This Millionaire Lives in His Office Closet... & NO SHOWER!

Hey, everyone, I'm Mike Andes. This is my studio, franchisee training facility, home. Come on.

All right, so, yes, this is a commercial facility. It used to actually be a Curves gym. And so when I purchased the gym Anytime Fitness next door, I basically negotiated that I get this space for free. So no extra rent. I just pay triple net only. So I pay about $390 per month to have this facility, and it serves a lot of different purposes, as you will see. So I was gonna show you around. The main reason why we have this location really is franchise training. So this is the board we put outside, and this is where we train all of our franchisees. And this big open area can also double into having all the tables and chairs. And we can get, you know, easily maybe 20 people in here and have the projector for franchisee training. So this is where we would be. I'd be up here and I'd be training all the franchisees that are new to Augusta Lawn Care. We would train them here on the projector. But we'll get to that in a second. So over here, again, what's kind of unique about this place is the fact that I'm trying to kind of marry work, training, studio and home together. So this is kind of like, honestly, a little bit of a mess. I got whey protein, amino acids, greens, other fun stuff that I like to eat. Kind of keeps me going, especially if I need a little energy. I don't eat a whole lot of food, unfortunately. It's usually pretty sporadic in the day, just depending on how busy I am. But I did recently, did recently get a microwave. Very proud of myself. Now I can have bone broth. So what I use right here is a lot of the food I like to eat is just kind of grab and go healthy stuff. So bone broth is great, unless you're, you know, vegetarian or something like that. But you can pour this into a cup, heat up some water, and it's really, really good. Just like straight protein and a lot of minerals. And so, yeah, have that whey protein and all of the good stuff. The aminos kind of give you some energy. But I don't eat a lot of food here just because I don't have a stove, I don't have a kitchen, anything like that. And here's just the bathroom. Again, really, really simple. The one thing that you'll notice is missing is there is no shower. So what that means is I usually shower next door at the gym when I'm working out. What that forces me to do is basically Work out every day. Cause I need a shower. So that's next door. It's not so bad, but it's probably the one thing I miss about having a real house is. Is having a shower. This is my bedroom over here. This used to be what was the storage closet for the Curves gym. So Curves is like a women's only gym. It kind of started dying off like 10 years ago. And so this is. I think it's about 16, 14, 1500 square feet, something like that. This is where I sleep. It's a whopping. I think it's about six and a half square feet by six and a half square feet. I can hardly walk in here without falling into my bed, basically. But this is. Basically. I love this. Honestly, after having this. And even though we're building a new. A brand new headquarters for Augusta Lawn Care and in that is gonna be some living quarters for me. Even in there, I am having a very similar setup for my sleeping. Because I found that when you're sleeping in this very confined space with no light, no windows, you sleep amazing. So I don't know, sleep on the floor has been awesome. Sleep sleeping in a very small space with absolutely no light coming in has been awesome. And I'm addicted. So it's not as bad as it sounds. I would not trade this little room for anything. I love it. So anyways, of course, had to have a bean bag. I got this for my birthday a couple years ago when I first moved in here. Just always a dream. I usually fall asleep in this late at night, like 1, 2, 3 in the morning, and then eventually migrate into the bedroom. I'll fall asleep here if I'm working on my laptop or something like that. Over here is kind of what you've seen more commonly. And that is where I do a lot of the recording. So I know I've shown this before. I already have a couple lights on. But the goal here is just to be efficient when I need to record. So whether I am training, doing training for the MBA for entrepreneurs course or landscapebusinesscourse.com, i want to be very quick to be able to turn all my lights on. My camera's over here. It's behind you. This is where my camera's at. So I can see myself in this screen here. This screen is for any notes. The big screen out front, the flat screen. This is where I'm gonna see any notes that I need to have while I'm doing any sort of training. But then the camera's right above this lip. You can See here? So that way it's not like I'm looking far away. And you can see over here. I used to have a secondary screen right here. I don't actually use this anymore because it's just annoying when I would be at the whiteboard and then I'm looking over here for my notes. And so that's why I set this other one up here. So that way I can just look right below the camera and see any notes that I might need. Couple cool things. This is a. I should probably put the link of this in the description. I got this on Amazon. It's called Air Lift. I don't know it. Serval, I don't know is an airlift. Whatever it is called a table. But what's really cool is you just pull that handle and then you can lift it up. So now it's a standing desk, it can roll around and then you can just push it back down really easily. So. So I really like this because if I'm ever doing a live stream, I can just pull this up, put my laptop here, plug in the laptop and immediately I am live. I'm seeing myself on my camera or my screen out front and I can interact with the audience live. Whiteboards are awesome. You'll see another whiteboard over