happen? These companies are like, oh, it's cheaper to get robots, and now we can pay off the cost of the robot in two years instead of eight years. Like what do you think they're going to do? So.

It just, it's just supply and demand and it is.

Free market. And the government getting involved is always bad news. Is 100% political and there should be no minimum wage. I would 100% get rid of that. And people are freaking out about that. Guess what? Right now there's more demand for workers than there is supply. That is we have the lowest unemployment rate ever. So there's not a problem. Like, oh, I'm not going to get a job. It's like, no, there's tons of people looking for good employees. The only. This is kind of comes back to PvP. I kind of like this. Like if you raise base pay, you're only incentivizing the lowest performing workers and now you're going to price them so high that the lowest performing workers will not be able to beat a robot. So guess what? It's to going gonna happen. They're gonna all lose their jobs and they're gonna simply go on to social welfare programs. And you're making that so good now. It's very tempting.

Yeah.

So like it's an absolute joke. It's messed up. There's no, unfortunately no solution because politicians will keep doing this to get votes and makes me mad. Yeah.

Which is interesting that you say that it is political positioning, but they're. The governorial. The, the governorial election is not for another two years, but it's probably more by the state senators.

Oh, it's obvious.

Yeah.

You got to have, you got to have your vote. Your polls coming in better, you know, like, like Newsom also gave away a. What was it, an inflation reduction? No, Inflation Help act or whatever. And gave everyone $500 literally a year ago because they had a surplus in California. Guess what happened this year? A $52 billion deficit. So. Oh, free spending across the whole state, all government agencies, free spending. It's like, are you so idiot that last year you could not see that you're gonna have a deficit this year of $50 billion? And so instead of like being like, okay, we, let's save up for next year, we're like, let's write a check to everybody as if that's gonna help inflation. Like, it's absolutely insane. And it's a bunch of political, like, it's just a joke, dude. Yeah, we need like, it'll never happen so we can just like kind of theorize and have fun about thinking about this. But like, somebody needs to get in there just like, clear all regulation out. Like, we need to go back to being a free country. We do what you want, when you want. And this. There's gonna be, there's gonna be downsides to that and there's gonna be people who have hurt feelings over that. But we will be more successful economically. Everyone will do better. Because, like, everyone's like, oh, well, by raising minimum wage, we're taking from the rich and giving to the poor. That is like the mentality. And if that was true, I'd be all over it. But those 2,000 people that lost their jobs, guess what they're doing? They don't have a job. They went from, you know, $15 to zero. Now, if you. If what I think would be better is instead of us like raising like all this lobbying around, trying to raise minimum wage, why don't we focus on educating the lower, the working, working class. Call them low class, whatever you want to call them. I know lower class has negative connotation, but in terms of income, in the context.

Yeah.

You know, if you take. Instead of trying to fix all of those issues through artificial means, why don't we just focus on educating them better, giving them better skills. Why don't we focus on the fact that, like, giving them a college education around, like political science is going to get them nowhere in life and they are going to be on the benchmark of minimum wage instead of being like, okay, what things are useful today? Like, maybe they should build the robots. Like, oh, that's going to put people on jobs. Well, at least now they're going to have a job because they've been trained correctly. So I think it all goes back to education. And if we're going to make education that something that government pays for, like, it is a shame that the government education is so broken and preparing people for jobs are going to put them on minimum wage. And so now as you raise minimum wage, you're gonna get whacked. Those jobs, they're gonna be on welfare programs. And then once you have them on welfare program, you have their vote for life. That is literally what's happening.

Yeah, it's big picture stuff. I think it reminds me to kind of two points for this. Number one is education. The problem with it, the problem with education, not the American educational system, but just in general, people have to choose to educate themselves. You can't force people to be educated. And number two, it goes to Ray Dalio's principles, which is the first indicator of a declining dynasty, is lack of education. And that's when you look at average statistics across the US in terms of high school dropouts versus high school graduates, when you look at college programs and the people enrolled versus graduates and, and it's just massively declining over the last 20, 30 years in the US and I think that goes to say, like, they'll just go with the person that handed them a $500 check, put them on welfare. And that's better than working hard, choosing to educate yourself and choosing to push yourself to be better.

