We Lost $8k per Employee (Mike Andes Interview feat. Brian Rand)

Welcome back to the Mike Andes Podcast, where we discuss the ins and outs of owning a small business. If you're new here, the Mike Andes podcast is all about starting, maintaining, and growing your small business. Today we got a doozy. A week ago, Mike sat down with Brian Rand, AKA the pun fessional, AKA Professor Rand. He is the trainer for all the new command center representatives here at Augusta. And we're gonna go along for the ride as he picks Mike's brain and hits him with just about every question in the book. If there's something that you want to know about Mike, it's prob in this interview. As always, you can get the video versions of this interview and more over on the Mike Andy's YouTube channel. But without further ado, here's Mike and Brian with a deep dive.

Hey, what's Mike Andy's here. And this is Brian Rand. He is one of the trainers and one of our team members at command center. Been there for over a year now. And as part of what some of you have requested to have more interview style questions to me, instead of just having random people who have no idea who I am that are gonna ask very surface questions, we decided, hey, why don't we just ask people who know me the best, the business is the best and can kind of push back on some of the things that I talk about instead of just being, you know, how did you get started mowing lawns? Like, actually go a little bit deeper. So that's kind of the goal. Last week we had Liz on, we had Brian. We'll probably have Lee and a few other people on the show. So I have no idea what he's gonna say. The objective here is twofold. Number one, to stump me with a question, and number two, to get more views than Liz did on her interview. So make sure you press the like button video and without any further delay, go ahead and kick it off. Brian, maybe before you get started with your questions, kind of share a little bit about yourself and kind of how you got started with Augusta, kind of what you do too, because you're kind of the main trainer at command.

Sure, yeah. So I've done customer service for multiple other businesses throughout the years. I worked at a call center in Colorado for a long time. I did tech support. I did escalations or de escalations, I should say. So when the customer calls and says, let me speak to a manager, and they go, let me put you on hold for a second. That guy, and they transfer your call and they go, this is Brian. He's my manager. He'll take it from here. I took that call all day. I got that call all day long. So I just. My specialty was de. Escalating people and just trying to just, you know, calm them down a little bit. Explain to him, hey, it's not the end of the world. We'll do what we can to make it right. I'm sorry you're having a bad experience. Let's see what we can do. Maybe I could send you a stuffed animal and a T shirt, some kind of concession, and make your life a little bit better. So we did that for a while, and I worked a few other customer service jobs as well. But I've worked a lot of frontline jobs, mostly phone support. And yeah, I found my way into Augusta as things were really starting to take off and there was a need at the command center.

I jumped on rush last year.

I jumped on it and I got involved and it was awesome.

Cool. Well, let's jump into it. Hard hitting questions with Brian. Here we go. All right.

I'm actually going to start off with some pretty softball questions, pretty soft questions here, and I'll tell the people. I do watch Mike's videos, and I've watched a few of them. I haven't watched every single video he has, but I've seen most of them. But I tried to ask questions that I didn't know the answer to already.

Cool.

So. And I think. I think maybe some people will know some of these answers, but I don't. So I wanted to know. I mean, we all know that you started land, you know, mowing lawns with your brother when you were younger. We know you have some other jobs as well. Some people know that you worked at a gym and were a personal trainer as well. I was curious, what other kind of jobs did you have and what was your experiences like? Like, did you like working for someone else? What were some big takeaways from other jobs you had besides lawn care and working for yourself?

Yeah, so my very, very first actual paid job was working for a blueberry farm. And. And they also did beekeeping just down the street from us. We used to live in the country when I was younger, so that was eight years old. So I was technically like my first paid position. And that was. That was kind of like the first per hour job. Like, I'd always worked around construction sites, even like 5, 6, 7. Just trying to make, you know, we'd pick up nails, I'd pick up rocks, like around job sites. But really the first paid position was A blueberry farm. And then they did beekeeping as well. And I really, actually enjoyed the beekeeping and really fell in love with honey. And the whole process of making it was actually pretty cool. That was when I was really young, even though even as I was doing the lawn care thing, I actually was a insurance agent for. For State Farm. So I did the whole, like, dressing up as the State Farm bear, like, the whole nine yards. And it's funny because I could only sell certain types of insurance. Like, I couldn't sell life insurance because I was under 18. So I actually had to write to, like, the Washington state insurance commissioner just to get my license to sell property and casualty, which is like, you know, house rental insurance, car insurance, et cetera. But, yeah, I did that whole thing, and it was fun, and I learned a lot. I also did another sales position, and these are both stints of six to eight months, just part time. While I was doing the lawn care thing, I also sold credit card processing. So it was a company called Smart Choice Payments. I think they got bought out by now, but basically selling card processing from different retailers. So they'd set up all these appointments with me, like, every hour, kind of doing estimates. But you'd go in there, you get statements of what they're paying on credit processing now, and then you have to figure out what you could save them on. And then you'd have to try to sell them, trying to get them on different credit card processing.

So I'm curious, as an employee, Mike Andes, as an employee, what was that experience like for you? Did you like having some direction, some guidance? Do you like a little bit of a, you know, like, structure, or did you kind of just wish, like. I wish I could do it my own way because I feel like I could do something better. What was your experience working beneath somebody else?

I actually didn't feel like that. Like, I know some people are like, oh, I could never work for. I didn't feel like. I felt like I was a good employee. And I think the thing that I thought about a lot, though, was, like, especially with the gym, because that was my first real, like, full time, really enjoyed. I was there for several years as a personal trainer. And so every time I went into work, though, I would always ask myself, like, if. If I own this place, what would I do? And so I really started, like, I thought I was a pretty good employee. I wasn't the type of guy. Like, I was only a business owner. Like, that's all in my mi. I wasn't really like, that Like, I knew I loved business and stuff like that, but because I was going the medical field and that was my goal, like, my whole teenage, you know, in school, career in college, it wasn't in my mind actually to have a business. So, like, even though that I think that some of those skills were there, it was a matter of I was going to medical school, so I had to get a job. And so I thought I was a pretty good employee. Yeah, I have to talk to my manager and stuff. But I definitely felt like when I would go to places, the thing that would be annoying is if I. If I had an idea and it was not even voice. If I voiced, it wasn't even, like, addressed. It was just like, went into the ether. Like, the credit card processing and the insurance was like, I had ideas for marketing and, like, how we could do this better. I was like, no, like, this is the way we've done it for like 50 years. Because state Farm, like, we know how to what we're doing. Like, you probably do. But, like, at least give me why this won't work or let me go test it out. So sometimes that was a little bit constricting, I guess, but, yeah.

Feeling like your feedback was going nowhere.

Yeah. Or at least just tell me why it's not going to work. Like, I don't mind if it's a bad idea. Like, but if I have an idea, I'd like to know whether it's good or bad or test it. And maybe it's good. Maybe I'm just, you know, lucky, you know?

So you kind of wanted to know the why behind the systems.

Yeah. Or even just just be able to test the ideas that I had. Right. And so I love marketing, I love sales. And that's why, like, insurance, I did half decent on, and then I did half decent in the credit card processing. I like talking to business owners. That was a lot of fun. I kind of looked at it as almost like shadowing. I would shadow for the medical field, like doctors and stuff like that. But when I did the credit card processing, I got to go into, like, all sorts of restaurants and salons and like, every single retail establishment office you could possibly think of. Taxi services, I got to see their profit and loss statements.

Oh, wow.

So I literally probably saw hundreds, if not thousands of P&Ls from industries all over the place. And I love that. That was like, literally like shadowing in entrepreneurship for me. I didn't realize at the time. Cause again, I still thought I was gonna go to medical school. I still. I Thought this was like, hey, a short term sales gig that I'm good at, I can make good money on and then move on. But that was, that was pretty cool. Looking back at it now, I haven't even thought about that until right now. That like, that was like the fact that I saw profit and loss statements and like cash statement of cash flows and balance sheets from all these different industries was actually kind of a cool experience.

Yeah, you were kind of getting a peek behind the curtain early on.

Yeah, dude. And it's crazy cause like the way that I was strictly sales and I didn't have to do the first, which was setting up the appointment like that they, that's the hardest sales position, just setting up the appointment. I already had a confirmed appointment coming in. I was the closer. Right. So but when I came in, they had to like the people who pre qualified them made sure they had their bank statements, made sure they had their profit and loss statement, their balance sheet, like the whole nine. So when I came in like I got to see the whole financial snapshot of their business. And it's cool because I probably like not probably like at least a few hundred in our local community of businesses. Like I'll still go and like go to the restaurant and like I'll know the owner. I kind of know where they're at financially. Like it's kind of fun. So it's, it was a cool experience.

Awesome. Another thing I was kind of wondering was why not just work for someone else? Like most of us are doing like 90% or you know, most Americans are just working for someone else. Why not keep up with that? At what point were you like, I've got a plan and I want to do my own thing. Why not just get a job and grind?

Yeah. Like honestly is somewhat a necessity starting out because like I said, hey, I'm not going to go to medical school. That's not, I'm not going to do that. And it's like the only thing at that moment because I had already just kind of like started to go part time with the personal training thing at the gym. And I didn't really want to do that like full time long term, like, because I, I felt like I had more skills beyond just a personal trainer because I had basically done all sorts of like surgeries by that point and everything in Africa. So like personal training was like just a paying the bills while I was going through school. So I didn't want to do that full time. The only other skill I had was mowing lawns. Like like, if you look at me when I was 18, like, basically my call, like, dropped out of college. I don't really have a lot of really useful skills outside of medicine and, like, biology and chemistry. It's like, what am I gonna go do? So, honestly, out of necessity, I was like, oh, I. I got time. Like, I'm just gonna start my lawn care business thing, I guess. And at the time, the owner of the gym, Anthony, I was like, man, you know, I love golf. Like, why don't you start this thing called Augusta Lawn Care, and we'll. We'll dress up in these, like, the white caddy suits, and that'll be, like, our uniform. And he's like, oh, that's a great idea. So. Oh, let's go. So that's why I started. It wasn't like, this grand vision of what I wanted to do in life. It was never that way, because I truly believed until literally 18 years old that I was gonna become a medical doctor. Like, that's the only thing I had in my brain. And reading books and going to classes and the whole nine. So starting a business was not, like, the thing for me, even though it was. I was the guy, you know, selling golf. Golf balls that were in the water, selling candy at school, all that stuff. That was all throughout.

