Why Mike Turned Down $10M Offer - Episode 023

This video was made right before hell. Like I was annoyed by someone last week. I fired. I would rather die. I don't really care what people think. I will be way more lethal. I am very annoying. It stresses me out. Dude. I don't look forward to that day. But all along the way I'm mad. It's underestimated just how empty you'd feel. And I'm always in litigation. That was horrible.

Dude.

That.

All right. You're Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon got fired.

Yeah. Dude. If either of them would like a job on the C Suite unfiltered thinking I'll. I'll go either way. You know.

Be an awesome show is if they both come together from completely different like office ends and made of network together. I think they do really good.

Maybe like.

I know.

But their audiences hate each other.

Yeah, I know. But like dude, like you know. Yeah.

The aisle. I mean I agree. I know everyone.

Hey, look, like we're not. We don't. We don't discriminate against left or right or blue or red. We just want everyone. Yeah.

But then. But then you get no one.

Like what. What sells in the media extreme.

Hey. We're gonna take both extremes. We're gonna avoid the middle and just go opposite extreme.

What was that one show? We were pretty young. So some of our more senior audience members. Was it Hannity? Who was the guy with Hannity? Sean Hannity used to have a co host.

I have no idea who was.

It was still a Fox show. But he was definitely a more like left leaning liberal Republican. So he's still on Fox. Handy Combs. I don't know.

Can you imagine though? But if the two of them did news together that would be so awesome.

Just like Don Lemon holding his pencil and Tucker Carlson doing the face. Have you ever watched him when he like when someone's debating him he just.

Does that face and they just debate cross examinate people from like completely different angles. I'd watch that show. I'd never even watched the news. I'd watch that Hannity Combs.

That's what it was. Alan Combs. Yeah. Oh, he passed away. So that's that. But yeah, they were more of a debate style. And then Sean Haney Wentzella. But yeah, a lot of news today. There's a lot of things we could talk about. Tucker Carlson. I texted one of my buddies about it who's more in the political sphere like stays up to date on it and he said it'll be good for Tucker.

I think so too.

Yeah.

Yeah. People Underestimate just how powerful, you know, once you're out from beneath a network, how much you can do. And he can really start to do what he wants on social media and, like, he creates his own thing. Dude, he could become huge.

Well, he's been getting out there. He's been doing, like, the podcast circuit. Yeah.

He was just on Nelk. Nelk Boys.

Yeah. Which they're wild. They had Trump again.

I know. I listened to that.

Oh, really? I haven't listened the whole thing. I saw some clips. It looked awesome.

Yeah.

So then they got, like, super emotional. They were like, we need you back, man. It's like, all right, chill. I don't know if we should be crying over Trump right now, but, I mean, hey, passionate. Yeah, man. Well, how's your week been?

Well, it's Monday so far.

Yeah. But, like, I guess in general, last week was horrible.

Thursday, copilot, we had. We went. Went down for, like, 20, 30 minutes twice. So it was just part of. We had to get the server up, but then I was up all that night getting the server up live. So we took the site down for a bit and then put the server up. So it's good, but, like, we're. I'm just trying to make sure that we keep it stable, but also keep innovating fast enough and don't slow down the rate of innovation. So that's what we're working on. It's been good. That was stressful, dude. Thursday was not a good day. That was horrible. Like, painful. So I think we got some good things in place. I kind of brought forward what we were going to do in terms of testing for deployment and stuff like that. And then I got another developer coming in house. They're going to sit right next to me starting Wednesday. I got him to start earlier.

So you have two in house, copilot folks, right now?

Three.

Three?

Yeah. Oh, two.

You're bringing a third?

Yeah. And then everyone else is like the teams that I've had from PvP and then what used to be Lawn Pro, and they are all virtual.

Okay, gotcha.

We do a lot of stuff in person, like on Slack, and every single morning, we do a video chat with all the. But there's like a. It's probably at least 10, 11, 11, 12 people now. It's quite a few, so it's growing.

Yeah. How are things at Augusta going? I feel like a good mix of our audience here on the pod aren't inside of Augusta. And the public channel has been a little bit more about the corporate Locations and ch. The regional manager out there, who's awesome.

We're training up at least 12 to 15 more people over the next couple weeks. Because a couple weeks. The past couple weeks, service autopilot was really slow. And then.

