Latest / Home Service Millionaire with Mike Andes / The Business Rules We No Longer Live By

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The Business Rules We No Longer Live By · Home Service Millionaire with Mike Andes

• 0:00
  I really like this idea and I suspect it's a Tony Robbins thing.
• 0:03
  It's this basic idea that if there were no limitations, like if there were no limitations, what life would you build?
• 0:10
  I always loved that frame.
• 0:12
  The life I really wanted was I want all the deals and the cool stuff.
• 0:16
  I want a bunch of businesses.
• 0:18
  I want those businesses completely ran for me.
• 0:21
  I want to be in all the cool and all the investments.
• 0:23
  You know, like as I learn more, like you wanna invest in other people's businesses.
• 0:26
  As you learn more, it's like, I wanna be in the private equity deal.
• 0:28
  I wanna be in all the deals.
• 0:29
  I love deals.
• 0:30
  So the change, what I no longer believe, is I no longer subscribe to that.
• 0:35
  Systems are horrible.
• 0:36
  You should not have systems in your business.
• 0:38
  Do not create SOPs.
• 0:39
  Everyone says cash is king.
• 0:40
  I do not believe that cash is king anymore.
• 0:43
  I was a complete and total idiot until my eighth or 11th hire inside the business, which was hundreds of thousands in revenue.
• 0:50
  I was very proud of my 30 plus percent margin and the other business, other department losing money.
• 0:55
  And they broke down the valuation in terms of how they were valued.
• 0:58
  And it's like, oh my word.
• 1:00
  In that anxiety, we start doing dumb decisions.
• 1:02
  We start hiring the wrong people.
• 1:03
  We start spending money in the wrong places.
• 1:05
  Our performance and our longevity decreases.
• 1:08
  We get burnt out.
• 1:08
  We sell the business after a year or two because we're just done.
• 1:11
  All right, welcome back everyone to another podcast.
• 1:14
  JP, thanks for coming on again.
• 1:16
  Of course.
• 1:17
  Just so everyone knows, JP has a little low energy today, so we've got to get ramped up today.
• 1:22
  He went on a long walk.
• 1:24
  It's been a long day.
• 1:25
  I'm fine.
• 1:26
  I'm here.
• 1:27
  I'm here.
• 1:28
  I'm good.
• 1:29
  So today, we're going to...
• 1:31
  I'm interested to see how this one goes because when we do the docket, we don't talk beforehand really much.
• 1:36
  We just have a question or a topic, and then we, on our own, come up with our ideas.
• 1:40
  Today, I want to talk about two business rules that we used to believe...
• 1:45
  that we no longer believe, we changed our mind.
• 1:48
  And then one personal belief that we used to have that we changed our mind on.
• 1:53
  And so I think there are things that we sometimes ascribe to in our thought process or the way that we do things.
• 2:00
  And then there comes a day we realize it does not serve us very well.
• 2:03
  And it's an old identity or mindset we have to shift.
• 2:06
  And so maybe I'll kick it to you first.
• 2:08
  We'll bounce this back and forth, kind of volley it and start off just with a rule that used to believe or live by one kind of business that you no longer believe is true.
• 2:17
  Take it away.
• 2:18
  So I had a number of them on my list and the two I'm going to talk about, I think will be most applicable to the audience, at least the ones that came to mind.
• 2:25
  So this one, I slightly mentioned it before.
• 2:28
  I'm pretty sure I've mentioned it as we're talking, but I think this one's really valuable.
• 2:33
  The backstory is I used to, when I was in college, listen to this radio show called The Bruce Williams Show.
• 2:41
  And I looked him up today in advance of this.
• 2:43
  So he did this national business talk show for 29 years.
• 2:46
  And...
• 2:49
  He was way more famous than I realized he was.
• 2:53
  And he wrote four to six books.
• 2:55
  And then when I saw the books, like, oh, yes, I read one of his books as well.
• 2:58
  And I back then, way back then, got this idea that I believed for quite some time.
• 3:04
  And that was that for you to be able to hire a role, so hire a person, you need to have done that job before.
• 3:12
  So that you understand how to do the job.
• 3:15
  Because if you haven't done the job, then how can you hire the best person for the job?
• 3:19
  And then how can you train them?
• 3:21
  How can you manage them?
• 3:22
  And how can you know if they're doing the job right and hold them accountable?
• 3:26
  Makes perfect sense.
• 3:28
  And we have to usually do that when we have low amounts of cash and we're just getting started.
• 3:31
  Yeah, makes perfect sense.
• 3:33
  Like everything about that, I subscribe to that idea.
• 3:36
  But as my business has progressed and as they got bigger, then I have come to believe that that's wrong.
• 3:45
  I think there's a time that that's probably like to your point, you got to manage cash.
• 3:49
  You got to be careful.
• 3:50
  There's a time that that's sort of true.
• 3:53
  But I think it's this big, giant bottleneck in the sense that it bottlenecks the growth of your business behind you, like behind the leader.
• 4:03
  And what I mean by that, if I'm incredibly busy, I don't have time to do that job as well and become great at that job and fully understand it.
• 4:12
  or it bottlenecks the growth of the business because I've got to learn all this stuff while I also run the business, while I also manage the people, while I also do all the other stuff.
• 4:22
  So as I progressed in business, it just no longer made sense to me.
• 4:27
  And I don't know when I could say that I quit believing that, but I would guess I quit believing it as the businesses that I was involved in started to grow more quickly.
• 4:38
  Another thing that
• 4:41
  would have me make an argument against it is I hold this belief that I've learned elsewhere.
• 4:47
  And that is you should really understand who you are in the sense of what am I good at?
• 4:54
  What do I like doing?
• 4:55
  What gives me energy?
• 4:57
  What could I keep doing for the next three decades?
• 5:00
  That's the world you most want to live in.
• 5:03
  So the idea being, how do I take...
• 5:06
  a solid skill set I have in an area that I like and make it this much better versus make a mediocre skill set I have that sucks all the life and energy out of me and try to make that better.
• 5:19
  So if you buy into that philosophy, which I do, then I want to live in a world of doing the things I'm best at and uniquely gifted at as compared to most people.
• 5:28
  And I want to become as good as I can at those things.
• 5:30
  And I want to hire people to do all the other stuff.
• 5:33
  And so there's a couple of,
• 5:35
  different ways of thinking about, like, those are examples of why I don't agree that you need to know, have done the job, know how to do the job, maybe be good at the job so that you can hire and manage a job.
• 5:47
  And I think there's a lot of ways that you can overcome having actually done the job to still be able to hire and manage to the job.
• 5:55
  So that's, that's a big change in my belief that goes back quite a while.
• 6:00
  Yeah, this one was really apparent for me when it came to technical things.
• 6:04
  Cause there's some things where you're like, oh, I can learn how to do that.
• 6:07
  Like for example, I think a lot of times people think about marketing.
• 6:09
  Like, oh, I can learn on the weekend how to run ads, for example.
• 6:13
  It is, you can kind of get there.
• 6:15
  When it came to engineering, and this I think is kind of the risk with AI, it's like, oh, I can vibe code.
• 6:19
  It's like, there's a whole nother level.
• 6:22
  of skill here that you can't learn in a day a week a month a year like there's people that have done this for decades and they just think on a completely different level and if i'm going to have to learn that skill i will slow myself way down and so i think specifically to your point like it's if you want to move fast it's skill acquisition instead of like gaining the skill yourself you acquire the skill by hiring someone else that has it already
• 6:47
  Exactly.
• 6:48
  And I'll use your analogy.
• 6:49
  So let's just say you had to go hire a bunch of software engineers.
• 6:54
  And so the idea is, if we're going to apply this principle, well, I need to be a software engineer or learn how to program.
• 7:02
  Okay, fine.
• 7:03
  So let's say you on the side, learn how to program and dabble for a year.
• 7:09
  So now you could say, I kind of know how to program so I can kind of know how to hire.
• 7:13
  No, you can't because you don't know anything.
• 7:17
  You haven't the faintest idea in just one year of doing that job, what it takes to be what a 20-year experienced engineer knows and has looked at and has experience.
• 7:27
  So just having some amount of skill doesn't translate.
• 7:30
  You could say the same with hiring a highly experienced sales manager.
• 7:35
  I'm sorry if you've been selling for one year.
• 7:39
  That does not make you a seasoned sales expert that can manage a sales team.
• 7:44
  You haven't seen anything yet.
• 7:46
  You just did it.
• 7:47
  And you don't even know if you did it well.
• 7:48
  You might have read a, I don't know, a,
• 7:52
  10X guy book, whatever his name is.
• 7:53
  Grant Cardone.
• 7:54
  Grant Cardone.
• 7:55
  Sell and be sold.
• 7:56
  Let's go.
• 7:57
  Yeah, you might have read his book.
• 7:58
  That doesn't make you, it doesn't mean, I mean, I'm sure there's great advice, but it doesn't mean you're a sales expert as compared to the guy, gal you'd hire that's been doing it for 20 years.
• 8:07
  So, again, this whole concept to me just completely falls apart.
• 8:11
  I think there's other ways you can solve for this problem.
• 8:14
  So if someone's listening to this, because this was the hardest part for myself when this was very apparent for myself, because I have no skills in this area, and it's showing very badly.
• 8:25
  What would you say to the person that knows they don't have the skill, but also feels completely inadequate to go find someone who has the skill because they can't vet?
• 8:34
  I think that's the part that feels safe.
• 8:35
  It's like, okay, I know how to mow grass.
• 8:37
  Therefore, when I train my operations manager, I know if he can do a good job because I have done the work and I can tell if the job is done right.
• 8:44
  Like what happens if I don't know what good even looks like?
• 8:47
  Yeah.
• 8:49
  Okay, so...
• 8:51
  I've got a bunch of thoughts I'll kind of rattle off here.
• 8:54
  I would tell you, this may not yet be the direct answer to what you're saying, but I think this is an area where you start.
• 9:00
  A lot of times we might think we need a role.
• 9:03
  We need a person to do a thing.
• 9:05
  Better said, we have a problem and we need that problem resolved.
• 9:10
  We need somebody to do this problem.
• 9:11
  And so we've heard that this kind of person, this role can solve that problem.
• 9:17
  And that's a fine starting point, but I think you need to generally understand what is the problem and problems that need to be solved in the business.
• 9:23
  Like, what is the thing that we need to be doing?
• 9:25
  What's the outcome that we're trying to get?
• 9:28
  Because that really defines who you even need to hire.
• 9:33
  Sometimes we have a problem.
• 9:36
  Like, for example, we need to do our accounting.
• 9:39
  Right.
• 9:40
  most people intuitively understand this, you probably don't need a full-time accountant, but that's the problem.
• 9:45
  And so by really understanding that, you can sort of understand, do I need a full-time person for this?
• 9:50
  Could I go get a contractor?
• 9:52
  Could I get a consultant?
• 9:53
  Could I get my CPA to recommend somebody?
• 9:55
  So breaking it down, there's also times where we have a problem and we just immediately assume we have to hire a full-time person that also comes with all these other skills that we don't even need yet.
• 10:05
  So
• 10:05
  Not what you're asking, but I think you sort of start there.
• 10:07
  So you're thinking about what is the problem that I'm trying to solve?
• 10:11
  I think you're now thinking about what kind of person would I need to solve this problem based on whatever that person and what role that person typically occupies, what kind of things can they do for the business?