So, yeah, well, I mean, you got to understand that you're. I mean, I hear your explanation, but I refuse to accept it, because most of us at age 18, we didn't have a resume built out. We didn't have job experience, life experience, and so to say, like, hey, I just. All I knew how to do was lawn care. And. And so I knew that's what I had to do. The people I hear on the. On the comments are saying, like, I can't work for somebody else. That's not you. You were fine working for somebody else. Why not just build your resume and just work on finding another job in some other field and building off that? Why not do that?

Well, like, I didn't have parents or, like, a mentor that was like, you got to be a business owner. Like, it's the best thing in the world. And I really hadn't tapped into, like, social media or YouTube or anything like that at that point in terms of business. So it definitely wasn't like, oh, I've got to do this thing. I really felt, even a couple years into. Into starting my business, I would potentially still become an executive at a another company, like, because I went after finishing medical school, because I'd always thought, like, getting out of Kind of my family's financial issues was going to be going to school. And so being that I was 18 years old, still really young, but had my bachelor's degree, I was like, well, the next natural step is I should go get my master's because I don't know what I'm doing. So I figured, hey, I'll get my mba, my master's in Business Administration at night, and I'll do this lawn care thing on the side, and then during the mornings, I'll do the training thing. So I was kind of doing all three. And I still, like, got. I got offers to work at Amazon, Boeing and Microsoft because they're close to us. And so they'd come up and, you know, basically just pitch everyone in the. In the class to. To work for them, because the evening class, you had to have experience of some sort. So fortunately, I could say, like, I had years of business experience because the lawn thing, and I actually had an entity structure that could say, hey, this is an llc. And all the rest of it. So able to get in the program that typically all of them were older. They either had businesses or they were already executives. So that was pretty cool. But I already had job offers. Like, I was considering, like, going and doing my. Doing something else or someone else. I think I would have been a good employee. I do believe that. And I don't think that, like, I could only busy be a business owner. I think now it'd probably be difficult to go back. Um, very difficult, I think, to, like, have to work with someone that I hated, someone that I didn't get along with or not have my ideas heard or at least acted on or told, give me some feedback on my ideas. That would be painful, but I think I'd be a good employee, man.

I really do.

I think so, too. And I think if Amazon or Boeing came up to most people, they'd be like, yes, this is a dream job. And when those. When those people came down and talked to you, you were like, I'm just gonna keep grinding and do the lawn care.

Yeah. At the point, though, like, as I was doing the MBA and they would come in and do their presentations, and then I would look at the salaries, because you can see salaries of, like, your professors. Right. If you go onto the website for the college and see what they're offering. So I was like, man, I make. Doing this lawn care thing now. I'm making more than my professors and, like, what they're offering me to do these jobs. Like, man, I could make that just mowing. Lawns. Like, why would I move down to Seattle? Like, I have my family up here. I'm still young, still living at my parents. So it's like, well, why would I move down there? And so I just kept doing the lawn care thing. By the second year of the mba, it was very clear to me that, like, you know, I was going to make more money. And like, I love this business thing. And so I kept going.

Gotcha. So you ran the numbers and you realized that what you were doing was totally fine, if not better.

Yeah, like the. I remember the college has a. On their website for the MBA program, the Evening MBA Emba, it's called. They have a graph projection of incomes of students that graduate from the program. And so I looked at that literally like every few weeks leading up to when I decided to leave school and just go all in. And it was like, man, like, I'm already making more than this. I'm just doing long care on the side. What if I could just go full time and cancel this? So it was, you know, obviously I'd already gone to the transition point of getting out of medical school, which is, you know, a big decision. But then dropping out of going out of the MBA and going into like full time mowing lawns instead of going and getting a career was another big decision. But I was like, look, the money, it started to make a lot of sense because that was my second year. We did almost 200,000 in revenue and it was just me and one employee. So, like, I was making pretty good money. And so that's when. That's why I went. The next year, we almost tripled in revenues because I went all in. We're going to go full time. I'm not doing the training thing anymore. We're just going to go all in.

But you were still doing Anytime Fitness. You're still doing personal training and all that as well.

Until the end of the second year. Yeah.

So what pans out with. So I think most of us know that you owned or owned Anytime Fitness franchise. So how does that come to be? How did you get the capital from that? Did you just. The lawn care thing is doing well. I'm just going to buy in Anytime. How did that pan out?

Yeah, so Anthony, the previous owner, he came out of the Navy and was able to get some really good franchise agreements with any type of. Back when they only had like, only had 1,000 or 2,000 clubs. Now they have like 5,000. They're a lot larger. But he got some really good deals. He had like five or six locations. I think up to seven. And so I hadn't really talked to him for a couple years because I left, started working in Augusta specifically, and I started rolling around this idea of franchising. And so one day I get a notification, because I have a notification at any business in Whatcom County. It goes for sale, I get a notification. And so it literally went up. And the next second I called him. Literally within one minute, I was standing in a nursery, Van Windergen's nursery on Portaway, and Blaine standing in the checkout, and it comes in. And I immediately called him, and he's like. He picked up. He's like, I expected to hear from you, but not that fast. That was his first line to me. And I said, yeah, I want to buy it. I said. And he's like, we're going to make it happen. And I'm like, I don't know if I have enough money. It's like, we're gonna make it happen. And that was just the way Anthony was. And I still see a lot of characteristics from him and the way he led and was a manager and an owner in what I do, because I obviously was. He was kind of my first boss figure in my mind. And so. But when. When he's like, yeah, we're gonna make it happen, we're gonna make it work. So basically what he kind of did is he did not lend me the money to do the down payment because you need 10% down. So I bought it for 500 grand, so you gotta put $50,000 down. I didn't have. I had 50,000, but it would have, like, taken all of my ca. And so I was just honest with him, and he's like, hey, what we'll do is you pay that, and I know you're going to be really low. And we'll make sure that we have the. What's called the remit, or like, the dues for an entire month of membership will come out, like, the next day when you take ownership. So you'll be able to kind of get your cash reserves back. And so, yeah, that. We made it work. So, yeah, I purchased that and we. I still own it today. I have a general manager now. That is some profit sharing because we were going to sell. I was going to sell it to them, but it didn't work out with their financing, so I just made the general manager, and it's still running today.

Is. Is that the inspiration to do the franchise with the lawn care, or was that it's all coincidence?

It was flipped, right? So like, I knew at that point, I was like, hey, somewhere down the road, I wasn't expecting within a few years, I was expecting like five or ten years down the road to franchise Augusta. I said, hey, like the year before I bought it, it was the entrepreneur magazine, ranked at number one franchise out of every franchise available. So I'm like, look, if I can learn from the best here and go to their training, see what kind of support they give, how they do their back end dashboard and all the rest of it, I'll have a good understanding of how we can set ours up and learn from the best. Because there's plenty of really bad franchises out there. And so I had already worked in the system, knew their systems, but to actually then, then see the behind the scenes and how they ran from a franchisor perspective, which is a completely different business than landscaping is the franchising side of things. So being able to learn that from them. And honestly, as I look back on it, it gives me confidence when as like right now, you want to do everything possible for the franchisees and you want to support them as much as you possibly can, you want to give back them as much as you can, you want to give them resources and discounts and all the rest of it, but you could literally just give and give and give and you would just lose every penny. You would never be able to make it profitable. And so what is actually the most helpful thing with Anytime Fitness is, yes, learning their training and their systems and procedures and how they interacted and supported. But honestly, the level of support that they gave, I can benchmark against knowing that they're leading in the industry versus what we give. And I feel like we do a much, much better job in terms of support one on one with the franchisees. So it gives me a little bit of confidence because otherwise I would just not know what the standard is. Like, am I supposed to literally have every single one of them that can text me all night long? Am I supposed to hop on a call every single second they like. I haven't talked to someone for Anytime Fitness for over two years and that's the level of support that I've got. And I've not been to any conferences and I feel very disassociated with them. And so I, I know that's a negative, that's something I can learn from the negative side, from them being a franchise or even though they're really, really successful, just how to support the franchisees more.

Wow, so you knew before you even Joined Anytime Fitness that you were gonna franchise this whole Augusta thing.

Yeah, I knew eventually I had already set at the team meetings that that was the goal. I already told that offsite means, hey, we're gonna franchise this thing and we're gonna get to 100 locations and all that stuff. I just didn't expect it as fast as we ended up doing it. And I mostly did it quickly because I knew that people like Lee and Liz wouldn't stick around if I just had one location. Their level of talent would just. They would stay with me for a couple more years and I'd lose them. Not because they were unloyal or anything or I couldn't pay them enough. It was just a matter of, like, they needed harder things to work on. And so I wanted very badly. The best thing in my mind of being self employed is the ability to choose who you work with and be able to hire and work with people you want to. And I wanted to work with highly skilled and people that really wanted to get ahead and were really, really good at their job. And I didn't want to work with just like, you know, people just coming in and out every three months. Like, I wanted to work with people that are really good and create a place where they could grow into. And so that's when we eventually pulled the trigger. Faster than we thought. But going into Anytime Fitness, the main reason why was to get experience and skill. There was no desire to own a gym at the time. Being younger, it was definitely like kind of an ego thing at first, but now it's like, it's not an inconvenience, but it's more a matter of like, I've got what I need from the club and that's why I was going to sell it earlier this year. Ended up just basically having a manager so I can show up once a week for 15 minutes. But yeah, it was definitely the goal for the gym was to learn the franchise model.

So what are people around you like, like your friends, your family, your co worker? What are they thinking when you're shelling out all of your capital into buying an Anytime fitness? When you're trying to run another business already, are they supporting you and how important was their support or lack of support to you?

