We Disappeared for 3 Months… Here’s What Happened - Episode 109

All right.

Welcome back. Another episode. The C-Suite Unfiltered is back, and it was gone for hiatus of 2026. You know, people thought maybe the band broke up. Maybe I was going to, you know, fall out.

Did you see the one, the one comment on our podcast on Home Service Millionaire?

Yes.

It was like C-Suite Unfiltered became filtered. Let's go.

Yeah. We got filtered. So yes, uh, we, we did not get filtered. Uh, we took a hiatus. It was kind of unintentional, kind of our schedules didn't line up, both very busy. And, uh, now we're getting back into it. We have a set meeting schedule. Obviously you've been optimizing your schedule, so I figured this episode, because, you know, the people really want to just probably get the updates. Why, why were we off for the last 3 months? What were we focusing on? Things of that nature. So we'll just start right there. What has Mike Andes been focusing on in Q1 of 2026?

Lots of stuff. So we did a lot of promotions at the homework side as well as Augusta recently. I was like, on this, this 6-week sprint for me is to get more time back for myself and just put more on the team. And they're super capable. So that's gone well so far. And then working a lot on website stuff for Augusta Nation. And so it was a huge, Q1 or Q2 update that we had, or I guess Q1 2026 update. And that was we had like 51.2% more estimates per location sent out this year versus last year. And like that didn't just like randomly happen. So yeah, it's been a lot of work on that for the past 14 months on the forms, on the website in general, like the AI side of things, like just pushing more and more towards that direction. And so that was a huge not relief, but like is validation of all the work we've been putting in over the past 14 months. So that was really big. Um, Homeworks rebranded, I think since last time we talked.

So, uh, I guess, yeah, the rebrand went live. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. So, uh, yeah, lots of work, like me fiddling around with AI. A lot of that has been happening.

Yeah, no, you've been very focused on, you know, one of the things that we have talked about historically on the pod, but like more and better, like, can we just do more of what we're doing that is working? Like if something is working, can we do more of it? And then can we do it better each iteration, each day, each quarter, whatever it may be, whatever your measurable is? And that's kind of part of, I guess, the hiatus of the pod is like we've just been very focused on that, myself included, with just the sales system we have here at Augusta. So with the HomeWorks rebrand, I guess maybe we dive into that. Not only did we get a rebrand, we got more tight-fitting shirts from you, which look fantastic. But walk me through kind of how the rebrand has been going, what the team is kind of currently working on. Like, rebrand from my perspective, I was not a user of HomeWorks. Obviously, I use it on our end, on a backend for franchise-related tasks. But on the user end, it seemed like it went pretty smoothly. I'm part of the Facebook group. I see, you know, kind of the court of public opinion. It seemed like the user switchover to HomeWorks went well. How was it for you and your team doing that switchover kind of going into the busy season for most of the users now? Like, how has that transition been? Everything firing on all cylinders, like timelines hitting expected dates or extending? What's that all look like?

Yeah, like the rebrand is one of those things where it's like, it seems simple on the upfront, but it's like there's so much on the backend. So for example, like we've used the domain secure.copilotcrm.com for years. And so, you know, it works well, the mail, all our mail going out from that URL works good, et cetera. Like switching all that over is not an overnight task. And so we haven't even finished all the conversions over, um, things like Mailgun. We're like, we're not gonna swap that right before Spring Rush. Uh, and SendGrid that like manages all the marketing and transactional emails, like those have built up so much value in terms of deliverability. Like, there's no way we're restarting those. And so it will actually take us quite a long time to actually move everything over. But we are wrapping up in the next 6 to 8 weeks a lot of that backend stuff. So anyways, yeah, it's always like, you know, we knew we needed to do it. It needed to be a new brand. I think we could build on top of this a lot. I got very passionate about it once we started doing the design stuff of like, okay, what's the logo going to look like? What's the name going to be? Like all these different things. And so I got very passionate about like the 3 links of the chain are sales, operations, and admin. That's like directly correlated with what I talk about every video. And if any, there's weakness in any of those 3, the chain breaks and you're only as strong as your weakest link. And so that premise, I got behind. As soon as I caught that vision around like the, when we were doing branding, you're looking like hundreds of different different logos and you're like doing all these name things and looking at different trademarks and all this stuff. And when I saw this one, I was like, that's it. So, um, yeah, it was, uh, that's like the easy part. And then it's like, okay, now we gotta like change everything, people's email addresses and like make sure everything's routed over. We have like, I forget how many, it was like something like 30 to 40 different like softwares we use internally, whether you talk about CLO or you talk about GitHub or everything's gotta change. So, uh, it's just a lot of changes. And so it worked out good though, as much as like, I didn't like the fact that it was in February, it was before Spring Rush when we changed. And then we have time during Spring Rush to make a lot of the backend changes that are required while a lot of people don't want frontend changes. So we're working a lot on like bugs and accessibility, and then also the backend changes after kind of the downstream effect of changing the brand. So yeah. That's awesome.

