"This will put people out of business." - Episode 051

Podcast episode (Mike Andes & Lee) covering Augusta's strategy to build a defensible moat via proprietary software and operations. Key initiatives: Max AI (AI phone-answering/lead capture), instant-quote interactive pricing/forms tied into Copilot, Command Center (call/ops support), and broader software infrastructure to reduce overhead and increase margins. Mike argues these custom tools (costly to build) will be differentiators that competitors cannot easily duplicate, enabling price competitiveness and faster scaling; he positions a $14,000/year value for Augusta members. Episode also discusses operational challenges scaling Command Center, community value (peer support, retreats), and listener Q&A about learning call-center/admin operations. Includes a Tesla-related tangent and brief recommendations (The Book of Virtues).
Questions this video answers
$14,000 per year (he also references roughly $1,200/month equivalency).
About 37% leave a voicemail (national average cited).
Approximately 79% of people complete the call with Max.
Calgary call center: $2.97 per minute; Augusta: $0.90 to $1.09 per minute (roughly one-third the cost).
He estimated getting past ~300 U.S. locations to meaningfully feel lead-trajectory differences (versus ~150).
Chapters
We will give it to Augusta for free, and then I'll pay for it by selling it to the public.
There's one thing we cannot put a dollar sign on.
There will be. People go out of business because of all the stuff that we're building.
This is how you know you've won in life.
What's up, man?
Not much, man.
Welcome back. Another episode. C suite unfiltered.
Like, you moved your. Your podcast mic up there.
Did I go up? Did I go too high? Normally I just grab my hand and.
Just do this and then tilt it down.
Yeah. Yeah, man. Well, you know, appreciate you hopping on. Things have been kind of cr. Kind of busy. Any initial updates or anything notable you'd like to share right off the bat?
Well, I think last time we were in the middle of hell.
Yeah, a little bit.
Yeah.
Yeah, that was. That was the thumbnail, right? Yeah.
So I'd say we are now. We have diagnosed hell. Okay. We know where the fires are coming from.
Okay, good.
And so, like, I made a post on my podcast, but it was. I. I'd say the past few weeks, I've learned that sometimes jumping into the fire and firefighting isn't actually what's needed. You actually need to step back, diagnose where the fire is coming from, and create a strategy to actually do it correctly and execute. And so when you have a large team of engineers, you just throwing everyone in the fire is tempting because, you know, you have a lot of firepower, you have a lot of people. We could have just jumped in, But I know if I did that in six to 12 months, when CoPilot continues to grow, we'll have more issues because we duct tape the problem. And I know that in the short term, my pain that I was feeling and I'm still feeling now could have been resolved faster, but, like, in the long term, I'd just be kicking the can down the court, down the field. So I feel like the past few weeks has been, like, restructuring things, creating internal review committees, like, all the things that are boring. To, like, a founder type person is what's required.
Gotcha.
And so I feel we have it all in place. And yesterday we jumped into the fire with a plan and a game plan. We changed so many structures and internal things. And so I just hope that over the next, like, two to three weeks, all of that hard work is. Pays off in the form of, like, fixing the fires long term. So that's what we're working on now.
Nice. Yeah.
As of yesterday was the first day, I felt like we jumped into the fire and we're actually starting to make things happen and I just hope that it's felt by the users.
Yeah, no shout out to the copilot team. I've even noticed some changes in, like, the accounts that I'm in. Things seem to be moving in the right direction, so I know it wasn't fun there for a while. Well, it's still not fun. Yeah.
It's just a matter of, you know, the house is still burning, you're still in hell, you have a plan that is not going to be a patch job.
Yeah, fair enough. Gotcha. Yeah, that's kind of something. I know we talked, like, very co pilot heavy last episode, but I thought maybe we'll talk a little more Augusta heavy. And I know we don't like to get in the weeds on Augusta, but I do also like to. To call you out when you have specific quotes or when you. You make certain claims. Right. Like any good co host should do on a podcast.
Right.
I'll call you out.
Any good?
Yeah, yeah. I'm a big. I'm a big J journalist. I got the certified verified check mark on Twitter on X. I don't.
So I had a thought the other day. I was like, I remember you saying this and we're kind of coming up on it. So you said there's kind of a roadmap for Augusta for 2024. We talked about this in the roundtable is our quarterly meetings with our owners. And you said a couple of things in there that reminded me of things you said five years ago. And specifically five years ago, you. You said, well, four years ago, at the end of 2024, it will be five years since these claims. You said that in five years, the moat for Augusta will be obvious. So clearly we're building the moat. Right. Clearly there are certain integrations we're using. And I'm not sure how much you want to share publicly. Obviously, Copilot is something that you're massively developing and putting your time into. So what is the moat looking like right now at the beginning of 2024? And kind of what should it look like at the end of 2024 so that it is quote, obvious to else?
Yeah. So the biggest thing that we can do to create a moat is basically create technology that no one else can duplicate because of cost. That's really the biggest thing we can do right now. Like, down the road, the things that will be more felt by the industry is like we'll have so much brand power that we'll be able to get a location started and get twice as, three times as many leads simply because people are aware of what Augusta is. You know, at 150 locations, maybe we have a tiny little bit of that. But I'd say we really need to get past 300 in the US just to feel that actual, like when we start locations, we see meaningfully different like lead trajectory.
Than if they were starting independently and just spend a bunch of money on advertising to gain awareness. But I think that right now, like for example, the stuff we develop with AI, like no solo operator or no independent business, even a big company is going to be able to, to build that. It just costs so much money.
Right.
And so we, we have all the buying power of Augusta to be able to build something that answers phone, answer the phone 24 7. And basically the past seven, eight months we've been refining Max AI, which Max is the name of the person answering the phone using AI to. We were refining it and it's all like prime time for him is spring rush.
Yeah.
And that is when there's so many calls coming in and there would otherwise be mislead opportunities during the evening, the night and the weekends. Can we pick those up? That's going to be a huge, in my opinion, a huge opportunity for Augusta to be able to capitalize on. And I just know the cost right now of that technology is hundreds of thousands of dollars. I think that in four years it's going to be off the shelf stuff. So I think we're, we're, we're basically just getting three to four years ahead, refining it to the point we'll be able to connect with copilot for Augusta, etc. So that way in four years when it is off the shelf technology, we're already figuring out much more complex issues down the road. Like when they call in, can we determine which services every single location offers and be able to firefight from there? Can we handle invoicing related and estimate related things? Because I do believe in three, four, maybe five years that lead collection from using an AI bot will be very, very commonplace over the phone and we will be like off the shelf, buy it for 100 bucks a month type situation. However, the initial build that technology is not there. We have to train Max on words in our industry and like mulch is different than like tree mulch and like all this sort of thing. And so, you know, right now I'd say that is, is a moat. And then by the time it is off the shelf technology, we will be like way Ahead.