I know it's like what people always say, like, they don't care, other people think, but, like, I had crossed that bridge already, right, Because I had to, like, drop out of medical school, which my entire family, friends, coworkers, peers, had always thought that's what I was going to Become. So for me to drop out of that. I basically kicked everyone's, like, thoughts of me in the face because I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna go mow lawn instead of going becoming a surgeon. What Everyone had thought of me for, you know, five, six years because they knew I was ahead in school. They knew I started college really young. Like, that was the thing. And I was absorbed in it. So, like, everywhere I was, like, I was the kid with, like, skeletons and muscle systems on my wall and watching surgeries. It was, like, my pastime. So I had already got past that. Like, what do people think about me and what do they think about my decisions? And my parents are incredible when it comes to. They never put pressure on me to do anything, including going to school young. They specifically actually sat me down. Like, hey, just so you know, we're not pressuring you to go to school young. You not need to do this. Like, if you want to, that's up to you. But we are not pressuring. And they never did, ever. And so. And we never even talked about it. Like, it wasn't even a big thing that was going to school really young. Like, now I think, like, if I was a parent and my kid was 13, going to college, I'd be like, I want to know what they did every single day and make sure they were safe. And, like, we never even talked about it. It was super normal. And I never felt weird because that's just how they operated. So when it came to the business stuff, like, even to this day, they kind of know, like, hey, I'm gonna do my own thing, and I don't care. Like, I care about them, but I don't care about what they think, and I don't care what anybody thinks. When it comes to the decisions and it comes to business, I have to live with the decisions. And so I really don't care what people think. And. And at the first, when people give their opinions, their goal is usually to help you. They love you, and they just want to give their opinions and help you do better. But what they have to realize is that for someone that has goals and ambitions and dreams, like, the last thing, if you actually love them, is to try to cap those things. Like, you'd rather let them run and get hurt than just box them up or chain them down. And so my parents, hats off to them, they've never questioned. They, hey, we support you. And my mom's always a little more conserved. Like, honey, don't make sure you spend too much money. How much debt Are you in, like, are you sure you can do all of this? But they were just phenomenal parents, honestly. And that's where I think it was built into me. Just not really care what other people think. And just once I had a decision I was just gonna go for it. And people think that's good. Some people thought I was really smart when I was going to college. Other people thought I was, you know, I was losing out my childhood and whatever. And honestly, I spent less time in school than probably most high schoolers did during that same. They're the same age. Right. Because I was going to college, go to college like three or four hours a day. I wasn't losing my. My childhood. I would go play golf for like four hours a day and work out and everything. So people just have their own opinions, whatever, but after they see that you don't care, they stop saying stuff. And that's a great spot to be because they know they can't penetrate. And so it takes a while to get there. But.

Okay, that's a. That's an awesome answer. I'm gonna shift gears actually and kind of talk about P4P for a little bit.

Cool.

So I, I used to work at a. I was a bicycle mechanic for a long time and my younger years.

Really?

Yeah, I actually worked at a shop and we got paid a piece rate.

Okay. Yeah.

Or piece work, I think what's called. So you've heard of it?

Yep. So is it like buy the. So if you were fixing a. A bike, would it be like, hey, if you do the disc brakes, you do, you get $10. Is it like that sort of. Or is like a percentage of what you build out to the customer?

It's not, it's not a percentage. It's a flat rate. So per service, you got a. You got a base wage and it was. I think, I think at the time I was making like $3 base wage. Let's go $3 an hour, base wage. But then if you fixed a flat tire, you got 50 cents and if you did a tune up, you got $5. And that was just added on throughout the day. So the more work you got done, you just got this on top of it. So it wasn't exactly what P4P is, because it wasn't an either or. It was. You were going to get your $3 an hour, but you could make more by getting more stuff done.

Got it.

So I was wondering if you had heard of this, if you had an opinion about this, if this shaped your P4P system.

Or yeah, P4P is not new, right? Like, everyone's like, you're trying to make it like you made. I'm not like, it's, it's. It's not new. Piecework, piece rate, pay for performance. Performance pay is a term. Most people knew already. What P4P, though, is, is specifically for home improvement businesses that bill by the budgeted hour, right? When you sell time. And so, like, for example, the bike shop, they probably would pay someone. Someone would pay by the service, right? A little more difficult to implement. Like what we call P4P, because not per time, right? Whereas if they were charging by the hour to the customer, this P4P would probably make more sense. In home improvement, most the time our jobs revolve around some sort of budget hours. Even if you have a flat rate, you're baking in a certain number of hours on that job. And so if the crew can get done more efficiently, there's more profit to be had and it can be shared with the employees. And so it's not new. I did not make it up. I read lots and lots, just about every single book you can possibly put your hand on about piece rate, about piecework, about any other term similar to P4P. I've read it. But there was never a system or software or technology that would make that useful and simple for us to be able to calculate with Precision less than 1 minute per day per employee out in the field. And that's what we were going for. And so that's why we created the software and everything. But P4P is not new. It's not exciting. It's nothing revolutionary about it. It's just how do we simplify it for home improvement businesses and then create software to make it where it doesn't take lots of time to calculate? Because we were doing, you know, Lonnie made all sorts of Excel spreadsheets, and we use that for years before we actually did the software.

So when I worked at that shop, working for piece rate, getting paid like that, first of all, most of the people who worked there didn't make a lot of money. And it was because it was all college guys, right? So let's be real.

The people who were making good money were the people who were doing the worst work because there was lots of corner cutting, because they were incentivized to get stuff done quickly. And the people who took the time and just tweaked the break a little bit better and just centered things a little bit more and just, just really cleaned the bike and oiled it and did just all the stuff you're supposed to do and didn't cut the corners. Those people were probably making the least next to the lazy people. The lazy people and the detail oriented people made the least. But the people in the middle who were just like, let's get it done, doesn't have to be perfect, get it close. Those people are doing the best. And I wonder if you have some opinion about how you, how you make sure that people on P4P are doing the customer service stuff and going above and beyond and like making sure that they're taking care of the customers. Is there a way that you've kind of thought about that and made sure that that's not getting missed?

Yeah. First off, I think people assume right off the bat that if you switch off of owl and go to P4P that people are going to go faster and they're going to cut corners. And if someone's money motivated, that is true. However, if someone does not have an eye for detail or they just simply do not care about the customer, if they're on hourly, they're going to do the same exact thing. So it's about training and finding a person that cares for the customer is the first step. Because I don't care if you're getting paid by the hour, you're just going to take longer and not grease the chain. You're still just going to take longer and not do those finer details for the customer. You're not doing that for money. Whether you're on hourly, you're doing that for the customer. And so that might be my first thing. Because a lot of people go to quality as the reason why they can't switch to pay for performance. Like, oh, well, everyone's gonna go fast and break things and mess stuff up and you know, put the bike chain on backwards or whatever it might be. And so, but, but you do have to have checks and balances for the people who are money motivated and are gonna try to cut corners. And that's why quality has to be a part of that. Whether it be, you know, for a bike shop, that's gonna be harder. Because a mess up on a bike shop could potentially mean someone getting hurt. But more likely it's the small things like not greasing the chain that will kind of slide through the cracks and not get detected. And no one's gonna like complain about it necessarily. It's just because it's going above and beyond. So that's where training is gonna come in play when it comes like the home improvement business. But also incentivize the opposite, which is when people do go above and beyond like incentivize it, build it into the program. So locally if someone gets a five star review on Google and they were on the job, they get 50 bucks cash last. Just last week we gave $260 at one of our team meetings in cash to one person because they got online reviews. Also incentivizing them to get new customers. So they got, they talked to the neighbors, they got information. So how do I incentivize the opposite? So instead of concerning so much about the quality side, which is important and we have checks and balances for that in P4P but also like what about for the person who does actually care about the customer? How do I make sure that they get compensated for that? Because that's not a normal behavior for us to really care about the customer and make sure they greased the chain and asked them about how they were doing on the trails last week. That's not innate in most employees.

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So you think so part of pulling away from that is that training is really, really essential. Making sure they're trained properly and understand quality matters is really important training.

And just like some things you can't teach or train and that is caring for a customer. Right? Like sometimes people just cannot be trained that like they, they simply do not care about anyone outside of their, you know, the three feet around them. And so to talk to someone who's a stranger and care about their landscaping or talk to some Joe Blow walking to a bike shop you've never met, like there's a certain level of you cannot train that to care for this person and want to help them and make them happy. And a lot of times those people just have not had customer service experience.

But it's just amazing to me. And we were talking about on the franchisees group, it's like it's not about necessarily Whether or not P4P works or not, we know it does, but it's finding someone who actually wants to make more money and actually cares for the customer to make sure they do a good job while they're working efficiently. So that's sometimes a challenge, just finding the people. The right person though inside of P4P will love it. The wrong person inside of PVP will try to take advantage of cutting corners. You'll have to fire them. Or two, they will simply not care about making money. They will not be money motivated and they'll never make more than they would otherwise on hourly. So what you're going to do is hopefully attract the highest performers because they enjoy and thrive in an environment where they get paid. The paid more, the harder they work and the more efficiently and more higher highest quality they can produce. And their compensation is tied to that.

What do you say to employees who are interested in getting their base Pay raised in P4P so they get hired on it their hourly they're making P4P and they say I need an increase in base pay. Is there ever a reason why you should do that? And what would be the pros and cons of doing that?

Yeah, so base pay in my mind is unfortunately, and I'll get a lot of flack on the comments for this one. By raising base pay, all you're doing is giving more money to your lowest performers. By moving the base pay, you don't not you're not giving more money to your highest performers, you're giving it to the lowest performers. So when you take that step back and realize that you never want to touch base pay if you can possibly do it now, the reason you have to have base pay be competitive is because when an employee, a prospective employee, is willing to apply, that's the thing they're looking at because they're not used to what PVP means. And most entry level, especially laborers, are simply looking at what's dollars per hour. So unfortunately, like in the perfect world, we would be able to pay more in P4P to our highest performers if there was like no base pay. It was just straight P4P. We would lose a lot of the lowest performers very quickly and we'll give more money to the highest performers. But you can't do that because you're never going to be able to track them in. Even a good employee if they're entry level and a hard worker and could really Crush it on P4P, won't join your company if there's not the dependability of a paycheck and ultimately if they were so risk tolerant that they would take 100% commission on P4P without a base pay, they just go start their own business. They'd be an entrepreneur. So if you're actually trying to attract employees, they need a certain level of dependability and confidence knowing they're going to get a paycheck and they at least pay their bills. And so you have to have it high enough to attract talent, but low enough to. With the delta between what they make on P4P and what they're making on base pay is substantial enough. If it's like a dollar an hour, it's like 80 bucks a paycheck. Am I really going to push a little harder? Am I going to skip the second smoke break? Am I going to, you know, not make sure I don't. I'm not on my phone all day long. Probably not for 80 bucks. But if the delta between that is $500, and instead of making $17 or $18 an hour on base, I'm making 24, $25 on P4P, you better believe they're going to be looking at their notes the night before, making sure they're more efficient, making sure that the person they're working with is also efficient up. And so it just ultimately aligns the goals of the employee and the employer. And that is be efficient, get things done. But also you need to have a high enough quality to where you're not going to get a callback and you're not going to have a customer that's complaining. And then to make sure that there's not the do as good as we can to get by, we incentivize the alter the complete opposite, which is when someone goes above and beyond, they get compensated well for that.

