The Advice You’ll Need at Every Stage of Growth | Jonathan Pototschnik

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I just look at some of these businesses and think they're one bad year away of going under.
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Number one reasons Augusta Lawn Care Locations close is because of divorce.
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It never solves the problem of bad management.
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This is an honest conversation I recently had in person with Jonathan Potosnik.
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Jonathan has ran a $10 million lawn care business, multi-million dollar cleaning business, as well as ran Service Autopilot and exited the business about six years ago.
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Now we're gonna be talking about everything from getting started in choosing a market to marketing and advertising, finding great managers, as well as all the way up to a 10 million plus dollar business where we start thinking about things outside of just the business and how to actually be successful in life.
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And wait till the end, because I asked some,
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more selfish questions of things that I just want to know from Jonathan.
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He has poured so much into my life and the life of many people in the green industry and was a huge inspiration as to why I started HomeWorks after he left Service Autopilot to be able to make sure there was a founder-led software business in the green industry and in home services.
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Without any further delay, let's fly out to Texas, sit down with Jonathan and see if we can't learn something from the OG himself.
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Thanks for having us out.
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Absolutely.
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And I wanted to do a little bit of a different sequence.
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I wanted to make sure that we kind of hit everyone that's listening.
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Okay.
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From starting out to 10 million plus.
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And I want to ask questions at each stage of business.
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Okay.
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And then I'm going to ask selfless questions.
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Things I just want to know from you personally.
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And so the first question I want to talk about is someone starting from zero.
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Yeah.
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Is choosing a market.
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It's one thing that I heard you say years ago, and I thought was really interesting, is like, if you have these intentions of growing a bigger business, the market does start to matter, in terms of how big of a business can this market actually accommodate.
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And last week I had Jonas from Pest Badger out.
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Oh, you did?
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Yep, and he was talking about how they like to go around a major city, and mostly because it's faster to be able to get on SEO, and rank well, and become a bigger name in a smaller market.
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What's your take for someone that's starting out and they're thinking like, hey, I'm willing to move.
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What are the things that you're taking into consideration in terms of where they should move a home service business to get started?
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Yeah, I think there's lots of ways you can play this strategy.
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And you're a marketing guy, so the point is so important for people to understand.
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When you think about marketing, if you send a postcard to somebody that doesn't have any money, couldn't possibly buy your thing, you're completely wasting your money.
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Whereas if you send a postcard to somebody who lives in a million and a half dollar house, makes 600,000 a year, isn't gonna take care of any of this stuff, they are for sure a buyer.
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It's just a question of will they buy from you?
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And so that is one of the single most important concepts to understand.
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And so when you think about where do I want to go, first and foremost, you're thinking about do these people have the money to buy my thing?
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They may have a problem.
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They may want to solve.
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They may want somebody to do pest control and fertilization, weed control, and move along, but they can't afford it no matter how much they want it.
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So when I think about a market, I'm thinking about
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is it a market where people have enough disposable income that they are buying these types of services?
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And not just 10% of the street or 20% of the street buys these services, but a big percentage of the street buys these services.
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And that's top level.
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I'm thinking about the other thing I'm really thinking about, is this a dying market or a growing market?
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So another concept in business that I really believe in, I'm sure you believe it too, the more you can hop on a trend and ride the trend, some people will call it riding a wave, the better, because it's the concept of rising tide lifts all boats.
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So if you're going into a market and that market has people moving out of that market,
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That is a negative.
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It just it's you've got this headwind that makes it hard to grow a business there.
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Whereas if you're moving into a market where new homes are being built all the time, it's growing, people are moving their businesses are moving their life in general is getting better for people.
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That's a really important sign.
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So I want to go somewhere where the markets growing.
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The long term prospects are great where people have money.
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If it's a younger clientele, I know there's a ton of opportunity to.
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a sell to people that are retiring because they can't do their own work.
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And that's a great market too.
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But I have to say, I kind of like a market where people are more savvy with technology and more capable.
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Because if you think about how we want to market to them and get in front of them through digital marketing, if how do I want to sell through that to them and get paid, I want to get paid with credit cards.
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I want them to be a little more technical.
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Also, if they're a little bit younger, that's good for the area.
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They've got kids, they're busy, or it's good for the market.
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That market will grow versus eventually if you got a lot of older people will die.
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Those are some of the super top level things I'm thinking about.
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So there's two concepts here.
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One is when you're getting started.
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And let's say you're living in a town is not the best town to start in.
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The reality of you picking up and moving to this ideal market, it's probably not going to happen.
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We could say you should do that, but the reality is you're probably not going to do it.
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That's a big lift, very expensive.
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So there's this idea where you just start where you are and learn, like get in the game.
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That's one of my favorite sayings, just get in the game and quit talking about it.
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Just get started, learn the lessons.
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And then if you discover you love this thing, then you might think about making the move at a later time.
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Yeah, like years ago when we first started Augusta, I was of the opinion like, it really doesn't matter where it's at.
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The market is basically irrelevant.
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We can always carve a niche.
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As long as there's other competitors, we can steal some of their clients.
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And I think what's changed over the course of time is realizing that although that may be true, it can be significantly easier if there's people moving in.
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All the house prices are going through the roof, so people have equity and they feel rich.
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Like if their biggest net worth is their house and that's going up in value and they get a line of credit.
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they're definitely going to be preserving that house, maintaining that house, adding to that house.
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And so we've seen a huge increase in the past couple of years.
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We do a huge report on every single market.
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And the biggest one is population moving in.
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Usually that drives housing prices up.
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Usually that means that there are headquarters businesses moving.
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It's one of the things that more recently I'm looking at is the business climate.
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Are they bringing the new tech workers?
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Because a 30, 40-year-old that has discretionary income is not moving to a place where there's not work.
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And so where are the big corporations moving and then bringing that talent along?
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Yeah, I agree.
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And I agree with your statement that you can outdo the competition in every market.
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The reality is most of the time when we're a newbie company, we're not outdoing the competition.
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We have a lot to learn.
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Quality is not that great yet because we haven't figured out the right people.
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Customer service is okay, but it's all on us.
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So we drop the ball sometimes.
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So the other thing is, again, in a small market,
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As long as it's a good market, I have no issue with that because I'm in Dallas, and I wouldn't say that Dallas is an easy market.
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There is unlimited competition here.
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I mean, unlimited.
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And so you don't need to go to a Dallas or a Chicago or one of the giant markets of the United States.
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But you just want to go to a good market, as I kind of talked about.
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And then you can always add and expand over time.
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When it comes to pricing going into that market, we were talking earlier and you're saying, hey, if I ever did something again, maybe I'd go way premium.
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Yeah.
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If someone has that mentality.
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That was in the software side.
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True.
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True.
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I'm just saying on home services, if they have that same mentality, like, hey, I'm not going cheap.
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I'm not going to start out at the lower end and move up as I hit capacity or raise prices.
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How should they be looking at it?
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They want to go very premium.
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I'm seeing more of these people thinking this way.
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It's like, hey, I'm not going to touch your property unless I'm doing five services.
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I'm not touching it unless it's very expensive.
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It's very white gloved.
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Is that something someone should be starting with, do you think?
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Or should that be something they move into as they learn the services in that area?
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I think move into, I don't know if that's necessarily correct.
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It really depends on your experience level.
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If I think back to me, if we had gone super premium from the beginning, well, actually, we had in the very beginning of the business, I sold some very premium, multi-multi-million dollar properties way back in the day where we took care of everything for them.
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It was the bane of all my problems.
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because I was doing too many services.
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I wasn't good at a lot of stuff.
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I mean, I just remember dumb things like, I never did the work in the field, but I was selling it.
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And then I'd kind of have to manage it.
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And I just remember, I didn't even really know how you keep all the weeds out of the flower beds.
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I mean, I knew you could spray them.
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I knew you could hand weed them, but like,
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You're trying to figure out, okay, is it a good idea to lay down that, what do you ever call it?
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Fabric.
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That fabric.
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Is that a good idea?
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Is it a good idea to till the thing up a couple inches?
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I remember trying to figure out all this stuff that I didn't know the answer to.