Yeah.
Other stuff that we've been working on. Yeah.
Can I just interject there? So when you talk about, like, something we're customizing versus off the shelf. Right, the off the shelf. Trying to think of the term I was. That came to mind. Like, it works. It's. There's a. There's a term for that. Like, it just simply works, but it's not great. It's not good.
Serviceable.
Yeah, that's the. That's the word I'm thinking of. Like, when there's off the shelf AI technology, lead generation, lead collection technology, it will be serviceable. But what you're saying is that in four years, we, right now we're serviceable or we're past serviceable. I would say in the information I have. So we'll be leagues and bounds ahead of serviceable to where it's actually something that your customer wants. Right. They're serviceable versus what people want. And I think that's where we're going to get to is the fact that, like, it will be so refined, people would rather talk to an AI than a real person. Because it's so refined.
Yeah. Like, off the shelf stuff, I think in three to five years will be that you sign up, you pay a hundred to two hundred bucks a month. It's like, hey, we are going to. Anytime you miss a call, it'll be routed to us. We will gather what lead information, in terms of contact information, the customer, and we will send that to an email that's going to be coming down the pipe. The thing is, we're way beyond that. Like, we're already taking every single call and categorize into, like, 80 different sets of what type of call. This is cool. We can delineate. You know, we already have tracking for, like, how many. How much customers are frustrated. We can. We can determine when they need to be handed off. We have routing for, like, based upon certain words, when they need to be going command center, a live person versus if Max can handle the entire call. There's just so many things that we've been working with that, like, off the shelf alone. It will gather contact information.
Right.
But it will very much seem like out of the box. There is still a good 30 to 40% of people when I listen to these recordings of Max that truly believe he's real.
Yeah.
The other 30%, like, because we do tell them we are in a virtual agent. Right. To some people, they immediately get, okay, I'm talking to robot. I'll be much more succinct.
Yeah.
Other people have full out conversations with Max and he will understand and transcribe and we have recordings and we have analytics and we have text message verification of their email address to make sure there's not incorrect information being shared. So like those are the things that like will take a lot longer for people to figure out. And so that's like one, one thing that we've done. Jimmy, keep going of other stuff.
No, that's great. And I think it's also too like the side note to that is you could have serviceable AI lead generation, lead collection, but you're also customizing it for our industry and what you're doing is you're creating frameworks for it. Right. And that's one thing that you know, I talk a lot about with owners and general managers in this industry is like gosh, I wish there was just an obvious like decision making framework. Well you're creating that in a phone answering service. So that way you know, like this decision goes here, this decision goes there, this goes to a live agent and it just makes it that much more streamlined.
Yeah. And like a lot of the things that we're building are, seem somewhat disconnected right now, but they will all come together towards the end of this year. So like I'm very confident. But in you know, to, to my predictions standpoint like I do believe that like it will be obvious by the end of this year that there's like so much stuff that we've built that like you can't duplicate. And it becomes an obvious choice to join Augusta because if you actually look at like. So for example, I went to a grounds guys a few weeks ago to do a turnaround. You know, he's doing 500,000 annual revenue, he paid $60,000 in franchise fees. Right. I personally like, I don't think I could actually sell that as, as a value add to a franchisee in our industry. Like it's worth it. I just don't. However, I am very confident I can charge $14,000, that's 1200 bucks a month and be able to say like all these things we provide is worth it. Yeah, I really do believe that. And so like and next week probably I'm going to Calgary. I guess we'll find out when this comes out. But like probably going to be going to Calgary to help a call center get turned around and they charge $2.97aminute. We charge 90 cents a minute.
Yeah.
To a dollar and nine cents. So it makes a dollar almost a third of what their cost. Yeah. And to the Fact that like I see their margin, I'm like, okay, they're tight, but we're able to make, we're still tight at command center, but like we make it work at a third of their cost to, to the owners of August. And so that's also like value. And so I, I just like have no doubt that $14,000 per year is a no brainer when you, when we start building this sort of thing. Like, you know, you got the discount thing from Echo the other day, right. So like from day one, your very first piece of equipment, you're saving 20%. Like, okay, that's, that's like a hundred bucks per piece of equipment you're buying. And so I just really do believe that like by the end of this year it'll be a matter of like you don't join Augusta because you want to have your own brand. And I totally get that. Yeah. But outside of that, there's not a reason because the, the enterprise value is greater, the systems behind you are greater, you'll scale faster, you'll be more profitable, you'll be able to get to multiple locations faster. You have general managers that can, you can send off to get trained so you don't have to be in operations like that sort of list as it grows. Guess what isn't growing. Your, your franchise fee. That fee stays the same every single month.
Yeah.
And so, you know, the people that joined really early, their, their license now is, you know, five times more valuable. They can sell it and there's real enterprise value there. So that, that's kind of like the one thing Max AI, but like the other thing we're working on and have been doing for a long time, like working on the past several months is the instant quote forms.
Yeah.
And I know, I already know, I've seen it on other people. They're trying to replicate what we're doing. And I get great joy in seeing, I shouldn't say that I don't get great joy in seeing people fail, but I see great joy in seeing how hard we work to make it what it is and seeing other people try. And I know it's going to do their site, it's going to slow it down dramatically. So we have basically an interactive form that based upon the pictures, gives the pricing. And I know that we're going to be able to connect that with Copilot down the road. We're going to be connected with Max AI so that he can give pricing over the phone without a live agent 24 7. We'll get the price and get the credit card information of the customer into Copilot with a job on the schedule and it is ready to roll.
Yeah.
Without any human interaction, I am very confident we can do that by the end of this year. And so, you know, no one else is going to have access to things like instant price forms. We're not doing it longer. We've done. It took us months to build. We could never do it for longer web design. So we're doing it for homes for. For. For Augusta only. And same thing with Max AI. I'm never going to build that and then go sell it to the community. Like, it took so much money and customization and like, pain. I'm not going to go try to sell.
Yeah.