there. Use them a lot. I enjoy them for just creative thinking in the back here. It's a little bit of a tight fit, but this I bought for myself last Christmas from Lowe's. So I always wanted a sauna. And I always thought, hey, you know what? I'm never gonna be able to get a sauna cause it's so expensive. But then I saw this one man sauna that I got from Lowe's. It was $900. And it's cool, you just plug it in like 110 volt. There is no extra wiring that is required and it's small. So if you're bigger than £250, it might be a bit of a tight fit for you. But again, advantage of being small, you can fit into one man sauna. So it takes about 10, 15 minutes to warm up. So for example here I just go power it on just my temperature, how long it is set for. But honestly, it takes about 15 minutes to get warm inside there and the temperature is pretty good. But it only gets up to 140 degrees. I know there's. There are definitely some saunas that can get up to like 220, etc. But that is the sauna in the back here. It's a bit of a Mess. But basically, this is where I keep a bunch of the uniforms and stuff that I mail out to to franchisees and potential franchisees. So after someone has a franchisee call with me or intro call, I'll send them a couple shirts, also some books, some pens, a hat, some flyers, et cetera. So you can see I got all of the priority mailing stuff in the bottom there. And try to keep it somewhat organized with these shelves and these drawers and good stuff like that, which looks like we've run out of extra large T shirts off to get those replenished. All right, make our way back out to the main facility here. Over here is where you probably see the most, and that is where we do the podcast studio. So, again, the goal with everything inside of here is just being really efficient when I am wanting to record. Especially before I had Brady and Zach and Danny to be able to do the recording for me, it was very much like the only way I do recording is if I could come in here and in 30 seconds be talking about what I just was thinking while I was driving here, for example. So again, it's really quick, quick setup. It's like I hit this one, one button, and it has all. It's connected to all the lights. The camera just turned on, and then all I have to do is turn on the back lights using this little remote. And as cool as the studio looks when I'm sitting here, all these are are landscape lights. So these are landscape lights that I can change the color on. So, for example, here, if I go here, I can change this color to. Let's see here. Let's do. You can just change the color directly from here. Again, it's. It's not rocket science. This is literally. I make sure this is the right purple. Is that the right purple? I think that's the right purple. There we go. No, that's not. That's purple. There it is. So, again, this is not rocket science. These are literally just landscape lights that were 25 bucks. I was looking at getting the ones that were actually professional studio, like, color lights. And you're looking like a thousand dollars for these WI Fi setups is ridiculous. I was like, you know what? These will work just fine. So these little remotes is what turns it on. And now you're not gonna be as impressed in the studio when it looks pretty good, and you're gonna like, man, it's so cheap. But that's that over here, this is where I connect for my live streams. And once I plug this in, everything is Ready to go. This is connected to number one, my camera. And then number two, it is connected to this microphone. This microphone is wired all the way back to the table in the back there that has an H4 Pro from. What is it called? I forget the name of it. Whatever. It's a two channel little recorder back in the back. But that's what this is connected to. But then I got to bring that forward to my computer and that's audio and video. Most cameras are not going to connect directly to your camera without a bunch of software. So I got is this really cool 4k cam link. Great. It costs like a hundred bucks, but it allows you to plug directly from the camera into your computer without any software intermediaries or like a streaming software or anything like that. So really, really like that on this microphone. This is the Shure SM7B, very common microphone for podcasts. I did not want to spend this kind of money because these cost like 4 or 500 bucks on a microphone. However, in this room there's a lot of echo and you'll probably already heard it throughout our talk here. That next door where the gym is at, that's the weight room over there. Therefore you'll hear bangs and people screaming sometimes and all the rest of it. So I need to invest in a good microphone and I have a second one here in case I ever do interviews. I had to do that because otherwise you would catch a lot of that. And right now you're probably gonna hear at some point in our little tour here is you'll hear weights being crashed around, people deadlifting and all the rest of it. So bless their hearts at 2 in the morning when they're crashing around 350 pounds of deadlifts. But I also got this thing called Mike Flag. That's what this thing on the back is. It's really, really cool. It costs like I think about 50 bucks, but it's like actually hard. I thought it was like foam just by looking at them, but you're able to, you know, design them yourself. Looks kind of cool. And yeah, I kind of like the setup. Pass a little bit, invest a little bit more into me and make it where it's live, streamable, where I can just plug things in and we're good to go. You'll notice white or what is called notebooks just about everywhere where I sit just for notes and things like that. For some reason, like I'm a big digital advocate in terms of like checklists and using different apps and things. But there's still for Me just nothing that really