• 10:24
  And then you need to be clear on what the outcome is you're trying to get.
• 10:27
  That's really important to get clear on.
• 10:30
  Another example of where this presents itself is,
• 10:33
  you've someone's heard, I need an operations manager.
• 10:36
  Great.
• 10:36
  What's that mean?
• 10:38
  What does that mean?
• 10:39
  And is it really even what you need in your business?
• 10:41
  Tons of people early in their business have heard, and it's, you know, I am a person that conveys this message.
• 10:48
  I believe it.
• 10:49
  People need operations managers earlier in their business than they realize.
• 10:53
  But if you hear that, you're like, well, I need one.
• 10:55
  Well, maybe, or maybe all you need is just an assistant.
• 10:58
  Right.
• 10:59
  That can run around and do things for you.
• 11:01
  So it's just getting really clear is what I'd say is this long answer to trying to answer what you're asking.
• 11:08
  You've got to get clear first.
• 11:10
  Okay.
• 11:11
  Now, then I suspect that the next thing that a person would be feeling is how do I even know if I'm hiring the right person?
• 11:22
  And because I don't know exactly what I need.
• 11:24
  I don't, how do I even vet them?
• 11:26
  Like, how do I interview them?
• 11:27
  How do I know if they're good?
• 11:28
  I think that's like the next part of what you're asking.
• 11:31
  And I think there's a variety of ways you could do this.
• 11:34
  One would be, could you test them in some way?
• 11:39
  Okay, so maybe I'm hiring an irrigator and I have no irrigation experience.
• 11:44
  Is there a way, so I've never fixed an irrigation system, but is there a way that I could test them on a project?
• 11:51
  We'll use irrigation here to run through
• 11:55
  Because it's probably generally more complicated than it's like we're hiring somebody in the office or for some other role.
• 11:59
  But let's use something like an irrigator.
• 12:02
  So you may not be in the irrigation business, but if you're in the trades, you can sort of picture you're hiring a skilled role.
• 12:08
  But I don't know anything about irrigation.
• 12:10
  I don't know anything about the licensing.
• 12:12
  I can't even tell you what a zone is, hypothetically, or a valve.
• 12:16
  That's your problem.
• 12:17
  You don't understand this, but yet you've got to hire this person.
• 12:20
  But could you find some test projects to give them to see if they could fix it?
• 12:25
  Could you interview a bunch of irrigation people, like a bunch, and learn from the interview process what matters and what doesn't and be able to pick up the differences between the different people?
• 12:36
  Like, what are they talking about?
• 12:38
  You know, that type of a thing.
• 12:39
  You could apply that to any role.
• 12:41
  Could you hire a consultant
• 12:43
  to help you interview?
• 12:44
  Like, could I go find somebody that knows about irrigation and what a good irrigator looks like and what an irrigator who could shift eventually from being a technician to being a manager of irrigators.
• 12:57
  Can I find somebody that can advise me and could co-interview them with me?
• 13:03
  Those are some of the things.
• 13:04
  So you can think about it.
• 13:06
  It's like, well, okay, I've got this problem.
• 13:07
  This is always, I think, the way you think about things.
• 13:09
  I got a problem.
• 13:10
  I don't know how to solve it.
• 13:11
  Who could solve it?
• 13:12
  That's to the example of the consultant that might be able to help you.
• 13:16
  And then this won't really apply, but I will say that this one came to mind.
• 13:20
  I know because people will have to hire salespeople.
• 13:24
  I just always remember the...
• 13:26
  And I just believe it to my core.
• 13:27
  When you're hiring salespeople, if you can afford it, you always hire two.
• 13:31
  Now, you can't, in my example, go hire two irrigators.
• 13:33
  But why is that a saying?
• 13:35
  It's because you never really know what great is or what good is until you have multiple people doing the same job.
• 13:43
  Or also maybe because a lot of salespeople are kind of flaky and they'll leave you.
• 13:46
  And then you still have at least one.
• 13:48
  But that is...
• 13:51
  That example of you never know what great work is until you have a couple people doing the role.
• 13:56
  And that then points back to, could you find somebody to help you interview this role?
• 14:01
  Could you find somebody to help you get interviewed, educated on this?
• 14:06
  Yeah, it's great.
• 14:06
  It's funny.
• 14:07
  I hadn't thought about this, but like, uh, two of, two of our three technical leaders inside of homeworks, for example, this is actually happened.
• 14:14
  We, they were contractors and it was a great way to be able to vet them.
• 14:19
  And so I think for home services, like if you have a new service, you're adding, having them as a sub that you give work to for irrigation or tree work, whatever, is,
• 14:26
  is a great way to understand how they operate and then have other subs come in and be able to bet like are they actually good do they actually know their stuff do they do a great job upselling or treating the customer correctly etc and then you make them a really good job offer and so like another thing for me as you were saying it was like josh he's our he's our chief product officer now but like he was a consultant for a while i think probably three to six months and
• 14:51
  And then once I brought him on, another thing that I could rely on is word of mouth.
• 14:55
  It's kind of like a lot of our customers.
• 14:57
  They ask their friends or family and get referrals.
• 15:00
  The same thing is true professionally.
• 15:02
  Like if you have a role and someone else has come from as an executive or a mid-level manager, like, hey, I work for this person and they were a killer and they're in a big company and they're like completely out of their class.
• 15:13
  Like they're amazing.
• 15:14
  We got to go get them.
• 15:16
  you can have a little more confidence, kind of like a referral for a service that, okay, I'm directionally correct here.
• 15:21
  But when it came to our CTO role, we actually had two contractors to your point.
• 15:25
  And we told them both like, hey, we're looking for a CTO, come on in.
• 15:29
  One of the contractors had for a couple of years, the other had about throughout six months.
• 15:32
  And that's who I ended up having as Dan is now our CTO.
• 15:36
  But it was a very much of a contractual,
• 15:38
  contract relationship you can see how they operate inside meetings how they deal with the team specifically one time when he was a contractor dan uh we told him hey we want you can i kick up some dirt like this was right through bug hell and i'm like we need the engineers to like feel a little bit of pressure and so on the next meeting to see him do that at a level that was almost like uncomfortable it was like okay it almost gave us confidence okay we know what he can do when he knows he needs to kind of put the screws in and that was a huge
• 16:06
  kind of try before you buy sort of thing for us.
• 16:10
  Interesting.
• 16:11
  Yeah.
• 16:11
  On this particular topic, what else do you think people would be nervous about when they're high?
• 16:16
  Does anything come to mind?
• 16:18
  think a lot of times we do the math of how much of our profit is going through this role because typically these are overhead rules or executive roles or management rules and it is scary when you say okay i made 200 grand last year this person's gonna cost 120 that's 60 of my profit out the door okay a month in they're not working out i gotta cut this person right away and so it is a lot of times i feel like cash constraints and
• 16:44
  you have to be confident in the math that that having this person is going to allow the business to grow or run without you or make it more profitable in the long run otherwise you're looking for short-term gains really quickly and for all the people we've you know these kind of hires it has never been a short term like oh yeah like
• 17:00
  immediately we made more money or it takes three six months to integrate them get them fully equipped get their their reports like firing all cylinders and like give their efficiency higher and you have to have that long-term vision when it comes to a role that you hire them you don't know how to really vet their or do their job the ability to let them cook for a little bit that's something that i've always found is helpful
• 17:24
  That's been my experience.
• 17:25
  And so going back to identifying the problem you're trying to solve, one of the things I think you're, you know, that's somewhat obvious.
• 17:33
  That's why you're making a hire.
• 17:34
  But in the interview process, you can also explore other things this person might be able to help you with.
• 17:42
  So what else in your business might they be able to help you with now?
• 17:45
  Or if you're hiring a more expensive person, that should mean that they're running ahead of where you're at in business, meaning they've already been somewhere else and seen things.
• 17:55
  They should be able to articulate to you what types of things are coming for you.
• 18:00
  Like what were they doing elsewhere that they expect to eventually have to do here as the business keeps growing?
• 18:06
  If they don't have any of that knowledge, that right there is a sign that, hey,
• 18:10
  This might not be my candidate, even though I don't understand exactly what they're doing, but they can't even articulate to me what's coming and what they've done elsewhere that we'll eventually do here.
• 18:18
  Now, if they are able to articulate that, that also gives you an idea of other things you're going to be able to have them do.
• 18:25
  What I mean by that is like, let's say you're hiring them to solve this problem, but you worry like, will that be enough work?
• 18:31
  Will that keep them completely busy?
• 18:32
  What else are they going to do for me?
• 18:34
  If you, during the interview process, I think you can uncover and discover all kinds of other things.
• 18:38
  Say, okay.
• 18:39
  can do, which will give you additional confidence to make this higher.
• 18:44
  Yeah, I got one.
• 18:45
  I got one more.
• 18:46
  You, you said a minute ago, something around management.
• 18:48
  It made me think of something.
• 18:49
  So let's say you're hiring somebody ahead of you.
• 18:52
  And so you're, you, you don't really know what to expect from them, or you in a way don't even necessarily know how to manage them.
• 18:59
  Meaning I think it's a part two, it's scary.
• 19:01
  It's like, you feel a little bit out of control.
• 19:03
  Yeah, that's it.
• 19:04
  When you said the management thing, that's what made me think.
• 19:06
  Because I started in business when I was young.
• 19:08
  And so just age alone, kind of, and you're dealing with people that are quite a bit older than you and you're not necessarily completely confident that like,
• 19:17
  Like, do I know what I'm talking about?
• 19:18
  Like, how do I manage this person?
• 19:20
  So one thing that I think is a little less scary if you're managing somebody that has a level of experience you don't have is just think of it as, yes, you own the company.
• 19:31
  Yes, you're the boss, but you're also a partner in a sense.
• 19:33
  You're a partner in building this business together.
• 19:35
  You're a partner in working together.
• 19:38
  And so you sit down together and you talk about the goals.
• 19:44
  Like, here's what we're trying to accomplish.
• 19:47
  you have them help you create a plan.
• 19:51
  Here's what I need to accomplish.
• 19:53
  What have you seen where you've been?
• 19:55
  I'm not saying we're going to do everything right now that you've seen, but what are things that you've witnessed and experienced elsewhere that we might need to do here?
• 20:03
  That helps create some goals.
• 20:05
  And then so you define the goals together.
• 20:09
  You make a plan together.
• 20:10
  Then it's, you know, if I'm sitting there, I'm like, hey, what do you need from me?
• 20:14
  What is going to hold you up from achieving this?
• 20:16
  Because you're saying these are the goals.
• 20:18
  You're going to own this.
• 20:19
  I want you to achieve this.
• 20:21
  What is it you're going to need from me?
• 20:22
  What bottlenecks am I going to need to get out of the way?
• 20:23
  What things are you going to need me to do?
• 20:25
  That's just a friendly conversation.
• 20:27
  Yeah.
• 20:27
  And then they can present you with a plan.
• 20:30
  They can present you with this.
• 20:31
  Here's what I can achieve some of these things.
• 20:33
  Like we, we both said together, these are some of the goals for the business.
• 20:37
  Well, I think I can do this one and I could probably get that done by this day.
• 20:40
  Like you let them make the plan.
• 20:42
  You let them make, hit the goals and you got you together, agree on the results.
• 20:47
  And then you review the outcome.
• 20:49
  And over time,
• 20:51
  As you go through this process together that you've both made an agreement, then you can start to get comfortable with how fast they work.
• 20:58
  Do they hit their goals?