I love it. Well, congratulations to you and your team on the, what seemed to be a smooth transition and everything you're doing. Let's talk a little Augusta update because, you know, we didn't record after we had our annual annual owners conference, and usually we share a little bit of behind the scenes of kind of what we're doing. So what has— obviously I know the answer to this, but for the folks that aren't a part of Augusta, what has been kind of the shift of Augusta in kind of Q4 of 2025 and into Q1 of 2026? It seems like we've kind of course-corrected— is a strong term to use. It's not course-corrected, it is, I would say, more North Star-defined, a little bit more clearly, like the direction that Augusta is going in. It's not that Augusta was going in the wrong direction, but it's like, okay, we knew the direction we're going in, but now it's more defined. What kind of definitions have you come up with that you feel have worked inside of Augusta, maybe still need to improve on, maybe give some of the updates to the public that were kind of launched at our conference 3 months ago now?

Uh, yeah, so there's a lot announced, but, um, a lot of it actually started a year, a little over a year, year and a half ago almost. Uh, no, like 14 months ago when I got pretty clear, like, here's where we're going. Uh, that's right when we started the holdco. So like I actually was able to feel more comfortable going more into like, where are we at in 3 or 4 years down the road? And so creating a game plan for that. And part of that was like, we are either going to become a thousand location franchise with a thousand different owners, or we're going to develop much more hearty systems that allow for multi-unit owners to be able to expand and grow and really focusing on like Okay, instead of just someone owning one location and maybe going to $800,000, $900,000, $1 million and kind of plateauing there, we need to be able to have it where they can put their general manager over plates and go start another one and just keep going. And so we've been looking a lot at like Wingstop, for example, what they do with their franchise, with their franchisees and them as a franchisor. They've been super successful with their model. And that was— they made this big pivot too, is like we're focusing on our existing owners. We're going to give them priority in terms of territories. We're going to focus all of our time and attention on existing owners and just scaling the number of them. And so the average Wingstop owner has 14 locations. And that was after a very decisive pivot that they decided, hey, we're going to give more exclusivity to them. We're going to price discounts to them. And we're going to just focus on taking the existing members of the franchise and just make them super successful. And when they made that change within like 12 to 24 months, their churn dropped off a cliff because you're dealing with people that are now scaling, they're growing, they're expanding. No one leaves. They now, they now actually make it where you have to start 3. You must start 3 locations from day one. That's how I define they've got. So we're not there yet. We're not like, you must start with the executive model. We haven't got there yet, but we're moving towards like, we're shifting towards that direction, not going in that direction, but we're shifting that direction, which is we've, we've in the past couple of years added higher requirements financially to even join. We've now had it where it costs more to join, which is more of a financial barrier. And then we've done the opposite to existing owners, which is like make it easier, allow them to be able to expanded areas, you know, spend your time doing expansion planning calls. Where are you moving next? Can we reserve those spots? Can we give preference to our existing owners to be able to take these spots? And so I think we're kind of shifting upmarket with the franchise. I think it'll be overall really positive when we look back in several years. It's always a little bit of there's, you know, growing pains or like things you have to change. All the systems have been built in the past, like, okay, you build one location and like you get started from zero. Well, now we have people joining like, hey, I want to start 6 locations next few years and I have $1 million. So like, we better make sure we know how to deploy that. So like, how Augusta Leads, for example, is a big component of like, okay, if they're gonna be people joining with this kind of capital, they don't want to be doing 200 new customers this year and being happy. They want, they want a lot more. And so we need to have ways to deploy that capital much more efficiently. And Augusta Leads was one of the things we announced at conference where we actually do the, uh, run the ads, we do the Facebook ads, we do the Google ads, we do LSA for the owners. We do all the tracking, all the backend stuff so they can just go out and do work, uh, get their team, hire their team, train their team, and we can do the ads. And so the objective would be that like we can run the ads, we can then take the calls and sell the jobs at command center and on instant quotes on the website. And then the owners just have to focus on their team. And that's like a very diff— that's the hardest part of a supply-constrained business like we're in where you have labor, which is, can you build a team, train a team and retain a team and develop leaders? And so I want them to focus on that, not all the other stuff required to get there. And so that when someone joins, if they have a lot of capital and they're comparing us against joining a Taco Bell for $2 million, I can deploy their capital way more efficiently and I can actually scale the size they need. Because the nice thing, the reason a lot of times, you know, whether it be private equity or people that just need to get money to work for them and they want, you know, 15%, 20% return, they're happy with it. A lot of times the reason they'll go to these fast food restaurants or these other franchisors is because there's a proven model that when I open up, open up the shop, I have a line out the door or at least have like a $1.5, $2 million revenue business. Like right away, like first year, maybe I have burned for 3 months getting everything up and running, but like pretty quickly I get there. And that's always been the struggle for Augustas. Like profit mode happens in year 3, you know, maybe year 2 if you're lucky, if you really, really gas it. But as we get more sophisticated owners and ones that have more capital, they're like, no, no, no. Like I want to be first spring rush, 3 to 4 months and I want to be in profit mode and I want to go do this again. I want to copy and paste it over and over. And so making sure the system is ready for that. And then while doing that, making sure the systems are ready for owners to get there, making sure that the existing owners that might not be there yet get there. And so that's like a lot of the systems of, of like Augusta Leads, being able to get them to the point where they're in profit mode and thinking about second location and thinking about how do I develop leaders instead of the company, not just how to get 2 more customers, how to get 5 more customers, how do I get one more truck? And so that's been a big focus is multi-unit ownership, allowing our existing owners to scale and giving them preference on pricing, uh, territories. And you've been a big part of that.