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We weren't ready to be premium.
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And so there was a lot of experimentation done with those early clients.
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And so based on my experience being a total newbie...
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premium wasn't the way to go.
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Go get your feet wet, learn it, figure out who your ideal client is, who do you most like working with?
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What's your ideal property?
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Is it a big property?
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Is it a small property?
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Once you figure that out, you can pivot that business.
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That's not very hard.
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So that's what I would gravitate towards.
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As someone kind of figures out that first couple of services, starting to grow the business now, the passing a million and beyond.
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A couple of questions.
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So one thing you said about a year ago, one of your videos, it got cut three different times and sent to me.
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And it was basically saying,
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you really start the business and it really takes a whole nother level at that 3 million and kind of beyond level.
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It really becomes something different.
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It's usually something that can live without you.
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You have a management team, et cetera.
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And has the potential to, if you're doing it right.
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Correct.
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It can also be like the worst.
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Assuming it's done right.
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should that be the goal for everyone or should they stop at certain periods along the way and get more profit?
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I see some people going for that too soon and just, like we just left someone the other day, having hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, too low of margins.
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Do you see it as more of an incremental, like that is something that over the course of time I get to or should I shoot straight for it?
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No.
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Okay.
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Build and clean up.
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Build, clean up.
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Build, clean up.
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If for no other reason you're just learning so much over time, at least that's been my experience, I've got to imagine it's been yours.
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So if you just keep your foot on the gas all the time, whatever you're doing wrong and whatever the mess is continues because you're just keeping up all the time.
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You let your foot off the gas.
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Maybe you get out of the weeds just a little bit.
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You have more...
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you can breathe a bit, you can think about the business a little bit more.
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That's when you realize, I'm pricing wrong.
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I'm carrying a lot of people I shouldn't be carrying.
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I'm doing all these things wrong.
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Let's clean that stuff up.
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There's that kind of cleanup.
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And then there's also this cleanup where growth is expensive, whether it be the marketing side or whether it be the CapEx, adding trucks and equipment.
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And by letting off the gas a bit, bringing down those expenses, people can pay down debt, they can build up cash.
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And so I'm a huge believer in this whole concept of, you know, you go hard for a period of time and then you clean up things and then you go hard again.
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And there's seasons.
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You know, in the city turf business, we went through a whole season of multiple years where we really barely grew the business.
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But we went from being a mowing company to now we're really a fertilization weed control, pest control tree company.
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And was it more contracted or didn't you have a lot of immigrant workers for a period of time at the beginning or is that not the case?
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In the beginning of CityTurf?
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Yeah.
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Immigrant as in like H2B Visa?
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Yeah, H2B.
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We still have them.
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Oh, you do?
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Okay.
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Yeah, yeah.
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We still use them.
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It's an absolute nightmare.
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Right.
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So you may or may not get them all, even though the same team members always come back and have been coming back forever.
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But we still use that program.
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So mostly the shift was the services side.
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Yeah.
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In that kind of level.
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The shift was the services side.
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And how long did those years take?
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I don't remember.
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I was very distracted with service autopilot, so I can't remember now.
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But I'd say that was probably a three-year journey, if I was just guessing.
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Kind of migrating over the service.
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The business kept growing, but it was really growing slow.
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But we changed, I call it the quality of the revenue.
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The structure of the revenue completely changed in the business.
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And so that's another example of cleanup.
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There's lots of versions of cleanup.
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Like you, I've seen so many companies, and debt is a real problem for a lot of people.
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Yeah.
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They're just living on a razor thin edge of they have no money.
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And maybe it's just because I'm so conservative financially and always have been and way too conservative, frankly.
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But I just look at so many businesses and think they're one bad year away of going under.
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I still to this day will argue that a massive percentage of our industry got bailed out by the ERC money.
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These companies, I saw so many problems.
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In these businesses, because I've seen so many businesses, and a lot of balance sheets got cleaned up.
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They completely—but they never learned lessons.
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Right.
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But they got bailed out of lines of credit, too much debt, bad pricing, so many things.
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They also got bailed out because in COVID, everybody started raising their pricing, which gave people cover to raise their pricing, which they would have never done it otherwise.
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And so— Leaves reporting because everyone had money.
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Yeah, and so—
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That's back to your point.
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This idea of taking a breather and cleaning, I love it.
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Yeah.
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At the million-dollar market going to the $3 million, a lot of times I see a lot of people struggling with it is you now need mid-level managers.
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It's not going to be usually, depending on the industry, the owner and technicians.
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There's gonna be, whether it be admin workers and office people or estimators and salespeople or operations managers.
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I see a lot of times that's the skill people lack, but very few people have the ability to say, I do not lack the skill of leadership.
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And they keep running up against this invisible wall of 1.5, two million.
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No one sticks around for operations managers or general managers or people in the office.
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There's like this churn.
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The technician part, they figure it out.
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And I've always really, I found it interesting that
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being a manager of managers is a different skill than a manager of technicians.
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Yes.
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And just because you're a great manager of technicians, where many times, like, do these tasks, take this photo, click yes, do this form, and it is much more regimented versus where now I need the autonomy of a general manager or an operations manager that can think on the fly, make decisions without me, unless I'm going to become just a, you know, micromanager.
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Yep.
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What do you see as the difference between someone who does good at that transition versus someone who doesn't?
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And I ask this question because this is the biggest reason at Augusta and a lot of people that I see getting past a million, they hit this wall is because they do not have the ability or skill to...
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lead leaders.
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And the reason I mentioned specifically is you have to do that at City Turf so you could go focus on something else.
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And from the outside looking in and from what I've heard from you talking together, you have a really good relationship with the people and the management at City Turf, even though you haven't been in the daily operations for a long time.
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So what do you think is the difference maker for a great manager of managers versus someone who hits that and is falling apart?
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Yeah, I think
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One, the first thing that comes to mind is the story you're telling yourself.
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So somebody might tell themselves the story that they want a big business, but they also tell themselves the story that I hate managing people.
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I hate employees.
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I hate doing this stuff.
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I wish it was just, I wish it could just be me in a truck, but I want the business to be bigger because my friends have bigger businesses or I want to make more money or my spouse is like, we got it.
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We need vacations, the kids have got to go to college, like we need to do more, you know, it's like, ah, fine.
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You know, and so they're building this bigger thing, but they haven't changed the narrative in their mind that, hey, this is who, this is my new identity.
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I am no longer Bob, the hardscape guy, Bob, the landscape guy, Bob running a really great lawn mowing business, and I love my guys that I work with on the truck too.
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I'm Bob, the business owner.
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I'm Bob, the builder of a thing.
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and telling themselves this new narrative that the entire game of business is people.
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I am now a person that builds people and leads people.
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That is the entire game of business.
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And until you accept that and also...
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become excited about that future, you're not going to learn all the lessons you need to learn.
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You're not going to be open to criticism.
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You're not going to embrace maybe getting coaching.
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You're not going to do all the things that you and I and so many other people are super successful have done.
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You've done coaching.
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I've been in coaching.
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We've read a bunch of books.
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We've talked to a million people.
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We're willing to listen to other people and say in our team and say, what am I doing wrong?
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How could I be better?
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Whenever something's not going wrong with the team member, my first thought isn't the team members are horrible human being.
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My first thought is where did I not communicate enough?
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What am I getting wrong?
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Eventually, we'll find out if I'm sure I'm communicating properly, I'm coaching properly.
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then I know the problem is them and not me.
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But my first thought is it's probably me.
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And it's that kind of a thinking.
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I just think most people tell themselves in narrative, team members are bad, there are no good people.
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And so when you're approaching it like that, you'll never be a good leader.
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And that's a super high level way to think about it.
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Having done the Academy, it serves all the Academy business for a while, and talking to other people about coaching, people just see this idea of spending hundreds, let's just call it $500 a month.
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That's a scam.
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It's a ripoff.
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Those people are just making lots of money for themselves.
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But universally, I think learning from other people, whether you're in a coaching group or you've got a mentor, is the fastest track to a version of success where you're learning how to grow yourself into this person.
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Mm-hmm.
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So that's the, you have to be of the mindset that I am now this person.