• 20:59
  Do they hit the outcomes?
• 21:00
  And then you could start to push.
• 21:04
  And so the reason I just said that last thing, you can start to push is I think a lot of times, at least in my case, when I don't fully understand a role, I'm just guessing as to how fast they should be able to get their work done.
• 21:14
  I have no idea.
• 21:16
  You don't know.
• 21:17
  You can only start to push once you start to understand about how fast that person's cadence is.
• 21:23
  And so I don't know if that made any sense, but that came to mind when you talked about management.
• 21:30
  Yeah, one of the things I think too, when you get this type caliber person, someone knows things you don't, has skill above you, maybe they're older than you.
• 21:37
  To your point, I always think of like, you make change or progress in the business by identifying a problem, identifying a solution, and executing.
• 21:44
  And I think a lot of times, to kind of almost prove yourself as the boss, you feel like, well, they'll come up with the problems that I have to have like the solution, I have to have the idea.
• 21:52
  And
• 21:53
  It's, I think, partly humility and partly identity, identity, like an identity that we have that we always have solved the problems.
• 21:59
  And a lot of times that's what has served us well, getting to a million or two million or three million.
• 22:03
  You finding every problem and creating the solution and executing on it has been the thing that got you there.
• 22:08
  But as you get to this level where they have skills that you don't experience that you don't or just simple experience in terms of age, you have to sometimes let them bring up the problem, hear their solution or even let them execute without you getting involved in order for them to be able to build up that trust with you so that when you do push, they'll actually listen.
• 22:28
  I learned this hard way to like when I got very capable people in and there's a couple of times Josh like he'd put like, hey, no, like.
• 22:34
  here's the problem with founder led companies and like you're you're identifying these he's identifying those characteristics in me and being able to do that in a constructive way obviously uh to be able to kind of push back but then to know okay this is my parameters these are the things that he can do that i can do and
• 22:50
  I mentioned Josh because he's one of one of our top hires when I had to turn things around.
• 22:55
  And he was very skilled and brought on a lot of the team that we have today.
• 23:00
  But that was one thing I had to learn, too, is like, I have to let them cook.
• 23:03
  And the type of person that is going to come into your organization has more experience than you.
• 23:07
  They're gonna be very frustrated if you're constantly jumping in with a solution to every one of their problems, because they have the ability to go start their own business.
• 23:15
  If it wasn't for the risk or the capital requirements or potentially the time investment, they could just probably go do exactly what you're doing, but they're willing to work with you, but they're not going to work for you.
• 23:27
  And I think that's sometimes a very different dynamic of trust and accountability and a relationship that has to be built with that sort of skilled person.
• 23:36
  That's good.
• 23:36
  Last thing I'll say on this, because you made me think of this one too.
• 23:40
  Again, if this is an uncomfortable situation and you feel like you need to have the answers
• 23:45
  Mike just said it.
• 23:46
  You don't, but here's what you can do.
• 23:48
  You just need to be able to ask questions.
• 23:50
  So there's that old idea that if somebody comes to you with a question, you ask them, what would they do?
• 23:55
  I believe in that.
• 23:56
  Like you put it back on them.
• 23:57
  But also a lot of times when somebody comes to ask a question, they're trying to figure, they're legitimately trying to figure it out or they've got some ideas and they're just not sure which is the right way to go.
• 24:08
  So a lot of times, even when I'm in a situation where it's like, well, I don't know.
• 24:11
  I don't
• 24:12
  I don't do what you do.
• 24:13
  I don't have the skills you have.
• 24:14
  I can ask a lot of probing questions and that process will help them figure out what to do.
• 24:20
  Sometimes that person just needs somebody to ask good questions and that brainstorm together, the answer comes out.
• 24:27
  And so there's nothing wrong with asking questions.
• 24:31
  So
• 24:32
  The reason I'm saying that is you shouldn't feel inferior or dumb because you don't know their role and therefore you don't have the answer.
• 24:41
  Totally cool.
• 24:42
  Just ask questions.
• 24:43
  And that's not being dumb.
• 24:45
  That's what a person does.
• 24:47
  That's what a great executive, I think, does all the time.
• 24:50
  They're just asking good questions all the time and other people are figuring out the solution based on those questions.
• 24:56
  They're not giving the answer.
• 24:59
  Very good.
• 24:59
  All right.
• 25:00
  What do you got next?
• 25:01
  I'll go ahead and share my first belief that I had a rule in business.
• 25:06
  This one's really basic, so we probably won't take long on this one, but it is certainly the first thing that popped in my mind, and that is a belief that I had was speed is everything.
• 25:14
  We kind of talked about that.
• 25:16
  I think you've... Yeah, yeah.
• 25:18
  And so I think the frame of building the business to last 100 years has changed my thought process on this.
• 25:24
  And even when you look at...
• 25:26
  Because what causes this mentality when you see like AI, for example, moving so fast, it's like you almost feel like you're always falling behind and you're never going to be able to catch up.
• 25:40
  It's like just release after like with AI specifically and coding right now, it's like just every week, there are just huge strides forward.
• 25:48
  And it's very easy to feel like, oh, my word, if we don't go fast.
• 25:53
  we are going to fall behind.
• 25:55
  And I think that in the past, that's how I would have reacted to this sort of movement in the market.
• 26:01
  And when I look back at 100-year-old businesses, and there's not too many of them,
• 26:06
  They just did things better.
• 26:07
  Like this is why our number one core value is constant improvement.
• 26:10
  It's not about speed, it's about constantly, i.e.
• 26:13
  consistently, and over the course of a long time, longevity, being able to produce and improve the process.
• 26:20
  And I've constantly just thought about that every time I feel this sense of I am behind, I'm falling behind, everyone's moving so quickly.
• 26:27
  It's like, I will take what I have, I will make it better, and that's the only thing I will promise.
• 26:32
  and that's the only thing i will hold myself accountable to is this constant improvement and when you think about your business a lot of times i think it is somewhat because of private equity or valuations or like headlines around valuations uh especially on ai right now but it's so easy to feel
• 26:49
  Like, man, I'm working so hard.
• 26:51
  I still feel way behind.
• 26:52
  I'm not moving fast enough.
• 26:54
  And in that anxiety, we start doing dumb decisions.
• 26:58
  We start hiring the wrong people.
• 26:59
  We start spending money in the wrong places.
• 27:02
  Our performance and our longevity decreases.
• 27:05
  We get burnt out.
• 27:05
  We sell the business after a year or two because we're just done.
• 27:09
  And I think with private equity, like thinking in terms of five or seven year sprints, typically,
• 27:15
  the the counter to that is how how would i run this business today if i knew it was going to be in business for 100 years which means i'm not running it my kid isn't running it there's going to be someone else running it well i'd probably change the way the legal structure is i'd probably change the way we invest the cash i'd probably change a lot of things around taxes i probably change the way we we hire people because they're going to be sticking around for a while and that that culture is going to be super important in 100 years what what can stand the test of me leaving this business
• 27:42
  Like literally I will not be here in a hundred years.
• 27:44
  And that has really helped me slow things down in an environment when it comes to AI.
• 27:50
  But it has also allowed me, I think, okay, what's the one or two things that I do need to move fast on?
• 27:56
  So for example, for us, like this year, it was after seeing everything with OpenClaw and all the agent, agentic stuff, it was like, okay, we are pivoting away literally a month after we talked about, we were gonna do instant quotes this year.
• 28:08
  We were gonna do some stuff with the price book.
• 28:11
  And we completely pivoted because it's like MCP and API is the future.
• 28:16
  I believe that no one's going to have want to be logging into software in a few years.
• 28:21
  They're going to be thinking about how can I build on top of a platform and a foundation that is completely customizable to me that I can talk to in plain English.
• 28:28
  I can just build around.
• 28:31
  And is this a huge 360 that we had to take on early this year and then build this entire year, the new API, the new refactor to be able to do it.
• 28:41
  And I still feel behind.
• 28:41
  It's like we have to refactor the entire code base to be able to create an API that's actually solid.
• 28:47
  And it feels slow at times.
• 28:50
  But that has helped me.
• 28:51
  It's changing the belief that speed is everything.
• 28:53
  Welcome to software.
• 28:58
  Only a small, at least back in the day, it's different now, but only a small percentage of time used to get to go to features as the thing got bigger and bigger.
• 29:05
  You're always redoing something else that the client would never see.
• 29:09
  So this is a tough one, and it resonates with me because how's the balance of when you sort of mentally relax and play the long game?
• 29:20
  How do you balance that with the push, push, push,
• 29:23
  go, go, go that it also takes to impact change and move people forward quick.
• 29:29
  And I, uh, I don't know what the happy middle there is because the push, push, push as fast as you can is a constant state of disappointment and frustration.
• 29:38
  At least that's been my experience.
• 29:40
  Last week you told us to cut out fans, family, don't care about what your spouse thinks.
• 29:44
  Just go hardcore.
• 29:44
  That's how you go fast.
• 29:45
  That's how you get, that's how you're happy.
• 29:48
  Exactly.
• 29:49
  That's the only way.
• 29:50
  Yep.
• 29:51
  So it's like there's that side, which I have these two emotions, like that side where it's like, I want to go faster.
• 29:57
  I'm always dissatisfied because we're not going faster.
• 30:01
  And so you're like, well, if I just would be more content with not as fast, I would be less frustrated.
• 30:07
  But then at the same time, you want to push like you.
• 30:10
  You probably know plenty of people who are just like, cool, cool with how it works out.
• 30:14
  This will be great.
• 30:15
  It's like, dude, you ain't getting nothing done in life.
• 30:17
  Like, so how do you live in the middle and, you know, in a happy state?
• 30:20
  I don't quite know the balance, but I love the idea.
• 30:23
  I think actually this year when I was having some of these emotions, because when you're faced with reality, okay, this is going to take a six month refactor in order to be able to get the code ready so that you can do what you want to do.
• 30:35
  And it's going to be painful and you're probably going to cause trouble doing this.
• 30:38
  Just have Claude write this.
• 30:40
  This is not a big deal.
• 30:42
  That's right.
• 30:42
  That's right.
• 30:43
  That was the move.
• 30:45
  But you know what actually came to mind is you taking a three-year sabbatical.
• 30:50
  because i i knew like how it took you time to just retrain your brain because the one side of you're saying like push push push and seeing i'm sure over the past couple years with ai seeing all that happening and feeling i would somewhat uh assume on the sidelines to that as you were on you know spending time on vacation etc and on the uh sabbatical and i was actually looking at you as when you came back to like okay
• 31:18
  I'm sure it took a little bit of time, but like he got right back into it.
• 31:21
  And like still he hit the ground around.
• 31:22
  He's still able to produce.
• 31:23
  It wasn't like all of a sudden I lost all my skill.
• 31:26
  And that is how Dan Martell used to say to me, you're going to lose all your momentum.
• 31:32
  And he was right.
• 31:33
  I'm losing my momentum.
• 31:34
  But I did.
• 31:35
  But it's like, who cares in the broad scheme of life to your point?
• 31:39
  It's like, I don't care.
• 31:39
  I don't care about being a billionaire.
• 31:41
  Like there's, you know, I don't care about all these things.
• 31:45
  And so like, what is a great life?
• 31:48
  Well lived.
• 31:49
  It's a long game to your point.