And so, you know, those things are reserved for Gusta. And I do believe that with Copilot being the highway that we're building, all these little things like P4P being able to get integrated, be able to have commands that are much better integrated, having the instant price forms and Max all integrated is like, we have this highway, we have this, like this entrenched mode of transportation that we can then build off of. And as I was talking to the owners last week on the roundtable is like, if you look at the transportation, like the layout of the US it follows several things. Waterways, railways and highways. Right. And so I believe that the infrastructure of what we're trying to build with copilot is the thing that's going to connect all these things that we are currently working on. So, for example, like when you go to an instant, when you do instant quote door hangers, like, you don't have to have the customer write things out. You can have it where they scan a QR code. It already knows the price. It makes the estimate in Copilot and they're accepting it right there based upon the scanned QR code.
Right.
Those are the type of things that, like, we can only do for Augusta because it has to be so customized, we'll never be able to make that public. And so, you know, the thing with Max AI, the thing with instant quotes, the thing with doing with Copilot, I think will all convert towards the end of this year to make it was like, oh, like it is basically impossible to build this. And it has taken us for a full five years to build it. I had to have command center as a way to build the infrastructure. The plumbing for Max to plug into. I have to build Copilot the plumbing that I can plug in instant quotes, plug in instant quote door hangers and be able to use all this stuff. And so I just believe the next five years, like, the main focus and objective of Augusta is to dominate on software. And if we do that, we'll be able to produce the product at a lower price, at higher profit margins and with less overhead because we won't need as many office staff and people and all the rest of it. So. And I think that by getting customers, they're, quote, fast and efficiently and in a matter of three minutes, get their card information, the price is confirmed, their job is on the schedule, and they know the date of service. I just happen to believe that a lot of people want that. Yeah, especially the customers that we want the most. And we've already seen it with people that have accepted instant price forms that you're like, man, I would have charged 40 bucks for this. They accepted 60. Let's go. Right. And so people always, for things like instant quotes on the forms that we're doing is like, well, what if the person puts lower? And you're like, man, that should be. That should be a $40 mo. And they accept it for 35. Okay, great. But there's gonna be people on the other side of the distribution. Right. And so anyways, getting on a sidetrack, but those are some of the things that we're working on to basically make what I said five years ago reality. And I was like, by the end of this year, a lot of these things are converging, and it's just a matter of, like, these different projects we've been working on. There's another project I'm working on that I'm not gonna talk about yet. Yeah, share it with the franchisees and of, like, we will give it to Augusta for free, and then I'll pay for it by selling it to the public. Yeah. And then we can plug it into all of our little outlets and just have, like, this massive advantage. And so I think when I talk about Augusta, some people are like, well, you know, that's going to hurt us. Yes, it is going to hurt you if you don't do exactly what we're doing. And that's how we change the industry. Right. Like, my goal is by having all this technology, we have a unique advantage to be able to produce a product that's premium and at a lower price. Those are two very different things. The only way to do that is have a unique advantage in some way. You have something that no one else in the market can tap into, and that's going to be software. And so the secondary Part of changing the industry is we need locations. Like that's the only reason franchise is to get tons of locations that are doing what we're talking about and using this infrastructure. So that way then it forces everyone else to adopt those strategies.
Proof of concept.
Like it is, it is a matter of like force them or else they fail. It's like, do I want people to fail? No, absolutely not. Do I want them to use the systems that we talk about? Absolutely, yeah. And because that's how we change, the level of professionalism in the industry is like forcing people to change. And so yes, there are, there will be. People go out of business because of all the stuff that we're building and we will be able to be very price competitive and be very profitable in these markets and it'll be done by software. And if people don't adopt The Ideologies of P4P Open book management treating their team the way that we do, then they will fail. And I will feel bad for five seconds. But the goal and achievement of Augusta hinges on us changing the level of professionalism. Unfortunately, we will only do that when we compete with people. And so I want people's websites to look better. I want them to answer their phone faster. I want them to adopt technologies that we are five to 10 years behind on other industries on. I want them to adopt these to make it better for the customer. And the only way they will do that is if we do it and then put pressure on them to compete.
Force their hand 100% effectively. Yeah, yeah. I kind of want to just go back just a hair. So you talked about Max AI answering the phones at Augusta, right. Then you talk about instant quote price forms and upsell forms on the website. Like people can get an estimate, a quote right then and there on their website. The theme of that is, I would say a term called lost opportunity cost. So why do you think you're focused on avoiding lost opportunity so much for those inside of Augusta? Like, what is the point of that focus? Tell me if I'm wrong, but it seems like that's what those two things focus on.
Well, there's going to be customers that don't want to put their information on what form there's going to be customers that don't want to talk to Max AI. My question is twofold. One, are those the customers you want? And secondly, what about all the customers that do want that and what type of customer is that individual? The person that values their time isn't going to nitpick you on every little thing. Every single week they're going to put a card on file, they're going to let it run, they're going to let you do winter services and they're accept every single upsell because they just want their property looking good. They're not going to question you on price. You might never ever do an in person estimate with them. They just want the job taken care, done. That's the type of person that adopts these technologies of saving themselves time because they have typically a higher net worth. They're also going to accept all these other services because they like this technology. Like the, the idea of one click estimates eventually being able to be done in text is going to be very, very helpful for that type of individual. Cause they're at work and it's like, do you want mulched in your bed? Is going to cost you $800? Yes, done. It'll be scheduled for next Thursday. Like that's what we need to get to.
Totally.
And so I just believe that what is the lost opportunity is if you're open 40 hours a week, you're missing out on 120 hours a week of your, of your phone not being answered. And in those 120 hours, 120 hours a week, which is like what, 67, 80 or 60, 70% of the hours in a week you're not answering the phone. Only 37% of people that when they hit a voicemail message, leave a voice message. Which means out of the 60 to 70% of hours of the week, only 30% of the people calling you are going to leave a message. And it's vastly lower when people are trying to ask for new business versus people leaving you a message because their invoice is wrong or they want to change their schedule or their dog got out or whatever. And so I see that across Augusta, that 37%, and it's also a national average, like we're very much close within that if someone hits a voicemail, they're not leaving a message. So will there be people be unhappy with Max? Yes, 79% of people complete the call with max, which is better than 37% of people leaving a voice message. And then we having to play phone tag with them tomorrow because they didn't give us their full address. That's the type of thing we're solving for. And the technology, new technology will never be perfect, but it needs to be better. And I do truly believe the math is like completely on the side of who adopts this software in technology will be the one that takes a Commodity, which is lawn care. And that's why, like, I look at the grounds guys like, no shade to them. But, like, I would never feel good charging someone 10% of their revenue. And they're growing their business. There's people inside Augustination. We'd be paying $200,000 a year from. I wouldn't feel right about that.
Right.