Yeah, and it sounds like to me, and obviously I'm on the inside track, so trying to be more of like the, the, the objective host, if you will, and ask more, you know, pressing questions, would be the focus has shifted, like you said, to our existing owners. It's, it's less focused on expansion, and for us, external expansion or outbound expansion. We're not, you know, actively marketing. We're not actively going out and seeking out the best people to join Augusta. Yes, if someone hops on a call with me and they're overly qualified, a great cultural fit, and they want to deploy that capital that you're referencing, 100%, we're going to let them join Augusta. We still want to keep growing our company, but the main focus has shifted from that. Okay, we're not a sales-driven engine. We aren't doing the sales to get people in the door. We want to help our individual owners that have started with us now scale. And that's a completely different system. And it's very owner-first from what you're saying. And that's why we kind of followed the Wingstop model is if you look at it, you know, now it looks like, oh, they only care about people with you know, million-plus dollars in net worth. I think with, you know, Wingstop now, it says you have to have a net worth of $1.5 million to even, like, apply effectively, uh, and that'd be on the low end probably. Well, that's because they moved up market, but what they did is they also grandfathered a lot of their existing owners into these discounted programs for expansion. And that's what we're doing. It's not just, oh, we're only going after people that have more money now. Oh, Augusta's so sophisticated. No, what we're doing is we're actually discounting aggressively to our existing owners to allow them to expand because we like them, we know them, we trust them. And we know that they'll have a higher rate of success if they've already done one location successfully first, their second, their third, their fourth. It's just going to get easier. And as you said, giving them the resources and support so that they can just focus on the high leverage tasks, which is developing that leadership team. So do you feel that that is the kind of next bottleneck we solve for the owners of Augusta is the leadership bottleneck? Like we have the scaling tool. We know that the model is now copy and paste per your book's title or expansion planning. We are giving them the resources and support to consistently copy and paste. Now the next bottleneck seems to be leadership based on what you were, what you were sharing.

Yeah. Like all 4 L's in the 4L framework have to be addressed. This is a, this is the big thing I talked about at conference is like, um, we have now have Augusta Leads to ideally, if someone has liquidity, I can get you leads. And, um, the efficiency of the Augusta Leads program is like fantastic. And like Matt, the operator I brought in to run that department is like stellar. He's hiring people underneath him, um, that have experience and like They're fantastic. The next constraint becomes labor and then leadership. And so we're working on these aspects of like, how do we solve these problems? And so in part by kind of locking down new— hey, not— we're not focused on new owners. It allows us to focus on our existing systems and just make them more bulletproof and make it better. And if we do that, if we make the economics so good, we don't need to sell. Like, this is why we've always never— like, before last year, we're 5 or 6 months, we've run ads. We've never done advertising is because, like, if we just make this better, people will line up to buy this regardless of what the initial cost is. Um, and so that's what we have to focus on. And so whether it be solving the leads constraint was like, hey, you don't need to know how to run ads, give us a budget and we'll do it. And hopefully by the end of this year, we have a guarantee around how many customers we will get you to in 4 months when you have a certain budget, like that will be valuable. The next thing is, um, labor and leadership. So we've just for the first time, we're going to continue it later this year is we started to recruit for general managers on the leadership side across the entire country. And then they are, primed to, and knowing that they're going to have to move to a location. And so if we can create, like we did recently, like the top 60, 70 GMs out of 2,000 applicants that we screen, that we get videos of, that we are able to put in front of our owners, that's valuable. So that way now it's like, hey, I want to go, I want to start 5 locations because, you know, I got $1 million. Okay, great. Here's 5 candidates that are super solid out of 50 that think would be super willing to move. And here's, if you want to look through all these videos of us processing them. And so that leadership constraint, the ideal in the perfect world, we're able to make it where if you need a general manager and you don't have one in your crew, there's a place to go to. Labor is a more difficult one because it's very localized. No one's going to usually move to technician or, or, uh, move their family across the country to join a $25, $30 an hour job as a technician. And so that one's a harder one to solve. We want to work on that one and that one's going to be next year. And same thing. The liquidity side is how do we give money to owners that are expanding quickly? They don't want to wait for 2 years of solid tax returns, i.e., in profit mode, to be able to start the next location. How do we actually facilitate the capital side of the business for them to be able to copy and paste? And we judge them based upon their business model and the system adherence instead of just did you make a bunch of money the last 2 years in your profit and loss statement or more importantly, your tax return. I.e., did you pay the government a bunch of money so that you can get good 2 solid 1040s to be able to then get an SBA loan? Like, that's kind of like very hard to scale and grow quickly. And so because we believe in the copy and paste training system, we should be able to back it up with the money, which is assuming you can find a great general manager, assuming we can solve the fact that we get customers for you, assuming that we can then ideally have laborers lined up and ready to go for you and then be able to give you money that solves all 4 of the L's and the constraints. And so as As we do that, what is going to become the next constraint is the thing that I can't change and I can't fix for the owners, and that is their ability to lead. And this is the biggest constraint when it comes to multi-unit ownership, hiring general managers, hiring 10, 20, 30, 40 employees. And so that will also be taken into account, like how do we take owners and operators and turn them into leaders, uh, people that can, can manage 5, 6, 10 general managers. It's a different skill than hiring 5 or 10 technicians out in the field. And so this is like top of mind over the next 24 months. And whenever someone has like a good idea, it's like, that's fantastic. I basically still have the next 12 to 24 months baked of what we need to work on. And there's so many improvements that need to be made, whether it be a command center, the software side. And so, um, more and better is basically still going to be the tune for quite some time. And by not focusing on the owner, uh, new owners, we can just focus all of our time and attention on that. And so I'm really looking forward to like, especially the last half of this year and 2027 of like a lot of stuff we, we know we need to do and we just haven't had the time for it to be able to focus on that.