• 31:50
  And so,
• 31:52
  it didn't mean to cut you off but i um i would agree with you it's like i i uh i don't regret it in the least but i did come back into a world where i suddenly felt holy cow i am getting left behind this ai did you feel that while you were on the sidelines no no it's okay really wow that's crazy yeah i did in the beginning in the beginning oh more than a couple months okay and then i got very happy with that lifestyle and then i got very bored with that lifestyle
• 32:19
  And then when I let my mind start switching back over to the business stuff, I'm like, holy cow, this is the most amazing opportunity moment in time ever.
• 32:29
  I can't miss this kind of thing.
• 32:32
  And so then all the stress has come, like not stress in a bad way.
• 32:37
  I love this stuff.
• 32:39
  But all those old feelings have come back that I had got rid of for three years.
• 32:43
  Really?
• 32:44
  Like the speed aspect.
• 32:45
  The frustration.
• 32:46
  Like, God, this isn't going fast enough.
• 32:48
  Are we making the right decision?
• 32:49
  What's the future going to be?
• 32:51
  Like, which is the best path to travel?
• 32:53
  Like all that.
• 32:54
  Is this going too slow?
• 32:55
  Always feel that way.
• 32:58
  Okay.
• 32:59
  Here's the question.
• 32:59
  Okay.
• 32:59
  You were about to say it.
• 33:00
  Sorry.
• 33:01
  Like, what currently do you feel is going too slow?
• 33:03
  Quote unquote.
• 33:05
  City turf marketing.
• 33:06
  Okay.
• 33:06
  Like, yeah.
• 33:07
  But I kind of know what the solution is to it.
• 33:10
  But generally.
• 33:13
  That's what causes the frustration, though.
• 33:15
  You're right.
• 33:15
  That is what causes the frustration.
• 33:16
  When you know what needs to happen, but it feels like it's not going fast.
• 33:21
  Yeah.
• 33:21
  And some of it's my own doing, because I really like the, I'm taking this in the weeds.
• 33:26
  I really love marketing.
• 33:27
  And I know the solution is this.
• 33:30
  I need to hire more people.
• 33:32
  The problem is AI.
• 33:34
  Do I really need those people?
• 33:36
  Am I going to need those people in 12 months?
• 33:40
  I really want to commit all that money right now.
• 33:42
  Like that's the problem.
• 33:43
  I'm not afraid to write the check.
• 33:45
  I'm afraid that I write the check and I'm like, I should have done that.
• 33:49
  And so it's too many details in my brain that has me slowing down, which then makes me frustrated.
• 33:54
  If that makes sense.
• 33:55
  So I got us off on a tangent, but I love this particular idea and I love this idea of
• 34:03
  can you be, can you have a, because I am a very long-term focused person.
• 34:09
  I'm just, that is who I am.
• 34:10
  I've been saving since I was 14 years old.
• 34:12
  Like I am long-term focused.
• 34:14
  Saving for retirement.
• 34:15
  Saving for everything, saving for whatever.
• 34:17
  And so, but my, but I, uh,
• 34:20
  I love that idea.
• 34:22
  So it really resonates with me.
• 34:23
  I feel like I took over your thing and I didn't mean to.
• 34:25
  It's like, that's a great topic.
• 34:27
  It's just so hard to, it's, here's what it is.
• 34:29
  Here's what I'm trying to say.
• 34:30
  It's, it's easy to hear that.
• 34:32
  It's really hard to make a shift and live it to you, to a question to you, do you feel that as you've thought more this way that you're able to relax?
• 34:41
  Do you feel like it's had an actual impact on you?
• 34:45
  Like this new way of thinking?
• 34:47
  100%.
• 34:48
  I can deescalate my mind because it's so easy for me to ratchet up to like, like, for me, I still have a hard time with this.
• 34:57
  This is the confession here.
• 34:58
  It's like, I think everyone should be working harder.
• 35:01
  Like, why are we not working on weekends and evenings and everyone should be working?
• 35:05
  And like, especially because I do a lot of working and like to see people off time off holidays, that's just like,
• 35:12
  Guys, we're going to fall behind.
• 35:13
  Do you not understand this?
• 35:14
  That's what is inside.
• 35:16
  And so this this this is the thing that keeps me from reacting on those emotions.
• 35:22
  Another another proof that helps me do this, though, is like it's rarely the first to market or the fastest that makes the money.
• 35:29
  So you can look at Muse coming out right now.
• 35:33
  We haven't talked about Muse being the frontier of AI for years.
• 35:36
  And all of a sudden, they come out of nowhere, and they're probably going to be the ones that make the money, realistically.
• 35:42
  Same thing with Apple slow to adopt AI.
• 35:45
  Amazon's not creating frontier models, making gobs of money on their ads and presenting the right thing in front of people using AI.
• 35:52
  And so consistently, I have seen the person that is the fastest is actually the one that doesn't make the money.
• 35:58
  And so I also, it helps me slow down like, okay, also it hurts sometimes when you're ahead.
• 36:03
  So for example, there are other competitors when it comes to software right now in home services that haven't added an MCP or an open API.
• 36:11
  And in my mind, I'm like, okay, well, I don't wanna be the first guy out in front that's doing all of this.
• 36:15
  And then they're just gonna like do it in, you know, six or 12 months and learn from my mistakes.
• 36:20
  But on the other hand, it has really helped me realize that they're at the largest level,
• 36:25
  the smartest people, the biggest companies, it's rarely OpenAI and Anthropoc that are cleaning up right now when it comes to profits.
• 36:32
  It's the bigger companies that have been around for a long time, have established companies, established product lines, take a little bit slower gears sometimes.
• 36:39
  Like we're talking like Apple, three years behind.
• 36:41
  Seven years after they've released a,
• 36:45
  foldable phone seven years later yeah exactly right like and somehow they cash in and so is it is it getting it first or getting it right that actually makes the money and that has helped me sometimes slow down and realize let me think through this let me really stay in problem uh space longer before i go into solution space um so yeah i think i think it's especially hard for you because i lived in your exact same world you can run at a slower pace in the trades software's
• 37:15
  Software is legitimately different.
• 37:17
  And I do believe in that idea that the first guy out of the gate takes all the arrows.
• 37:24
  And so I think- You look at Anthropics Financials like, oh, I don't want that.
• 37:31
  So to your specific point, the way I personally think about this, right or wrong, I have no idea.
• 37:36
  I don't think you need to be first, but I do think you need to be in the game.
• 37:40
  And so as you're, and I think that's what Apple does is my theory, they're in the game.
• 37:46
  They're just in the background.
• 37:47
  They have their teams working on this.
• 37:48
  They're watching the market.
• 37:50
  So what I used to say this about the robotic mower thing.
• 37:54
  And I think the advice was accurate.
• 37:56
  The timing was wildly off.
• 37:59
  Um, so the, uh, the idea was that if you say someday I'm going to do robotic mowers and you wait till everybody adopts, people start adopting robotic mowers, and then you decide you're going to try robotic mowers.
• 38:14
  There's a multi-year gap between the time you first start.
• 38:17
  trying a robotic mower, just a few mowers for that whole first season.
• 38:21
  Then you ratchet it up a bit.
• 38:22
  Now maybe you even have a person in your company focused on robotic mowers for the second season.
• 38:27
  Maybe you get serious in the third season, doubtful because in the third season you realize, holy cow, how are we gonna finance all these?
• 38:32
  So it's year four when you're serious,
• 38:36
  that creates a massive gap where companies that were running ahead win.
• 38:41
  And that is why, so my operating philosophy is you don't have to release first, you don't have to focus first, but you need to be in the game on these emerging technologies.
• 38:50
  And that could be true, like the robotic example of the trades.
• 38:53
  It's true in software.
• 38:54
  And like, as we see, we're going to see a rush of AI-based tools coming to the market that are going to have hardware-based or physical-based harnesses around them.
• 39:06
  That stuff's coming.
• 39:07
  I don't think you have to adopt everything immediately, but you want to start playing the game and you want to get your mindset right.
• 39:12
  So that's my personal take on that challenge right there.
• 39:15
  Most people aren't even in the game.
• 39:17
  They aren't even aware that there's a game happening.
• 39:21
  And that's why they'll be seven years behind everybody else.
• 39:24
  Yeah.
• 39:25
  All right.
• 39:27
  Second business rule that you used to believe that no longer serves you.
• 39:30
  Building systems is how you build a successful business.
• 39:34
  Oh, I, mine's pretty controversial too.
• 39:36
  Let's go.
• 39:37
  Oh, good.
• 39:37
  Okay.
• 39:38
  Yeah.
• 39:38
  Yeah.
• 39:38
  Yeah.
• 39:39
  This is good.
• 39:40
  I, I really think the E-Myth, which I looked up today when that book came out, cause I read it when it came out.
• 39:45
  So I would have been around.
• 39:46
  Let me guess.
• 39:46
  Let me guess.
• 39:48
  Let me guess.
• 39:50
  Mmm.
• 39:50
  2005?
• 39:50
  No, I was around high school time.
• 39:52
  95.
• 39:54
  Whoa, that was when I was born.
• 39:55
  Yeah.
• 39:56
  Again, again, making me feel old here.
• 40:02
  I think this is, I don't fully believe what I'm gonna say, but I'm gonna say it just to be controversial.
• 40:06
  I think that book has led more people astray and cost them more money and wasted more time and got people more distracted, had more people procrastinate thinking they're doing the right thing than any other book.
• 40:18
  I know that's not true, but that's how- Now you said the controversial part.
• 40:22
  Tell us the-
• 40:23
  yeah so you know systems are horrible you should not have systems in your business do not create sops if you turn that into a short then yeah that would be there you go i need to now add context so i believed i read the e-myth uh again another topic you read it it's like hey mcdonald's i think i haven't read that book in what it's like 25 years now or whatever i mean i know 95 is more 20 but it's been a long time since i read it um
• 40:52
  It's a perfect argument.
• 40:53
  How does McDonald's run their, I think they talked about McDonald's in there.
• 40:56
  How does McDonald's run their business?
• 40:57
  With systems.
• 40:58
  You could bring in a kid.
• 41:00
  He can do the job.
• 41:01
  He could flip the hamburgers.
• 41:02
  Like, that's what you want.
• 41:04
  Again, another thing that sounds perfectly true, and it's not that it's not true.
• 41:10
  So my belief became I need to systematize as much as I can, and I need to create systems, and I need to create them early.
• 41:17
  Okay.
• 41:18
  But I would say that what I now believe is that you first have to figure out what to do, how to do it right, and will you even still be doing it in the next six months before you create a system?
• 41:34
  And so this idea of systematize everything, I just think is wildly wrong.
• 41:40
  And I'll give you a couple examples.
• 41:42
  So I'm 18 years old,
• 41:45
  and I have a lawn care business and I start a vending business.
• 41:48
  So I buy Coke machines and snack machines and I put them into only 10 and I put them out in businesses and I buy a cargo van.
• 41:59
  I subscribe to all the trade journals in the vending industry.
• 42:01
  I read everything I can read about that.
• 42:04
  And then I back
• 42:05
  Then, so this must have been email time.
• 42:07
  I start to think about my systems for my business, for my vending business, how we're going to fill them and all this stuff.
• 42:12
  And I just look back and I think that was just, that was me feeling like I was making progress and being productive and doing something in my business.
• 42:22
  And the only thing that mattered was, was I put selling vending machines into businesses.
• 42:26
  That's it.
• 42:27
  That's the only thing that mattered.
• 42:28
  Nothing else mattered.