Yeah. And like the, the, it's not a matter of like high school dropout rate either. It's like, I think that's more of an indicating factor that people are waking up the fact that what they are getting from that education is worthless in terms of actually producing economic value.

Yeah.

And I forget which president was like, it's the economy, it's the economy, it's the economy. Like, that is what education should be built around. How do you produce more economic value? And if we actually thought about like the way we just talked about education online and like communities, if you actually took that same concept, like how do we maximize the per minute value of people in educational setting in high school and college, you'd completely change your paradigm. It's like, okay, the value per minute of learning about political science and communication, all this other garbage versus how to balance a checkbook, which now is not longer a checkbook, like how do you use QuickBooks, how do you use, how do you file your own taxes? How do you, how do you actually look at a profit loss statement, a balance sheet and all these other things? You'd have a massive boom of people starting their business, creating more innovation when they go in. And now you'd have people that could actually negotiate their salary off of $15 because they have the education as to, okay, I know the business makes this much money. Here's my profit. I'm producing X amount. I can go negotiate 18 or $20 an hour because I know what I'm producing.

The.

These are the type of things that like needs to be taught. And if you actually focused on economic value and per unit value of time, per minute of time in these educational settings, people wouldn't drop out the same way. If I'm trying to focus on a conference like per minute value so people don't walk out and go to the bathroom for four hours and talk out in the hallway. If they just focus on the same thing in a college or high school setting, they'd actually get people to absorb information, stay in school, and then learn something valuable so they Come out. They're not on minimum wage.

Yeah.

Like, the problem is the fact that we are setting them up to only be able to work at minimum wage. They don't have the education, negotiate, sell. Like, why are we not in communications studies focusing on how to sell people? Everyone has to communicate and sell any. Like you have to sell your family, have. Sell so many things in life. Like, why are we not talking about basic negotiation tactics? Why are not talking about like basic persuasion and body language for everybody in high school, These things would serve them much better than being like, this is how you fill out a welfare form.

And.

And if you want financial aid, go here. It's like, it comes down to, like, what are you going to do for the community? And if you actually look at your nation as a community, it's like, are you giving more than you are taking? And we all are in this business of taking from the community of our country. And it's like across the board. It's not the US Only. It's like in general, we're just always asking, like, what can we get out of this? And so like, when I took a little financial aid in my first year of college, and so I remember thinking, like, I'm going to make this country a return investment on that money because I got like four grand and I was like, I'm going to give them like 100x back. And so when I pay my taxes every single year, I just think about that I am, I am giving a return on investment on what the government gave me. And since that year I have paid taxes like, I've never gotten money back. But like, my thought is, like, they invested in me and I'm going to give a return on investment. But unfortunately that mentality is not there. It's like, what else can I get? Like, how can I, like get around all these other things?

How can I not pay it back?

It's a joke, dude. And like, that that's what will lead to a failing dynasty, is everyone's looking to take instead of give.

Yeah.

And there are some fam there. I think it's like a lot of familial things. I see people like, especially when it comes down to community service or like military service. That's why I think it's like a good thing. Like when families like, do, like everyone just kind of. It's common. Like you go to the military for four years because it puts you in the mentality, like, we must give. And like, that is the first and foremost. And so in any community group organization Networking. If you're trying to increase the economic, the value of being in that network, it is getting members that are going to give more than they get. That's how you contribute to economic prosperity. And added value comes in the form of I put in more than was taken away and unfortunately we were all trying to take away from our country, from our businesses, from our employers, from our employees. Like, the whole idea that like I should extract as much value as possible from employees is flawed. Like, would I want people to work this week, 60 hours, 100%, I need them desperately. But if I force everyone to do that, it would push everyone to like not give as much the other 51 weeks out of the year when they know I asked so much of them. It just drained them and depleted them so much. And so like squeezing and take. Asking for more than what you give is always a problem in the short term it does well. And that's why like we have like, oh, everything is friend and like unemployment super low. And like we have all this economic prosperity that will only last last so long as long as everyone in the community is, is taking more than they give. And that was a long diatribe that was probably unnecessary.