Like, I wouldn't say that my value provided them was worth that much, because as you grow to that size of business, you don't need the franchise or as much. You actually figure out a lot of things yourself. But if we develop all these other things, it becomes like, for 14 grand, I get access to all of this. Like, it becomes in, like the first year is half that. So it's like seven grand or whatever.
Yeah.
So, like, these are the type of things I think about. I feel very good about the value proposition. And I think that I can just like, as we connect all these pieces, it'll just become like, glaringly obvious that for $14,000 a month or $14,000 a year, I'm going to website access to command center, you know, access to all this technology that takes hundreds of thousands of dollars to build, by the way, and you can just plug into it and all the discounts and everything else. And so that's the goal. And then I just want as many people to join because it makes it so painfully obvious. And then by doing that, we will create enough pressure on the industry to actually make changes. Because no one cares about you and me talking behind these microphones until they're competing with us. Right?
Yeah. So what would be your elevator pitch? Like, what is the moat? The moat, like, summarize everything you just said. It's all that, and it is hard to do that. But what is the elevator pitch of the moat that is around?
We will create software, and we are creating software that will create a lower overhead structure and a lower price structure at a higher profit margin than any other, anyone else in the industry we will compete with. Yeah.
What if that. Let me just play devil's advocate for the heck of it. For the. For the. For the. For the pod. What if you had someone that, like, their goal just isn't aligned with that, like, they're fine being in operations forever? Would you say that they just have a higher risk tolerance because if they go down, the business goes down, which you've talked about, you know, in some of your previous videos and kind of your story about when you were hospitalized while running your original Augusta location. Or would you say it's Just hey, like you just have different, a different value set than we have and that's fine. Like what would you say to those people?
There's definitely people that like Jason mogul ass for the rest of their life. Totally right. And I appreciate that. I would also say though that you might be short sighted somewhat by the fact that like you can't mow grass till you're seven years old. And if you do like you're, there's going to be consequences in terms of physical. And you're potentially the reason I say short sighted is you're mostly you're not being responsible for the people that you need to take care of. If you have family, if you have team members and everything hinges on you, it is extremely.
Self serving to be like, well, I'm not going to create systems in my business because I don't want to be managing people and I just want to be doing the work. Well, what happens if you can't now you can't provide for your family now your employees that you have because everything hinges on you and you take the calls and you run payroll and you do everything they don't have a job like that seems somewhat short sighted to me and somewhat selfish. Now again, I think that people should build their business to serve themselves. And so if your objectives are, are that you just enjoy the operations of actually doing the work, fantastic. I do believe the responsible thing to do and if you believe in being a good steward of what is given to you is to make sure that that business can run without you and that that business can provide for your family and the employees, the family of your employees. Even if you get hit by a bus, I think that's like fundamental, like leadership as you scale and grow and you're like, okay, well can I do $100,000 a year by myself, make a decent living, etc. Yes, you can. If you get hurt, you're not going to provide for your family. There is no unemployment insurance here. There is no thing to fall back on. Like I don't and I see every single day that failing in terms of someone having an injury, having a divorce, having something crazy happen and they completely ruin their life. And so I see that aspect and I say I think that yes, you want to be in operations, fantastic. Let's go build this business to the point where you can delegate sales and the admin side to someone else. And then you take operations, right, and build this business to say 800,000 or 900,000. And if you get hit by a bus tomorrow, there's two other people trained up on how to do operations so that not everyone loses their job and loses their livelihood and your family still has something to provide for them. But I totally also understand just like the willingness and the desire to work hard and earn in the money yourself and not manage team members. Again, it's stressful. I get it. Totally. But I do think it's sometimes a little bit shortsighted.
Yeah, that's fair. And I think too like to the, to the operators that may be listening, like you're, you're, you want to be in operations, you can still do that inside of Augusta, right? It's not that you are forced to scale to a certain size. You are not forced to hit certain KPIs or metrics that we, you will be penalized if you don't hit.
Right.
We have a lot of guys that are more operations focused, but they realize that their business needs to get with the times. It needs to use software, it needs to have an online presence. It needs those things in order to survive long term.
The question is, even if someone wants to do, say $250,000 a year, right, them and one employee can do that. I believe inside of Augusta, because you have Command center to be able to hand off all the admin, you have the max AI to be able to answer leads and get information from them. You have Command center do over the phone estimates and you can just simplify services. The point is just super efficient with you and one guy. I do believe that. And so the question is that $250,000 person would probably only do 150,000 in revenue if they didn't have Command center and all the backing. Because guess what, they'd have to figure out their website, they'd have to make sure they answer their phone, they have to be checking their email all the time. And so I really do believe that when you start looking at just the math of like even at 300,000, $14,000 per year, assuming your growth model and everything, you have full access to Command center, you're looking at what is that at 300,000, it's like 3 or 4%. I believe that is a fair exchange of value for the fact that you will probably be able to take your max revenue from 150,000 to 250,000 with the same truck and same employee. And so the question is, is that $14,000 worth the hundred thousand dollars and jump in revenue? I believe it is. Assuming that you can do more than 14% profit margin in that setup, that's A good trade off. Yeah. And the part that's intangible is the fact that if you get hit by a bus, command center can contact your employee and, and literally manage them remotely.
100%.
And we've done that multiple times. People would get into trouble, people have issues, they get in, you know, hospitals, et cetera. We can, as long as they've been following the systems, we can literally jump in with their team and operate their business for them. And so I just see so often the times life events cause businesses to close down. And I think that having systems and procedures in place and having people to back you up, not just a command center but a whole group of people around you and other owners that can jump in and help you prevents those low lows from you when you quit. And whether it be the camaraderie and the community, whether it be actually the technical help of command center to jump in and actually do things for you during those low moments. Like you need to get through those times just to stay in business.
Yeah, yeah, 100%. And I think like there's something that I say on a lot of my calls is that there's one thing we cannot put a dollar sign on and that is the community, the culture, the support that you're going to have. Like in Washington, western Washington, we don't get a lot of snow. Anecdotal evidence, but it's still a cool story. Right. And then we got hammered. In 12 hours we had over 10 inches of snow in most of western Washington. Well, I had a coaching call with one of the Washington based owners that day and he said, yeah, after this call I'm going to go head over to this guy's location and help him out because he's behind on snow route. And it's like that's just something you get as part of Augusta. Right.
Well, like for example, like next year we're doing where everyone that's over seven figures will have like a separate retreat for them. Right. And you know, we'll have an event at some place like, hey, if you want to come, if you're doing over seven mil or seven figures, you can come and be in this. In. Yeah, I just, I'm paying $60,000 per year to do the same thing for software. It's like if you're above a certain threshold revenue, you can be in this room.