• 42:29
  And so my argument isn't that systems aren't good.
• 42:33
  Right.
• 42:33
  And it's my argument is not that systems are not critical to building a big business in time.
• 42:39
  My argument is most businesses will never get very big and they create systems way earlier in the business than they should.
• 42:48
  And so if I hire Bob to do a thing and I'm a new business, we don't have the faintest idea of what we're doing yet.
• 42:56
  I just don't know.
• 42:57
  I don't know what good work is.
• 42:59
  I don't know.
• 42:59
  It's just like hiring an employee.
• 43:01
  Are they even a good employee yet?
• 43:02
  Are they fast?
• 43:03
  Are they skilled?
• 43:03
  You don't even know yet.
• 43:04
  You've got to try a bunch of people.
• 43:06
  It took me...
• 43:07
  I think my 11th hire was elder somewhere around that, which was the team member that changed my view of how fast work could be produced.
• 43:14
  My, he was my somewhere between my eighth and 11th person I hired.
• 43:19
  Now, if you apply that idea to systems, I was a complete and total idiot until my eighth or 11th hire inside the business, which was hundreds of thousands in revenue.
• 43:29
  But our four, I figured out what producing great work was.
• 43:33
  And so I,
• 43:35
  It's not that you don't do systems, it's like, are we doing them too soon?
• 43:38
  Are we doing them in the name of being productive and fixing the business for next year, when really all we have to do is go out and stand in the property or in the home with the person and train them, like literally train them.
• 43:55
  Or create a simple checklist.
• 43:57
  When we're doing this thing, don't forget, we got to do this, this, this, and this before we leave the property.
• 44:01
  Yes, that is a version of a system.
• 44:02
  I get that.
• 44:03
  But it's a much lesser version of a system than most people do or create.
• 44:08
  And then my other one is, I think a lot of people, I'm sure I did the same thing.
• 44:15
  We create systems.
• 44:16
  We spend our off-season creating systems in the name of dealing with problem people in the company.
• 44:23
  Whereas if we just fired that one person and replaced them, problem solved.
• 44:27
  Because the rest of the guys are smart enough to do the work in an efficient way without some complex system.
• 44:32
  Or Mary in the office is smart enough how to answer the phone and take really great care of the client without having to literally look line by line at everything we're going to do every day.
• 44:42
  And I would also challenge people of all the systems most people have created.
• 44:46
  are you using them?
• 44:47
  Like probably not.
• 44:48
  And so that's really the argument is when do you do it?
• 44:51
  The other last thing I'll say on my little rant here is that it's really important to understand that as the business gets bigger, it keeps breaking.
• 45:02
  So as so what an example might be, you go from zero to 300,000 in revenue, you've kind of got a way of doing things, but from 300,000 to a million,
• 45:13
  there's probably a little things start to evolve.
• 45:14
  There's a little different way of doing things because you bring more people into the business because you upgrade your equipment because you now have a software system because now you actually have a phone system.
• 45:22
  You're not on your cell phone anymore because now we've actually got three trucks that are all the same or two trucks that are the same kind of truck and not one beat up old truck.
• 45:31
  You start things change from, um,
• 45:34
  Zero to 300,000, 300,000 a million, a million to 3 million, 3 million to 10 million, 10 million to 30 million.
• 45:40
  They just keep changing.
• 45:41
  And every time they change, you have to change things.
• 45:45
  And so that's my argument.
• 45:48
  It's not that you don't do systems, you think about them differently.
• 45:52
  And if you're growing quickly, that's the biggest thing too.
• 45:53
  Like, if you're like, well, I want to grow double next year.
• 45:56
  We're gonna make systems today.
• 45:57
  All right.
• 45:57
  Should we build into the fact that in six months, this is going to be completely irrelevant.
• 46:03
  Yup.
• 46:04
  And are we going to also time for the fact that that six month marker in the bill of our busiest season, when we will need to have now a new system for this system.
• 46:14
  And will that even happen or will it actually end up breaking because we're dependent on this old system that inevitably is going to break.
• 46:20
  Cause we're doubling year over year.
• 46:21
  Yep.
• 46:23
  When I wrote this one, I thought, oh, Mike will probably have issue with this because, you know, he probably, I don't know this, but I'm guessing you have systems.
• 46:33
  Okay.
• 46:33
  I'm guessing you teach your people to follow a system.
• 46:37
  I was like, so Mike's probably going to have a issue with this.
• 46:39
  And so I was thinking about it's like, well, he's not really a, like, if you've got a franchisee that's a half a million dollars a year,
• 46:48
  You're not a half a million dollar business.
• 46:50
  Mike has built a big business with lots of people in his world that are all building.
• 46:54
  You've gone through this many times.
• 46:56
  You've figured out, this is your copy and paste concept.
• 46:59
  You figured out how to do it.
• 47:01
  You couldn't have done what you, the systems you have now, you couldn't have done them eight years ago.
• 47:06
  Like you learned how to do this.
• 47:08
  Whatever.
• 47:09
  Yeah.
• 47:09
  You've learned this over time.
• 47:10
  It's an example of my argument.
• 47:12
  Now.
• 47:13
  if somebody could hear me say, hey, when you're a $300,000 or $500,000 business, like you shouldn't be spending a ton of time creating systems.
• 47:19
  And they might be thinking, wait, Mike tells us to follow all these systems.
• 47:23
  Yeah, because over years, it was figured out what to do, which makes it way easier for you from the beginning to just know what to do.
• 47:31
  Most people don't know what to do when they get, that's the whole beauty of the franchise in my mind is like you just come in and correct anything if you think I'm saying anything incorrectly.
• 47:38
  But that's the beauty of it.
• 47:39
  It's like you could come in and the guy could just shortcut
• 47:42
  10 years of learnings for you today and just say, dude, do it this way.
• 47:47
  Do that that way.
• 47:48
  Use this equipment.
• 47:49
  Use this truck.
• 47:50
  Those systems were built over years of figuring it out.
• 47:52
  For most of us, when we're starting, we don't know any of that.
• 47:55
  And that's why the creating of the systems too soon or early is too soon.
• 48:00
  Do you think that that changes when the owner's like, okay, this is the size of business I wanna maintain, and I wanna optimize for reduction of my time spent in the business?
• 48:10
  Is that when creating more quote unquote long-term systems might be effective?
• 48:15
  Yeah, yeah, 100%.
• 48:15
  Cause a lot of it has to do with speed.
• 48:18
  A lot of it has to do with figuring it out.
• 48:20
  So if in my mind, I'm thinking like, if, hey, if I'm doing a 750,000 and I'm right now, and like, hey,
• 48:27
  I kind of want to cap this thing around a million bucks.
• 48:30
  This is working really well.
• 48:32
  Like, wow, we're making, you look at the numbers.
• 48:34
  Are we making money?
• 48:35
  Like things are going good.
• 48:37
  Let's like make this the game.
• 48:39
  Like let's firm this up.
• 48:40
  Let's make a, let's,
• 48:42
  create somewhat of a system.
• 48:44
  And the other beauty of doing that, like maybe this is how we proceed through taking care of properties because we're hitting our budget time.
• 48:50
  This is working.
• 48:50
  Like this is how we do it.
• 48:52
  And the other beauty of doing that is once you've done that, you can look for ways to work on it and slowly refine it and prove it's been documented.
• 49:00
  So absolutely.
• 49:01
  And I'm not saying that somebody shouldn't create systems under a million dollars.
• 49:05
  Not at all.
• 49:06
  I'm just, if you look at how most people do it,
• 49:09
  A lot of people at 700 are still trying to get to 2 million and they're spending money and doing things and adding services and doing all this stuff.
• 49:17
  Not like they're settling it down and not like they're trying to refine the business and make it an incredibly well-oiled machine.
• 49:23
  And once you get to that place, like, hey, we want more of this at about this size and we're just going to make this thing.
• 49:28
  We're going to dial this sucker in as good as we can.
• 49:31
  That to me makes a ton of sense.
• 49:33
  Yeah, this was this is the distinction we made franchise and even my content like a few years ago is like you're either in profit mode or in growth mode.
• 49:41
  And if you're in growth mode, you're getting more customers and you're hiring people.
• 49:45
  That's how you grow.
• 49:46
  And if you're in profit mode, that's when we start optimize every little thing.
• 49:50
  We're going to standardize the equipment.
• 49:52
  We're going to create systems for every little aspect.
• 49:54
  Great.
• 49:55
  But
• 49:56
  It's very difficult to be doubling the size of the business from 300 to 600, 600 to 1.2, 1.2 to 2.4 while you're trying to build systems for every little detail and thinking that you're going to get efficient down to the 1% on every single aspect.
• 50:12
  Yeah.
• 50:13
  All right.
• 50:14
  I'll share my second business one.
• 50:16
  All right.
• 50:16
  So also a little controversial because everyone says cash is king.
• 50:20
  I do not believe that cash is king anymore.
• 50:24
  And the reason for that is after going through
• 50:29
  what we call, it's a software called CARDA, but basically they do the valuation of the business.
• 50:34
  And so, yeah, we've done that the last few years.
• 50:36
  And so the ability to be able to see what is enterprise value and optimizing for enterprise value over profitability.
• 50:44
  And I think I made a video recently about this.
• 50:46
  This is not for the person that's doing a million or two million or three million.
• 50:49
  Like profit is super important.
• 50:50
  But in a larger size business, I want enterprise value to be as high as possible.
• 50:56
  And profit is not as important because I don't want to be taxed on a whole bunch of profit.
• 51:01
  I would rather take that profit, deploy it into the business in an efficient manner, and improve the enterprise value of the business.
• 51:08
  And instead of thinking as much like cash is king, I got like...
• 51:12
  store all this cash underneath my mattress.
• 51:15
  It's like, okay, can I create a scalable model?
• 51:17
  What's the story behind how I can spend money more efficiently?
• 51:20
  What's the thesis I can share with my team that attracts better talent, attracts investors?
• 51:25
  What can I tell the market?
• 51:27
  So whether you're trying to sell the business at a really large size or attract investors or bring on really key hires, they're not like, how much money do you have in your bank account?
• 51:35
  It's
• 51:36
  What's the story and how do we double this thing?
• 51:39
  How do you take a dollar and get $10?
• 51:41
  Like what's your cap to LTV?
• 51:42
  Like knowing those numbers is far more important than I think I have a million dollars underneath my mattress or I made seven figures in profit last year.
• 51:51
  And this was the example, like the story behind this was when we did our first valuation and I had one part of the business, very profitable.
• 52:00
  I was very proud of my 30 plus percent margin and the other business, other department losing money.
• 52:06
  and they broke down the valuation in terms of how they were valued and it's like oh my word all right we're going to focus on growth they're like how are you going to deploy all this capital they basically gave me no credit for the cash or the profitability sure it was like yeah if it's not growing and you don't have a really clear path in terms of how to spend that money we're not going to like give you better enterprise value and when you look at the biggest of businesses again i know i'm speaking to a little bit of a different audience but like
• 52:34
  People don't sell their stock.
• 52:36
  They take loans against that equity margin to be able to live their lifestyle so they don't have to pay taxes.
• 52:44
  And so if you can build a business of enterprise value high enough to where that is a possibility, and you can have a lot of more tax efficient ways of making profit or taking livelihood from the business, that's the much longer term game.
• 52:57
  And so cash is king, used to believe it.
• 53:00
  I bought into the jargon.
• 53:01
  It's three words.