Perfect. Well, that, that's the Augusta franchise. Now might as well. Let's do a recap on the media side of things. You put up an interesting poll, I think a couple of weeks ago. I don't remember what the options on the poll were, all the poll were, but you said something along the lines of, hey, thinking about making making some changes to the channel this summer. What do you want to see more of? And I can't remember what the 3 were. One was like the day-to-day of me running my, my business at the current size that it is, more turnarounds. And then I think there was a third option—

studio, studio and Q&A.

More studio and Q&A. So, what were the results of that poll and what's the direction the media team is headed in?

Yeah, so like 44% are like, hey, we'd like to see more of your stuff. Of like how you run your business. 41%, I think, was turnarounds and like 11 or 14% was the studio and Q&A, which just hurt my soul. But the problem with that data is that is all the people that follow me on Instagram. And so they are likely the closest followers that want to see more behind the scenes. So that's what you have to be careful of is like where are you polling this? This is not the public, right? So what that tells me, and like this is why when I make those videos, they don't get a lot of views because like those few thousand people that voted on that, yes, they will like the content about my businesses and how I do hiring, how I do manage my time and how I use AI. They will like that. But the general population comes for entertainment and they come for more surface-level information that they can apply to their own business. And so, yeah, starting in June, we're going to make a bit of a pivot. There's a big reason, like I've been trying to get stuff off my plate and delegating and creating incentive plans. For the team to be able to tackle the problems that I've been working on so that I can really double down on this element. So June is going to like— I've marked June as like we're going pro. So there's several things I want to do. And honestly, I have talked about like 8 years, 9 years, 10 years. This is 10 years worse. Mercy. It's been 10 years of me making content. And so I have talked about starting a lawn care business and starting a business in general so many times, which is great. I'm passionate about that. I could do it all day long. I would also like to be able to cover topics that are much like things I'm going through. What problems am I trying to solve? And we do have over 120 employees. The business was valued at over $43 million. I would like to be able to talk to the person that wants to get there or is on their way to that and be able to serve them as well because I have so much content from like 0 to 1 million. And then in the past year, I've focused a lot on 1 million to 3 million. I would like to offer even more beyond that. Mostly, that's what I'm learning. And so I'd like to be more like transparent, like, here's this thing I'm working on. It's like I made several videos already. There's 3 of them. They're ready for June. And I made them the day problems happened. And so I'm usually like, yeah, like 2 years ago, this happened in my business. 5 years ago, I was at the Bellingham shop. There was a mutiny, like all these sort of things. Now it's like this morning, this happened and here's how I dealt with it. And so it'll be interesting. I don't think there's gonna be a lot of views. But I'm passionate about it and, you know, I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. Here's the thing. This will be the big test. This will be the big test when I start sharing numbers about the business, like 120 employees, $64 million in revenue, $43 million valuation. Is that enough to garner eyeballs of larger business owners? Is that enough to get the views higher? That would be interesting because I usually don't do that. I say in my intro, but I don't usually talk about in my titles and like the thumbnails and stuff. When I make it about me, I usually try to make it about the owner. So like, this person has debt, this person is trying to scale, this person has a problem. Like, I've always made it about someone else and that usually brings in more entertainment. And so if I'm gonna be saying numbers about me, like, you know, whatever, $43 million CEO, whatever, if I put that in the title, it's now about me. And so it'll be interesting, it's a little awkward, to be perfectly honest. Like, I don't usually like saying that sort of thing, but if I can make it work on the media side and I get to talk about topics I'm like actively working on, I would be very excited. So we'll see what happens.