Cool.
It's capped at 50 people. I'm paying 60 grand a year for two. I think it's three now, three events a year. To be able to be in that Room. Yeah, right. I think that, I think that the goal we're doing there, for example, is creating that community for the larger operators that don't need our support because they figured out the systems right. And there are multiple location owners and they're running the systems. We still want to create that. Hey, you need a group of people that are all doing what you're doing, the same business model, everything. And they push each other still. And that's like the value of the community. And like, I personally believe the community is the value, like you said, because it keeps everyone's head in the game when they would otherwise quit and everyone's using the same systems, et cetera, et cetera. But it's just one of those intangibles we can't sell because no one sees the value until you're actually in it. And you understand like, community is what, like makes everything move. And that's before in the pod.
Yeah, you got me smiling there a little bit because it reminded me of a coaching call I had probably within the last week. It was with the Storts and we were going over their revenue and I won't share any of those numbers, but we were going over kind of their numbers and talking game plans. I was like, good year last year. I'm assuming this year we're flipping to profit mode, kind of enjoy the fruits of the labor. And they immediately asked, well, is Mike still doing that seven figure retreat thing? And I was like, yeah, you still planning on doing it? And they were like, so, yeah, we're gonna push for seven figures this year. And I was like, all right, let's do it. So then we started game planning growth mode, and it was super fun. And I think too, like sometimes, like I say this on calls a lot and on Koji calls, like it's the beautiful thing of business. It's a game. Like, yes, yes, it is your livelihood. Like, yes, take it seriously. Of course. Treat your customers right, treat your employees right, give them opportunities. But like, it's a game and it's fun and it's exciting and you play with numbers and you move this and you move that. And I think it's more fun to do it when you're on a team or with a group of people that are like minded and want to play it with you.
You know what's so cool about the story, for example, is like, I think he did it for like 10 or 15 years and kind of capped out around 3, 400,000. And then like, you see their, their ability to like come to conference, like, absorb. Like, oh, we need a CRM. Like, oh, we need, like, implement P4P. Like, we need to. And you just see, like, their revenue is, like, more than double that in the past few years, and it's 100 because, like, they just took the systems and they're willing to change. It's hard to do that for 10 or 15 years. And that's not an easy thing for anyone to do, let alone someone that's a little bit older. They're established, they're running a good business 100%, but always being in operations, etc. It's like, man, just like, in a few years, like, just seeing, like, implement systems, trust the process. It's never easy. It's always hard to change. But, like, yeah, they're probably at 900, 850.
Yeah. Close to a million.
They're gonna push for that. Like, that's. That's super awesome.
Yeah.
Super rewarding for them. And, like, that's like, you know, I'm very. That's, like, why I do all my content and stuff like that. And just to push people to be able to, you know, achieve that.
Yeah, I. And I distinctly remember my intro call with them where it was like, you know, we're doing the three to 400,000, like, getting older. Not sure how much longer we can do this. Well, guess what our call was the other day. It was, we want to get to a million and open location number two. Right. And in two years, that flip happened. Right. And it's not easy, but they put in the hard work, they followed the systems, they learned, they grew as people, as leaders. Their son Caleb is involved. He's phenomenal manager for them. And, like, it's just cool. Like, you're saying in two years, you can see the flip of a business from doubling and over doubling in revenue to almost quitting to now potentially opening a second location. Really cool story. So. Yeah, well, that's. That's the moat. That's. That is the moat we were building. I didn't mean for the conversation to go that direction, but it did. So I got something from. From the audience. Hey, what's up? It's Lee. I'm interrupting this episode because I want to give folks maybe an opportunity to reach out and book a call with me if you're looking at joining Augusta. You know, the discussion that Mike and I had was fairly impromptu. I always like to pick his brain on, you know, claims that he has made in the past. And I thought, man, the moat is getting bigger at Augusta. We are making it very clear why we are going to be differentiated from the rest of this industry very soon. And if you want to get in the castle, if you want to get behind the moat, I'd love to book a call with you. I'd love to chat with you. If we've already talked before, feel free to book another call with me. Just want to get you on board, you know, before spring rush. We got one more training and if you'd like to do that, click the link below in the description. We can book a call. I'd be happy to talk options with you and get you on board, get you wearing the Augusta Yellow and get you a part of our awesome community. That's all I got. Back to the episode. All right, this is from Will Kelly, a good friend of ours, and I'm just going to read it verbatim. It's a little bit longer. Question is a question. So he said, I have a question I would like answered if possible on the next pod. I know Mike went out to Jim's mowing operation in Australia and that Jim was kind enough to open his facility up to show Mike behind the scenes. I wanted I watched a coaching call recently on the Landscape business course from someone asking Mike if they could pay him to come to Command center to shadow any ops managers to learn the operations, which Mike respectfully declined and said that would not be an option. Which makes sense. However, the YouTube content doesn't talk much about building the admin and call center side of the business. So my question is, if learning from Mike directly isn't an option, who do I need to talk to or what training program should I take to learn how to build the office side of the business while scaling multiple locations similar to a call center approach like cc?
So I will say, like we're planning to a turnaround for a call center, so there'll probably a lot of very technical things come out there.
Okay, let me think here. So yeah, so when I went over there, for example, like I was being trained as one of their franchisees, I was not getting the nuts and the bolts of what's going on behind the scenes. I got a tour and things like that and I asked questions and things and saw stuff and I pick up on a lot of things, but it wasn't like I was getting the nuts and the bolts of how things work on the back end. That is what every business must protect. If I shared every little thing that we figured out over the past four years, there is no reason to join Augusta. Yeah, now I basically probably shared 95% of that with the world. The things that are real moats, in my opinion, you can't duplicate. So even just telling you like how we created Max AI, I could give you the layout of how AWS connects with all the servers and all the rest of it is like, you can go do this for a few hundred thousand dollars. Right? Like that. In my opinion, the Tesla battery is a stronger moat. Yeah, like me telling you how to build something. Like, I can tell you how to build, you know, like to your point, a Tesla and like they literally open up all of their patents so that anyone can see it. Why is there not 10,000 other Teslas like other brands that have built based upon those patents? Yeah, because it's harder than it is. Just like, oh, there's a plan, I can build it. And the same thing is true when it comes to the franchise. I just like always laugh. How many people join or book coaching, calls me like, I want a franchise. I'm like. And after the call, like the last thing they should be doing is franchise in their business. And same thing with call center. It's extremely hard, dude. Extreme. You have, there's so much human, human, like air and like humans involved. And as soon as you start creating like lots of locations, it just gets harder and harder and harder.