So what I'm hearing you say is that the only reason to have a high base pay is to attract new talent. Really? And I'm hearing almost no argument why you would for existing employees, change the base pay. If anything, that'd be detrimental. I don't hear any, any pros to why you would raise base pay for somebody who's been with you.

Aside from attracting new talent, There is no benefit in my mind. Since we started P4P, it's been like what, four, probably four or five years at the local shop. We have not raised base pay since now. The average wage has gone up more than 50% though. And so the challenging part is just getting people in the door. High performers, though, once they're there, they and they figure out the system. Usually after three to six months, they can make way more. There's some made over 30, $30 an hour last week mowing lawns. Right. And so.

But yeah, the downside is attracting talent, getting them in the door when you have a lower base pay. And if someone came to me like I want to raise, I would, I would just be like hey look, first of all, I have never had someone ask me for a raise entry level position on P4P. Now when you're paying a manager, they, if they don't have the opportunity to make PVP because they're, they're doing non revenue producing tasks, that's when you're going to have to figure out wage increases or bonuses or whatever. But when it comes to entry level employees, I look and say, hey look, Mr. Jones, Mr. Jones, that's a customer. Let's just say Bob. Bob comes to me, he's like I want to raise, I need more money. My family's going through X, Y and Z. I say look, last, last pay period. You earn $19.50 per hour. Now Joe over here, he earned $27.50 per hour. Maybe you would talk to Joe and ask him what you can do to be more efficient. And by the way, Joe's done that for the past four months consistently. He's never hit base pay. Maybe you go learn with him. Maybe we'll team you up with him and just watch how he performs, watch how he gets to work. He jumps right in his truck when he gets to a job site. He has a plan already. He's not just walking around for 20 minutes, you know, lollygagging and figuring out what equipment he forgot back at the shop. So those are the type of activities that you should be doing. And maybe hey, by the way, here's some YouTube videos do you want make you more efficient too? How to cut, trimmer line, how to spool it faster, how to edge correctly. These are all things that you can do to make more money. And so to this day I've never had a field worker ask for more base pay because they know what my response is. And it's hey, look on the leaderboard, type p4pssoftware.com youm can see how much everyone's making per hour. See that? 27, 28, 29. That can be you just go figure out what they're doing differently than you. That's what I would would say if someone approached me about base pay being increased.

Awesome. So I'm Bob in this scenario and I. And you're Joe. Yes, and I come to you. And I say, hey Joe, I need, I'm, I'm struggling. Tough times are tough. My kids in the hospital, I need more money. What are you doing? How can I do it as Joe? Has Joe been pretty helpful to Bob or have you found that Joe's just like, I'm not giving you my secret sauce.

This is my, like, I think that was my concern at the beginning too because P4P is very individualistic, right? And I was like, man is going to really hurt the team culture and things like that. But if Joe is working with Bob, it is in Joe's best interest to make sure Bob works efficiently. Because they're splitting P4P. So if I put them together on a route or on a project, he's going to get trained via osmosis and Joe is going to want Bob to work faster and be more efficient. So he's not going to hold anything back. Because now how hard and fast and efficiently Bob works is going to affect Joe's pay. And Joe's a high performer. He doesn't want to cut because he's now working with Bob. So he's gonna make sure Bob has all the skills he has to make sure he's efficient.

But then Joe's like, why do I always get stuck with the Bob's of the team? Because I feel like the boss is penalizing me for being the best.

That's where, that's where two things. One, if someone like was high perform and they said that, I'd say, look.

You learn how to be really efficient at doing X, Y and Z work, job, physical work. The next step in your career is figuring out how to take what you know and duplicate that and replicate that to other people, that's what's going to put you for promotion. That's what's going to make you a manager. Type level of talent is to be able to take what you know and give that to someone else. And how do you take Bob and make him from 19 to 24? If you can figure that out, you become much more valuable to a company because you can replicate yourself. You can only be one great all star. But if you're able to figure out and have the skill to train other people how to do that, you become infinitely more valuable to the company. And when there's a promotion, that's the person who will get it because that, that person can. They might be able to make $10 per hour above base pay for the company by themselves. But if they can train 10 other people how to do $5 more per hour above base pay. That's now $50 of value to the business. They'll get promoted.

Awesome. Great answer.

Checking my notes and switching gears, I have some questions just about general business stuff here. What's more important to you? Customer service or marketing?

From a business. Business owner's perspective.

Yeah, just general business question.

Oh, man, I'm hate for this. I think marketing. The reason is because you can't have customer service without having a customer. And so if you don't have any customers, you don't get any customers if you don't have good marketing. And so I can't like, everyone's like, I gotta have the best, the best service in the world. And I'm gonna. Let's just say you're a doctor, right? Like I'm the best doctor in the entire world. Okay, great. But you only have one patient every single month. You're only gonna help 12 people in the entire year. You can be the best doctor, the best at what you do, but you're only gonna get 12. And you can refine the processes and make it incredible when they come in, there's like a puff of air and all the rest of it. You can make it perfect, but you're only gonna help 12 people. I'd rather focus on getting 1,000 customers and maybe I lose 10 of them because they're not happy with my service. But the net out is I still help 990 people. And so if I'm gonna focus so much on customer service that it limits the impact that I can have in terms of volume of people, that's where I start to question it. So it's not to say that customer service is not important, but you must have marketing to have the volume to where customer service matters. And if you actually look at impact for your business on a community, creating jobs, helping, if you actually believe that your service is better than the competition and you're doing a service to the customers, the best form of customer service is doing business with them. If you actually believe you mow lawns better than Joe Blow down the street, the best form of service you can do is make sure he doesn't go with Joe Blow and he goes with you. So getting a customer comes prior not is not as superior, but in terms of.

Just the.

What's the word? The sequence. The sequence of it is important. You've got to get the customer in order to have great customer service. You have great customer service that will never get you good customers if you don't have marketing. So you get marketing first get customers, then focus on customer service, and then that will be a compounding effect. But you cannot have great customer service and expect that randomly you're going to customers without great, great marketing, which is going to tell the message of your great customer service to potential customers.

But isn't customer service the basis of referrals? And that ends up being its own marketing.

True. However, the question is, like, it is a form of marketing. You're exactly right. Like, referrals is a form of marketing. So it's just a matter of I've still got to tell a good marketing. When we say marketing, I think story. So I've still got to tell a good story to my customer in order for you to refer to someone else. If I don't have a good logo, if I don't have a good brand, if I don't have a good website for them to refer someone else to, well, again, what's the point of the referral? Yeah, this guy mows my lawn and I forget his name. I'll try to remember to tell him to call you or something. That's not good marketing. Right. Good marketing is, I have a brand, have a great website, I have a logo. I have a story that I've told the customer, whether it be through the brand name, whether it be from my website, whether it be for my uniforms, my professionalism to where now I'm worthy of a referral. And when they do that, it actually converts. And so it's a chicken and egg game. Like, I cannot have customer service without customers. So get the customers, then get maniacal about customer service. Everyone talks about Amazon and they say, you know how Jeff Bezos was all about the customer? Like, let's just rewind the tape bit and realize that for the first 10 years, they lost money like crazy. And the only thing he cared about was getting more customers. He did not care about customer service. He cared about how do we get as many books in the hand of our customers as possible? And if we got to take a loss on that, we will, because we only care about getting more customers now, then we have something to figure out in terms of customer service. But you've got to have the marketing right before. It's not any better. It just has to be right before in terms of the sequence of events.

All right, this is kind of a jar question, but it's on my mind here. When have you not. I don't want an Augusta example here. Just in general. When have you seen leadership and been really impressed with it and what stood out to you about this great leadership experience.

Okay, so I'll go broad and then I'll go more narrow. So I'd say in what inspiring to me from a leadership broadly is whenever there's battle and the leader runs toward it, that is in my mind the epitome, and it will cover a lot of mistakes that the leader makes, is that when there's trouble, they run towards instead of running away from it. You can think all sorts of negative things about a president, about a congressperson, about a business owner, about any sort of leader, your parent, whatever it might be, your spouse, any sort of form of leadership. You can think of a lot of negative things and see all their weaknesses. But if in the time of battle that is bad things happening, they run towards it and they're with you. That's the main thing. And so, you know, you can look at things like 9, 11, when it happened, whether you're a Democrat or Republican, you stood up and cheered when George Bush walked out on in New York for the Yankees game and threw out the first pitch because at that moment it didn't care. That was our leader and he stood up and he said something. And there's a reason why presidents stand up after big events like that and talk to their talk immediately, if fast, as quick, as fast as possible to the, to the public. And yes, it's a PR stunt, but the reason is because leadership, you've got to be visible in a time of battle. You'll be visible in a time when there's conflict. And so leadership in my mind is leadership is determined by the person that runs towards battle instead of running away from it. And so when I go, when I zero down on business leadership, I look at the one that always pops into my mind immediately is Elon Musk on the factory floor during 20, 15, 16, 17, when no one thought they were going to take over the world or all this now is all like, oh, yeah, they're such a great company. Like back then they were the most shorted stock in the, in the country. And they're, they were losing money and he was, he just had flushed all his money down the toilet. He just got from PayPal and he's out on the floor working on the, on the cars, on the factory floor. That to me is why over the past five to 10 years, you've seen their employees galvanize and work the crazy hours because they, okay, if our leader can do it, we can do it. And so if our leader is willing to run towards battle when there's stuff that goes on. And it's going to happen in every organization, whether it be political, family, business, whatever it is. Whoever runs towards battle, in my mind, is the leader. And if you go way back to like caveman days, like the leader was expected, like, hey, we are going to admonish you, we're going to respect you, you're usually going to be rich, you're going to, you know, back in the bunch of wives and all the rest, we're going to take care of you. But if you're our leader, when they come and fight us and there's something coming and battling us, you better be the one at the front that was expected of them. And so when it comes to business, when it comes to politicians, everyone will hate on them getting a lot. But you have to realize their responsibility. And this is why we really hate them if they don't step up in the moment of crisis. It is their responsibility in the moment when everyone else is running to be the one at the front. And that's why they get paid. That's why people make billions and billions of dollars as the CEO of the company. Because when everything is falling apart and that the Model 3 is not working well and we're losing money, we're a few weeks away from bankruptcy, I'm on the floor and I'm sleeping inside the closet. That's Elon Musk. That's a leader. And so. Yeah, that's a long answer.

So a leader quite literally leads the charge. Quite literally should be at the front.