• 53:02
  It sounds cool.
• 53:03
  You know, two K sounds, C and K, but it doesn't work in the long run.
• 53:10
  So how do you think about how much cash to have?
• 53:13
  If it's not king?
• 53:15
  It's Prince.
• 53:16
  It's still a prince.
• 53:18
  How do you think about the minimum to retain?
• 53:20
  So if somebody hears that and they're like, okay, ooh, I'm gonna spend it all down, we're going.
• 53:25
  How would you cost them?
• 53:26
  It's Equip Expo.
• 53:27
  The week this is being dropped, it's Equip Expo.
• 53:29
  Just spend all of your money.
• 53:31
  Equip Expo at Mike's booth.
• 53:34
  Yeah, well, I don't have anything to sell there, but we can hook you up with a truck or two.
• 53:38
  So I would say, for me personally, it's always one month of revenue in the bank.
• 53:43
  So I use revenue most because everyone knows what revenue is.
• 53:46
  When you start doing like two months of expenses, people have no idea what that is, or payroll.
• 53:49
  It's variable.
• 53:50
  Yeah, yeah.
• 53:50
  Everyone knows how much money they made last month and whether or not their cash balance is above it.
• 53:54
  So I've always said one month of cash in the bank.
• 53:56
  And to this day, that's what I use in terms of the businesses.
• 54:00
  Anything above that, I look at as we need to deploy this.
• 54:02
  We need to have a plan to deploy this, whether that be hiring, whether it be marketing and expansion and buying more customers.
• 54:09
  So that's kind of how I look at it.
• 54:11
  I really don't have anything I disagree with there.
• 54:13
  I mean, if the person wants to shift to that mode of running their, but that is a mindset shift in a specific decision you make that I'm going to play a different business game than the majority of people play.
• 54:25
  And so I don't think that would apply to everybody, but if, um,
• 54:30
  If you describe to that, do you ascribe to that now, even with, with city for turf knowing like you don't necessarily need the cash, but it's a matter of like, I want to grow this thing and I'm gonna put the money back into the business.
• 54:40
  Is that your mentality?
• 54:42
  No, no, but I'm totally willing to subscribe to that mentality.
• 54:47
  I just don't want to do what it takes.
• 54:49
  Like what I mean by that is, I, I it's like, we have tons of money, cash and, um,
• 54:58
  It's just being massively underutilized, like massively.
• 55:03
  But we don't have anywhere to spend it.
• 55:06
  That marketing manager, I'm just saying.
• 55:10
  Not going to make a dent in the cash.
• 55:11
  It doesn't matter.
• 55:13
  And so we'd have to start buying companies.
• 55:15
  That's the only way we could spend the money.
• 55:18
  And so, and that's just, you know,
• 55:24
  hopefully I didn't come across wrong.
• 55:25
  That's just a, like we're in a fortunate position.
• 55:28
  Yeah.
• 55:28
  We've been, we have no debt.
• 55:29
  We've never really had debt.
• 55:30
  We just accumulate cash.
• 55:31
  We've distributed lots of cash.
• 55:33
  Like we, but we still have cash.
• 55:35
  And so we're at a place where it's like, if I want to grow, I could spend a lot more cash on growth, but it still wouldn't really use the cash.
• 55:43
  Yeah.
• 55:44
  You could ratchet it way up.
• 55:45
  So we'd need to go start buying companies.
• 55:48
  And that's what I meant by, do we really want to do that though?
• 55:50
  Is that really the game we want to play?
• 55:53
  You'd have to have an exit, essentially.
• 55:55
  Yeah, probably so.
• 55:56
  Yeah, otherwise...
• 55:59
  the beauty of business is you get to figure out what game you want to play and what lifestyle you want.
• 56:05
  And I don't know that that's really the game that anybody wants to play with, you know, city turf.
• 56:10
  And if, and so that's why I don't think we can spend the cash, but I think,
• 56:14
  that the best use of the cash right now would be to ratchet up marketing in a serious way.
• 56:20
  Not actually quite yet, because that's what I'm back.
• 56:22
  I'm figuring stuff out.
• 56:24
  And once we have figured some more stuff out, we can ratchet up marketing and we are going to.
• 56:30
  So that will happen, but that still will not consume the cash.
• 56:33
  It won't consume even the profit that's being made per year.
• 56:36
  We're not even going to bleed that down that significantly.
• 56:40
  I think it would create weight.
• 56:42
  Well, I don't know.
• 56:42
  I'm saying things I don't know about yet.
• 56:47
  But I think the best way to run the company would be if you're just trying to create enterprise value.
• 56:53
  And if this were my only thing and it's the main thing I wanted to work on, the best way to do this would be to start burning that cash down through as much organic growth as we can get first.
• 57:05
  And then start making some strategic acquisitions.
• 57:07
  I think that would be the best use of the money.
• 57:09
  And I would totally subscribe to it.
• 57:11
  I'd have no pushback on that.
• 57:12
  But that's just not, I don't want to have to do that personally.
• 57:15
  I want to get to work on my other projects as well as CityTurf.
• 57:19
  And I think to live that, it probably requires like getting fully involved and fully focused on that business.
• 57:27
  And I'm not sure Philip wants to do that.
• 57:29
  So longer answer than what you're asking.
• 57:30
  But I just want to give enough context to say, for us, it's not the right thing.
• 57:34
  But I agree with the philosophy, the way you're thinking about it.
• 57:36
  I think what you're thinking about is not even right for most people.
• 57:39
  It's right for some.
• 57:41
  Yeah, I think it really depends on your management team too, if you're not in the daily operations, like my locations, for example, like they're the opposite cash is king.
• 57:49
  It's all about distributions.
• 57:51
  Everyone's on profit sharing at the management level.
• 57:54
  And that's all they care about.
• 57:55
  It's when it comes to like, what is the thing I'm building for the next 20, 30 years?
• 57:59
  That's when enterprise value holds way more weight.
• 58:01
  Now that I've seen the other side of the game that people play.
• 58:06
  And it's like,
• 58:07
  They just you look at these companies that are valued at billions.
• 58:11
  They don't make a single penny.
• 58:12
  It's like, oh, well, so maybe maybe my philosophy, I need to have a 25, 30 percent profit margin every single year.
• 58:19
  Maybe that's not the thing that I should subscribe to if I'm trying to build a big, big thing to your point.
• 58:24
  A couple of things on that, just to further make your point.
• 58:28
  If I've said this, I said this ages ago.
• 58:32
  to friends, if I could do it all over again at Service Autopilot, I would have burned it.
• 58:37
  We were playing a conservative game.
• 58:39
  We had cash.
• 58:40
  We had no debts.
• 58:41
  I never had a line of credit.
• 58:43
  If I could do it all over again... We weren't planning to sell, though, either.
• 58:46
  So we weren't even building it to sell anytime soon.
• 58:49
  It wasn't even...
• 58:50
  But if I had known I was going to sell, I would have changed every single thing about that strategy I was playing.
• 58:58
  I would have burned all the money out of that business.
• 59:01
  I mean, I would have.
• 59:04
  Now, there is a risk to that strategy, though, too.
• 59:07
  You could go down that road, and then the market to sell is not there.
• 59:12
  Or the market turns, and you've got money, but you don't really have enough money.
• 59:17
  These public companies have this backstop where they can go to the debt markets oftentimes in ways we can't, or they can go to their stock and they can raise capital and we can't do that.
• 59:28
  So sometimes even when we're in massive growth mode, we could, we still have to be careful.
• 59:33
  That's my philosophy, but I was way too careful.
• 59:36
  I've always been way too conservative in hindsight, knowing how the world worked out.
• 59:40
  Yeah.
• 59:41
  No, well, I'll probably tap you for, how would you have spent this money?
• 59:45
  I'll be tapping you very soon.
• 59:47
  So it'd be great.
• 59:48
  Well, you're there kind of, and you're getting there.
• 59:50
  It's like, it's marketing.
• 59:52
  But the problem is, well, yeah, we talked about it another time.
• 59:55
  Yeah.
• 59:56
  All right.
• 59:57
  Let's switch to personal belief.
• 59:58
  This one will be fun.
• 59:59
  Go ahead.
• 1:00:00
  Okay.
• 1:00:00
  Things that didn't serve you well.
• 1:00:02
  Yeah.
• 1:00:03
  So a personal belief that I think it's personal.
• 1:00:07
  Like it's a personal belief, but it's very personal to me.
• 1:00:10
  So this is not so much me giving advice.
• 1:00:13
  This is not me saying you should listen to this and you should do this.
• 1:00:17
  I hope I never quite come across that way.
• 1:00:19
  I'm just sharing ideas.
• 1:00:20
  But this one I don't think would will work for everybody.
• 1:00:24
  So I. I.
• 1:00:26
  I really like this idea, and I suspect it's a Tony Robbins thing that I've probably known for decades.
• 1:00:32
  I've heard it many times.
• 1:00:33
  It's this basic idea that if there were no limitations, like if there were no limitations, what life would you build?
• 1:00:40
  Like there's nothing that could keep you from accomplishing it.
• 1:00:43
  There's nothing that could keep you from having it.
• 1:00:45
  There's literally nothing.
• 1:00:47
  It will happen.
• 1:00:49
  It may not happen tomorrow, but it is going to happen.
• 1:00:50
  It can't be stopped.
• 1:00:51
  It can't be stopped.
• 1:00:52
  What is the dream?
• 1:00:54
  What do you want?
• 1:00:54
  I've always, always loved that frame because I think it tries to get at this idea of what do I really want versus what do I, at a subconscious level, limit myself from wanting because I don't think it's for me or I don't think it could be achieved or whatever the narrative in this story is we tell ourselves.
• 1:01:14
  I think we all tell ourselves a narrative.
• 1:01:17
  Like I grew up thinking if I could just make, I've said like,
• 1:01:22
  People who listen to me probably heard me say this.
• 1:01:23
  If I could just make $90,000 a year, which I think back when I said that was the equivalent of $142,000 now, something like that.
• 1:01:30
  If I could just make this amount of money, I'd be happy.
• 1:01:32
  I remember clearly I wanted a three-car garage, a modern house on three acres.
• 1:01:39
  I wanted a Ferrari, an Acura Legend, and a Tahoe.
• 1:01:43
  And I wanted a bulldog.
• 1:01:45
  I remember very vividly, that was my goal.
• 1:01:48
  That was a really small goal.
• 1:01:50
  But that was my belief of what was possible in my world.
• 1:01:55
  And my horizons kept getting bigger and bigger.
• 1:01:58
  I didn't think all these other things I saw people had or did could be my life.
• 1:02:03
  I didn't know why.
• 1:02:03
  I just didn't.
• 1:02:04
  My subconscious didn't think that was possible.
• 1:02:07
  And my brain expanded over time, reading magazines, listening to other people talk.
• 1:02:15
  Just listening to Tony Robbins, Zig Zig, like these are old names.
• 1:02:20
  Brian Tracy, like my my confident, my brain expanded and my confidence grew.
• 1:02:24
  So the point here is I always love that frame.
• 1:02:27
  And so when I used a frame like that.
• 1:02:30
  the life I really wanted was the idea that I want to be doing all the deals.
• 1:02:37
  I want, like I want all the deals and the cool stuff.
• 1:02:40
  I want a bunch of businesses.
• 1:02:42
  I want those businesses completely ran for me.
• 1:02:45
  I want to be in all the cool and all the investments, you know, like as I learn more, like you want to invest in other people's businesses.