Let me interject right there. Speaking as a third party, take my Augusta hat off, if you will. I think your struggles with Command center have been some of your most intense struggles and not with like the employees. I want to be very clear when I say that the employees are fantastic, the team is phenomenal, but it's the systems that you have to create and the scalability. Right. We just reworked how we do email categorization at Command Center. I mean, Brian had to make like a 17 page document and it was necessary because it was affecting so many people. But like, that took a lot of time just to reorganize how we do email categorization.
Right.
And I don't want to talk too much in the weeds. Like you said, we have to not share certain things. But I think from your, from my perspective seeing you, there were a lot of challenges that you had to overcome that you just could not foresee. Like copilot, I feel like you knew what a lot of the challenges were. And yes, it may be hell, but you knew what you were getting into with the Command center. And like a call center, it's a different beast from what I saw.
Yeah, like, like with software we have a little bit more of a, like like, lots of people have built software companies. There's not a lot of people have built call centers. And like for our industry, right, there's other call centers. But like you call some call centers, they have like three tracks that you go down, right? It's like, is this customer service and I'm going to make a ticket for you. Is that like, it's very, very linear. Whereas, like when you have 150 locations and every single one has different services and everyone has a different service area and then every single one has a different estimator and like you, you're branching, you start to have like, where you have like millions of different types of things that can happen. And so that's just tough to create systems around. And it requires saying no to certain options for specific locations. Because like me saying yes to this, I have to times of 150 and then I have to multiply that by four. So now we have just multiplied how many by a thousand, right? And so.
Yeah, like in terms of like. So for example, let's say someone came to command center and like shadowed us. I just don't believe it'll actually help them. I think that they would get a lot of the blocking and tackling. They'd get like, oh, we should use this software because they used it. We should do this because they did it. That's not what makes things work. We could switch to Slack instead of using Connecteam and it would work just fine. Totally. That's not the secret sauce. And it's proof in that people like Elon realized, like, give away the patents, who cares? Because you can't do what I'm doing. And so there's like, there's, there's so many intangibles that actually make businesses work. And so I could tell you right now, like all the software stack that we use, whether we Copa or Augusta, in terms like all the stuff we're doing, I can tell you exactly how to do it. And I still don't think people would be able to do it. And so someone coming in and watching, observing.
The biggest thing for me is it slows down my team. And I don't like that. Right? It's like someone the other day was like, I'll pay X amount, just come shallow for the day. It's like, look, I understand that that's like a lot of money and everything, but like, I can't take a whole day because like I am going to think about you. And they're like, oh, you don't have to think about me. I was like, no. Like, I'm gonna be concerned about you. Make sure you're not bored out of your brains. Make sure your lunch is taken care of. Make sure you're picked up from the airport.
I'm gonna just be, yeah, totally.
And it's not worth the time. Like.
It'S not a matter of money or time. It's like, back to. Someone actually was asking a question in the Mastermind. Like, they wanted to go shadow underneath someone. Like, how do I do that? It's not offering free labor. It's not offering money. Those are two things that they can go buy. You can go get more money, and you can go buy labor. What you need to do is provide solutions to them. Right. So, for example, if someone like Will had a solution to a problem that I had, and he was able to be like, here's what. Exactly what you should do. And then I went and did it, and it worked. Now all of a sudden, that's how you get access to certain things. Like, the highest level of access is when you give solutions to someone else with no strings attached. They implement it. It works. And now all of a sudden, they feel like they owe you something. Right. It does not matter the amount of money. That is an inconsequential thing. But in terms of, like, sharing about Augusta.
Oh, man.
Because I get where he's coming from. It's like, hey.
Gyms kind of like, let you come over. Like, why would you not let someone else? Let me think for a second.
Yeah. Well, while you think there's a. Alex Hormozy said this. This famous quote. He said, you want to make money fast, solve rich people's problems.
Yeah.
Right. So for while Mike thinks that is.
Well, I'm just trying to get the right answer. I think the right answer is I don't want to slow down the team. And if someone was in the office, I just know we'd all accommodate them so much and help them and try to, like, make sure it was worth their time. Like, it would slow us down. Like, I know that Liz would want to make sure, like, they have a name tag and a special spot. And, like, they want to make sure they're like, okay, like, let's have a system around Mike. It's like, it's not worth all of our time. We have objectives that we need to meet. Yeah. And unfortunately, teaching other people how we do our systems is not part of the mission of Augusta Nation. It is build tons of locations to put pressure on the industry, and if it doesn't align with that, Like, I just don't want to take any sort of deviant from that whatsoever. And so it's not like a secret either. It's like, literally the basic stuff. It's like, do the hard work. Everyone wants the magic to, like, what software are using here. I'll tell you. Ringcentral Connect Team Slack. Like. Like, you can just go, yeah, what are you going to do with that? Right? It's not going to be helpful. And it's like, okay, well, how do you organize things? Well, we have all these folders. Every single location has a different chat. We have different chats inside of each department. Like, you can just start going, breaking it all down for someone. Like, is that going to help you? Yeah, I don't believe it does.
Yeah.
So I would say most of all, whenever someone asks for access, though, it is like, I do not want to slow the team down because there's many people ask, like, hey, we want to come see copilot. I'm like, no, you're not coming into this fire. We are firefighting right now. And, like, it's not worth any amount of money for me to slow the team down. And also sets a precedent to the team that we have finished the finish line and we have not.
Right?
Like, when I start having people coming around touring our offices, we have one, and we have. We're not. We're close to where we want to be at. And so, like, I also, like, from my perspective, like, the ideology of, like, always being day one, day two, to, you know, Jeff Bezos points like, stasis, that's when you start having office tours. And, like, we're gonna have people come in and, like, show them around and show them what? And there's value to that. I understand that. I'm going to do one of those next week, right? Like, I'm gonna go to an office, I'm gonna learn about them, and in March, I'm gonna do another one. Yeah, right. There's value to that, and I'm paying a lot of money for those things. However, those businesses, when I see that, I realize they have lost day one mentality. And I don't know if we'll ever get there. I don't think I'll ever want to be like, all right, everyone come in. I'm gonna show you how we do this. Because now I'm telling you, like, this is how you should do it. I'm like, no, I'm gonna make this so much better by spending my time on that instead of just telling other people how we did we got to here? Yeah, like, if I tell you how to get to here, it means I'm capped. If I'm just focused on getting to the next level, I'll make something bigger. And hopefully by watching that and observing, you'll get actually more, because I'll be able to 10x what? Otherwise I would have showed you how to get to here. So anyway, so that was a lot, right?