Yeah, absolutely. I think in times of peace is when it's actually sometimes hardest for a leader to make, for people to make sense in the society we live in that wants equality so badly. It's hard to make sense why the leader gets paid more. It's hard to make sense why the leader gets the perks, why the leader gets to be on tv, whatever it might be. But in a time of war is when real leadership has to be exemplified. Otherwise the whole organization falls apart. And so anyone can lead a great company or a great company, everyone, anyone can lead a successful company when everything's going well. They just didn't ipo, there's money and people are getting stock options, the stock price is going up and the economy is doing well. We just doubled in revenue. But true leadership is when that flips. And that's when you usually get to see who, who is really a leader, who is going to be the CEO that actually turned the company around. And then who are the people that are just along for the ride. And there's a lot of those people.

All right, so team culture is something that you talk about. You've been talking about. What is something about the team culture at Augusta that you're especially proud of.

That we don't get complacent about it because it's never going to be what I want it to be. There's really no pride in having culture, in my opinion. It's like, people like. And I used to use the word culture, too, so I'm guilty of it. But, like, really think about what culture is like. The American culture, it's built over hundreds of years, and it's hard to change. And, you know, it's our culture in certain parts of the country or certain parts of the world to operate a certain way, and it takes decades, if not generations to change that. So when people are like, I'm going to change the culture of the company, like, be careful. Like, you're trying to change something that's probably ingrained into this company and then these individuals. So somehow we think that company culture, we, like, flipping a week or two. It's like, no, no, no, no. You're probably going to have to fire everyone, because if you want to start a new culture, good luck getting everyone to change. So in my opinion, the only thing that I can be proud of is that we're constantly trying to improve it. There's nothing really. I look at him like, oh, it's so great. Like, I don't get involved in the. Like, I'm not a big fan of, like, the victory laps. Right. We are not where we want to be at. I don't think our culture is where I want it to be at, and it never really will. Probably be the point, like, we nailed it. Never. And so I'm most proud of the fact that I look at it like, that way, and I've always looked at it that way. And if you do that when it's really, really bad and everyone's hating you, you won't feel as bad, because you've always been telling yourself, this is not where I want it to be at. And it's not perfect, and we're trying to make it better. And then when everyone's telling you it's amazing and we got, like, the best place to work in Whatcom county award and all that sort of thing in 2019, you also realize, like, great, that's fine. But it's. I see all the holes still, and I still, to this day, still see where we can improve. So the only thing I can be Proud of is that we constantly are working on it. And it's actually something I really generally do care about. And it'll never be perfect.

I wanted to talk about work life balance.

So it's no short answer.

It's no secret that you get a lot done. You get an awful lot done. How do you, Mike Andes.

Take care of work life balance? And how important is that for someone who's got so much on their plate, not just you specifically, but business owners who are putting in the hours?

Yeah. You know, I had from most standards, I would have no balance whatsoever. None. And so, but being deliberate about that and knowing why I'm doing that and being okay with it and wanting that is important.

Like, if I really wanted to have work life balance, and that was appealing to me, like, being off at a certain time, going to work at a certain time, not working on the weekends or whatever, I could do it. Like, I don't need to do this anymore. Right. Like, someone the other day was like, oh, you're like all this stuff and you're saying stupid comments. And I'm like, look, realize that if I just stop doing all my businesses, I could live off my real estate income. I don't have to do this every day. And so you have to realize I'm making the decision to do it. And that's a very liberating. And I'm very fortunate and privileged to do that. I don't have to go to work to put food on my table. Me going working tomorrow is not gonna make any impact on whether I can eat. So once you calibrate that and then realize that I am making the decision to push myself, push my body, push my brain, not get sleep and do these things and try to run optimally throughout my day to get more and more done is my decision. I made the bed like, I did that. So if I can't complain, you're never going to hear me talk about how tired I am or I didn't sleep last night, or, you know, I was up all night doing X, Y and Z. Never going to happen. Because I made the decision. And so I don't like when people complain about it. I don't think balance is something that should be achieved. Try to be a constant thing we think about, I think balance, we. We've so made it. And like, if you're on a seesaw, what everyone's trying to figure out is how do they get on the fulcrum? Right. And they're trying to balance on this balance on this fulcrum. Like, in the middle, you got to realize that a seesaw, how you actually make action is you get out of balance. You go from one side to the other, back and forth, back and forth. If you're trying to run, you actually are constantly falling. You're constantly out of balance. In order to make progress, I think in order to make progress in any area of life, you're gonna have to go out of balance for some period of time. You can't run forever, so you can't be out of balance forever. You've got to calibrate, you've got to rest, you've got to recover. But if you're going to make progress, you're going to have to push yourself and you're going to have to get out of balance. And so I'm a big believer in I go all in on one thing and I go all in on the other. It's very much like a seesaw. Like in. If you take the aggregate, it's imbalance, but in any one moment, it's completely out of balance. Instead of trying to balance on this thing in the middle, like, constantly judging my. Oh, I think people just judge themselves so much based on, oh, I'm working too much. I should be with my family, and there's their family. Oh, my goodness, I should be doing this at work. I should be trying to get ahead and make more payments on my mortgage. Like, they're constantly in this, like, beating themselves up when it's like, look, I'm going to be at work and be 110% at work. I'm not going to think about anything else but work. And then they need to go home, and they're like, I'm not gonna think about a single thing about what happened today and what happened at work. I'm just gonna focus on my kids, like, going back and forth in my mind and going all in on whichever direction is most beneficial for me and works well for me. And so it's something that's worked well for me and with my family. I don't check my phone if I can. You know, when I'm working out, like, I am working out. Like, I'm gonna be training for the Olympics. If I'm in business and I'm doing business stuff, like, that's all I'm thinking about. And so right now, when you look at the micro, like a day, like, hey, I'm going to. With my family, going to work with my family, someone that's in a job. But then you also got to step back and realize there's gonna be seasons of your life that you're gonna be out of balance. And so from, for me from 18 to 28, that 10 year period that I started, August at 18, 20 is still a couple years away. I'll be massively out of balance in the direction of business and making wealth. There will probably come a time not saying it's at 28 or 29, but like there will come a period where I over index towards family, wanting to get mar, have kids and all the rest of it and I will go all in on that.

But right now I'm out of balance in the macro but in the micro I'm trying to stay as balanced I possibly can be trying to get as much sleep as I can optimize things like that. But I don't think about balance at all.

So people who are, who are working the hours right now and they've got the family and they're trying to do other stuff, your advice is work hard, play hard, be at work and be at work and when you're at home, turn off the phone.

I don't, I don't, I don't recommend that. I think people need to figure out what works for them. That works really well for me, for other people. Regardless of whether how much ambition you have and money you make, you still want to get off at 5:00 every night and have dinner at 5:30 with your kids. And that's great. You should do that. You should take what I've just said and just delete it. Every single person that tried to tell you what works for them, it's an input. It's like, hey, that works for them. Great, maybe that works for me, maybe I can test that out. But you've got to figure out what works for you. Just listening to me or anyone else talk about what works for them is not going to like. Every, every physical, mental, spiritual and psychological person is different. So why would I listen to what works for you and think, oh it's going to work for me. You're completely different than me and so no one should listen to me like, oh that's, that's good. Oh that makes sense. Yeah, it makes sense for them, but not necessarily for you. So listening to this, no one should be like, oh that's icer do that. No, you should figure out what works for you. And I found that words, what has worked really well for me as a.

Business owner, how much like pr, community events, giving back should you strive for like you know, community stuff, having a float in the family Day parade, that kind of stuff. You see people doing that all the time, and that's like, their marketing or just having, like, presence in the community. How much of that do you subscribe to?

Oh, man, I could talk about for a really long time. I never talk about this stuff. First off, I think that most people do those things out of guilt and because they think that's what they're supposed to do. They don't do it because they want to. They don't do it because they actually have a passion for it. They're doing it because, like, oh, like, I should be doing that. Like, that is what is expected of me. Therefore, I must do it. That's the first thing I think. People like charity and philanthropy does not run on people that have giving hearts. It's based upon people who feel guilty for having wealth. That's what it is. They feel guilty when they see a child that's an orphan in Africa. And so they give money because they feel guilty. And it will appease that guilt knowing that they have 10 homes and four private jets. That's what most charity and philanthropy is built around. It is not about wanting to do good in the world. And that might just be, like, my tainted, twisted, jilted self thinking that, but that's just the truth. And so I think that most small business owners should get to the place where they want to give back and they actually want to make an impact, and then realize and ask yourself, like, what is the impact I want to make? And then ask yourself, what do I need to do in my business financially to make that happen? And some people are like, man, I want to build a school. I want to build an orphanage. I want to help my church do whatever. It's like, okay, great. Like, you're going to need some serious financial backing to do those things, so focus on that. Right? And so I'm not a big believer. Like, personally, I. Because I know how philanthropy works. I've worked. I've talked to several people that work in, like, the Red Cross and some other nonprofits, and they've told me all about the guilt stuff. They know how to play it. That's all their marketing is built around. They know exactly the psychology of why wealthy people give money. And I'm like, I am not going to be that person. I'm going to know from now what exactly I want to get done, where I want the money to go, and then I've got to figure out a plan to make the money to make that happen. But it's not going to Be because I get wealthy and then feel guilty and then want to give the money away. All right? And so long answer to say, I think you got to know why and what you want out of the philanthropy and giving back, whether it be for a local community, you know, Little League game. Like, I am not going to support that Little League game. If it's for marketing. It's just not. It's a bad move from marketing perspective. There's very little ROI on it. So either it's me marketing, or I'm giving this money, right? And so in my mind, it's very binary. Some people are like, well, if you do something good for everyone else and you're gonna like good pr, it's like, no, no, no. I'm either giving this money away, or this is a marketing move. And giving money away to people can be a marketing move, and that's just fine. But don't play it up as a PR move. Like, we have such good giving heart for giving back to the community. Like, no, you're just copying Toms that gave one pair of shoes away for every pair that they gave. And you're doing as a marketing stunt, you're not doing that because you care about water in Africa. And so part of it is, I've talked to the people who run these campaigns. I've also been to Africa and seen poverty and orphans and people in hurt, and they don't need some guy in New York feeling bad for them and so that he can sleep better that night. Giving a million dollars to some charity, that's not what they need.

But why not sponsor, like, a kids Little League team and put Augusta on their jerseys? Why not do that?