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This is what I do in the business.
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How can I become the best at being a leader, the best at being a coach, the best at growing people, the best at recruiting people?
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That's what you have to get your mindset to.
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And then that's what you have to observe on your calendar that you're spending the majority of your time actually doing.
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If you can remember back to when you started to have to do that for your first mid-level manager, what were some of the tensions internally even that you had to kind of overcome?
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Or what were the skills you were learning to make sure that you could hand things off and you could go do something else?
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Just handing things off.
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I think for me, and I think this is probably true for a lot of people.
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You feel you've been doing it for a while.
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It's your business.
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You feel like you're the best at it.
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You know how to do this thing.
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They're not doing it the way you would do it.
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It just drives you nuts.
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And so there's this element of just this underlying frustration with the other party thinking they're too slow.
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They're not getting this.
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They're not doing it the way I would do it.
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They're not doing it good enough.
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And so you don't delegate.
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And the reality is unless you delegate and then also explain and teach how to do this thing,
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they're never going to be able to run with the ball.
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And then if you also don't accept that there are multiple ways to get things done, are we getting the outcome that we want?
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And their process for accomplishing this thing might be, is different than mine, but might be totally fine.
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And and so I found for me, and I think this is, again, true for a lot of people really struggle with that.
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So what happens is you just hang on to things.
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You don't delegate to people or you do delegate to people, but you treat them more like a robot.
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I'd like to think I didn't do this, but you probably I probably accidentally did it.
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You treat them more like a robot and you don't say you don't give them a why.
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Like part of this growing a person is.
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It's not just saying do this thing and replicate, keep doing this thing day after day.
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It's like, here's why we do this.
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Here's how we're thinking about it and why we do this thing.
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This is how the customer's thinking about this experience.
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You're giving them all the whys and perspectives so that they start to learn the business, the organization, so that when they understand the concepts, they're going to be able to do this.
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then they can apply their own skill set and come up with their own ideas and say and observe what needs to be done inside the business.
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I don't know if that's if I'm wording that clearly, but I think oftentimes we view delegation as something we don't trust a person to do.
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So we don't delegate.
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And then we do delegate.
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We delegate like people are robots and we don't delegate like they're really people that are going to own this thing.
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And so they never end up.
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owning the role.
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They just become a task person, and then we're not happy with them.
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And so I think that's one of the areas where I grew tremendously as I started to do a better job of explaining the why, bringing the person in to fully understand what we're trying to accomplish, understand how the client thinks, have them give them things and just let them fail.
334
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Give them a budget, let them waste the money, which is painful, but that's how they learn a
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release people to go prove that they can or can't do a thing.
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But most of us don't really do that.
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One thing I found a lot of times, it's the financial stress that comes with letting them fail on your dime.
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It's very hard.
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Pools you back into micromanagement or stepping on their toes because you're like, I can't afford this job to go bad.
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I can't afford a hundred thousand dollars losses before I go get another GM.
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Yeah.
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And so a lot of times I see sometimes like fix the business so that when you hand it off, it can afford a couple mistakes.
343
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Yeah.
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And sometimes in that pursuit of grow, grow, grow, and you get middle managers all over the place, and all of a sudden you're mad at everyone, not because they're doing a bad job, but because you have no money in the bank.
345
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Yeah.
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It's financially stressful.
347
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Yeah.
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I also think that a thing that we can do inadvertently, and if you go too far with what I'm about to say, you can never fix the situation.
349
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So you hire an individual, you say, hey, I want you to be my operations manager.
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I want you to find issues.
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I want you to fix them.
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I want you to optimize the business.
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I want you to do all these things.
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They do a thing and you immediately like, no, we don't do it that way here.
355
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Oh, no, you should do it this way.
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We constantly put our foot on them in a sense.
357
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They spend some money and they make a mistake for 250 bucks.
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You come down on them versus just say, oh, man, I've done that.
359
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I've done that a million times.
360
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Here's what I've learned that solves for that problem.
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If you step on a person enough and stop them, they just quit putting themselves out there.
362
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And then what you end up with is a leader that will never...
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go out on their own.
364
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They will never streamline on their own because they live in fear.
365
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They need your permission all the time.
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At a subconscious level, they live in fear.
367
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And then you've completely destroyed the future potential of that person inside your organization by constantly putting the brakes on every... Like, the one I...
368
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think of a lot is somebody comes to you and says, hey, I think we should try this thing.
369
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And your first reaction or our first reaction is, yeah, try that three times.
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That doesn't work.
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And if every time somebody comes to you with an idea, you're like, oh, we tried that five years ago.
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That doesn't work.
373
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Oh, no, that won't work.
374
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No, I just, clients are never going to go for that.
375
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And you just literally kill every idea.
376
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Why should they ever come to you with ideas?
377
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And that's a really hard behavior to...
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you know, change if you're doing that.
379
00:22:31.276 --> 00:22:38.240
But I think it's one of the really critical things to help people grow and feel the confidence to run inside your organization.
380
00:22:38.941 --> 00:22:44.404
In 2026, we're trying to give away 100,000 copies of the Copy and Paste Millionaire book that I recently wrote.
381
00:22:44.724 --> 00:22:50.027
It's the blueprint from getting from zero to $3 million in annual revenue for any home service business.
382
00:22:50.428 --> 00:22:56.371
Now, as part of the 100,000 book challenge that we're trying to give away, we have two ways to be able to take advantage of this.
383
00:22:56.711 --> 00:22:59.153
One, you can get the free audio book, ebook,
384
00:22:59.593 --> 00:23:07.859
the course and a physical copy of the book sent to you for free without paying shipping if you go to mikeandies.com slash cpm course.
385
00:23:08.420 --> 00:23:12.162
Now, if you're like, I don't want to take a course, I just want the book shipped to me right away.
386
00:23:12.583 --> 00:23:16.385
You can go pay for the shipping at $6.50 for a $35 book.
387
00:23:16.746 --> 00:23:17.706
I'll cover everything else.
388
00:23:17.946 --> 00:23:20.348
Just go to mikeandies.com slash 100k.
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Our goal is to get this book in the hands of 100,000 home service business owners.
390
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I see kind of as you get to five million and now growing beyond that, a lot of times it becomes how do I figure out the compensation model for those managers or department heads or division leaders, however it's broken up the organization.
391
00:23:39.101 --> 00:23:43.905
What has worked for you and what do you see working in home services when it comes to either –
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compensation or bonuses and what has kind of been a tried and true model for someone who is trying to delegate and maybe conceptually can do that.
393
00:23:51.431 --> 00:23:52.992
Maybe it has the money, the business is doing well.
394
00:23:53.072 --> 00:24:00.778
But it's like, how do I make sure that when it hurts the business, it's hurting the person and they care enough so I don't have to jump in and they're on some just cushy salary?
395
00:24:01.790 --> 00:24:03.652
You know, unfortunately, I don't have a good answer for this one.
396
00:24:03.972 --> 00:24:08.136
I don't think we've really done a great job figuring out the compensation models.
397
00:24:08.756 --> 00:24:19.426
I think what we've done, and I'm a fan of that, and it's really hard work to figure it out and even to craft compensation models specific to people.
398
00:24:20.046 --> 00:24:23.689
So inside the CityTurf business, that's not something I've personally worked on.
399
00:24:23.750 --> 00:24:25.291
It's not something that we've really done.
400
00:24:25.451 --> 00:24:27.093
I would say the approach we've taken is...
401
00:24:27.753 --> 00:24:30.996
And I really like the compensation model approach paired with what I'm about to say.
402
00:24:31.236 --> 00:24:34.819
I think we've taken more of a really strong management.
403
00:24:35.320 --> 00:24:41.846
So from a management standpoint, we have really been hardcore about kind of push, push, push, go, go, go.
404
00:24:42.646 --> 00:24:46.190
And we've sort of powered through and we've done less around incentives.
405
00:24:46.210 --> 00:24:46.550
Yeah.
406
00:24:46.610 --> 00:24:48.212
We've definitely done incentives, and I have.
407
00:24:48.272 --> 00:24:52.317
I've done incentives around compensation, around money extracted from the business.