I like it. Yeah, I think it's a good question. It's a thought provoking question, obviously. And I think too, like, to. I know Will's question is about like the office staff and scaling that side of things, but, you know, people ask me like, well, how'd you learn how to do s. How do you learn how to do scheduling? And I was like, obviously I had the pleasure of working under you and Liz, so some of that came through osmosis. But a lot of it just came from, like, watching your content. Right. Like, if you go back and watch a lot of your old content, it is very operational. Maybe not so heavy on the office side, but it is on, like, you know, managing your crews, estimates potentially on scheduling, that sort of stuff. And that that can be helpful.
And I would say, like, to answer his question more directly, a lot of stuff that we do would not be helpful for 99.99% of people, because first off, who has multiple locations? Then next, it's like if we had 10 locations, commands are look totally different when we had the first 10 locations. Yeah, like all different systems. All like, I would not recommend you have as much structures. Like, you don't need a 17 page document if you have 10 locations. You don't know. Right. We ran everything through Grasshopper. It was very clear when the phone rang. We know who, who, like which location just based upon the number. We memorized everybody's names inside of Augusta Nation. Like, that's harder to do when you have 75 people working in 150 locations. Like, the whole structure has to change. And so I saw massive changes when we went from like when we passed 10, we had to make. Make actual, like, oh, there should be things written down.
Yeah. Okay.
From that then at 50, we had to make a bunch of changes. And then when we got to like 90, 100 last year, that's when we had to like, really like. And everything was built. Okay. What was gets us to a thousand locations? Right. And so like, that was like the really. The tearing was like we got to create departments and we got to create department leads and you got to have Assistant managers. And, like, you got to have all these layers because that's the only way to build the infrastructure to go to the next level. And that's like, what we've been doing the past few weeks at Copilot is like, oh, I've got to have like an engineering team, leadership team. Like, yeah, that's not fun to build that, but it is required to 10x the company, and that takes time, it takes energy, and it's not something that usually founders enjoy doing. But me sharing how Command center works literally just wouldn't help anybody. Because even if someone like Will, who I know wants to do like, five locations or so, I would not recommend what we do. Right. It's a totally different structure. And like, you know, maybe if I would have made videos. Actually, you know, it would be helpful for Will, the videos that you made. Walking through Command Center.
Command center tours, when there's like six.
Six, 10 people working, that would be like, most beneficial because I think you kind of walk through a few a little bit. Yeah, a little with them. That'd be most helpful. Because now what we're doing, I would not recommend anyone do. Unless you're trying to build a thousand person, like, operation and a thousand location operation, so.
Yeah, that makes sense. Well, that. That's pretty much all I had on that.
Seemed like I was a wet blanket to.
To. Will.
Will. Will, I love you.
Yeah, well, you're great.
You do a great thing.
Yeah, you're awesome.
It would not be super helpful for you, I can assure you that.
Yeah, so I. I agree with that. I agree everything needs to be taken.
In context, and I don't want to slow the team down, and I don't want to set the precedent that we have. We have somehow made it. We have not made it. We are so far away from making it. I see so many holes and ways that we can improve. Improve. And we haven't even got to, like, the moat part. Like, we're so far away. Like, I just don't want the idea, like, oh, I'm showing people around the office that I just, as a team member, I'd be like, oh, it means we've won. Like, we're there.
Like, oh, we're doing something. Yeah, yeah.
No, no, no, no, no. Like, I want to be able to, like, fly under the radar as long as possible here. Anyway. Sorry, go ahead.
No, you're good. I. I just figured we had to do a stock price check in.
Oh, okay.
You know, after the big news from Tesla.
Oh, yes.
You know, what was the Big news.
I know it dropped by.
No, no.
Elon.
Elon's pain avoided by a judge. So I figured we do. We do a quick check.
Okay.
It's actually. It looks like it opens the day.
Yeah. Today.
Yeah, this is the day here, so at live 190.
Okay, now here's my question. Did he void the. The stock package that he called a shot, like, five years ago, or is he voiding the new compensation package for the future here?
Let's see. Payback.
Granted. And it was a large company, so they're turning that down. That's pretty brutal.
Plaintiff is entitled to rescission.
Yeah. So this is the thing. Like, in my opinion, when he called his shot in 2018, everyone laughed him to scorn. They were like, oh, him asking for all this money. Good luck. And everyone approved it. Because this is the thing. If you create that much shareholder value, the shareholders should be willing to pay $50 billion. Like, if you're able to create a $700 billion company, yes, we are willing to give you 50 billion of it. Yeah. Right. And so, like, it'd be like me right now. Be like, okay, if we ever get the business to $100 billion, Lee, I will give you a billion dollars. Like, I will take that in a heartbeat. Because, I mean, I have a hundred billion.
Yeah.
It's like the fact that they're now retracing it is stupid. Yeah. I think the board is going to leave a bunch of credibility. I haven't looked at this at all. But just the fact that they're resetting, sending a pay package, it'd be like, me literally be like, hey, when we get to 250 locations, you're gonna get this. This big bonus. And then we get there like, well, it was.
It was. This was sparked by a shareholder.
Yeah.
So the shareholder is saying he should not be paid out.
Yeah. But the shareholders agreed to this pay package in 2018, right?
Yeah.
So, like, I think the board will lose credibility. The fact that stock dropped when they literally are trying to save up $50 billion. And again, this will all be stock.
This is not cash. Yeah, it's not.
But, like, the fact that it dropped shows that people believe in Elon, not in the fact that they're going to produce more profits this year. And so the fact of the matter is, would the company have done that without Elon in the past five years? The answer to that is no. The next question is, when he called his shot, he was in the middle of production hell. It's literally like Cobra's Going to take over the world. No one like I've been able to see who really believes in what we're doing versus the people that just like fans.
Yeah.
Because right now we're in hell. The people that are supportive, I will remember they were the true followers. They're the people that like in 2018 bought Tesla stock. If you bought Tesla stock after 2020, you are a follower.
Yeah.
You are, you are following the masses. And up in 2017, 2018, when he called his shot and did this, he was laughed to scorn. I still remember watch reading the article as I was walking to Safeco Field.
Yeah.
I still remember this because everyone thought he was absolutely insane. I go back to the stock price.
Well, yeah, this is, I mean 2019. 2019, February, it was $20 a share.