I would do that if there was, for me, the benefit. So, for example, okay, here we go. So let's say it's a thousand dollars. That $thousand dollars is $1000. Regardless. It can be spent on a lot of other things. So I have to ask myself is, where do I get the most joy and benefit and value in spending that thousand dollars? I can spend it on a marketing plan. I can spend it on hiring somebody. I can, you know, buy another microphone, or I can give it to a little league. Now, what's the value of all of those transactions? Is what I have to ask myself. And if I don't get more than $1,000 worth in return in value, whether that be a warm, fuzzy feeling, whether it be people seeing that the shirt in the back and then calling, and I make $5,000 in revenue every single transaction, regardless, if it's Philanthropy or buying a microphone, you are paying for value. And unfortunately, a lot of people will buy the do the thing for the little league not because there's marketing sense or not because they actually want to care about, but they feel obligated to and they feel bad about it. And I'm not going to give money away for that reason. Reason. And so people, you know, people know pretty well that are close to me, they're not going to get money if they ask for it. They're just not. Because there's not anything inside of me that gets value back in return besides guilt for not doing it.

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Awesome.

We know that you are very budget conscious. You've promoted the fact that you kind of live modestly and that it makes sense to cut corners in some aspects so that you're not spending as much. We know that that's something that you promote. Is there any instances or situations where you do splash out, you do kind of get the nice thing? Like, you know, on microphones, I don't cheap out. On trucks or trailers or blowers, maybe I don't cheap out there. Is there any areas where you would just would not cheap out and you would recommend just like getting the good stuff?

Yeah, it can ebbs and flows depending on where I'm at financially. Like, if we're in a really good spot financially, I'm probably more incline to buy my microphones knowing that in the long run it's going to pay off, right? Like it's going to make better content, et cetera.

And you know, in times when it's tough, it's like, hey, we can make the microphones work. But, you know, now I really, I spend a lot on food. I like to eat out. When I go out, eat out in really nice places. I don't think about the tab. I had this thing, it's the weirdest thing. I don't know if I heard it from somewhere or if I actually it came on myself. And I will never go out to eat with anybody or at any restaurant where I don't feel I can pick up the tab for everybody I'm with. And so that's kind of like my benchmark for, you know, going out to eat or partying. I don't party at all. I don't do alcohol either. So like going out to eat for me is a lot cheaper than what most people probably because I don't, I don't drink. But eating out, like I don't ever look at my budget for eating out because I only go out to usually two or three times a week. But I like to go where I like to go and I'll spend whatever I want. I'll get three appetizers or whatever, I'll eat half of it if I want. Like I'm very wasteful. But yeah, that's just eating out is probably the one thing that I do that's a little over the top. But other than that, ultimately, when you look at every single dollar you spend today, if you actually believe you're going to build a great business, it's going to have great returns, every single dollar you spend the day is worth a thousand in a few years. So if you actually look at that and you start running the Math on that $5 latte you start. And if that five dollar latte, if that was invested in my business, it's no longer a matter of 8 to 10%. Like in the stock market everyone talks about, if you just didn't use Starbucks, you'd get, if you're running a small business that has far better returns than 8 to 10%. If it's a well run business, that $1 is literally worth 15 or $20 in a matter of a few years. Like that's hundreds of percent return on that dollar. So every dollar I can save today is probably exponentially worth more down the road. And so if you can keep doing that over time, it only takes like 10 to 15 years to build really great wealth. It really does hard work being over indexed and out of balance towards that thing. If you, whatever you put your attention on, that's where money's gonna follow, right? If I put my attention on, you know, looking like a great physique, I'm gonna go get a gym membership, I'm gonna get better clothes, I'm gonna probably get Botox, I'm gonna get supplements, I'm gonna eat really well, whatever. If I put my attention on getting a relationship, like you're probably gonna date, you're gonna go on Tinder, you're gonna, you know, do whatever to figure out how to get a relationship. If that's really important to you. And if business and making money is really important to you, you're gonna go all in on that one thing and you're gonna dedicate yourself to it and you're gonna put all your eggs in that basket and all your time and energy.

See very quick returns. Alright. If you want to build a business over the next 40 years, yeah, you can probably do it in a very balanced like only work a few hours a day and do the four hour work week thing. But if you want to have fast gains, the same way that if you want to lose £40, you're going to have to go on a very intense diet and workout regime in order to see that those quick results. The same thing is true for business and building wealth. If you want to go ahead and go faster and build something really great in a shorter amount of time than 10, 20, 30 years, you better believe it's going to be all in lots of sacrifice. And you know, sleeping, if it means sleeping on a mattress, then that's what we do. If it's building this thing in the middle of my living room, that's what we do. So yeah.

So if I'm a small business owner, I'm a viewer of yours and I'm running a lawn care company, is there anything that you think I could, I shouldn't cut a corner on? Like maybe you don't need to grab a weed whacker from the pawn shop. Yeah, maybe that's something that's worth, that's an asset that's worth picking up new and getting, you know, the higher quality. Is there anything like that?

Yeah, like definitely equipment for now is I would buy new. My first stuff I bought used and you know, I paid for that dearly. But again, when you're first starting out, your time is worth less than it is when you've grown the company. So at the beginning it was okay if I went, if I something broke down or didn't work for a half a day because like my time wasn't worth very much. So as your, as your time, the value of your time increases. You can't have downtime. So things like trucks or equipment, computers, like I literally would never think about buying a new phone or a new computer even just a few years ago. But now I realize that if I can save half a second every time I pick up my phone, I'm gonna save literally hours every week. And now my hours are worth significant amount of money. Like it makes a lot of financial sense. Right. And so as your time gets More valuable things like equipment, having breakdowns, things not working correctly start to make a big difference. Literally the reason why we're sitting in this one bedroom apartment is because the place where I've lived for the past four or five years, I live in the closet. It's next to a gym, and there's a train that goes right by it and shakes the entire place. I had to come to the realization that me having just one or two nights.

A month that I could not sleep because of a train or someone banging around the gym was now costing me more than the rent on this one bedroom apartment because it would reduce my, my efficiency. It make me grouchy, angry. I'd have a few days where I couldn't sleep because of that going on. And it was just my, my time is now worth enough to literally pay. You know, I rent this, I would otherwise be renting this out. So like, it's probably worth fifteen hundred dollars a month to me, but it is worth two days extra of efficiency for me.

Now you've earned the right to sleep. Now you're successful enough where you're allowed to sleep a sound night of sleep.

Yeah.

All right. A couple questions about Augusta specifically. Augusta Lawn Care specifically. One thing I wondered, and I guess I kind of wondered this based on your experience with the Anytime Fitness, do you wish the locations, the. Each franchise was more customizable or more standardized? And what kind of freedom did they give you with the gym?

Yeah. So with a franchise, there's certain limitations because there's certain brand standards that have to be upheld. For us, for example, you, you have to paint your truck yellow. There is no other option. You have to have the brand of Max or mascot. You have to do a certain way, etc. The website, we govern that, etc. So there's certain limitations of entrepreneurial freedom that come with having a franchise. What you ultimately have to do is two things. One, look at the track record of the franchise, and two, you have to trust them that they're actually making decisions in your best interest. And so there's a few things that I've done to ensure that those things are intact. For example, I own four locations myself. So every system that I institute is having a direct impact on my revenues in my businesses because I own locations. And what people don't realize is as I grow a corporate location count, I'll probably make just as much revenue and have just much impact personally, financially from my corporately owned franchises compared to the franchisor. And so when people see that, they say okay. Like not only is he just like making this franchise and selling franchise licenses, I have four of them and I'm going to get more of them every single year because I see them as a good investment. So I hope that, that, that element helps with the trust because they, I don't have a track record, track record. I don't have 20 years and you know, they have 4,000 plus, 5,000 plus clubs in an Anytime Fitness. I don't have that track record. I have two growing seasons and about two and a half years of franchising experience. And I literally tell people you don't really want to be a franchise, you don't really want to be a business owner till you're in year three to five in the lawn care landscaping industry. So there's probably not a whole lot of track record to go on.

And so, you know, when I look at Anytime Fitness, what I think they failed at is what I really have tried to over index on that is communication with the franchisees. When Covid hit, we literally lost the Anytime Fitness. We had to close down. So we were like in panic. We didn't get very much communication from corporate and our franchise business consultants. All of a sudden just like send us emails saying hey, we're, we're being released from the company. Everything just, just appeared. They would make some videos after a few weeks, but they were way behind. And like again, in a time of battle, you expect there to be a leader. You expect someone to help you out and that's what a franchise was there for. And so that has helped me though realize that that's what we need to over index on with Augusta. And that is like we have daily masterminds now. We have prior to the masterminds every day with video. It was weekly reports, it was monthly check ins with a coach to go over metrics and numbers and quarterly roundtables on zoom for the entire organization. So things like that has been helpful to see what their weekend and then what we need to do better. But in terms of systems, procedures, a lot of what we do at Augusta is literally a ripoff from Anytime Fitness. Even like the things we call like Dashboard Academy, all those backend systems that we have is just straight rip offs from Anytime Fitness. Because hey, don't if it works, don't fix if it's not broken, don't fix it. It worked really well. But there was definitely parts from like, hey, every franchisee at any time Fitness hates this one thing. All right, great, let's make sure we don't do that. At Augusta, because that's going to be a pain point. So I know what it's like to be a franchisee. I always like to be a franchisor and what it's like to own my own franchise locations as a franchisee of Augusta Lawn Care. And so I try to take all those and look at the weaknesses, the pros and the cons, and then try to hopefully help all the franchisees. And then over time, that will build a track record that other people have. No idea who I am will look at me like that business model works. Oh, there's 500 locations. I've done it really well. They've only had a nutrition rate of 5% compared to the 50% in the lawn care landscaping industry. Probably a good idea to use them. And so that would be the goal.

So as a franchisee for the gym, are there certain times where you were, like, had creative freedom to try something different or do something a little bit different that might make business sense, or try something that worked out for you or you weren't exactly doing, you know, whatever their guidelines were, they gave you some freedom and you like that. And were there any times where you felt constricted and maybe it stifled your ability to be profitable?

Not the latter a whole lot. Because I bought into the idea that following the systems is the right thing. I trust them. I know that they have done this a thousand times before. So me, with my one location is not going to come with a better idea than them. I follow the systems religiously. And then they give you certain parameters of freedom. Like, for example, you don't have to do training, like personal training, your club, but you can, and they're going to give you the resources. You don't have to do tanning, you don't have to do supplements, but they're going to give you the resources to make that happen. So at Augusta, we try to emulate that. It's like, look, we're not going to say you can only do mowing, you can do landscaping. And we're going to give you the resources for that. P4P will still work for project based work. We'll still let you put it on your website. It'll still be on your truck. It still says landscaping. Like we will allow that. That.