I like it. Do you think that people are more prone to take in times of prosperity?

I think so. But then the problem is that you can't wean people off of that. It's a mentality and it's like an ethos that people live by. And so, you know, we've had a hundred years of economic prosperity in the U.S. right? And so we've just gotten used to. That is the common way you operate. That's how you vote. That's, that is how you come to work. That is how you create a business. It's like, how much can I extract from my customers? How can I get as much as possible. For me, instead of thinking like, okay, if I actually increase the community, this is how I kind of think about long hair lines. If I increase this, I will grow just fine, I will be fine. Everyone else will do better and them doing better will make me do better. But like this mentality of like, I must get as much for my employees and, and then employees must get as much from the business, and then customers must get as much from the company and then the company wants to get as much from the customers. This mentality is like very short term thinking. And I don't think a company and a business can last 10 years doing that. I don't think a country can last 100 plus years without going into decline. And that's exactly why we are in such massive deficit. And we are spending literally more than a quarter of our budget towards interest. Now any business where a quarter of your budget went towards interest, you'd be like, they're gone. Like I would tell them to close down. I would tell the US right now to close down. Like it's, it's a spiraling out of control and it will never like it will not work in the long term.

So what's the 20, 30 year plan?

Keep going to debt until we finally go back to the gold standard because we're going to devalue our currency. That's the only way we can pay back our debt. There's no way anyone will get politically voted in that says we're going to cut spending back to where we have to have a balanced budget. Not a single person will get, will get voted in. Just you won't. You cannot cut Medicare, you can't cut Medicaid, you can't cut Social Security. Can't cut Social Security. Like if you just say the words I will cut Social Security, you will not get voted. We must cut Social Security. We got to. And we need to put hundred year bonds and we need to like. But these things will not get done. Cause it's not fun or exciting. And like the more. Have we talked about this before?

I think you and I have off the pod. But yeah, keep going.

I think so this is just me, like I'm super uneducated. This is like just me like yakking. It's super invaluable, honestly. But anyways.

I think this is my personal opinion. Okay. Have we talked about this fun church and all that sort of thing.

I mean just.

Okay, so my opinion is that the moral fabric of the country is built on people having community. Is it also it comes with like businesses and culture and like even like when I look at Augusta Long Care in the franchise, like I think it's so core to we as what humans need to be able to succeed.

Yeah.

So when I look at like a country like the U.S. right.

Yeah.

When people stop going to church, that's when welfare was required. Because in a church community, if you. So you like a church and then you have a family unit. Right. So you have family unit, then you have like a church unit, then you have like a small town community. Then you have like a nation, then you have like humanity.

Yeah.

Right. Yeah. And so I think if you look back at the family unit, like that selfish thing that we just tired of talking, it can start there. But then what happens is when it starts getting outside the family now, it becomes no longer a family problem. It's like, oh, I'm not going to go to church, I'm not going to contribute. Like tyrann Ties and offerings. Ties and offerings is literally a way of like putting money aside to be able to help the poor.

Yeah.

And so what used to be that community would be family. Like people live together longer, they take care of their, their family, they care their parents. Like that community was broken at the family level because no, now we travel away now we don't care about our parents. We put them in like an old folks home. We don't pay for them. Like they're kind of outside out of mind once they're like 80 plus plus so we don't take care of our parents. So now what do we have to have? Medicare. Okay, like we got to take care of these. Oh no, I'm trying. Not Medicare, my bad. Social Security.

Yes.