• 1:02:50
  As you learn more, it's like, I want to be in the private equity deal.
• 1:02:52
  I want to be in all the deals.
• 1:02:53
  I love deals.
• 1:02:55
  I like negotiate.
• 1:02:55
  I just like deals.
• 1:02:56
  I like action.
• 1:02:58
  I wanted, I wanted,
• 1:03:00
  multiple homes.
• 1:03:01
  I wanted cars.
• 1:03:03
  Like then when you really think it was like, well, I'd be really cool to have a jet, been on jets.
• 1:03:07
  That's pretty cool.
• 1:03:08
  I'll take a jet.
• 1:03:09
  And so then you meet other people and it just keeps getting bigger.
• 1:03:11
  So anyway, it kind of paints the picture that when you, for me, when I would eventually, when I would think in those terms, like I like, why wouldn't you live a major lifestyle and have all kinds of stuff going on?
• 1:03:23
  Like if I like I used to love the movies where it was like a business guy that had big stuff and tons of action.
• 1:03:30
  They're always doing deals like they're always flying around doing stuff like that's the life I want.
• 1:03:34
  Like it just seems so cool.
• 1:03:36
  And so I would say so that was it.
• 1:03:38
  So the change, what I no longer believe is I no longer subscribe to that.
• 1:03:44
  And I think that it's been breaking down for me in terms of that idea for probably 10 or 12 years as my financial situation just kept getting better.
• 1:03:54
  And maybe some of it has to do with getting older.
• 1:03:57
  I mean, but, you know, 10 or 12 years ago is...
• 1:04:00
  I was still in my late 30s.
• 1:04:01
  So, but it's been evolving.
• 1:04:04
  I don't know.
• 1:04:05
  I can't say exactly what it is and why.
• 1:04:07
  But what I've come to decide is for me, this is why it's personal.
• 1:04:12
  I think what I most value in life is a clear mind and a free calendar.
• 1:04:17
  Like a lot of guys that are like hard chargers that I respect, their calendar is blocked to every minute of the day.
• 1:04:24
  But for me, if I get up and I look at my calendar, like I can just work on whatever I want to work on today, that's awesome.
• 1:04:31
  I love that is like the best feeling to not have hardly anything on my calendar.
• 1:04:36
  And then to me, a great feeling is I don't have noise in my brain all the time.
• 1:04:40
  Now, I create plenty of noise in my brain because I get excited about AI.
• 1:04:45
  And I start thinking about city turf market, but I have 100% freedom in my life I've created that I could end all that tomorrow if I wanted to, and it doesn't matter.
• 1:04:53
  And that to me is still clear mind.
• 1:04:55
  Clear mind doesn't mean I'm sitting around having cocktails on the beach.
• 1:04:58
  That's like the worst way to live life, but that would be miserable.
• 1:05:02
  But it means I have optionality.
• 1:05:05
  So this is my big change is like all these things.
• 1:05:10
  I will reveal one thing I normally don't say.
• 1:05:12
  I have let one area of these things into my life.
• 1:05:17
  And this is good because Mike wanted examples.
• 1:05:19
  So I have 14 cars and I will have- Whoa, I didn't know that.
• 1:05:25
  And tomorrow I will probably have 15 cars.
• 1:05:27
  Let's go.
• 1:05:28
  So, but, and this is the only reason I'm saying this is because it's interesting how
• 1:05:34
  I often dream of having four cars.
• 1:05:39
  And that's my cars have always been my thing.
• 1:05:41
  I've when I was 10, I saw Ferrari.
• 1:05:43
  It's like, this is what I want in life.
• 1:05:45
  And so I haven't done the houses things.
• 1:05:47
  I haven't done all the other stuff.
• 1:05:48
  I've only done the car thing.
• 1:05:50
  And I've been doing cars since I was 28.
• 1:05:52
  And and so but my point is even this one thing that I've actually led into my life.
• 1:05:57
  This is like this is how I know what I am talking about is true.
• 1:06:00
  I.
• 1:06:04
  even fantasize about simplifying that.
• 1:06:06
  And this is the free mind thing because I like old exotic cars.
• 1:06:10
  So they break all the time.
• 1:06:12
  It's a never ending problem.
• 1:06:15
  You know, you always have to reg, I sound like I'm whining.
• 1:06:17
  Nobody's gonna feel sorry for me.
• 1:06:18
  I'm not whining.
• 1:06:18
  It's like, it's just, it's always one thing.
• 1:06:22
  Yeah.
• 1:06:23
  I can rattle off the reasons.
• 1:06:24
  But I have found for me, I crave more simplicity, more optionality, more clear mind.
• 1:06:32
  Optionality is more than even freedom.
• 1:06:35
  I just want to be able to do what I want to do when I want to do it.
• 1:06:37
  And so that's the big job.
• 1:06:38
  That's a lot of information.
• 1:06:39
  But that was my big change that has evolved over time where I have thought I wanted all this stuff.
• 1:06:45
  And what I've decided is like.
• 1:06:48
  We've talked about this.
• 1:06:49
  I could just rent that stuff if I wanted.
• 1:06:50
  But if I keep it out of my life, all the better.
• 1:06:52
  Last thing I'll say, I've also got friends, and I know what they'd say to everything I just said.
• 1:06:57
  They'd say, you're not thinking about this right.
• 1:07:00
  You can hire people that will handle all that stuff.
• 1:07:03
  You could have 30 cars, just hire a car manager.
• 1:07:07
  You can hire a person to manage the houses.
• 1:07:08
  I agree, but to me, people are still a thing.
• 1:07:16
  It's still something on your mind.
• 1:07:18
  I constantly think about what are all the little nagging things on your brain that just eat away?
• 1:07:23
  Yeah.
• 1:07:24
  at your energy level, your excitement, your happiness, your what's the constantly churning to-do list in your mind?
• 1:07:31
  How can you get that as simple as possible?
• 1:07:34
  That to me is the best life.
• 1:07:36
  So no preaching at all.
• 1:07:39
  I'm just, that's how I'm wired.
• 1:07:40
  I mean, if you take somebody like a Donald Trump, like I don't think he'd be happy being me.
• 1:07:44
  He wants complete, he wants 3,000 lawsuits going.
• 1:07:48
  He wants at any one moment, he wants all this stuff.
• 1:07:50
  That's how he feels alive.
• 1:07:52
  And so I think
• 1:07:55
  what makes you feel alive?
• 1:07:56
  Like what makes you like happy and peaceful and feel alive?
• 1:08:01
  And that's what you build to.
• 1:08:02
  And I've just decided that I thought I wanted one thing and it's not quite what I thought it was.
• 1:08:07
  So it's that 15th car that will bring that satisfaction.
• 1:08:11
  That's what happened.
• 1:08:13
  Tiffany doesn't believe any of that.
• 1:08:18
  I don't like that much stuff.
• 1:08:20
  It has never brought me satisfaction.
• 1:08:24
  It is the game of getting it.
• 1:08:26
  And it's like... Is the deal... Are you more into the investment almost?
• 1:08:30
  Because with the antique cars or the older cars, the value goes up.
• 1:08:35
  So I've had so many cars and I, up until, I mean, I have had so many cars up until a particular old Ferrari.
• 1:08:45
  I bought probably about four years, three years ago, four years ago.
• 1:08:49
  I've never lost more than $3,000 on an exotic car ever.
• 1:08:53
  And so it was a game.
• 1:08:55
  Honey, it's an investment.
• 1:08:56
  Not an investment.
• 1:08:57
  It's like I had basically figured out how I could buy stuff and drive it for essentially free.
• 1:09:03
  And I even had a deal where I didn't even, like the sales tax, I didn't even have to deal with the sales tax problem.
• 1:09:08
  So that was a bit of a game.
• 1:09:10
  I used to say to myself, I am wasting so much time looking for these cars to save.
• 1:09:15
  Like my, I'm giving too much information here.
• 1:09:18
  We are comfortable spending several hundred thousand dollars on a trip.
• 1:09:22
  But my goodness, if I'm going to lose $3,000 on the car.
• 1:09:26
  And now you said it publicly.
• 1:09:27
  So you can never.
• 1:09:28
  It's fear forever.
• 1:09:30
  Yeah, I know.
• 1:09:31
  I know.
• 1:09:31
  I've given too much away today.
• 1:09:33
  But it's like it's a psychology thing.
• 1:09:36
  The car thing.
• 1:09:37
  That was my way of answering your question.
• 1:09:39
  The car thing has always been a game for me.
• 1:09:42
  And it's this thing where I feel stressed if I waste a bunch of money.
• 1:09:45
  So I don't actually buy cars to make money.
• 1:09:48
  I buy cars to enjoy them, drive them.
• 1:09:51
  I don't collect cars.
• 1:09:51
  I don't like that.
• 1:09:53
  That would be my problem.
• 1:09:54
  I hate getting my Honda Accord dirty.
• 1:09:57
  Let alone if I had a nice car.
• 1:09:58
  I wouldn't want to drive it.
• 1:10:00
  It's raining outside.
• 1:10:02
  See, I don't have that problem.
• 1:10:03
  My problem is I do not want to wash the car.
• 1:10:05
  I don't care about it.
• 1:10:06
  Sometimes they want to take their cars to a car show.
• 1:10:09
  They want to wash their car.
• 1:10:11
  They like doing all that stuff.
• 1:10:12
  I don't want to do any of that.
• 1:10:14
  I just want to drive it when I drive it.
• 1:10:16
  I never want to think about it again.
• 1:10:17
  I want to drive it when I want to drive it.
• 1:10:20
  And so that's where it then becomes a stressor to me.
• 1:10:23
  It's like all the stuff you have to do, which I don't do any of that stuff.
• 1:10:25
  I pay somebody to do all that.
• 1:10:26
  But still, anyway.
• 1:10:27
  Yeah.
• 1:10:28
  That's enough.
• 1:10:28
  I get it.
• 1:10:29
  That's a lot.
• 1:10:29
  I experienced enough of that with a little secondary house.
• 1:10:32
  I had like 30 minute drive from my primary residence a couple of years ago.
• 1:10:36
  It was a tiny house with like a hot tub and like just a really cool spot at the back of one of my rentals.
• 1:10:40
  It was on some anchorage next to a farm.
• 1:10:42
  It was personal for your use.
• 1:10:44
  Is that what you're saying?
• 1:10:44
  Well,
• 1:10:45
  It was a rental.
• 1:10:45
  I rented out the front farmhouse area, but then I built a fence, had a shop space for Augusta.
• 1:10:51
  And then I had this garden area with there's goats and a farm.
• 1:10:55
  And I put a little tiny house and a hot tub and a fire pit.
• 1:10:58
  And just a cool spot I could go work.
• 1:11:01
  But it was always in the back of my head, like, I gotta go, like, do the chemicals in the pool.
• 1:11:05
  I've got to like, I don't want it to like anything go bad.
• 1:11:07
  I don't want the pipes to burn.
• 1:11:08
  Like, it was always like every few weeks I had to go back and eventually got to.
• 1:11:12
  And I already, it was funny because I was like almost playing with it because you had said this before about second houses.