Yeah, well, I think to, to like be kind of give a counterpoint would be that you watch Alex, Layla and their team like talk about themselves and the problems that they've overcome and what they do. And you see that as long as it brings value. And I think that's like the core to it is like they're not just flaunting numbers, they're not just flaunting the drama of their business. They are saying this happened, this is how we handled it, and this is how we're moving forward. And I think that's obviously, you know, that like you're— I'm not— I'm preaching to the choir here. Like, you know how that works. But ultimately, I think it will resonate with the people that are trying to reach that next level because they're like, okay, it's great that you help all these other people, but like, I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in kind of helping myself and I want to follow the path that you're on. And I think it is a pivot in terms of your audience. I'm interested to see what the numbers do as well. But I think there are a lot of people out there that want to see that content as well as like employees or high-level operators inside of companies want that content. For myself, like, I am not an entrepreneur. I do not own a business. I still watch more Mosey content because I want to understand how you operate like him. So I need to understand how he operates so then I can better support you in your operations. Right. And so I think that also resonates with high-level operators and performers inside of teams, not just entrepreneurs, if that makes sense. So I think it's like there's a trade-off to that audience, right?

Yeah. Like I'm, I'm more of the opinion, like I haven't— I don't have everything figured out. I'm still trying to figure it out, you know? And so I've gone away from documenting, quote unquote, the journey for a while. Also, because actually it's actually very difficult. And this is something that like I would love to talk about with Alex one-on-one about. And that is when you build in public, i.e., you talk about everything that's happening in the business, that's actually really hard on your team. And this is why I've always avoided it because like when you start doing it, it like I would find it very difficult as a high-level leader inside of acquisition.com when I am when someone gets fired, I'm hearing a story about that. Like, that's tough. That's hard. Like, is this— am I going to be the content for the next video, right? Is this meeting that— or if I have an altercation or if I push back and then like I'm wrong or I make a mistake, am I going to— like, I don't ever want that. And like we've talked about before, it's been like, is this going to be a bar show sports, right? Like, that draws an audience. But I never want to work in an environment like that. And I don't want other people that I care about on the team to feel that way. And so this is why I'm very apprehensive to go into this way, because like when you put, like, for example, one of the titles that we're recording Monday is like, I think like, Week in the Life of $43 Million CEO, something stupid like that. I hate that title. More like, I don't want my team seeing that title. Like, I do not make anywhere close, I don't have that liquid at all. Like, but that number is absolutely going to 5x the amount of views that video will get. And so this is like when Dan Martell, for example, he's a great example of this. He made content for like 8 or 9 years, he got to 20,000 to 30,000 subscribers. And then he made the decision, he was gonna quote, go pro, this is why I'm using this terminology for Jin, go pro. And what started doing is just showing that he had a private jet. He had a whole bunch of cars. He started saying it in his intro. He started talking about how much money he had. He started showing it. And like his channel has gone to like, I think 3 million or 2 million subscribers in the past 12 months or 18 months. So all of that to say, we'll see. I just want to walk balance. Like I will balance it out. And I know if someone's, if internal team members say stuff, it's just like, ugh, I'll lock up. 'Cause that's like the most important thing to me. But I also have to realize I do want to serve the audience that is going past $3 million and I've made a bunch for $0 to $1 million. $1 million to $3 million has been a big focus for Home Service Millionaire. But like, I want to be able to talk to the person that is trying to build a $100 million business. And I think the other part of it convinced me is I can— this is the part like I talked with ChatGPT a lot about this. It's like, okay, so I don't want to alienate my existing audience, but I also want to talk about these other topics that are more general, that are kind of outside of home services because I do software, I run a franchise, I do a lot of marketing stuff. We do— we have a ton of like I'm doing AI, so like out towards you, like I would like to talk about these things, but I don't want to alienate my audience. And so how I'm thinking about it is this is basically a 30,000-foot view, but people that have watched my content for a long time should be able to zero it in and make it applicable to their business. I just might not be the one saying, hey, this one-on-one technique that I use for all these team members is how you should use it when you have one employee. I might not do that, but the same concept could apply and it's going to take more work for the owner potentially to be like, hey, this is how I make it digestible to me. And so, uh, we'll see if it works. I don't know. Um, but I'm looking forward to it. Um, and I'm going to do it solid for a month and just see what happens.