We had a lot of people get sick. A lot of people. And that's the downside of having everyone in house. Like, we still have some people working virtually, but mostly in house. And. And whereas last year was like half and half, now it's like 90%, 80% in house. So the problem with that is when there's sickness going through, man, you can wipe out the whole office in like a matter of a couple days. And that happened. That really put us back. So I think the next couple weeks we'll slowly chip away at it. It's just. It's just like once you get that far behind because everyone was like rebooting their computer multiple times a day, waiting for service autopilot and clearing cash off every. After every single task and doing stuff like that. So that really slows down. And so I think we're. We're like a. I think in a couple weeks though, once we get the new teams up and then everyone's mostly healthy again. So, like, we'll get real cover. So I don't want to overreact because if we over hire, then it puts more like we can't give as many hours to our existing team during the summer and then fall and winter. It's really just. The spring rush is very cute. So once spring rush is over, I'm sure we'll debrief. We gotta figure out a better way of dealing with like half of our staff being gone for a few days, and that really hurt us. But fortunately, the franchisees understand, like, they also deal with employee issues like that, but they can control their schedule. You can put things off. We can't. Like, it just keeps coming no matter what.

Yeah.

So we'll. We'll get better every single year. It's still leagues better than last year, but it'll get even better next year to the same magnitude. So that's what I kind of just kind of. I'm a little more relaxed about them because I know it's so much better than last year and I just see all the flaws and what I want to change, but it's like, hey, we'll do that next year and we'll make it better. Right? Like, when you're in the middle of spring rush, we can't overhaul things. It just creates too much chaos.

Yeah. I saw some like, minor recent changes. And you guys were very delicate, like, about how you presented it, because it is. It's a big team. People are stressed, and they're stressed out.

It's emotional, and, like, you're working, like, 30, 40. Yeah.

You're working as hard as you can. And then you're like, oh, great, now I have to do this new thing or learn this new way. And you guys, I would say from what I've scene, because, like, I don't really work at the command center, but I see all the updates.

Oh, you saw the video?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, dude, I see it. I see it all. I see it all. It was great.

Pull that out of the bag.

Yeah, we hit him with the one, two punch. Because you did the inspirational video. And so. So it's funny, you did an inspirational video for our internal team of command center, and you post it kind of late at night. And I was just. My wife and I were just sitting in the living room. I think she was reading, and I was just scrolling on my phone, and I was like, hey, you mind if I put this on the tv? So we have a smart tv. So I threw it up on the. On the big screen and we watched it together. And. And as soon as the inspirational video from you, which was fantastic, by the way, was over, I just looked at my wife. I said, yeah, I'm going to leave early tomorrow to buy treats for the team. So one, two punch. You hit him with the inspirational word words. And I got donuts and coffee and snacks.

That's all you can do, man. Like, when you know half your team's out because they're so sick, the other half is coming to work sick, and everyone is sick. And you've done everything to make sure everything's cleaned and sanitized. We had, like, aspirins and, like, vitamin C, Clorox wipes.

Yeah.

Like, every medication you go, oh, yeah. Over the counter was like, just like, if you want it, you can have it. Yeah. I'm just glad there's no, like, od.

We're not ID in here. Yeah.

So. But you're just doing everything you possibly can. And you also just really careful because as soon as you hire, you slow yourself down for a few weeks because you got to train them up. So if you do too much of that, then you make it even worse, and then you just can't overwork people. So that's. Yeah, that was the rallying cry. It's like, hey, we really need everyone to work, but don't work too Hard. So, yeah, I think you guys are.

Doing a good job. You, Liz and the team over there. It's. It's leagues ahead of last year.

Right. There's still so many things I want to improve, but I just got to like. Same thing with Liz. She has a whole bunch of stuff she's already like, hey, we could make this better if people do fall out. Here's what we need to prioritize. So it just. It's way better than last year. It's me 10 times better next year based on some of the stuff she and I have talked about. But we're just like, hey, we only got to work on what we have now.

Yeah, makes sense. I had a thought. I don't remember where I was going with it, but Command center, they're doing great, man. They are.

You asked how Augusta was doing.

Yeah, I saw Augusta was doing.

I don't.

I don't know. My corporate shops are doing good.

The videos went out last week.

Dude, those videos are crushing, man. Yeah, there was a guy, I was actually funny. I took a screenshot, I sent it to Chuck. So shout out Chuck, just phenomenal manager. Like, just a great guy to work with. And someone commented on one of his videos and they said, I'd quit too, if I had to work for that guy. And I sent it to Chuck. I said, you're killing it. Bold of this guy to assume that you would even hire him in the first place.

Because I'm very certain that guy would not have been hired by Chuck based on that comment. That guy would have been late to his interview.