408
00:24:52.537 --> 00:24:59.506
There was a time, it's like, okay, incentives around the growing of the cash pool in the business and the incentives around the money extracted out of the business.
409
00:24:59.546 --> 00:25:01.147
That's at the very, very highest level.
410
00:25:01.168 --> 00:25:01.508
Mm-hmm.
411
00:25:01.668 --> 00:25:04.090
We really we've done pay for performance stuff.
412
00:25:04.491 --> 00:25:06.332
We've gone to pay for performance.
413
00:25:06.352 --> 00:25:07.673
This is getting below management now.
414
00:25:07.733 --> 00:25:08.854
We've moved towards it.
415
00:25:08.874 --> 00:25:09.835
We've moved away from it.
416
00:25:09.855 --> 00:25:11.357
We've done we've done those kind of things.
417
00:25:11.377 --> 00:25:17.582
But at a true management level of like your top, top people, it's been.
418
00:25:18.563 --> 00:25:20.524
it's been more muscle through it with management.
419
00:25:20.584 --> 00:25:23.925
So I wouldn't say I'm the best person to advise on this.
420
00:25:24.045 --> 00:25:30.767
I would say- And when you say that, just to clarify, is that like, when you say it's like more or less good salary, but these are the KPIs, it's more of a KPI?
421
00:25:31.047 --> 00:25:31.807
Yeah.
422
00:25:31.907 --> 00:25:33.267
We're trying to hit these numbers.
423
00:25:33.307 --> 00:25:35.488
We're trying to get these things done.
424
00:25:35.588 --> 00:25:38.209
And then also you can create a culture of pushing.
425
00:25:38.509 --> 00:25:42.330
So sometimes I think people want to do pay for performance.
426
00:25:42.850 --> 00:25:47.732
And again, I'm not saying anything negative or compensation plans because it's going to,
427
00:25:48.612 --> 00:25:55.316
they think it's going to magically solve all their problems and it never solves the problem of bad management.
428
00:25:56.497 --> 00:26:03.541
And so just because you throw money at somebody for whatever the scenario is, you're, I believe the whole world runs on incentives.
429
00:26:03.581 --> 00:26:05.582
And so you're incentivizing a behavior.
430
00:26:05.962 --> 00:26:12.266
So if I'm now incentivizing whatever that behavior is through this compensation model, I'll probably get a negative on the other side.
431
00:26:12.746 --> 00:26:16.088
And so a lot of times when people try to solve all problems with compensation, they're,
432
00:26:16.428 --> 00:26:18.850
or compensation models, they just create a different problem.
433
00:26:19.170 --> 00:26:27.815
And so compensation models paired with really strong management, back to data, back to we are a culture of go, go, go, push, push, push.
434
00:26:27.855 --> 00:26:29.676
We're a little more than a nine to five culture.
435
00:26:29.776 --> 00:26:33.679
It's like we're a culture of we take care of the client no matter what.
436
00:26:34.099 --> 00:26:37.362
That's all management to me, and that can't be fixed with compensation.
437
00:26:37.402 --> 00:26:48.033
You can't just throw money at people and magically they talk to the client right, they serve the client right, they bend over backwards to do things for the client, they fight hard to make sure we don't get negative reviews.
438
00:26:48.954 --> 00:26:50.396
People don't just naturally...
439
00:26:51.016 --> 00:26:52.818
do all the right things because you throw money at them.
440
00:26:52.878 --> 00:26:55.800
So that's where I'm saying, I think we've been a little more on the management side.
441
00:26:55.820 --> 00:26:57.862
Like talent acquisition being the focus.
442
00:26:57.882 --> 00:27:00.364
Like this person either cares with these customers or they don't.
443
00:27:00.544 --> 00:27:05.208
Right person in the right environment managed to the outcomes we want to get.
444
00:27:05.788 --> 00:27:07.769
And that works magically or works great.
445
00:27:08.129 --> 00:27:13.891
If you compare that with a really great compensation model, incentives, then I think you can get even more.
446
00:27:14.552 --> 00:27:15.812
We just haven't been good at that.
447
00:27:15.912 --> 00:27:20.454
I also have tried incentives and they don't always work.
448
00:27:20.494 --> 00:27:27.317
Like, so for somebody, what I mean by that is you might say, well, I'm going to incentivize this person for,
449
00:27:28.177 --> 00:27:29.078
to make more money.
450
00:27:29.598 --> 00:27:32.821
And more money isn't necessarily the motivator.
451
00:27:32.961 --> 00:27:41.169
I've really failed quite a few times in incentives where the person hasn't really changed behavior just to make more money.
452
00:27:42.030 --> 00:27:45.433
The thing that has maybe changed their behavior is this feeling of,
453
00:27:45.913 --> 00:27:47.835
their reputation on the line and pride.
454
00:27:48.075 --> 00:27:53.340
Like they're a person that's wired to do the right thing for their coworkers, to do the right thing for the client.
455
00:27:53.360 --> 00:27:59.866
And so throwing more money at them won't make them go faster because they might think, well, by going faster, I do less quality.
456
00:28:00.087 --> 00:28:01.448
That reflects poorly on me.
457
00:28:01.968 --> 00:28:03.150
And so the money doesn't,
458
00:28:03.810 --> 00:28:13.382
get you the outcome you want because their real motivation is their personal pride and the the look and outcome of their work, whether that be at a management level or at a production level.
459
00:28:13.562 --> 00:28:14.764
Does that make sense?
460
00:28:15.024 --> 00:28:17.888
And so, boy, it's tough, like either person.
461
00:28:18.148 --> 00:28:21.913
The other thing is, again, this is a service hall pie example because I wasn't doing CityTurf.
462
00:28:22.413 --> 00:28:30.155
At Service Autopilot, I did some compensations, but I personally, I never loved just giving people a check.
463
00:28:30.295 --> 00:28:31.615
I liked giving people a thing.
464
00:28:32.115 --> 00:28:35.956
So I was trying to figure out, like, okay, she wants to go to Japan.
465
00:28:36.336 --> 00:28:37.457
She wants to go to Thailand.
466
00:28:37.697 --> 00:28:39.077
He wants wheels for his car.
467
00:28:39.457 --> 00:28:41.838
I was always trying to think of those kinds of things.
468
00:28:42.278 --> 00:28:44.158
Nobody in the company knew we were doing these things.
469
00:28:44.438 --> 00:28:47.019
That person that got these things knew we were doing those things.
470
00:28:47.059 --> 00:28:50.980
And so instead of saying, hey, if you do this, you're going to get an extra $5,000.
471
00:28:52.541 --> 00:28:58.715
I was always more excited about, like, we need you to do this, and then you would gift them, surprise them with this thing.
472
00:28:58.956 --> 00:29:00.058
And I just always felt...
473
00:29:01.385 --> 00:29:04.326
I have so many ways to do this, but I felt like I had really good success with that.
474
00:29:04.346 --> 00:29:10.467
It was more exciting for me, but it really made a person buy even more into the company when they're getting this thing.
475
00:29:10.967 --> 00:29:19.209
You know, I've also, I love giving people money, but the other thing I've never loved about some of the, like if you're giving them an extra couple thousand bucks, like that's just gonna pay down the credit card, which is great.
476
00:29:19.229 --> 00:29:20.469
I think people should pay down their credit card.
477
00:29:20.669 --> 00:29:21.969
It's just gonna, that money's gonna disappear.
478
00:29:22.009 --> 00:29:27.610
But if they get an experience, if they get a thing, I just think it bonds them more to you and the company.
479
00:29:28.170 --> 00:29:30.591
So that's more the kind of stuff I've done.
480
00:29:31.431 --> 00:29:33.793
We've done bonuses and all the other stuff too, but it's tough.
481
00:29:33.813 --> 00:29:35.394
That's all I'm trying to say.
482
00:29:35.474 --> 00:29:37.876
Before we even did P4P, I still remember this one year.
483
00:29:37.896 --> 00:29:39.317
We were struggling at the time.
484
00:29:40.017 --> 00:29:42.539
And I just determined, hey, we have a little money left over.