We got to pay for these old people because their kids aren't going to take care of them anymore. Oh, and by the way, now it's like popular not to have kids. So like what's going to happen? Those people are going to get old and there's no one going to be able to take care of them. So what are they going to need to do if they don't have money? We're going to have to have the government take care of them. And so that's like the family unit, they're the church unit. Like the church should be able to pay for people that are struggling. And it's like in a church unit, a church body, if someone's like struggling financially, guess what? Everyone pitches in. You bring them gifts during Christmas if they don't have money, you give them food, you give offerings in order to be able to pay for the poor. Like that's what that money is meant for. Now unfortunately again at the church level, again, because they have this, what we just talked about, it's like it becomes a for profit organization. People build these massive churches and like start paying all these wages out and giving money for political reasons. It's like that's not what the money is meant for. It's meant to give back to the poor so they don't have to go to the government. And so then you keep going up and up and up in like the cultural fabric of the country being broken by the family, then the church and then it affects the nation. And I think that's what's happened is like, because the family unit broke and then the church unit. No one goes to church. No one contributes to any community. And so then we're all left to just ask the government for everything. And that's what's happened. Now we have this massive deficit we can't pay for, and no one's going to vote anyone in to change that because we don't have the fabric of the culture and at a family or a church level to actually provide for those that are in need. And so I think in general, like, unfortunately, like, you have to tax people as a form of getting money and then distributing wealth. When, like, that should be at the church and family level. Like, kids should take care of their parents. People would need that. Like, okay, whether or not someone's religious or not, if you're not religious, you just throw this out. But like it says in the Bible, it's a matter of, like, keeping in mind those that don't have family and are widows, and widows don't have a father. And the reason for that, in my opinion, is because if they don't have those things, there's no one to take care of them. And if the church actually took care of those people and then family took care of their parents when they do have family, and then the church body took care of the 10, 15, 20% of the congregation that was very needy, you wouldn't need all these welfare programs. But because all that's been broken up, we don't take care of our parents. We don't check in on them. We don't take care of them or not their older age. And then because we don't have a church unit that everyone goes to and contributes to, and those churches are broken because they use it for, like, other stuff besides giving to the poor, then we have problems.

Yeah. What would you say, just to, you know, play devil's advocate.

People that say, well, the church has always had instances of corruption. Not saying the church has always been corrupt. Let's be a more reasonable devil's advocate. Like, the church has always been corrupt. Like, the Catholic Church has done this. There's been this scandal. They've Money laundering. Joel Osteen had cash and gold hidden in the walls of his church. Like, come on, Mike, you're not serious. That the church is corrupt?

What's your agree? That's why it doesn't work. And that's why it's all filtered down to where now the government just has. We just all look for handouts. Because that happened, like, in the fundamental. Like, what should happen Is families take care of their parents when they get old. Kids get taken care of by their parents and get a good education so that when they can leave their family, they will get a great job that can provide for them so that they can take care of their parents. Then we don't have to take care of them from any other social network that is a church. Now, if there are people that are disadvantaged, don't have family, take care of them, get older and don't have kids, et cetera, for whatever reason, they get sick, they need help, whatever. Now you have a church body that can pay for things like deductibles, et cetera. If that's broken, then it's not going to trickle down. And that's the vast majority of money that goes into churches doesn't trickle down to what's actually intended for, which is money, a storehouse for the poor and the needy. And so unfortunately, that's, that's just. Yeah, like, that's why it won't work. Like, what I'm, all I'm talking about is like, completely hypothetical because it will never work. Like, there will never be someone that comes in and balances the budget. Then you trickle down. Like, that's the government level. There will never be churches that like, literally think of it as. Well, I shouldn't say there's none, but like, the vast majority of churches will not think in terms of, like, let's limit our spending so as much money as possible can be redistributed to the congregants. That will never happen. And then you go down to the family level. It's like, there's not going to be kids that think, like, okay, for the next 40 years, I'm going to work really hard so I can take care of my parents when they're 80 plus. People don't think that. And so I don't think it's like a solvable problem. And if I did, I'd really be going for it. It'll never, it'll never change. And that's why you, you see this, you know, rise and decline of, of cultures and dynasties and empires is because, like, that happens and then everyone just collapses. Yeah, but if you look at, like, the fundamentals of, like, how America was born, it's all of those things. Like, we saw all of that. Like, people wanted freedom of, of religion. They came here and like, it was built around churches and community and like having, when the, the natives, like, they got together for Thanksgiving and like, it was community. And now all that gets, just gets it torn apart. You know, we don't have church, we don't get together, like, and even that's why like Covid, like, I think just like put a nail in all this other things. It's just like literally just tore us all apart and said don't be together. And like community is like so underrated at every single level of family, business, government, etc. And we just lost it in our country. Yeah.