I was talking to Chuck. The challenging part is like, so basically Steven gets like 150 clips from them, right? And if there's no order other than just time and. And Steven has to make a story, right? And so he took like, you know, probably 200 plus clips from Chuck last month and then split them up into three different stories, Right. What people don't realize is that someone like Chuck might have said something three or four times in the month, but it sounds like he's harping on it because we condensed that into a five, ten minute video, right? And so it can seem like he's really harsh against something. Like really, he said it one week and he said two weeks later and said 10 days later after that. And then Steven's taken all that and put it very close together. So shout out to Stephen. He's phenomenal. Editing side. And then Chuck does a great job. And it's just easy to get misinterpreted when you're getting that selective with your clips from such a wide date range. Yeah, it can make me sound like a jerk. And so I was texting back and forth with. With Chuck about it. I'm like, dude, you don't need to change anything. He's like, I should be soft. Like, I should be soft enough. I'm like, no, dude, you're just fine.

So I think it attracts two people. No, like, we're serious.

Well, I told him this. I told him earlier. I forget. Like, the bottom line is we are showing the bad and the ugly along with all the good. It's going to be very easy. It'd be very easy if in three to six months we just showed all the numbers from the locations and they're all. They'll all be doing fine. Right. Even the one that was struggling is already doing good this month. So it'd be easy to do that. And. But then the problem is if I do that in six months or 12 months or whatever, or next year, I'm like, I'm cash flowing. 2000 dol and distributions every month from all these locations. I haven't been there. Like, I could easily pull that card. The problem is people would join Augusta or they'd start their own business and they hit these. All these road bumps that he's hitting in the first three to six months and they'd give up because they're like, oh, I must be doing something wrong or I'm stupid or like, and that's not true. Like, that's just how business is. So us being really authentic and genuine. Yes. We might lose the person that is a fan and would otherwise join a gust if I just showed the positive. But I don't want them in the system anyways because they're going to. They're going to collapse as soon as they have failure. And so I think just being open, honest about everything, I told Chuck, like, just show everything. Like, your raw emotion is fine because that's how they're going to feel when they have to go and pick up everyone's slack or, you know, people quit last minute stuff like that.

Yeah, yeah. And I've had two people on introductory calls recently, new to Augusta, new to the channel, that want more information. And they. Two people have just said that, like, Chuck's great. I love the transparency. I love that you guys are just showing this. And it does show the raw authenticity of like, hey, building a business. Business isn't easy with Augusta, is it? A lot easier. Yeah, of course. But without it, it's. It's still going to be a challenge, right? So. Yeah, but those have been. Those have been great videos, man. I'm loving them. I'm loving what Chuck's doing. So I want to jump back, though, to. To your YouTube channel, but let's rewind a year.

Okay.

All right. So you posted a video, and the. The title of the video is, I turned down a $10 million offer to buy my business. Dot, dot, dot.

Yeah.

So do you. Do you remember this video a little bit?

I do.

I know you post a lot of videos, but. So you basically explained to the people that private equity tried to buy out Augusta, and then. And then you go on to explain why you didn't sell. But I almost want to start there. Like, what did that feel like what.

What did that feeling?

Or getting the offer.

So I was on. I was on the airplane. We were taxing out when I got the email. Yeah, I still remember it. It's kind of weird because, like, I didn't accept it, but, like, it was. It was kind of surreal because, like, you don't ever put valuation on your. Right. And I don't really plan to sell, so it doesn't really matter a whole lot. And I've talked to a lot of these VC firms and private equity and talked about selling just so I can educate myself, but I've never got to the point where they give me. They offered me money. Right. They've. They've always, like, thrown evaluations and they want projections and all that sort of thing. So I've really stopped doing that the. Probably the past three months. I probably won't do it anymore, like, because I have no desire to sell. And I got kind of what I need from those calls. But, yeah, I remember when it came in.

What do I feel? I think there's definitely a sense of validation just because, like, someone, you know, values what you've done to that extent. And, like, I don't look so much for people validating me, but, like, the numbers, like, I like that.

Yeah.

Like, it's not going to lie. And then because I run the businesses, so on such little cash, cash in the bank, in order to keep growing so quickly. Um, it's like a nice, like, okay, like, I'm going the right direction even though it's hard. And, like, I'm doing the right thing because, like, I don't have to run this by boy. I could email back, yes. And, like, I'd have money. So that felt good. But it was. It was just like, okay, I'm doing the right thing. And there's no. There was zero inclination to kite bs.

Yeah. So do you want to share the actual number?

So no, I. All I can say because I have to sign NDAs, so I can say that I would have made more than 10 million personally and.

Pre tax or. And I was selling majority ownership.

Okay, gotcha.

Yeah. But they wanted. They wanted to kind of like everything. They wanted the whole thing company.