• 1:11:16
  And so I was, I had to experience for myself and sure enough, like,
• 1:11:20
  year and a half i'm okay let's just get rid of it let's sell the thing um mostly because it was just that constant like i've got to be back oh i can't travel i gotta get back and uh so yeah for 15 cars is not on my agenda i'm i i cannot handle it it's it's my stupid quirk so i'm curious so let's just say fast forward a little bit money is a total non-issue in your life like you got you can do whatever you want to do how do you live life what do you care about from from a yeah like how do you
• 1:11:49
  Honestly, like, I think it's partly because it's all I've ever known is I love this.
• 1:11:54
  I love building.
• 1:11:55
  I would like if I had a million dollars, that part I need to change.
• 1:11:59
  Like, would you, I, I, I was, I'm more like, yeah.
• 1:12:02
  Like, are you, are you, would you guys having that little tiny home house?
• 1:12:05
  Do you think you'd get a, I think you said you're a beach guy.
• 1:12:08
  Would you, or I think I, I.
• 1:12:10
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:12:10
  Okay.
• 1:12:11
  So would you get a house on the beach?
• 1:12:14
  Would you do that stuff?
• 1:12:16
  What kind of lifestyle would you live?
• 1:12:17
  Would you live in one place and travel all over to your different businesses or whatever you got going?
• 1:12:24
  Would you imagine the ideal?
• 1:12:26
  What do you imagine?
• 1:12:27
  I think I've dabbled in enough already and to kind of know.
• 1:12:31
  And I think it's probably trips specifically all extended family.
• 1:12:36
  And so I've done that on an annual basis.
• 1:12:38
  And then even what we're doing now with Texas is kind of like, okay, can we get away for a few months, reset, get a different idea of the business, get out of it, come back to it more of as an investor.
• 1:12:51
  And I think that'll change a lot because like, obviously I've only been married a couple of years now.
• 1:12:54
  And so I think that'll change a little bit in the future.
• 1:12:56
  So I don't have like super clarity on it.
• 1:12:57
  I just know I want to build.
• 1:12:58
  And I think in terms of so far, I've optimized it for my whole life.
• 1:13:03
  And so I have not thought a whole lot about like, what do I want?
• 1:13:06
  I think that... You've just been building to get to here and next level.
• 1:13:10
  Yeah.
• 1:13:10
  And I think, yeah, I think we're just...
• 1:13:12
  This past couple of years, it's been like, hey, what...
• 1:13:15
  What does it look like after build, build, build?
• 1:13:17
  Like that's all I ever knew.
• 1:13:18
  And so I want to give a lot away.
• 1:13:21
  I would like to mostly though, I kind of see myself as like, I don't want to say his name really, but I think of Tim Ferriss, like he tests everything for people's bodies.
• 1:13:29
  I would like to do that for home services.
• 1:13:31
  And that is like, whether it be the turnaround show or this challenge is like, how can I be the person that is in a very opportune position to be able to just
• 1:13:40
  show everything possible and not talk about it, but just show it.
• 1:13:44
  Because like this trip is expensive, like I'm moving down here and bringing media and all the rest of it.
• 1:13:48
  And I have a whole team of like, it's I'm uniquely capable to do that.
• 1:13:52
  And I don't know, I think because I had a near death experience twice.
• 1:13:58
  I sometimes think it's something it's almost a negative thing to have that because you have this like almost burden you feel on your back.
• 1:14:03
  Like, I got like, I'm living on borrowed time.
• 1:14:06
  I've got to always be giving.
• 1:14:07
  And I think that's actually hurt me a little bit.
• 1:14:09
  Dr. Gash has talked about this with me.
• 1:14:11
  Like you always have to be giving because you've been given this life in like a secondary time.
• 1:14:16
  And I think that has been a limiting belief and something I will have to work through as I think about the question even that you've had.
• 1:14:24
  All right.
• 1:14:25
  So two things I knew about the one near death.
• 1:14:30
  What's the other one?
• 1:14:31
  When I was really young, I drowned.
• 1:14:34
  And then I came back.
• 1:14:35
  But I was barely remembering that, I was only three.
• 1:14:38
  Okay.
• 1:14:39
  But the one when I- Very, yeah.
• 1:14:41
  Yeah, when I was 21, 22, that's the one I remember I can recall the entire scenario, that one.
• 1:14:46
  Yeah, but I'm sure that growing up, you heard about your near death experience, it was always part of, yeah.
• 1:14:51
  Wow, okay.
• 1:14:51
  I think it's one of those things, it serves you well for a lot of reasons, but also it can become almost a burden.
• 1:14:58
  oh, I have been given this.
• 1:15:00
  I am, I owe it to everyone else.
• 1:15:02
  And like, and that sometimes hurt me.
• 1:15:04
  Like I just work too hard.
• 1:15:05
  And it's like, why are you doing this?
• 1:15:06
  It's like, well, they need help.
• 1:15:08
  Or like, I gotta, I gotta do this.
• 1:15:10
  I gotta solve this for them.
• 1:15:11
  And sometimes I do think it has been, um, something I've taken on and it's almost too much at times.
• 1:15:17
  So.
• 1:15:17
  is that what you're talking about?
• 1:15:18
  So when you say Dr. Cash, he said it may be a negative.
• 1:15:22
  Is he saying you're spending too much of your time helping other people or what is he saying?
• 1:15:27
  I don't want to frame it like that.
• 1:15:28
  It's more like what has served me well in the past has been constantly to only think about others and like,
• 1:15:35
  just constantly work to solve their problems.
• 1:15:38
  And there comes a time with, to your question, like there, I had the resources to deal, do a lot of other things.
• 1:15:44
  And, um, what that looks like almost as hard because you, you've gotten so wired as to everything that I am given, I must give back.
• 1:15:52
  Um,
• 1:15:52
  more like there has to be a return almost and i think it is it comes partly from like that sort of protestant work ethic of like whatever i'm given i will get returned for and i will get and give that back to others and i think it's very helpful for a lot of life but it can sometimes limit your ability to even think in terms of i don't want to call opulence but like there are things that i haven't even thought about of what i want
• 1:16:17
  And sometimes those things are sidelined because of this driving notion that like you are here and you must you must perform and you must do better and you must improve and you must give.
• 1:16:26
  And I think that serves so many good functions.
• 1:16:29
  And then it comes to a point where it's like, maybe this isn't serving me necessarily my identity.
• 1:16:35
  My last one before your turn.
• 1:16:37
  Yeah.
• 1:16:37
  So what's your take on Texas so far?
• 1:16:40
  And I know you've been here a short time and it's been hot, but what's your take on being in a different place and just in general?
• 1:16:47
  You know, I have not thought about this.
• 1:16:49
  I have a brief thought about today.
• 1:16:53
  First and foremost, Brianna likes it.
• 1:16:55
  So that's like a huge deal for me.
• 1:16:57
  That's huge.
• 1:16:58
  huge um secondly i am i am slowly getting a different perspective in the business and that is really yeah like just being away from it yeah being away from it yeah okay i have not really fleshed that out so maybe i will eventually but
• 1:17:14
  I'm getting a different perspective on it.
• 1:17:16
  Just being away from operations, not being as emotionally tied to seeing people every day.
• 1:17:20
  I don't think it's something I would want to do long term.
• 1:17:23
  I love being in the office.
• 1:17:24
  Yes, I would.
• 1:17:26
  Time away has given me some perspectives that I think are going to be healthy for the whole team and the business in the future.
• 1:17:32
  Hmm.
• 1:17:33
  And it's only been like three weeks.
• 1:17:36
  I've never been away from them for long.
• 1:17:39
  So.
• 1:17:40
  What about Texas in general?
• 1:17:42
  Part of it was preparing for this, though.
• 1:17:44
  Meetings were cut.
• 1:17:45
  We had to get me off of a meeting schedule to be able to give myself time.
• 1:17:49
  So a lot of those things have just been a fruition of getting prepared for me not to spend as much time in the business.
• 1:17:55
  But in Texas in general, I love it.
• 1:17:56
  We love the people.
• 1:17:58
  We love the optionality of everything.
• 1:18:01
  We don't have a place.
• 1:18:02
  Yeah, Sweathouse is a place I love for saunas and cold plunges.
• 1:18:06
  Then you got like,
• 1:18:08
  Last night it was putt putt and then there's like go karts everywhere.
• 1:18:12
  There's like food everywhere, which now I'm on a meal plan, which stinks.
• 1:18:15
  The first week I took full advantage every night.
• 1:18:17
  We're just going to restaurants.
• 1:18:19
  That's why you had to get the nutritionist.
• 1:18:21
  Yeah, that's right.
• 1:18:22
  That's right.
• 1:18:22
  Maybe we're going to be at so, uh, but overall we really enjoy it.
• 1:18:27
  And, uh, I, I can't necessarily grade it because I'm sure June, July, August is so hot.
• 1:18:32
  I might change my mind, but, uh, you know, as you said, just stay inside.
• 1:18:37
  So last part of that.
• 1:18:37
  So being away from the team, you don't know that many people here, I assume.
• 1:18:43
  Do you feel isolated at all?
• 1:18:44
  I don't, or do you?
• 1:18:47
  This is never something I have ever struggled with.
• 1:18:50
  Yeah, no.
• 1:18:51
  I'm probably in Riley's camp on this one.
• 1:18:53
  I don't really need a big circle of friends or like people or I don't need quote unquote friends.
• 1:18:58
  Yeah.
• 1:18:58
  But I wouldn't say this is a positive.
• 1:19:00
  I wouldn't say everyone should be that way, but.
• 1:19:02
  Yeah.
• 1:19:03
  Okay, cool.
• 1:19:03
  All right.
• 1:19:04
  So let's hear yours.
• 1:19:05
  Okay.
• 1:19:06
  I kind of jumped around mine a little bit.
• 1:19:07
  So I have a couple, uh, I'll give this one.
• 1:19:09
  Let's see here.
• 1:19:10
  I think the belief I used to have or the one that changed is like believing every thought I have and being able to have strong beliefs loosely held and challenge my own ideas.
• 1:19:24
  And I think it's not just in business.
• 1:19:26
  It's just in life in general.
• 1:19:27
  Like maybe I'm wrong.
• 1:19:29
  Just maybe, maybe I'm wrong.
• 1:19:30
  More openness to being wrong.
• 1:19:32
  Yeah, exactly.
• 1:19:33
  And I think a lot of times when you're ingrained with very specific ways of living or morals or religion, it can be like, this is how it must be.
• 1:19:42
  And it's like,
• 1:19:43
  Can I have the humility, but hold this thought in my hand and judge it and ask myself if maybe, maybe I'm wrong.
• 1:19:50
  And if I am, maybe I'll have more grace for someone who has a differing opinion or thought because I no longer think I'm always right.
• 1:19:59
  And so strong beliefs loosely held.
• 1:20:01
  This is what happens as you get old.
• 1:20:04
  you're like oh yeah he's getting old now you're really starting to get old that's a good one though I think that is boy if we could use more of that in the United States and the world but I think that's also how you run a really great organization and how you take really great care of people and I think that's a better way it resonates with me I think that's the very same thing that's happened to me over time
• 1:20:32
  Very good.
• 1:20:33
  All right.
• 1:20:33
  Well, ladies and gentlemen, there's another podcast down in the comments.
• 1:20:35
  Let us know if any of these resonated with you or if you disagree that systems are great, cash is great.
• 1:20:42
  You should definitely stay staunch in every belief you think from day one of your life.
• 1:20:47
  Just let us know in the comments.
• 1:20:49
  Good to see you.
• 1:20:50
  Thank you all.
• 1:20:50
  Appreciate it.
• 1:20:50
  Bye.