Yeah. So it's 10x from then. And so no one would have believed that he could tax the company in five years. A company that wasn't profitable had all sorts of problems with creating the model Y. All these issues. And so if you had Stock in before 2018, especially in Tesla, you're a true believer in Elon and in Tesla and you deserve a lot of credit. If you are after 2020, you are a bandwagon follower.
And so it's just a matter of the fact that he called a shot and made that and everyone approved it because it seems so outlandish is it gives me a little bit of hope that when I'm in the middle of hell and people are saying stuff and someone was saying the other day because someone made a video about how bad copilot was. Right. And so I didn't watch it. Yeah, they did. They made it. And then they posted on a different CRM's Facebook group.
Nice.
And so someone sent me a picture of it. I was like, it's all good. The Internet keeps, keeps good receipts.
Yeah.
And so it was like. But like it's hard to say those things or be confident or even think about the vision of the company, let alone your pay package. Like if right now we are a public company. I was like, hey guys, if we can get, you know, copilot to a 50 billion dollar market cap, I'll get 5 billion dollars. Everyone be like, yes, because we get 45 billion in market share value. And but then if you hit the mark, it's like, oh, it's so obvious. Like this is like not fair. Yeah. Like so I don't know, I just think it's, it's pretty crummy that they would try to take it back. I think they're going to have all sorts of issues.
Yeah, this is going back to the, you know, the, the we've won mentality.
What's that?
This is how, this is how, you know you've won in life.
All right.
From a monetary standpoint, because you said if we have people tour one, if people come and tour and stuff, you're saying like we have wonderful. We've tapped.
Like we, we are.
The pinnacle is when the judge asked, is the richest person in the world overpaid? Like that's a, that's in you've won question. If someone has to ask that, like you've won the game, like, that's an actual quote from the trial. Is the richest person in the world overpaid? It's kind of, it's good. Do you think not financial advice. Is Tesla buy right now at this price? I was, I did some research last night.
It's tough. Their demand curve is crumbling a little bit. But if you were to make the case for buying Tesla right now, you have to believe in robotics and self driving a lot.
So like, yeah, I would say if you're trying to buy right now, you are not buying a car company, you are buying it with the promise that robotics and it is a self driving vehicle and they will be the only ones that will be able to crack self driving.
Yeah. Yeah, fair enough.
Gosh.
I had another question for that. I can't.
Oh, now would I sell right now? No.
So that's, that was the other question because there's a lot of speculation. So I was on like Twitter last night and I was like, I just want to see what people are saying, like what the general buzz is. And a lot of people are saying, like, if this forces Elon to effectively step down as CEO and not be involved in operations of Tesla anymore at.
A high level, they lose a lot more than $50 billion in market.
I was going to say, like the sell off would be massive, which then it's like, do you double down and buy more? And I quote, unquote, low price. Low price. Given the last couple of years, what.
Will be interesting to me is if Elon makes a big deal of this with the board or like what you don't want in a company now that they've become successful is now where the founder turns against the board and he'll start, have you have sides. Right. Because you're going to have sides being created here. Or if he is able to do this behind closed doors, resolve this and move on. And this is something that I think he's trying to get better at. Hopefully has people around him to help him because, like, he should. I haven't seen what's going on, but he shouldn't, in my opinion, go online and start posting about, like, his opinions of his PayPal package. He needs to handle this behind closed doors and let the company move forward without creating war lines, in my opinion.
He tweeted, and I was going to try to pull it up, but this isn't verbatim, but he basically tweeted, like, don't start a corporation in Delaware.
Because that's where the proceedings are happening. Oh, yeah. So that was, like, his initial reaction, and he was like, should I move all of our official, like, corporation to Texas?
Should he re.
Register? So he's already been on Twitter. What.
What law in Delaware is he specifically talking about?
Well, I think it's whatever's going on because the judge is in Delaware based, as far as what I'm aware.
Oh, so he's just picking shots.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I want to know, like, what the legal ramifications of being Delaware versus Texas is. Yeah. Because I don't. I don't know of any specific things in terms of shareholder power versus.
Yeah. Did Delaware Supreme Court is where he would appeal it to.
Okay.
Yeah.
So the fact, though, that even a judge get involved in this is stupid.
Yeah.
It's complete overreach by the government.
What's new?
Like, seriously, like, this is someone's pay package. Like, they literally all agreed inside this, this company that this was going to happen, and then it happened. Like, let it alone. Like, the government should not be involved in, like, 90% of the things it's involved in. It's so stupid. Yeah.
There's a lot of ways I could go with that, but we can. We can leave it with. We can leave it there.
Do you have, like, the government, me being like, lee, you've really crushed it. We're gonna double your pain. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah. I'm happy you're happy. And so the government's gonna fix this.
Like, yeah, it's not fair. Yeah. It's weird. Anyways, and I'm not super informed on this, so to anyone that's listening, if I said something wrong, I apologize.
I haven't. I haven't read anything.
I was reading more about the stock than I was. Judge's decision.
Hey, but this is a C suite. Unfiltered.
Yeah. So we can say whatever we want. It's fine. All of it is not financial. Advice. Do you have any? Not financial.
Go ahead.
I have one. A good book. It's written the author, but it's a compilation of writings and speeches and poems. It's called the Book of Virtues. It was authored by William Bennett, who is Secretary of Education to Ronald Reagan. So just, you know, back when we had, like, moderate conservatives and moderate Democrats, like back when people could actually talk. Yeah. It's interesting not putting my stamp of approval on William Bennett as a person. He's got, you know, he's a politician, so of course there's some. Some. Some mud in his history, if you will. But the Book of Virtue is really cool. Someone gave it to my dad back in the day, and my dad actually just gifted it to me, his copy. So it's essentially a compilation of stories, anecdotes, excerpts from speeches, poems, things of that nature from historical.
Great.
So like Abe Lincoln, Martin Luther King, like, various authors. It's really cool. Essentially, the. The short pitch is responsibility, courage, passion, honesty, friendship, persistence, and faith. So the Book of Virtues, how to be a Virtuous Person. Strongly recommend it. It's kind of cool. Kind of a cool concept. I think we need more of that nowadays.
Yeah, I agree.
Not virtue signaling, just actually practicing virtues and integrity and honesty.
Okay. Mine on finance advice is dumb, so it's going to be fast.
Perfect.
But it's like, what? My head is all. Only thing I'm thinking about right now. There's dedicated IP pools. I'll just leave it at that. People can look it up if they want. Dedicated IP pools. It's something I've been digging deep in because it's something we're doing at Copilot. It's like literally all I've been researching for the past 24 hours.
All right, cool. Well, that's it. That's the pod. Like, and subscribe.