So I think what's interesting to take it into context, because you start with that video.

I want to just have been a horrible deal for me now even a year later.

Well, that's what we're getting into. See, see, you're jumping the gun here. So you start the video and you say, hey, this is. This is a hard video for me to make. I'll put the link in the description.

Go back. And why did I say it was hard for me to make?

I mean, you know.

Oh, because I could. Because I could have regretted it.

Yeah. So you were like, I could regret this. But you wanted to be transparent for your audience and really show, like, what you were going through. And you basically say, like, I got offered this large amount of money over $10 million, and you were at a crossroads. So what did you feel like? That crossroads was sell out. You. Were you low on cash? Like you were trying to grow?

Augusta, I'm always low on cash.

Yeah.

I'm always stressed out.

But. But you.

You.

You don't really. I guess you don't explain, like, the crossroads. Does that make sense? So I almost want to get a little bit deeper.

Yeah. Okay. So I guess the crossroads would be like, okay, I've always said that I'm not going to sell majority stake ownership.

Right.

This is literally, like, in my hand. I could do it in a second, and I could. I guess the temptation is like, you immediately don't have this pain. And the pain is like, not sleeping at night because I'm stressed about cash. And you know, what happens when X, Y, and Z and the building project and all these stresses and how much we just deployed for, like, corporate locations and all this stuff. Right. So that immediate. That stress immediately goes away. And that's 80 to 90% of the time when I can't sleep at night is because of money. Mm. And it's weird because, like, it's weird to have this really high net worth. But, like, from a cash perspective, I feel very poor.

Yeah.

Because I just keep, like, if I have anything more. Okay. If it's more than a million, like, it's going out the door and it's like, well, that's a lot of money. And cash is millions. Like, no, I can, in a month, all my businesses can burn a million dollars. And that's assuming there's not like, a tax bill. There's not litigation. And I'm always in litigation. I've. I've. The past year and a half, I've never not been in litigation of some sort. That's always like, hanging over your whole head. Right. I've never had to pay a settlement I've ever had to pay. I've never been at fault. But you just don't know what those are going to go. Totally. I'm still in one right now for something that one of the franchisees employees did that I'm on the lawsuit for. So that's always hanging over your head. So you got to watch your cash position because you never want to get wiped out. And when you don't have investors backing you up, like, you are the backstop. So, yeah, like, in the moments, like, I guess the temptation could have would have been, you know, you can immediately have this ticket to, like, not have this pain anymore. And I think it just, it just sunk into me, like, this is a lifestyle business. I'm not selling. I love what I do. And if I took this 10 million or $20 million or whatever down the road, like, what am I gonna do tomorrow? This is what I love to do.

Yeah.

So I would basically just have to go back to the drawing board and figure out another business. Why would I want to do that? I'd spend another three or four years, and in that time, I could have taken what I had and make it so much bigger. Compared to like the delta, between 0 and 10 million, I could have easily done. I'll do that in the next three to four years, and I'd probably have done that already. So, like.

Yeah, like, it's underestimated just how empty you'd feel as a business owner, pouring 80 hours a week, and then immediately you have nothing to work for. And like, everything you've put yourself into, like, the team and the culture and like, all of a. That's gone. Or worse yet, someone's telling you what to do. That's not going to happen. So, like, and even for me, like, even if they wanted me to still run a CEO, so then they wanted me to have minority stake ownership, like, well, the problem is my whole ethos with the team is, like, they know that I'm not living on a lot. They know that I'm living small and I'm putting Everything in the business. And so I walk in the next day, I have 15 million, whatever million dollars. And they. And like, what's it for them? I don't have any equity for them any in the future. I have any stock options. I have anything to give. And so the whole dynamic would change. And because it's not for money from. For me, I can expect that from my team and I can expect them to push.

So anyways, yeah, no, I loved it.

It would be painful to watch you operate under a board of directors.

No, there'd be no way out.

Like, like, it would be so painful to watch.

No, dude, I'm telling you, like, there's just no way it would work ever.

Because that's how it work, right? They would bring in a board of directors.

You'd be acting CEO fast, dude.

Oh, yeah. Well, you'd be acting CEO for three minutes.

I. I bet within three weeks I'd get fired. If I was a CEO underneath the board. Yeah, I guarantee it. Because, like, yeah, like, even the other day when I apologized like that and did the thing that. That would have affected the holding group, right. So that would have all been ran through. I'm. I'm under another cease and desist right now from another company. That would be a huge issue if I had a board with me. It's like, not a big deal. I'm, like, recording my calls with the lawyers. Like, it's great.

But if I get a board, dude, everything has to be kosher and everything has to be just done right. I'm not. Not have to.