replaces using a notebook and pen for taking notes. So in the back here, of course, the trash that I just have to pick up from the back, throw that over there. Okay, so this is where the H4N Pro Zoom mic recorder is. So I put my two channels for the two microphones and then I take that audio back up to the front for live streaming or, or I can record it directly to the device and then use it. If we're doing a recording in the back here, I push this little button here and I'll have light in the back. And this is where I do all of my training for the MBA course, the MBA for Entrepreneurs course. This is back here where I can manipulate from this computer what I'm seeing on my screen for my notes. So from here I have my notes, I type them all up, I go through several textbooks that I had in my MBA course just to consolidate things, see what's important, see what needs to be brought out, see how I can bring some real world advice into what the textbook is saying and then put it in a note form. And that's where my, my training and actually recording happens. This camera is literally just used for the franchisees to take their portrait shots when they come here for training. And then another wireless microphone which is directly tied into the camera over here. So this right here, I would, I would usually put this on, start recording. And this is the receiver for this said wireless microphone. So whenever I have this on and this on, it's directly already linked to this camera. So if this camera is on and this microphone is clipped onto me, it's immediately recording to this device. So again, very quick, I can put this on, turn this camera on, and be live streaming in about 30 seconds. So just trying to be as efficient as possible. Cause if I don't do that, there's just no way in the world that I record. And honestly, this computer is 12 years old and I'm thinking about replacing it for one reason, because it takes a good five to ten minutes for me to boot it up and actually start recording on that system. Now because this thing, when you push turn it on, it takes forever to turn on and then it takes forever to boot up and it sometimes doesn't turn on. So it's getting a little temperamental. Gonna about put it out to pasture here pretty soon. So gotta get this fixed. But hey, it's a 2009 iMac. We gotta get the new one, the M1 chip in the back here. This is really just kind of where a Lot of my personal financial stuff goes. So checkbooks from all different businesses and then tax returns are stored back here and random stuff that I gotta keep for franchisee training and equipment, for camera equipment and all this other fun junk that I try to hide with this wonderful canvas background here. So these are really cool for Zoom. So especially last year when Zoom was like everything and all that I did and there was absolutely like no in person meetings, this is where I spent a lot of my time. I just behind this computer doing Zoom calls. So again, just the same thing. And that is just trying to make it where it's as quickly possible to record right away. So this little remote governs this light here. The reason I need this light is because over here I get. I get natural light coming in from the glass doors and it was very, very harsh shadows on Zoom. So got this light here. I can turn it up or down, whatever as needed to be able to make it decent lighting. And then this background is really just so it looks half decent. So again, just trying to make it as quickly as possible. When I'm at this computer many times it's late at night, Blue light glasses. Josh got me these for my birthday. These are great just to be able to help hopefully keep my eyes alive for longer than a few years. But blue light glasses are always great. Kind of keep the strain down. And then I do find I sleep a little bit better after a late night of computer work if I'm wearing those. Got these stereo monitors. So that way we can have it for franchisee training. People can actually hear what's going on. And this is the projector. It's really cool. It is automatic. So I just push the button here and it goes up. And then of course, I hide them. I'm not going to pay for this behind the drywall. So we're hiding the wires. That's all we're doing. But how it's basically set up here is if I can put it down, I'll stop it. But the wires go up behind here, up along the ceiling and up to the projector. I can go ahead and stop this here at the exact right moment and we're good to go. So that is basically it. You can see over here, we've got a whiteboard. We're about to go. Go ahead and do a video right now here about mowing versus landscaping and how we're heading into the summer. And it can seem like mowing is just like an absolute waste of time. In the spring rush, you're not making any money. But really, at the end of the day, recurring services is where you can really create freedom in your business down the road. It's a long term game. And this is kind of another whiteboard example where I would use this to be able to present that to the audience. So hope that was helpful. This is my home studio front franchise e training facility and it's all going to be consolidated, hopefully, knock on wood, in like a year and a half when our headquarters is done, I'll be building a separate living facility, a separate studio area and then a franchisee training area that'll be a little bit larger and we can have off site meetings for our local team as well. We also have our off site meetings here usually. However, we're now a little bit too big. We can't get all of our local employees in here, so we have to use an off site place. That will change the new headquarters where I hope to have a kitchen and we can actually get, get it catered and all the rest of it. So I'm Mike Andes. Thanks so much for coming along to my crib and we'll see you in the next one.