And I think let's go like even past community, let's go to the individual. This is one of my kind of favorite political phrases and I don't remember who said it, but, but I've always enjoyed this phrase and it says the key to a prosperous society is self governance. Right. And that's the self. And that can be as simple as like, I'm not going to spit out my gum on the sidewalk because other people walk on the sidewalk and I'm going to take pride in my town, my city. So I don't want to do that because other people won't do that. You could do it that small of an example all the way up to like, it is my responsibility to help the poor, to take my parents in, to help the widows, the orphans. And then it becomes the family unit of building that and having that be the rock of individuals. And then those individual family units then participate in community units, which would be churches, organizations, whatever. And then nationally. Right. And I think that what we've lost in America is self governance, which is, I am important. So I'll spit out my gum wherever I want because I'm tired and I don't want to find a trash can. And I think we've lost that self governance in America. So then our self governance can't even extend into the family unit of like, how do I help my family? Right. That's just kind of one of my things that, that I always try to think of like. Like we would never have to have tabs on our cars license plates, like inspections, like fuel emissions. If everybody just like took care of their car, made sure their lights work, drove the speed limit, we could eliminate like half the cops. Because if everyone just drove the speed limit. Right.

Yeah. And this is why it's like so hypothetical, because I get another happen. But yeah, like ultimately that trickle down would affect everything. Right. So it's very hypothetical. That's why I don't even talk about a lot. It's like we're just talking about like this wonderful like euphoric state that'll ever come to pass. But it is nice to, like, think about, okay, what actually was the trickle down. And then it's a matter of like, hey, if I want to build a community, whether it be a business, a family, whatever, it's like, how do I build this in a way that is like, contrary to everything that kind of like, courses. Like, if you just want to look at like, what we just talked about, that is like, what not to do if you're trying to build a great business, what not to do if you're trying to build a great family unit, like, any sort of community. It's so important. The reason I look at this so much is because, like, I look at Augusta as this way and like, I do believe, like, that is the value of joining. And I look at like, yeah, all these things we talked about, that's like, what I think about. Augusta Nation is literally like a microcosm of like a country and how it's governed and like, and no one's ever going to agree on everything, right? Because we're all. Because we all individual. And if you have a free market, like, people don't agree and there has to be someone that does make a call. There has to be laws. There has to be a. Green means go and red means stop, right? So even if you have the perfect society where everyone thinks about other people, there's still gonna be disagreeance with what those laws are. The laws have to come in play, and that's immediately when you break the ideology of self governance. Because now people disagree with something and then they. Therefore they don't value or respect that. Laws have to be in place, Right. And so then you have to have reinforcement to the laws in order for the people who don't agree with it and therefore don't obey it. So, like, that's why it kind of breaks down.

But yeah, anyways, I'll say one area where I don't practice self governance is stop signs and mall parking lots. Like, they have no authority. I'm not stopping. There's no one around. That's my one area where I don't practice. Assuming there's no other cars. Like, we were at, we went to Equip Expo.

Yeah.

And Zach, you're one of your media guys are sitting in the front seat. And he, like, hated that I, like, just drove, like, through parking spaces. He was like, what are you doing? I was like, there's no one in this parking lot. Like, I can. I can do this. So hand up. I'm not perfect either.

And I throw gum out on the highway. Because my thought is like, it probably actually helps with the asphalt, but totally wrong. As long as I'm on a highway, I'll throw it out.

Yeah, yeah. Everybody thinks they're special in their own way.

Oh, man.

Any non financial advice, Unless you had any other thoughts on that, I think.