485
00:29:42.579 --> 00:29:49.864
We'll get turkeys, hams, pumpkin pie, apple pie, and apple cider for every person for Thanksgiving.
486
00:29:50.205 --> 00:29:53.907
So the guys came back to the shop, and the whole place just filled with food, right?
487
00:29:54.588 --> 00:29:57.590
And a couple years later, there was kind of like a mutiny somewhat.
488
00:29:57.650 --> 00:29:59.411
I had now moved on out of the company.
489
00:29:59.451 --> 00:30:00.552
We'd switched to P4P.
490
00:30:01.313 --> 00:30:02.494
And there's kind of a mutiny.
491
00:30:02.534 --> 00:30:04.475
Guys kind of wanted to change inside the organization.
492
00:30:04.496 --> 00:30:05.857
It was against the GM and stuff like that.
493
00:30:05.877 --> 00:30:06.837
So I showed up.
494
00:30:07.578 --> 00:30:11.861
And what was interesting is it was kind of snuffed out by the crew that had been there.
495
00:30:12.242 --> 00:30:13.283
And they mentioned one thing.
496
00:30:13.303 --> 00:30:15.845
They said, no, Mike, and the team cares because they got us...
497
00:30:16.465 --> 00:30:17.485
this Thanksgiving thing.
498
00:30:17.745 --> 00:30:20.986
And in my mind, I'm like, those are a couple, maybe $3,000.
499
00:30:21.126 --> 00:30:27.468
And over here at that time, I was stressed out, how can you even 50 cents or a dollar more raised to be competitive, et cetera.
500
00:30:27.488 --> 00:30:31.829
But like a dollar raise is $2,000 per person per year, plus taxes.
501
00:30:32.449 --> 00:30:35.650
And I was out stressing out that when they just wanted something they could put their finger on.
502
00:30:36.270 --> 00:30:38.811
And to your point, the dollar raise would have disappeared.
503
00:30:38.971 --> 00:30:43.552
And I didn't even have it, but I could take what I did have and make more meaningful impact.
504
00:30:43.972 --> 00:30:44.192
Yeah.
505
00:30:44.633 --> 00:30:51.700
So when you talk about compensation models, I think it can take a lot of forms and it takes a lot of work, a lot of brainpower, a lot of thinking.
506
00:30:51.800 --> 00:30:54.423
And it's it's almost an individual.
507
00:30:55.164 --> 00:31:00.049
It's kind of it's to a degree, an individualized thing if you're going to do it at the highest level.
508
00:31:00.149 --> 00:31:00.329
Yeah.
509
00:31:00.669 --> 00:31:03.873
And then there's the whole other problem of if you get it wrong.
510
00:31:04.473 --> 00:31:06.155
You can kiss that employee goodbye.
511
00:31:06.175 --> 00:31:08.599
It's like, oh, wow, I gave them way too much.
512
00:31:08.639 --> 00:31:12.784
And if we get to this size, they're going to, they might as well own this company.
513
00:31:12.844 --> 00:31:14.186
Like, I really screwed this up.
514
00:31:14.226 --> 00:31:15.287
You can't unwind that.
515
00:31:15.307 --> 00:31:16.229
They're going to leave.
516
00:31:16.449 --> 00:31:18.251
And so it's tough.
517
00:31:18.452 --> 00:31:20.154
And you've got to be very, very thoughtful and careful.
518
00:31:20.334 --> 00:31:20.494
Yeah.
519
00:31:20.994 --> 00:31:23.815
As a company is now growing past 5 million, going towards 10.
520
00:31:24.055 --> 00:31:24.215
Yeah.
521
00:31:24.475 --> 00:31:30.596
One thing you said in our last interview, I think it was our last interview together years ago, we were remote.
522
00:31:30.896 --> 00:31:37.118
And you said that one line and Lee, he's the VP of sales at Augusta, he uses it in every single one of our trainings.
523
00:31:37.178 --> 00:31:37.658
Oh, interesting.
524
00:31:37.718 --> 00:31:38.018
OK.
525
00:31:38.058 --> 00:31:42.899
He puts it up on the board, put your name in a picture, a screenshot and then has this quote.
526
00:31:43.099 --> 00:31:50.161
And it's basically, in essence, saying a lot of people get out of home services too soon because of some other shiny thing.
527
00:31:50.281 --> 00:31:51.761
Start a new business.
528
00:31:51.962 --> 00:31:55.403
New industry, real estate, I'm gonna go do car stuff or whatever too soon.
529
00:31:55.463 --> 00:31:57.083
That was the part he zeroed in on.
530
00:31:57.763 --> 00:32:01.945
Mostly he has that at the very last wrap up with all owners before they leave.
531
00:32:02.405 --> 00:32:07.686
Mostly so that when they start growing and scaling and you get a location that's doing good, it's like, oh, I'm gonna move on to something else.
532
00:32:08.146 --> 00:32:14.948
And how I've always thought about it and how he talks about it is, you're like the 98th, 99th percentile in this industry.
533
00:32:14.968 --> 00:32:18.850
If you can have a business that runs without you, has mid-level management, is profitable by 20, 30%,
534
00:32:20.070 --> 00:32:29.276
Why would you go do something where you're maybe an average investor or an average person getting started in that industry versus just doubling down and doing more of what's already working?
535
00:32:29.316 --> 00:32:29.496
Yeah.
536
00:32:29.696 --> 00:32:30.857
Can you speak a little bit more to that?
537
00:32:31.277 --> 00:32:31.457
Yeah.
538
00:32:31.477 --> 00:32:33.118
I think it's powerful for that size of business.
539
00:32:33.779 --> 00:32:35.040
It's doing good.
540
00:32:35.540 --> 00:32:36.501
You have money now.
541
00:32:36.821 --> 00:32:37.421
Things are better.
542
00:32:37.441 --> 00:32:41.124
A lot of home service business owners that started from nothing, this is the most money they've ever had.
543
00:32:41.144 --> 00:32:41.404
Yeah.
544
00:32:41.644 --> 00:32:49.209
But they go to do something else, hurts the first business, and then the other business they started, they realize isn't all that it was made out to be.
545
00:32:49.669 --> 00:32:51.130
Yeah, I mean, there's several directions here.
546
00:32:51.170 --> 00:33:00.619
So number one is if I've got something that's just, we'll call it a $2 million business, it's making money, maybe it's not making as much money as I want yet, it's not perfect.
547
00:33:01.638 --> 00:33:07.601
What's easier, to go from two million to five or go from zero to two million?
548
00:33:07.621 --> 00:33:11.403
Just think back about how, and you could say, well, I've done it before, it's gonna be a lot easier.
549
00:33:11.703 --> 00:33:11.983
Really?
550
00:33:12.403 --> 00:33:13.764
It's still really hard.
551
00:33:13.804 --> 00:33:14.584
It's still really hard.
552
00:33:14.644 --> 00:33:16.225
I just, I don't care what experience you have.
553
00:33:16.305 --> 00:33:19.567
I think everything takes a solid five years.
554
00:33:19.727 --> 00:33:26.190
If you're going really hard all in, it takes a solid five years to get to a place where you're like, okay, this is gonna work out okay.
555
00:33:26.230 --> 00:33:27.010
This is gonna work.
556
00:33:27.250 --> 00:33:28.131
It's just all hard.
557
00:33:28.151 --> 00:33:29.992
And that's what, I think that's the story of
558
00:33:30.912 --> 00:33:31.652
almost everybody.
559
00:33:31.692 --> 00:33:36.713
And so this one concept is why would you abandon the thing that has momentum?
560
00:33:37.194 --> 00:33:39.734
And I sold service autopilot.
561
00:33:39.794 --> 00:33:40.854
Oh, that was a very good.
562
00:33:40.894 --> 00:33:42.255
Yeah, I'm coming back.
563
00:33:42.515 --> 00:33:43.855
I have no executive assistant.
564
00:33:43.935 --> 00:33:44.835
I have no recruiter.
565
00:33:45.055 --> 00:33:46.596
I have no marketing CMO.
566
00:33:46.656 --> 00:33:47.716
I have nothing.
567
00:33:48.076 --> 00:33:48.936
It is painful.