Yeah. I'm, I'm excited for it. And I know like we have, I have offered the analogy of like barstooling Augusto, which we don't want to do, or the Holdco, but here's maybe a better example and it's still drama and he got TV shows, but I think someone like Ryan Serhan, who you're probably familiar with, right? Where he— his— I just pulled up his YouTube page just to see, and like his top— one of his top videos is How I Beat My Competition: Week in the Life of a CEO Part 5, right? And so it's like he is sharing like, this is what I'm doing at my company that is better than yours. And yes, like he, he has a little bit of that like flair to him because he is one of the biggest real estate companies in, in the US. I don't know, maybe the world, but in the US like he's one of the bigger players. But he's still like sharing that and that got— let's look at that video. I mean, he got 50,000 views. He did another one, how much real estate actually make. That one got almost a million views.

Right.

And so it's like he is sharing his story, his progression. And yeah, maybe he comes at it from a different angle than you're going to come at it with. Like, you're like, hey, I'm building this. He's like, hey, I did build this. But he still has very publicly said like his goal is to be the biggest realtor in the US. And so he does also have that, hey, I am still building this. And I think that a lot of realtors relate to that and that's why they like it. And yes, there's some baked-in drama. Yes, there's some employee stuff. Like, I don't know if you ever saw one of the most viral clips of him where he's sitting in the back of his car on speakerphone. Have you seen this one? Yeah, it was a couple of years ago, I guess, for anybody that doesn't know. Yeah. Ryan Serhant, real estate broker in New York City, but does deals all across the US. Anyways, he's sitting in the back of his, you know, tricked-out Range Rover. He's got a driver and one of his agents blows a $9 million deal. Right? Because he said like one comment that offended the clients. And it's like, I'm like, dude, that got me hooked. I could care less about real estate, multimillionaire penthouse deals, but like that clip got me hooked because I'm like, how did he manage that? How did he manage that employee's $9 million mistake? How did he try to save face with the client? How do you try to save face with the other realtor? Those are the things that like, that's the skill set. Like, how can I learn to deal with that? How can you learn to deal with like something of that magnitude and still move forward as a company? That relates to people. Yes, it got clicks because of the drama and the fact that like, you know, it's very much like, you know, him being frustrated and reacting live to the situation. But I think you can do that if it's like, okay, issue happened, we had to resolve it, I'm gonna sit in front of the camera, click record. Yes, you might get clicks for the drama, but I also think there's value in sharing that raw, here's how we handled it. Does that make sense?

Yeah, like for me, man, the challenging part is twofold. One, a lot of these characters that you talk about, like they might have a big following, but I don't want to— I don't want to have the perception that I have of them towards me. And like, for example, Ryan, like super polished, awesome. I love his content. I don't want to look at him. I don't want people to look at me the way that I look at him, which is he has everything buttoned down. He is polished. He's got it all figured out. He's basically the god of real estate. I'm not that person. And as soon as I try to become that person, when I fall, the heart— that like, it feels very hard. It feels really bad. And so anyways, that's the first thing. Second thing is I feel about when I see that clip, I think about how do you go back to your team when you just made public that someone made a big mistake in the business? That's what I think about. And I don't know how I can reconcile that. So Ryan got a whole bunch of views. Probably more value from that clip than the deal by the time he takes his 0.1% home from that deal. But what about the team? And then what about all the other team members that then see you talking about someone else? Like, probably didn't say his name, probably didn't humiliate him, but you mentioned it. And I'm not saying it was a bad thing. I'm just saying there is downstream personal impacts when you make what is usually private public. And I'm still reconciling that because is I don't care what most people think. I care about what owners of Augusta think. I think I care about what my team thinks. I care about customers that have pulled out their wallet and support my vision. And so everyone else gets to weigh in their opinions when I'm trying to block that out and just be like, I'm just going to focus on these people and that's all I care about. And so, for example, if I say something I'm doing really good at, well, if you are a customer of HomeWorks or you are an owner inside of Augusta, you see a lot of my flaws. You see a lot of things where my team or myself are making mistakes. And so it becomes a— you have a target on your back the minute you step out and say, like, I'm doing something great because then everyone just looks to prove you wrong. And so I'm always interested by the fact that when people go really public with their wins, their churn, their leadership level a lot of times goes way up. So this is something I've been looking at a lot recently. So, for example, Elon loses his leadership team like all the time. There's such high churn there. Even companies that we've talked about on this pod that I look up to, huge churn at the leadership level. And I feel like a lot of times it is because of this public persona making things that should kind of stay private public or doing it in a way where people could look at them and feel like, maybe I shouldn't tell them that because that could come out in a video or that I made a mistake. They talked about a video, didn't say my name, but I knew it was me. And then they said something about me, not to my face, but quote, behind my back to the public. So I don't know. I want to be valuable. I want to be able to provide value to others. Like there's certainly, as I learn things, I want to pass those things down. That is super high importance to me, especially the owners. But it is more important to me that the people that are the 50, 50, 100, 200 people that I talk to every day, especially in the office around me, like what they think about me is actually far more important. So I hope that like that kind of balances it out. But I also know that I want to talk about higher level things and to talk to a higher level person that's coming to content that has a $10 million business. If I don't say this is the size of business, this, like I have 120+ employees and like we have millions of dollars. Like if you don't say those things, that's my credibility to be able to get my foot in the door and be able to help them. So I don't know, it is a juxtaposition. Yeah.