But realizing that at the same token, at any time, they're not going to force me to do personal training, but they're going to tell me the metrics of here's why you should do it, and we really encourage you to do that. And I enjoy that. There is some freedom. And that's what we try have tried to do with Augusta too is like, hey, we're going to force you to do certain promotions or force you to send one click estimate emails or force you into P4P. We're going to give you all the systems, all the resources and do it at a lower price than you can anywhere else so you can make this happen because we really believe it. Oh, and here's why. Here's the numbers. And that's really the goal. Like I want to give them freedom to be a business owner, decide what services they want, you know, decide who they're going to hire, how they're going to pay. But I'm going to give them the exact systems and procedures that I recommend and that I use at my locations. And it's the same thing anytime fitness. It's very consistent. The one, the people who start like trying to like figure out other random things like oh well, I don't want them to scan their fob at the door, I'll have to the other key card thing or whatever it is. Oh, we'll change the pricing of this and we'll just do, we'll bundle the membership with training. If they start doing all this other stuff, it's like, look, why do that? Someone else has figured out 5000 times just follow the systems. Because if you. The only reason you would not follow those systems after someone's done it 5,000 times is you don't trust them. And so when the. That's an important part of a franchisor franchisee or dynamic, you gotta have trust there because if you don't, people will just go in a hundred different directions and you'll never actually have a system them. Right. And so I know it works. I've done it. I've seen which ones, which locations succeed now which ones don't do well. And I have a pretty good idea of what's going to work. Very good idea. Like if I do a corporate location, I give the recipe to the general manager and say follow that to the T. As an employee I can tell them what to do because I know it works. And so my hope is that over time the franchisees see more and more and more that getting outside the systems is not good for their business. And trying to be creative and add to the systems is something that should not be done until you've just nailed it and you've done so well or you somehow you do not trust the franchisor in which. In which case at Augusta you could leave with no charge.

As the franchisor for Augusta, do you wish that there was more constraints or do you wish that it was more customizable? Are you happy with the where the balance is right now?

I think honestly, you talk to every franchisor, they would want the systems to be more rigid because they know what works. I know if I talk to any fine fitness, they would say there's certain things they wish they could just force upon a franchisee because they know it works. I would say the same thing. I wish there were certain things that could force on them the franchisees, not because of any other reason that I know they'll be more successful.

But then every single business owner and franchisee wants more freedom and they want the ability to customize and do so. There's that fine balance of I want them to have the freedom. I want them to be able to make their own business, but I also know it works. And I'm exactly the recipe I would recommend in basically every single scenario. And I got to balance those two things out because if I go too rigid, then if they fail because they're not good at sales or because they're just a horrible leader, they'll blame me because the rigidity of the systems and so you've got to have that balance. And it's just very, very big topic, honestly.

All right, if you had a magic wand today and you could fix one thing with Augusta Lawn Care, okay, what would you wave that wand at, man?

Okay, yeah, if I could wave A1.

Like anything, any one thing with your business, your. Your business right now.

I would fix command Center. I would make it completely automated where there's be no human beings. Hey, I have a magic wand. That's what I would do. Admin office sales, the back end of the business is the hardest to scale because you're dealing with humans that have to be trained and have. Have flaws and have. And make mistakes. And it's also the part of why most small businesses, especially in the home improvement industry fail is because the admin cost and the fixed expense of having an office space, a building, an office manager, someone that has all the secrets of the business in their head, knows all the customers, accounts, et cetera. So it's very important that we have command center. But it's also the least scalable and hardest thing, least profitable, lowest profit margin thing that we've lost hundreds of thousands of dollars on. And so if I could wave a magic wand, it'd be literally robots that could do all the soft skills of Command center, the billing the invoicing, the accounting, dealing with customer service, franchisees, not showing up on time at properties, customers that are mad. You just can't do that with a robot. You have to have a human and you can try to create systems and everything and you can have a robot that answers the phone, but that's going to make someone that's mad more mad.

So if I could wave a wand, that's what I would fix. It's been the thing that's been the hardest for us to scale, the hardest thing for every single, literally at every single order of magnitude for the franchise. We'll have to completely revamp Command Center. At 10 locations. It was working like a fine, beautiful thing and it just fell apart at 50 to 100. Because at 100 it has to be a completely. It has to look completely different. At a thousand, it will not look like nothing we have today. And so you're basically recreating businesses every few years, every year or two at the size that is, the pace that we've been growing and that's very difficult, it's very unprofitable. It costs a lot of money. We make a lot of mistakes. And if I could have a robot do all that and be as efficient and cost the franchisees less, I'd be thrilled. But to this day, we still need the Tesla robot to come along and do all that for us. But it's. It just ultimately you're dealing with humans and you have to realize that it's hard to scale, it's cost, very expensive, and we have to figure out how to make and break that system every year or two right now. And that's just going to cost us a lot of money.

So knowing that you don't have a magic wand and knowing that is. Oh man, major problem.

That's why I hired you. What are you doing? I hired Brian.

What are you doing to resolve it?

Simplification of the systems is important I talk about with every business, but we have to simplify it Command center and start to silo. Now, for a long time we tried to create generalistic command center that could answer all the questions for every customer. When a franchisee would call in that they would know how to respond to the franchisee and actually deal with a business issue. The problem with that is that it takes too long to train someone up to this proficiency and skill level to be able to talk to our franchisees and understand from a business and marketing and all the rest of leadership perspective of why the decisions they're making in the business are so it's very difficult to expect a frontline staff member in a matter of six weeks, eight weeks, couple months, to literally be able to talk to a franchisee, determine whether or not they should fire or hire a person, whether they actually let a customer go because they're overdue. All these things are so intricate and hard to train and take so long to train. And so how do I fix that? It's a matter of simplify everything so we can get someone up to being proficient and highly skilled at one thing at command Center. Maybe it's sending out estimates, maybe it's answering the chatbot, just one thing. And then as time goes on, if they're a high performance, they will need to learn more. But we have a very long ramp up of learning at command Center. Like you're not going to get bored for at least six months. And like there's payroll to learn, there's P4P to learn. There's so many things that you can learn. And so what I think we have to focus on is simplifying every single part and starting to create silos. And now we couldn't do that in the past because we didn't have enough people. You can't silo into. Okay. Because there's probably 50 different things we do at command center. Everything from answering a chat to sending out estimates, to checking the emails, to running payroll, checking. Like there's just a bazillion things we do. So if you actually tried to silo, what you'd end up having is a whole bunch of people doing still multiple many things and it'd be very confusing. Now we're getting the point. We have 50 plus people. That's when you start. Okay, you five people, you're scheduling. You three people, your payroll, you three people, you're responsible for making sure you train everybody on phones. Like that's the part where we'll become more efficient and be able to get people up to a certain level of proficiency where they're profitable without burning literally six to $8,000 training someone before they're ever making a dollar for the company. And that's why we burnt through so much, so much money, is because we were training them on every single aspect of the company. And, and you know, everything like weeks and weeks and weeks of training before they ever made a dollar for the business. When if we say, look, I just need to do one thing and send an estimate out, I could probably get someone up to proficiency in a couple days just doing that one thing. Let them do that for a week. And then let's teach you how to do the phones. The phone's a big deal because now you got to know a lot of different things. So maybe that's not the second thing we train them on. Maybe that is maybe the second thing we train them on is how to do email management for the franchisees. Right. That's a little bit more systems. It's not as many like different variables. Like when a customer calls, you could have one of a bazillion different things going on and they already have to have a certain level of proficiency just to answer the phone. And so I think one of the mistakes we made is like let's get people to be basic service which is answering the phone when answering the phone is one of the hardest things to do. When it's like why don't we focus on still basic services but things that are going to be more simple and regimented that we can get them to a certain level and then once they mash that and basically get bored, which if they're a high producer could be 2 days, let's move them on. But for someone that's going to take six, eight weeks for us to try to get them on the phone and understanding P4P and understanding why we hire and all the rest of it, then that person might not might get eight through eight weeks and then flop and we just wasted $8,000. By the time we paid a trainer, that person's time done role playing about selling over the phone and how to respond with emails and we've done coaching and all the rest of it. We spent all that money and they've not made a single dollar for the company. So I think the thing that how to fix that is simplify everything and then try to make it to where we can train someone, get them to be profitable for the business sooner. And that will ultimately be the thing that allows us to not have to keep raising prices to the franchisees. And that's the only thing I care about is making sure that it is a no brainer to use command center over building an office and buying land and having utilities and paying for Internet and all the rest of it. That's what I want to keep them from because that's what sinks most small businesses in the home improvement industry is all that overhead and fixed expenses. I'd rather keep it variable for the franchisees and it's got to be a no brainer and so we got to keep the cost down.

Awesome. So it sounds like you want people who like figure it out, you Know, run the weed eater for a week, get good at the weed eater. Then we'll show you how the mower works. And then we'll teach you more about hardscaping. You know, we'll kind of just build off you and just start you small so you can immediately start making money for the company. Which kind of segues to another question I have, which is how do you feel about promoting from within versus bringing in someone from the outside? Because you could easily just hire someone from some consultation thing from some big call center and they could come in and really pour gas on this. Why not do that?