568
00:33:49.316 --> 00:33:50.817
Everything about it is terrible.
569
00:33:50.937 --> 00:33:51.097
Like.
570
00:33:52.237 --> 00:33:57.260
Every day I'm like, I think to myself, Jonathan, you are doing 5 million things you should not be doing.
571
00:33:57.300 --> 00:33:58.561
You don't need to do any of this stuff.
572
00:33:58.601 --> 00:33:59.502
Why are you doing this stuff?
573
00:33:59.522 --> 00:34:01.743
You're buying back your time and just beating you over the head.
574
00:34:02.303 --> 00:34:06.185
I have lost every advantage, and I have to rebuild it all.
575
00:34:06.886 --> 00:34:08.527
Okay, tomorrow I could go get a recruiter.
576
00:34:08.787 --> 00:34:10.308
I could go get an executive assistant.
577
00:34:10.368 --> 00:34:13.490
I could go hire all these people, and I'll be burning $750,000 a year.
578
00:34:16.945 --> 00:34:18.005
for who knows how long.
579
00:34:18.225 --> 00:34:18.445
Right.
580
00:34:18.845 --> 00:34:24.327
You know, it's like, okay, so, it's really nice to have a team and have people that can help you do things that makes your life better.
581
00:34:24.367 --> 00:34:28.728
So, number one, would it be easier just to go from two to five or five to 10?
582
00:34:29.208 --> 00:34:29.708
For sure.
583
00:34:29.748 --> 00:34:37.930
I mean, if really for me, I just, right now, even where I'm at, there's really nothing I should do other than just build CityTurf through the most giant company I could build it to.
584
00:34:37.970 --> 00:34:40.451
It's the single highest leverage thing I could possibly do.
585
00:34:40.871 --> 00:34:44.412
And I am, that's all I'm doing right now is working on CityTurf, but,
586
00:34:45.355 --> 00:34:48.317
I want to do other things, and so I'm going to do those other things because I just want to.
587
00:34:48.677 --> 00:34:53.481
So there's that argument, but there's no doubt that it's easier to take what you've already got and go big.
588
00:34:53.581 --> 00:34:54.061
That's one.
589
00:34:54.441 --> 00:34:56.623
The other one is, why do people really jump?
590
00:34:57.323 --> 00:34:59.104
People really jump because it got hard.
591
00:34:59.545 --> 00:35:01.406
Like, okay, growth is stalling.
592
00:35:01.446 --> 00:35:02.567
I don't know why it's growing.
593
00:35:02.867 --> 00:35:04.008
Marketing doesn't work.
594
00:35:04.048 --> 00:35:05.809
There are no good people in this industry.
595
00:35:06.049 --> 00:35:09.371
This isn't that good of an industry, blah, blah, blah, whatever the excuse is.
596
00:35:10.252 --> 00:35:13.353
That is what every single person in every single industry is whining about.
597
00:35:14.053 --> 00:35:17.475
I mean, you've done software, you've done like software isn't exactly easy.
598
00:35:17.495 --> 00:35:18.095
Would you agree?
599
00:35:18.115 --> 00:35:18.335
100%.
600
00:35:18.375 --> 00:35:19.135
It's brutal.
601
00:35:20.076 --> 00:35:26.018
Almost everybody I know that has sold their software companies and it's a small number of people that have had that outcome.
602
00:35:26.798 --> 00:35:28.919
They, I mean, it's like the universal conversation.
603
00:35:29.799 --> 00:35:31.460
I don't think I'm going to do software again.
604
00:35:33.020 --> 00:35:41.663
I don't want to put their names out there because there's some pretty big name people have told me I am taking my software money and I'm moving it to buying home services companies.
605
00:35:41.743 --> 00:35:46.805
And I just sit there and listen like, cool, you think this is going to be easy and software is hard.
606
00:35:46.885 --> 00:35:52.566
Everybody in the soft on the services side thinks, oh, wow, I should have owned a service autopilot or a copilot.
607
00:35:52.626 --> 00:35:52.987
New name.
608
00:35:53.027 --> 00:35:53.347
Homeworks.
609
00:35:53.367 --> 00:35:53.847
Homeworks.
610
00:35:55.348 --> 00:35:57.829
They all think they should be on that, or I should all be in coaching.
611
00:35:57.869 --> 00:36:00.130
That's so, it's all so much easier than this thing I'm doing.
612
00:36:00.150 --> 00:36:02.692
This is what everybody's saying in every single industry.
613
00:36:03.032 --> 00:36:03.692
It's all hard.
614
00:36:03.712 --> 00:36:07.635
And so my other argument is, you're leaving because something got hard.
615
00:36:07.755 --> 00:36:09.295
Marketing is hard.
616
00:36:10.216 --> 00:36:11.337
Management is hard.
617
00:36:11.957 --> 00:36:13.158
Cashflow is hard.
618
00:36:13.938 --> 00:36:14.719
Recruiting is hard.
619
00:36:14.739 --> 00:36:15.279
Something's hard.
620
00:36:15.439 --> 00:36:17.401
Why would it be different in any other business?
621
00:36:17.421 --> 00:36:18.582
They still involve humans.
622
00:36:18.922 --> 00:36:19.923
They still involve money.
623
00:36:20.203 --> 00:36:21.784
They still involve sales and marketing.
624
00:36:21.845 --> 00:36:22.865
It's all the same problem.
625
00:36:22.885 --> 00:36:31.833
So stay in the game longer, learn those skills, get really good at the core of business, bringing in clients, bringing in people to do the work,
626
00:36:32.453 --> 00:36:41.595
managing the whole thing because those skills transfer to every single business, software, coaching, healthcare, you could pick any industry.
627
00:36:41.615 --> 00:36:45.375
And so why would you say, I've learned like 20% of what I could learn.
628
00:36:45.435 --> 00:36:46.275
I'm gonna leave this thing.
629
00:36:46.295 --> 00:36:47.636
I'm gonna go start from scratch.
630
00:36:48.476 --> 00:36:49.816
I still haven't learned any of the lessons.
631
00:36:49.856 --> 00:36:50.836
Why was that gonna go better?
632
00:36:50.856 --> 00:36:52.916
And so I was like, hey, you've got this incredible vehicle.
633
00:36:53.437 --> 00:36:59.298
We live in this incredible moment in time where all the money is saying, oh, home services looks pretty good.
634
00:36:59.618 --> 00:37:01.078
Companies are getting great valuations.
635
00:37:02.174 --> 00:37:06.737
Technology will bring more and more efficiencies to these companies that could bring in higher margins.
636
00:37:06.978 --> 00:37:08.058
Why would you leave this?
637
00:37:08.098 --> 00:37:10.360
These are great businesses with a great potential.
638
00:37:11.181 --> 00:37:16.504
Grow these businesses bigger and learn everything you can to be a great leader, great business owner.
639
00:37:16.725 --> 00:37:22.929
And then in the future, if you wanna do something else, you've got money and you've got experience and it will be way faster doing the next thing.
640
00:37:23.630 --> 00:37:25.171
Last thing I'll say is it's just universal.
641
00:37:25.191 --> 00:37:30.555
I see everybody, they're doing, maybe they don't leave home services, but they add services.
642
00:37:31.495 --> 00:37:34.297
So what I generally see is like you had a mowing, we'll just use mowing.
643
00:37:34.317 --> 00:37:36.979
You had a mowing and bed and bush business.
644
00:37:37.019 --> 00:37:38.600
I was doing some ancillary services.
645
00:37:38.620 --> 00:37:39.160
You got to 1.2.
646
00:37:39.280 --> 00:37:40.481
It's doing okay.
647
00:37:40.801 --> 00:37:41.622
You start FERT.
648
00:37:41.942 --> 00:37:43.403
That gets to about 300.
649
00:37:43.443 --> 00:37:44.224
You start pest control.
650
00:37:44.264 --> 00:37:45.164
That gets to about 150.
651
00:37:45.244 --> 00:37:51.088
It's just this cascading series of poorer and poorer and poorer results.
652
00:37:51.509 --> 00:37:53.210
There's very few people that defy that.