We can put a bow on it. Oh, here's non financial advice. Advice. I'm going to change the podcast, at least for the next little bit. My podcast. Okay, sorry, not this. I was like, okay, my podcast. On Mike Andy's podcast, I'm going to see what if. If it. If it's. Is if it's valuable or not, and if I get in trouble for it or not. And I think people should go check it out. I'm not going to do a video. So it's not going to be on YouTube, but if they want to go check it out, it's probably today's probably is going to be like on managing expectations. So I had a thought about, you know, how Elon launched the cybertruck five years, four years ago, and basically it's gonna be out next year and now it's gonna be four years, plus you're gonna still wait another year for buy one today. So basically a five year delay when he said it was one, it's gonna cost twice as much and yet people are still excited to buy it. Like, how do you manage expectations like that? Because. And the reason I've been thinking about that is because, like, I'm promising Copilot and Augusta are gonna become something. And so how do you convince other parties, whether it be employees, whether it be other owners in Augusta Nation, whether the users of Copilot that, hey, this vision is going to happen, but I'm going to disappoint you all along the way. But it's still worth being on this train because if people would have joined, everyone's like, oh, Tesla's so great. It's like, yeah, but during production, hell, it was worth basically nothing. And everyone was like, you know, just spitting all over, I would say copa Tesla. And like, it was horrible during production. Hell of Model 3. But now it's like this. Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of value. Yeah. And so how do you manage expectations when Elon knew how bad things were and had to go sell it? And the question is, is that false advertising? Right. And when do you. How do you balance selling to your employees and users a vision that you have that you need them to join and buy into, knowing there's going to be issues, but if you don't get them to join, the vision will never come into place because you need the money. And then when you're looking at employees, like, you know all the problems, you know, issues with your business, you know, all the customer service issues, but you've got to convince a key hire or you've got to convince a customer to come on board. And you know all the problems with your business, how do you still sell them, knowing that if you don't sell them, you'll never really fix the problems as it becomes a chicken and egg game. So that's what I talked about in the first episode of me talking into my iPhone on the podcast. I was driving from the gym, so let's see how long it lasts because I think it'll eventually have to close it down.

Is it just your, like, musings is kind of what you're thinking?

Kind of. I look at it more like kind of like a diary.

Yeah. Yeah.

I'm really good at, like, just talking. And as soon as I get a video in front of me, I. There's like, this weird thought, like, this is recorded. Whereas, like, audio, I'm just better talker.

That makes sense.

So I like to kind of have, like, a audio diary. And I thought if I can just do it from the gym to the office every morning, it's like eight minutes and, like, what we're going through. But I have to be careful because I always am. Like, I'm going to be super transparent. And then I say something about, like, our numbers or something, and then I'm. It's used against me from either internally or competitor. So I gotta be careful with that. But then on the flip side, like, I want to, like, I really wish in the first five years of Augusta, I actually had videos and, like, evidence of, like, the rashes and, like, all this other garbage, like, I couldn't put up with and, like, that. That pain. So that way, when I talk about it now, it's not like, oh, this happened. But you've only seen the past five years on when I'm on the client. But you didn't see the first five years of pain until I literally got underneath a truck and I was killed myself. And I was like, oh, like, I should fix this. Like, so I would hope that in 10 years I can look back and say, okay, I have some sort of a record of it actually happening. And we try to do, like, video, like, the vlog thing the day. Yeah. But it's too difficult because you bring all these other parties in. It's all for video. So it's a much more like organized instruction. You got to create a story that's compelling. Whereas this, I'm like, I'm gonna talk into my iPhone while I'm driving. Yeah. About what struggles I'm going through right now. And this will probably be mostly valuable in 10 or 15 years. So that's the goal.

I like it.

Reset. No, we don't. Go ahead.

My non financial advice is around the courses. So if you don't want to pay for courses, you know, if you're cheap, like, like I am. I'm cheap. You know, I'm frugal.

If you will just use my username and login.

Yeah, exactly. Just use my username and login, which I have done, is go to people's content before they were big. That's a big piece of advice I have, and I've given it to general managers inside of Augusta. I say go and watch like this old video Mike did like two, three, four, five years ago even, like, go watch this. It's very tactile. It's very in the weeds now. Like, if you look at your YouTube channel now and maybe this is some food for thought for you, it's completely different than it was three, four years ago. And I know you know that. I know everything you're doing is intentional, but I tell a general manager, like, oh, go watch this video. Yeah, it's three years old, but it still applies. Right. And same thing. And if the camera goes off. Goes off. But I think with like Alex Hormozi, you found him at what, like 15, 20K subscribers?