I guess, I guess to speak the employee perspective is to, Like if you and I had a disagreement and you wanted to use it for content, it's— I think that's within your right as my employer, right? Not saying like throw me under the bus, but if it's like I had a disagreement with my VP and here's what we did, like I think that's educational, right? Like that's the type of content that I want to look for when I am trying to learn and educate myself. Like I prefer when, when I click on content, for me personally, this is just at least one, one person's take. I prefer like almost monologue style content. Like I came here for that person to tell me what they believe and what they think because I respect them. I don't need the drama. I don't need someone else's outside perspective. Like I am here for that person. Like that is literally my perspective. There is something like—

go ahead, you go ahead, you can.

I would just say like there is someone that like right now, well, I won't, I won't say who, but there is like a content creator that is very on current events and like most of his clip, most of his videos are like 15, 20 minute monologue and then he like brings on an expert. Like it's not that I'm discrediting the expert. I usually just turn the video off at that point because I'm like, I'm here for this person's educated take on this and I don't really care about the interview. The interview is probably great, ton of value. Like I just want that 15, 20 minutes of like, this is the take. I can cross-reference it later. I can watch the expert later. Like that's what I'm there for. So anyways.

Yeah, I get where you're coming from. I think from a purely economic perspective, it is higher. There's higher return from sharing my experiences with thousands of people at the cost of the one relationship. However, if you and I had a disagreement and then I, a week later, there's a video coming about me, my quote, VP. First off, 50 people know who it is. And then they're making assumptions about me saying stuff about you. And then they're also making assumptions about you that might not be true. You do not have the platform to be able to defend yourself or say your perspective? And what are you going to think next time you do have a really, really solid perspective, but you don't push back because you're afraid I'm going to make a video about it? And so this is where I see the downside of being so upfront about things that should either remain private or should be, should be thought through a little bit more is the leaders leave. Like I'm telling you, like I talked to another company last week where Their incredible executive left another company. I went through their LinkedIn and it's like, oh, like these are all the— they're going to influencers that are very public and showy. And it's very difficult to thrive in that environment as a team member. And if all I care about is winning the game and not the views, I have to stay focused on my leadership team and leadership management, et cetera. Like, so anyways, that's just like my take. I look at Elon, everyone looks at Elon as an incredible person. Yeah, genius. Everyone knows everything he thinks. Thinks, including whether it be politics or whatever, some of that stuff needs to stay in his head and then he wouldn't alienate huge amounts of his team as well as his leadership team that is helping him get these businesses forward. And everyone just points to him like, oh, he says whatever he thinks, therefore I can say whatever I think publicly. It's like, hold a second, you're not Elon Musk. You're not sending rockets to Mars and you don't have the kind of clout that he does. So let's just take a backseat and realize that maybe we should keep our mouths shut online sometimes. And so I'm just walking that line of, I want to help as many people as possible. Cause to your point, if I shared a disagreement you and I had and I tried to, you know, here's how I thought through it. It probably helped 1,000 people do something similar in their business, but I'm not going to do that at the cost of our relationship because that affects me a whole lot more than 1,000 people, you know, Johnny Pants 123 on YouTube.

Fair enough. Fair enough. I won't, I, at the risk of not giving context here, I'm going to say something that relates directly to that because I think there's, there's the line, the line that, um, you're describing, I guess from an employer's perspective is like self-preservation. Like as an employee, you're like, I don't want the drama, the issues with my boss out there publicly. Like, how's that going to impact me from an office politics perspective, a public court of public opinion, my position at work? Do I get promoted? My pay, whatever. So there's that personal preservation. But then there's also the holistic vision of the company or the value of the company as a whole. And I do believe that we have lost some of the importance of that, like the institution of the company. That is to— the goal is to like increase the value of the company and grow the company. Company. And in a meeting yesterday, someone was like, so you're saying you would throw this person under the bus? And I was like, if it increases the value of the company, yes. Now there's no context to that, but it was ultimately like a positioning haha of like, yes, like if you had to throw me under the bus for this thing that actually does not matter, if it increases the value of the company, throw me under the bus because there is importance to that. And like, yeah, haha, it was kind of a joke in a meeting and it's out of context, but And like, I had someone look at me and they were like, seriously? I was like, well, yeah, like our job is to increase the value of this company. Like, I don't care if like publicly Lee looked bad. It's like the job is to increase the value of the company and we have to make certain trade-offs. And so that's where it comes down to. It's like a trade-off. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. I think that most people are not like you, so I try a little more lightly than that, but, um, that's fair. I think, I think The thing I focus on is incentives, right? Like, and so the reason that you would say that in a way is you have seen that as the company wins, you have won. And I want to make sure that's very clear to anyone that if they are going to make sacrifices personally for the sake of the company, that they also win. And I don't want it to be a one-way, like, hey, I will win. I will then take all of your losses. I'll make them public and I will make you walk into the office the next day and everyone knows what I was talking about. And like, that's just weird. I don't want to be in that position as a leader in the Level team. Like, I don't. And so anyways, we've gone on this for long enough. I'll see how it goes in June. And if anyone wants me to just like air out all sorts of dirt on Landria and Lee, now I have the permission.