653
00:37:53.690 --> 00:37:54.591
I mean, it's just very few.
654
00:37:55.271 --> 00:37:55.671
And why?
655
00:37:56.171 --> 00:37:58.593
Because they never mastered sales and marketing.
656
00:37:58.633 --> 00:38:00.194
They say sales and marketing doesn't work.
657
00:38:00.414 --> 00:38:01.535
Digital doesn't work anymore.
658
00:38:01.715 --> 00:38:02.755
Print doesn't work anymore.
659
00:38:02.795 --> 00:38:03.496
Nothing works anymore.
660
00:38:03.776 --> 00:38:05.217
No, it does.
661
00:38:05.377 --> 00:38:07.018
Or they say there are no good people.
662
00:38:07.178 --> 00:38:08.258
I can't find anybody.
663
00:38:08.839 --> 00:38:12.301
And so what's going to be different, as I said, in any of the other businesses?
664
00:38:12.742 --> 00:38:16.405
You mentioned valuations, a lot of money going from private equity into home services now.
665
00:38:16.785 --> 00:38:20.888
I think a lot of people getting started, that is almost a notion of, I'm going to sell this thing one day.
666
00:38:21.049 --> 00:38:21.229
Yeah.
667
00:38:21.609 --> 00:38:22.850
I still remember one video you made.
668
00:38:22.870 --> 00:38:28.675
I don't know if it was most recently or way back, and that was about the percentage of businesses that actually sell.
669
00:38:29.435 --> 00:38:30.876
Being tiny.
670
00:38:31.517 --> 00:38:39.223
And so with that in mind, the other part I also think about, and I think you mentioned it in your video, is so let's say you sell it.
671
00:38:40.573 --> 00:38:44.237
What are you doing with the money if you're not going to get 50% of it whacked by the government?
672
00:38:44.277 --> 00:38:44.477
Yeah.
673
00:38:45.078 --> 00:38:50.904
And I thought that was a really good frame for myself even as like we're growing and things like, okay, this valuation, whatever.
674
00:38:50.944 --> 00:38:54.047
But if I sell that, I'm just going to like, oh, I'm going to buy real estate.
675
00:38:54.107 --> 00:38:54.728
For what?
676
00:38:54.788 --> 00:38:58.252
Like I basically would be betting on real estate over the thing that I'm building.
677
00:38:58.272 --> 00:38:59.773
It's just a new business you have no experience in.
678
00:38:59.873 --> 00:39:00.334
Exactly.
679
00:39:00.374 --> 00:39:02.636
So you're going to spend the next 10 years learning that business.
680
00:39:02.656 --> 00:39:02.856
Yeah.
681
00:39:02.876 --> 00:39:07.779
So I've always, I've always, people recently have said, like, I'm going to build this, this, this, and I sell it.
682
00:39:07.799 --> 00:39:09.040
I'm going to try to get this multiple.
683
00:39:09.240 --> 00:39:09.961
And they're conservative.
684
00:39:10.041 --> 00:39:11.262
Okay, great.
685
00:39:11.962 --> 00:39:12.463
But then what?
686
00:39:12.523 --> 00:39:13.723
Like, where are you going to put that money?
687
00:39:14.024 --> 00:39:16.666
Now, now your job becomes a money manager.
688
00:39:16.726 --> 00:39:16.986
Yeah.
689
00:39:17.026 --> 00:39:17.986
And that's a whole new skill set.
690
00:39:18.207 --> 00:39:21.569
Not to mention, it's almost, most people can't handle it mentally.
691
00:39:21.609 --> 00:39:22.510
So I'll give you an example.
692
00:39:22.850 --> 00:39:26.813
You've heard that the S&P or the stock market returns on average 9% a year, whatever, you
693
00:39:27.373 --> 00:39:31.197
7 to 9%, depending on whatever timeframe you're looking at, you're like, okay, I got X pile of money.
694
00:39:31.217 --> 00:39:33.620
I'll just put it all in the stock market and I'll make 9% a year.
695
00:39:34.280 --> 00:39:35.842
Okay, that sounds wonderful.
696
00:39:36.122 --> 00:39:42.589
Until COVID happens, 2007 happens, or a big drawdown happens, and then you totally panic.
697
00:39:42.849 --> 00:39:44.490
You got 50% haircut on the taxes.
698
00:39:44.510 --> 00:39:46.251
You put the 50% in and now that got by 30%.
699
00:39:46.271 --> 00:39:47.992
And then you panic and you sell.
700
00:39:48.112 --> 00:39:50.554
Or it's down for extended period of years.
701
00:39:51.134 --> 00:39:53.716
And you're not getting your 9% because it doesn't ever actually return 9%.
702
00:39:53.856 --> 00:39:55.517
It returns 18 or two.
703
00:39:55.557 --> 00:39:56.317
It's all over the board.
704
00:39:56.657 --> 00:40:03.061
So not only do you have to learn how to invest, then you have to learn incredible calm and mental strength.
705
00:40:03.261 --> 00:40:05.943
I would argue a lot of entrepreneurs really struggle with...
706
00:40:06.543 --> 00:40:11.405
mental strength and they're very mentally strong, but they're not unemotional.
707
00:40:11.786 --> 00:40:17.989
I know a lot of entrepreneurs that can be kind of emotional, just the way they're kind of wired in the eye.
708
00:40:18.069 --> 00:40:21.710
There's always a big thing in Colby to assess this people.
709
00:40:21.730 --> 00:40:23.912
A lot of these entrepreneurs love living in the future.
710
00:40:23.952 --> 00:40:24.632
They love change.
711
00:40:24.652 --> 00:40:25.532
They love new ideas.
712
00:40:25.552 --> 00:40:26.493
That's what got them here.
713
00:40:26.833 --> 00:40:28.414
It also can create emotion because.
714
00:40:29.054 --> 00:40:30.454
It's like there's highs and lows.
715
00:40:30.574 --> 00:40:32.415
And so it's like you're really excited about the future.
716
00:40:32.455 --> 00:40:33.335
Then the future is bad.
717
00:40:33.355 --> 00:40:35.035
So now you're down, you're concerned.
718
00:40:35.055 --> 00:40:37.776
And what happens in the markets all the time happens investments.
719
00:40:38.236 --> 00:40:42.257
So what I've learned a lot of people like private equity and don't feel safe in the stock market.
720
00:40:42.517 --> 00:40:45.157
They like real estate, but they don't feel safe in the stock market.
721
00:40:45.517 --> 00:40:47.798
At the end of the day, the stock market drives all valuations.
722
00:40:48.098 --> 00:40:54.559
If the stock market collapses and stays down, your private equity investments collapse, your real estate investments are screwed, everything's bad.
723
00:40:54.799 --> 00:40:55.339
It's all bad.
724
00:40:55.399 --> 00:40:56.780
Maybe gold is non-correlated.
725
00:40:56.820 --> 00:40:58.641
Maybe it'll go in a different direction.
726
00:40:58.661 --> 00:41:01.543
But otherwise, if the market's down for an extended period of time, it's all down.
727
00:41:01.723 --> 00:41:02.704
It's all Bitcoin.
728
00:41:02.724 --> 00:41:05.605
Yeah, well, that's definitely a risk on asset.
729
00:41:05.625 --> 00:41:07.466
That'll go first, and then the market will go.
730
00:41:07.826 --> 00:41:09.667
Anyway, my point is that...
731
00:41:11.344 --> 00:41:17.146
My point in that is you've lived in a world of owning a business where every single day they're not doing what's called mark to market.
732
00:41:17.186 --> 00:41:18.426
You don't know your valuation.
733
00:41:18.727 --> 00:41:24.349
Every day your company was like, okay, my company's worth 4 million, my company's worth two and a half, my company's worth five, my company's worth one.
734
00:41:24.409 --> 00:41:26.289
If that was happening to you every day, you'd be a wreck.
735
00:41:26.549 --> 00:41:28.250
People that invest in private equity, same thing.
736
00:41:28.270 --> 00:41:29.810
They don't know the value they invested.
737
00:41:30.191 --> 00:41:31.571
They're stuck in the investment for 10 years.