Yeah, most. Cause I was in the gym content.

Because you were in the gym content. And so you sent him over to me and I was like, this guy's great. So you and I have been watching him when he was under 20,000 subscribers and he put out a full sales course on like his closure framework and all this stuff. And that's free and it's still on his YouTube. I looked and I think those are great. Like, go find the people before they were a big hit and just learn from them in their early days. Personally, that's where I've done most of my learning from. From you, from Hormozi. Even Grant Cardone's like, older content is really good. Gary V's older content. I know you'd agree with that. So that's my financial advice.

I agree with you about where the content's going on my channel too. Yeah.

And it's not like a shot or anything. I'm just letting you know.

Oh, Trust me. And I don't enjoy it as much in some regard. The reason I'm doing it though is.

Because I agree with you. I know the stories are great and I watch them and I support the channel and I want to learn, I want to be part of the community. But I personally want you in front of a whiteboard I know, showing me how to do this.

I know. And it's easier content to make. I, I like. That's the kind of content I would want to watch too. Here's why we don't do it is not just because a matter of like, we want to create original content. Like that is a piece of it too. Like there's a lot of talking heads and people that probably know business better than I, that could do better drawings or whatever. Here's the thing. I am trying to build up undeniable proof of what I'm talking about. And so I can talk in front of a whiteboard all day long and I can even give examples of other people that I have helped on that whiteboard and give the numbers, etc. And Alex is starting to do that now, like giving demonstrations, etc. I would die for him to go into a business and do what he's talking about. And I want to see it done. And that's what I'm trying to build. Okay. And so I think that as we scale the media team, I eventually can afford to leave media guys with them for a couple of weeks and see what happens after I leave. We can do a lot of check ins, we can do all this other stuff that is like, it is undeniable proof that when I walk in, I have seen a balance sheet, a profit and loss, even a two minute video of them. And I walk into a business and like quote, unquote, fix it. At least give the recommendations of what needs to be fixed within an hour or two and then be able to eventually see what happens afterwards. Right. That is undeniable proof in my opinion. And I think then when I do say a business principle, people will listen because they've actually seen proof.

Yeah.

And they've seen business owners, they've changed their business, they've seen the actual numbers change. And so what I am seeking over the next year to 2 is get undeniable proof that when I do say something at conference, someone's like, I should listen. Because I've seen 50 different businesses that he's turned around and everything he said worked. And when he said that they should close down and they didn't, they failed. When he said that they should do something that they didn't. They ended up failing. Like, I need undeniable proof and I think that by doing that I'll be have a bench that down the road that when I do say something that like that people will listen. And right now, if I just was a talking head, I'd be in one of a gazillion other people giving their opinions. Whereas, like there's not an opinion as to whether or not the company turns around and changes after I give advice. So. I know you know that. Yeah, but that's why we do. It's good. And I understand the, the core hardcore business people are disappointed in some of the content.

Yeah, disappointed is strong for me. Maybe there are people out there that are disappointed. I think it's just, it's taking a turn. I get the roadmap to this is undeniable proof. You can't impeach my knowledge on this, if you will. But there's just different learning styles. Right. And some people learn more from a story format. Some people just want the facts, figures, stackable skills. And that's where I think that it's a good encompass to what I was saying on my not financial advice. A lot of early content creators focus on stackable skills. Like we're going to teach you concept A today and then we're going to teach you B. And then in the next video we're going to go to C. That's what a lot of your videos were. Hormozi, Gary, Vee, Cardone, like a lot of these guys. So that's, that's where I would tell people to go.

And that's why like landscape business course, I kept the old videos in there from five years ago because I wanted people to see like the difference, but also like, see that was happening and like how my thoughts and ideas evolved over the course of doing 150 times at Augusta. It's like, hey, I thought this was working. It was kind of right. But like after doing 150 times, I kind of came to this different conclusion and, and like see that over the course of technology and time changing that like your opinions on things can and will change.

Yeah.

So, yeah, cool. That's financial advice.

Let's go like and subscribe. Let's get pod.

Yeah.