It's on writing. 100%. If it increases the value of the holdco, that's what I'm here for.

Yeah, exactly. Famous last words.

I'm not here to defend the shareholders. I'm here to increase the value of the shareholders. Lee is now a corporate shill. You heard it here first. No, but I just think it's an interesting line to walk. And I respect your opinion. Obviously I'm pushing back and, you know, giving, you know, out-of-context jokes. But ultimately, I think it is a fine line to walk. I respect your opinion as a leader and like that you want to preserve your employees. I think that's like— that always is going to win you points. I think that's good. I'll leave it. I'll leave it at that. Because it has been so long, the people have not gotten any advice from the C-suite for a while. We got to give them some not financial advice. So, Mike, do you have any prepared? You have 3 months to prepare. Tell me. Tell me you got something.

Okay, I'll do two things. First one will be kind of tying off what we just talked about, which is I do believe the retention of your direct reports as you grow a company is directly tied to the long-term net worth of the individual. For 98% of people, there's always going to be the people who just somehow get around this. But for the— and more importantly, the people that I respect and I look up to as good human beings, the retention of their leadership team and their direct reports is I have seen, would I trade lives with them from a business and personal life? Usually there's high retention and this is something that I have started to optimize for. Secondly, we bought a house in the past few months.

Yeah.

And the good news is, the good news is this. We had to liquidate a bunch of my stocks to buy the house, right? I wanted to buy with cash. Okay, let me, ah snap. Here's, here's, okay, here's better financial advice. Okay, not financial advice. Is make sure you run your credit score once in a while. I had a line of credit that had one penny on it just to keep it active. Right. The monthly interest came out after like 10 months. And for some reason, it wasn't connected to my personal bank account. That one penny became $90 of fees and 5 months of delinquency on my credit score, preventing me from getting a loan. So So here's how it turns good. When we had to buy the house, the market was at the top. I sold a bunch of stocks, right, to buy the house because like, oh, can't get a loan because like literally went to 580, my credit score. I'm like, can we not clean this up? Like, oh, it's going to take 6 months. I'm like, oh, forget that. Okay, so sold stocks right at the top. Then this whole war thing happened. War is horrible, but from a stock market perspective, it dived literally right after. Let's go. A week and a half ago, I'm like, I think this is probably the bottom. Like, this is going to wrap up. This is not going to be looking good going into midterms. We're going to try to clean this up as fast as possible, probably some shady deals on the table. So bought back in. Let's go. We're back to the moon today. It's Friday, April 17th. We're at all-time highs. Let's go. Nice, dude.

I love it. You played it well. That's crazy about your credit score. Yeah, there you go. That's good. Not financial. That is financial advice. Not financial advice. Financial advice is check your credit score periodically. Fantastic. All right, uh, my non-financial advice is I was having a conversation with a buddy, and, uh, we've been, we've been getting into like— this is gonna, for lack of a better description, I will quote someone on Instagram that I, that I don't know off the top of my head, but I should give them credit. But they, they had this clip, and it was just called— they were like, um, people think it's delusional optimism. Like, they're like, oh, this person's always positive, they're just delusional, like there's so much bad in the world. They're like, it's not delusional. I love this quote. They said it's ruthless optimism. It's like, I just be ruthless, that I will have positive outcomes. Because if you, if you are mentally like ruthless about being optimistic, it means like I'm giving myself every option to not let negatives affect me. And I was like, I like that kind of mindset because optimism, a lot of people just push it aside. It's like you can instantly say, yo, I'm optimistic about the future of AI, and someone could pull up 6 studies about how horrible it is for our brains, right? It's like, no, like I'm going to be ruthlessly optimistic, which means I'm going to give myself so many opportunities for this to have a positive outcome that like nothing will stop me. So that's kind of been a recent mantra of mine. It's like ruthless optimism, just focusing on the positives even when the chips are down, just like giving yourself options for to have a positive outcome. So that is my pump-up speech for everyone.

Let's go. I feel like if you put ruthlessly or violently before any word, it sounds really awesome. I'm going to ruthlessly execute. I'm going to violently discuss this.

That's why I like the term aggressive. That's one of my most favorite words. So anyways, appreciate you listening. Like and subscribe. Thank you for your time, sir. The C-suite is back.

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