So. So at the end of the video, you jump to an analogy and you say, you know, Grant Cardone attack him with a grain of salt, but he's obviously successful businessman and that he, you once heard him say, and I'm sure other people have said this, probably Warren Buffett and others, but, like, rich people sell, wealthy people hold. And so that was the crossroads where you said, okay, I'm going to hold. Like, I'm going to hold on to Augusta.

So how I would say that's a crossroad. That's validation for what I felt, right? So, like, I've always felt that way. But from a financial perspective, it's hard to walk away from the money. But you can, you can kind of validate it by saying, okay, like, statistically speaking, people don't sell. Have. Are wealthy. Very, very wealthy.

So you essentially decided, and correct me if I'm wrong, you sold off some real estate.

That's.

That's when you made this decision, was Shortly after this video or right before the video.

Yep.

So you sold off real estate and that was to fund what?

Yeah, so like a year ago we were trying to fund the whole building project and we were looking at debt, which if I, if I would have done good and got loan like debt last year, it wouldn't really, really bad because you fix your rate on with the SBA when you finish your building project. So I. My, my interest rate would probably be like 8 and a half, 9% right now on that project. So the fact that I sold last year a lot of the real estate is super beneficial. I was able. 1031. All of that just completed, actually, today. My 1031. April 23rd, say the 23rd. Yeah, yesterday. So yesterday 23rd. Yeah. So I got the paperwork today after the 23rd roll around. That was six months. So you gotta do everything within six months. So I finished all that 1031. So I won't have to pay any capital, any taxes on all my real estate that I sold. Like. Awesome. Yeah. And then I'll. We should be able to. If I sell one more piece of real estate, I should be able to get the building project for cash, which will be a big burden off which. The alternative that was like, you could sell. I could sell a piece of the company. Like, I was going through all the options, right. It's like, do you take on debt, which didn't work out last year, fortunately. Could. Could I take on equity? That's why I was entertaining all these. Okay. Potentially, do I sell 20, 30%? Do I get money? Just cover the building? You know, there's just all the different options you're running through in your head. Right. So I'm still stressed out all the time, dude. About money all the time. I. I don't think it'll ever go away, though. I think that number will go to, you know, eventually. It'll probably be like, you know, if I don't have 50 million, I'll feel like I'm stressed out.

Yeah.

That's just the honest truth.

Yeah, no, I love it. And that's what I kind of want to dive deeper because obviously this video, if you, if you watch it, like, you are. You are definitely more emotional and more stressed. Like, I can tell your guard is down a little bit more in this video. So that's why I wanted to get into it. So basically sold off real estate. That's to pay for the building. And then was anything else used for like P4P or for.

Yeah. So like Augusta or back then. And to Date pvp is still a money loser. I think it's really important for Augusta though. So I've always done it. Obviously everyone, Augusta doesn't have to pay for it. So we, we opened it up to where people could help us fund it essentially. And so that's been a big money drag. The thing is this. If I, if I wouldn't have continued with P4P stuff, I would never have been able to do Copilot. And so like I'm sure in like years this will all like make perfect sense, like a perfect book. But like it didn't seem this linear last year and that is like just a few months. When was. Did I make this video?

This video is from February 2nd.

Okay.

Of last year.

That's when I was, I started really thinking about, you know, I hated the CRM stuff, the stuff I was looking at.

And throughout 2022 I became educated about software and business and software as a service and what AI should be doing in this industry, but wasn't. I got copilot. CRM.com let's go. Before Copilot and Microsoft came up with their version of Copilot. It's like now you can't get anything. Copilot. I got copilot. CRM.com baby. Let's go. Before ChatGPT came along and all the rest of it. So I really started digging into the tech side. I haven't, I hadn't gone into tech stuff since I was in university and I ran. I've made some apps of my own just using Java and objective C for iOS devices, made some apps and stuff like that. So like last year I started digging back into that and I told a few weeks before this that video.

I told Augusta, I said the next five to ten years every dollar I make is gonna go into software. And I also in that same conference told them I don't plan on make doing a CRM. Yeah because I just thought that there other people would be picking up this, picking up all of these pieces like figuring this stuff out and being innovative. But then 2022 because the recession like it just double compound just what I, my feelings were towards the CRM world. So all of that say.

I don't know if in this video I was considering it was hard potentially because I want. I needed money for P4P and like it's still the same way as co pilot. Right. But I just truly, truly believe software is the thing we got to focus on for the next five years. And so I will constantly keep myself under a lot of pain because I'm just, like, spending money like, I was just hired another developer. They're expensive.

And even when I made this video.