It's something I thought about and I probably will do at some point. I wouldn't do a consulting thing probably for several different reasons because it takes so long to take. It takes a long time to get the consulting company to understand the way we do business. We do not operate like most command call centers in that they're trying to maximize profit. I am not trying to maximize profit. I'm trying to make as efficient as possible to save the franchisees money. And furthermore, I'm trying to take as much off their plate as possible, which means I'm going to do some things that are unscalable, like running payroll for companies that you never met, you don't know the employees is not easy. And running P4P for them every single day and running, sending report to their employees daily and we don't even know these people like that has. That is not super scalable. It's not like a software. It's not something that can just be done and scaled. We are doing that as a at a loss because I know it's going to be good for the franchisees. So I know, I know, I know. Like I have my mba. Like I know what certain things we lose money on and we should be cutting out. From a financial perspective, the only ways I would have a manager is if they got the culture and what we're trying to do and they got the vision of why I'm taking the losses. Now, I'd be more inclined to hire from outside, someone who had a lot of experience, but I would still expect them to go from basic training and go through. Right, right. Like no one gets hired to be the admiral in the army. You're not getting hired at that position. You're going to start at basic training, you're going to go through your six week, you're going to go through hell week. All right? You're going to go through all that training the same way everyone else would and so if I ever did hire someone that it's something I've definitely thought about. It's also a matter of what would that do in the cult to the culture of the business too. Right. And the way that we built the culture is very entrepreneurial. And to bring in. There's a lot of debates about this bringing in that level of structure too soon and what it does to everyone in the organization that's used of like, let's figure things out, let's make this better. Let's improve quickly, like fast iterations. Bringing in someone who has all the answers is going to be potentially a shortcut. But you might literally lose half your team that was so bought into the vision of the company and making things better. And you lose the heart of the company in exchange for the systems that might be better, but you lose the heart of it all. And that's the balance I'm playing right now. We're in that weird size of business. We're not a small little business anymore. But we're also not so big where people expect a massive level of hierarchy and systems. And you come in and someone just tells you what you're supposed to do. We have encourage, embrace and love when employers like, hey, what about this? What about this idea? And we like, think about it a little bit. I'm like, oh, like, that's a good idea. Let's implement and it's done next week. That heart is lost if you just bring in someone who's like, this is how it's happening. And ultimately at that point, if you lose that, an employee just becomes hands like, it's like you're a cog in the machine. We don't want you to think about your job. We don't want you to try to improve it. We don't want like, even the past week we've improved multiple things like the work log, the dropdown menu for that little, little things. But the only reason that comes about is because the heart of the employee is improvement. Make this better and that will disappear if immediately you have someone come in and say, this is how it's happening. I don't care about what you think. This is how it's going to work. And in the short term, you will do better. But if you lose the heart of improvement, the company will stagnate at whatever level that person is. And so that's what I'm afraid of. At some point we'll have to probably to really professionalize it. But I think a lot of companies do it too soon and then they lose the heart, they lose those people, they'll actually leave or it'll just become a place of like I am told, my orders. I only carry out orders. I don't get creative. I don't think about how I can improve this. And that's what leads a company to stasis and just constant plateau.

So one of the things that you talked about was a big challenge with the command center is that there's, it's, there's so much that goes into training. Because it's such a complex job, even though it doesn't seem like it should be, it ends up being that way. And so one solution is to try to simplify things or just kind of almost compartmentalize each task to some extent. There's got to be some pros and cons to having so many like problem solving things versus just like I almost want to use the linchpin book here, but you've got all these jobs that are kind of like, we need you to think outside the box. There's not a black and white answer every time. I'm expecting you to be able to be a problem solver, which makes it more difficult to bring on new people. So there are some pros and cons to that. Do you wish, now looking back at it, that you just made a factory where people just had the answers in front of them or are you happy with the fact that so many people are having to use their brains to come up with the answers to day to day problems?

Yeah, I've always said that it's easy to hire hands. It's a lot harder to retain heads. Heads, right. And what I mean by that is I can go hire a bunch of people tomorrow to work with their hands, but someone who can use their head actually think creatively is worth far more than 100 hands. And so I think that too much standardization to some point will discourage the person with the head. Because why do I need hit my head? Why do I even need to think about my job? Why do I need to think about it at night, about a better way to do something or how we can organize or train better? Why? Why? Because, you know, they just want me to be hands. They just want me to come to my job every single day. Clock in, clock out, don't break anything, don't, don't mess up anything. Just do your job. And you're going to get a lot of B players doing that. And ultimately I'm okay with the fact that we are a little bit unprofitable. I'm okay, If I can keep a players around, we'll build something really cool and then down the road we can bring in some great executive to figure out all the mistakes that we could have figured out otherwise. But it'd be very demoralizing for me to pull in someone right now and tell you how to train people and tell you this is. No, this is the manual. Do it this way, right? I'd rather take us a couple years. We're gonna figure it out. But the heart of that, when you get on a call with a franchisee like you do each morning with the ones that are in a state of emergency, you actually care and you're coming up with solutions. Because humans don't follow systems. When you wake up, it's not like your body's like robot, like a injection food. We as humans, like you're gonna have people call out sick, you're gonna have jobs that go south. You're gonna have customers that cancel you're customers that freak out at you. That's gonna be part of business. And so if I've trained you to follow the system so well, and it's so black and white, when someone throws you something gray, you have no idea what you're doing. And that's what. When you get on a call every single morning talking to franchise like business owners, you as an employee who's never owned a business are able to actually discourse with them because you've been taught how to think creatively and that's why you thrive and you come up with solutions on the fly. They throw a piece of information like, this job's going south. Okay, great, I'm going to move this off. Let's go ahead and try to set some interviews for this Thursday. Like you're immediately jumping into that. Not because hey, here's the systems on how to fix a business. When someone calls about being behind on a job, like we'd have a bazillion different things like systems have to create there. It's impossible. But the, the ability to think and use someone's head is what will make up for a lot of the failure of systems that a small business has at the beginning. And so I'd rather have the heart correct of the organism and then focus on the other parts. And that is the systems and procedures and how I work out and what I eat and all that. Have a healthy heart. If the heart's not pumping right, we're just all gonna die. I don't care how good your, how strong your muscles are and your arms and all the rest of it and how good you eat. If your heart's messed up, you're dead. And so I don't want to wreck the heart of Augusta and the heart of what we're trying to do. And I want people like you to feel like you're challenged and not just following a script. I want you to hop on a call and talk to a business owner and tell them what to do. And you have full confidence in what you're saying. Not because you've seen it a thousand times, but because in your heart you know that you're looking out for their best interest. And what you're saying is going to work because you've seen it happen. And you trust the people that are working below and above you because they've said the same thing. And you're literally just reciting what some other manager or someone next to you just said to another franchisee. But you know, it works and you trust them. And systems don't operate on trust. Systems operate on black, white, yes, no ones and zeros. And so if you lose the heart of the organization, people will get a curve ball when you throw a 0.5 at them. They'll fall apart when you throw a gray scale in them. And so although systems are great, I talk about them so much because most people index way too far to the other side, which is like, they don't have any systems. There's a part of it. If you go to systems oriented, you become the next IBM. You become the next company that has was massive in their day and now is no longer existence because they fell in the system so much, they lost the heart of what they were doing, they lost the innovation, and that's what leads to ultimate decay of a business.

So you mentioned small businesses there. And for the Chuck and A trucks watching this. Do you think, would you encourage them to look for employees and co workers to surround themselves with who are more thinking with their head, or would you encourage them to just find people who could follow the systems and be productive and just kind of do the way they're trained?

At every stage of business, you need different people, right? You're really entrepreneurial, trying to get something off the ground, build something really big. You're probably gonna want someone that's more, you know, think with their heart, buy into the vision, the goal, and then figure out stuff later kind of thing. If you get someone who's too systems oriented, they're gonna be bucking against you every single step of the road. They're not going to grow. They're not going to expand, they're not going to hire, they're not going to take any risk. So there's a balance. Right. And I look at someone like you versus someone like Liz. You're very systems oriented. She's more the heart. The, like, let's just figure things out, that sort of thing. So like, as a company grows, you need both. You need both. Again, back to the balance thing. I'm not in, like, oh, this is the perfect executive. Like, that's not going to happen. I need both angles here. I need both perspectives. I need both extremes. And somewhere in the middle there is a balance. But trying to find that person is good luck. So I'd rather just go out, hey, what the strengths, what the weaknesses? Get perspectives. And then I as an owner or a CEO have to make the decision, but I get both perspectives. And so as a company grows, you have the advantage of having more people, which gives you more perspectives. And that's why diversity is so important. Having different trains of thought and different ways of looking things. No one is right. I am not right on certain things. I go into a manager's meeting, I say something and they're like, no, that's stupid. I'm like, why? Like this, this and this. Oh yeah, totally. Like, forget it. Forget I even said that. Like, let's just move on. But if we had a system, it's like, okay, so Mike says this, then we, we have a three week trial period. Like, immediately you're able to fix, like nip the thing in the bud and not do it because it's a bad idea. Right. But if you follow the systems too much, like, so there's a balance, both directions. And I'm a big believer in as the company grows, hiring both extremes and then somewhere in the middle, there's, there's a balance.

Is there, is there something that you see a lot of business owners doing that kind of looks great from the onset, but it's actually kind of a trap. And a lot of people are making the same mistake all the time.

Yeah. Delegating way too quickly and thinking that paying them a salary or giving them money is going to somehow give them the heart. Right. So some people are like, man, I don't have the person with the heart. I don't have a Liz, I don't have a Brian that like cares about the business and cares about the franchisees, so I'll give them money. That does not create anything. Like, we're seeing it right now with locations you're dealing with right now that just Throwing salaries at people, that is not going to help them them. That is not going to give them the desire to actually make meaningful change for the business or push themselves or anything like that. That is an intrinsic something. It cannot come from giving them more money, cannot give them a title or giving them a company truck. And I see that far too often. People think, oh man, I'm overwhelmed as business owner. I need to find someone else. I need to find my number two. I need to find. And then I'll just give them money, I'll just give them a position, I'll just make so and so a title, give them a salary, I'll give them like a, a job contract. It's like that does not create what you're looking for. It's only create more issues because now you're gonna have all sorts of conflicts of interest and money. And now they're wanting to get off earlier and all sorts of garbage. So I think sometimes we want to delegate because we've heard it's a good thing to do. Don't micromanage, just delegate to other people and we delegate. Give them a bunch of money or give them some sort of title or something that they want to appease them and think that somehow that's going to make them care more about the business. It has nothing to do with money, nothing to do with title. Someone either has it or they don't. And what you want to do is realize who has it and then just try to give them the challenges they need to stay engaged. A really high performing employee doesn't stay because of the money, they stay because of the challenge. And there's something that they feel like they're making progress in and if they produce enough value, they should be compensated more. And if they don't, they should go have take those skills and go make more money someplace else. But most high performers, it doesn't matter how much money you throw at them, if they're not getting challenged and they're not able to think with their head and they're just told constantly, follow the system, follow the book, follow the book, they will not want to stay. And so there's that fine balance like we talked about.

I'm out of questions. I'm out of questions.

Cool. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for coming on, Brian. I really appreciate it and it was great.

This has been the Mike Andes podcast. We really hope you enjoyed that conversation between Mike and Brian. We have tons of lectures, interviews and more on The Mike Andes YouTube channel that'll be right up your alley. Anyways, that's all we have for you today. We'll see you next time.