738
00:41:31.591 --> 00:41:33.632
They don't know how the investment is constantly fluctuating.
739
00:41:33.692 --> 00:41:37.673
Whereas in the stock market or Bitcoin, you're seeing those fluctuations every day.
740
00:41:37.713 --> 00:41:39.734
People are not used to that coming from business.
741
00:41:40.294 --> 00:41:41.714
In business, they have this stability.
742
00:41:42.295 --> 00:41:44.655
Now, when you're an investor, you don't have any of that stability.
743
00:41:44.675 --> 00:41:49.757
It's a whole new thing that I've heard people say, it takes about five years to train yourself to get comfortable with it.
744
00:41:49.777 --> 00:41:50.757
And a lot of mistakes are made.
745
00:41:51.237 --> 00:41:53.918
So I kind of went off on a tangent.
746
00:41:53.958 --> 00:41:55.078
I love this topic.
747
00:41:55.158 --> 00:41:56.539
And so you're exactly right.
748
00:41:56.559 --> 00:42:08.162
Like this idea of selling, and now you have no income, you're burnt, you've paid all this taxes, you're burning down your savings, you're investing in stuff that is great when it's going up and scary when it's not.
749
00:42:09.743 --> 00:42:10.284
That's tough.
750
00:42:10.484 --> 00:42:11.686
It's really, really tough for people.
751
00:42:12.107 --> 00:42:19.797
I think that brings up a really good point, though, in terms of something I've always admired about you, and that is your demeanor not being too high and not being too low.
752
00:42:20.078 --> 00:42:23.122
It's something I thought a lot about during what we call bug hell back in 2024.
753
00:42:24.363 --> 00:42:28.345
And I remember at the time we weren't as close and we hadn't talked as much.
754
00:42:28.665 --> 00:42:36.248
But I remember just from afar at Service Autopilot conference, et cetera, knowing just from your demeanor, like the low highs and high lows.
755
00:42:36.268 --> 00:42:37.888
So this is actually the first time I've ever said this.
756
00:42:38.388 --> 00:42:39.869
It's a big deal we talk about in Augusta.
757
00:42:40.389 --> 00:42:41.610
That actually came from me.
758
00:42:42.790 --> 00:42:43.671
looking and observing you.
759
00:42:43.891 --> 00:42:44.191
Oh, wow.
760
00:42:44.371 --> 00:42:49.114
OK. And it was like he's the type of person that has lower highs and higher lows.
761
00:42:49.854 --> 00:42:53.577
And I know that it's certainly a skill you probably had to develop over time.
762
00:42:53.597 --> 00:42:54.757
I have tried so much.
763
00:42:55.038 --> 00:42:56.358
What exactly
764
00:42:57.485 --> 00:42:58.446
do you think caused that?
765
00:42:58.926 --> 00:43:01.569
Or what have you done to cultivate that?
766
00:43:01.849 --> 00:43:03.551
Because that was something that I had to learn.
767
00:43:03.571 --> 00:43:04.171
It was so hard.
768
00:43:04.191 --> 00:43:04.752
It's very hard.
769
00:43:04.812 --> 00:43:08.655
Every mad person, I would be like, not be able to sleep.
770
00:43:08.836 --> 00:43:12.279
I would have, I could literally feel like cortisol pumping through my veins.
771
00:43:12.339 --> 00:43:13.060
I'd be mad.
772
00:43:13.200 --> 00:43:15.062
I would be, I'd be reactive to things.
773
00:43:15.102 --> 00:43:16.363
I would want to get my opinion on everything.
774
00:43:16.723 --> 00:43:20.387
And now like I find myself more and more just saying like, let's just not make any decision.
775
00:43:20.947 --> 00:43:21.688
for a couple days.
776
00:43:21.708 --> 00:43:21.908
Yeah.
777
00:43:22.249 --> 00:43:25.973
And I've gotten better, but it's something that I've always admired about you.
778
00:43:25.993 --> 00:43:33.342
And I wanted to hear from yourself what you either did or were there times where you recognized this has to change in order for me to be able to continue growing the businesses?
779
00:43:33.742 --> 00:43:37.647
Yes, I can't point to a moment that it changed.
780
00:43:38.127 --> 00:43:38.948
It's been a journey.
781
00:43:39.129 --> 00:43:40.570
And for me, it's been...
782
00:43:42.843 --> 00:43:46.884
it's been getting older and having more, it's basically comes down to experience.
783
00:43:47.544 --> 00:43:48.625
You start to see a pattern.
784
00:43:48.645 --> 00:43:49.425
It's like, you know what?
785
00:43:50.045 --> 00:43:50.725
We figure it out.
786
00:43:50.845 --> 00:43:55.987
I used to love to say like, we eventually learn that we can engineer solutions to things.
787
00:43:56.107 --> 00:43:58.507
No matter what you throw at us, we're gonna get through this thing.
788
00:43:58.868 --> 00:44:04.969
And so there's this element of confidence where you build this muscle because you're looking back and saying, well, that didn't take us down.
789
00:44:04.989 --> 00:44:05.930
And that was pretty bad.
790
00:44:05.970 --> 00:44:06.990
That didn't take us down.
791
00:44:07.470 --> 00:44:08.931
I thought everybody was gonna hate us there.
792
00:44:08.991 --> 00:44:09.731
They forgave us.
793
00:44:10.151 --> 00:44:11.132
We survived it.
794
00:44:11.212 --> 00:44:16.635
And so you look back and you're like, okay, you gain the confidence that allows you to be calm.
795
00:44:17.235 --> 00:44:19.977
And then it's just hyper awareness that everybody is looking to you.
796
00:44:20.817 --> 00:44:21.638
And I...
797
00:44:22.878 --> 00:44:26.199
Everybody's looking at you to figure out, in the organization, to figure out how they should feel.
798
00:44:27.040 --> 00:44:33.082
In your, when you have little kids and you have a wife, they're looking at you to know how we should feel.
799
00:44:34.263 --> 00:44:35.143
Everybody's looking at you.
800
00:44:35.703 --> 00:44:38.144
And so who do you wanna show up as?
801
00:44:38.344 --> 00:44:40.325
I wanna show up as the calmest guy.
802
00:44:40.445 --> 00:44:44.587
And a long time ago, I came to that conclusion, and I have worked so hard on that.
803
00:44:46.048 --> 00:44:50.611
I don't know exactly what I've done other than to constantly have a lot of self-talk.
804
00:44:51.131 --> 00:44:54.414
Some of the self-talk was built on this, seeing that we've always engineered a solution.
805
00:44:54.434 --> 00:44:55.354
We've always figured it out.
806
00:44:55.775 --> 00:44:56.755
I think we can figure this out.
807
00:44:56.855 --> 00:44:57.896
Nothing's going to take us down.
808
00:44:58.677 --> 00:44:59.277
It'll work out.
809
00:44:59.657 --> 00:45:01.919
Constantly reminding yourself of that, working out.
810
00:45:02.179 --> 00:45:03.820
It's like the single most.
811
00:45:04.281 --> 00:45:05.201
It's a story I haven't told much.
812
00:45:05.301 --> 00:45:06.082
I'm not going to go into it now.
813
00:45:06.102 --> 00:45:07.963
But I had $100,000 saved when I was 20 years old.
814
00:45:10.845 --> 00:45:12.447
And that was a lot of money back in the day.
815
00:45:13.047 --> 00:45:17.831
And I got a completely frivolous lawsuit that ultimately we all walked away from.
816
00:45:17.871 --> 00:45:18.852
I can tell the story another time.
817
00:45:19.133 --> 00:45:22.315
I lost basically all my money fighting that lawsuit.
818
00:45:22.636 --> 00:45:26.199
I would run for nine miles at one o'clock in the morning.
819
00:45:26.419 --> 00:45:28.521
with my boxer, just one.
820
00:45:28.541 --> 00:45:29.962
She'd be on the leash and I'd be running.
821
00:45:30.282 --> 00:45:40.872
That was the only thing I could do to calm myself because it was such a scam of a lawsuit and it was dropped and restarted three times just to destroy us financially.
822
00:45:41.472 --> 00:45:46.097
that, and then ultimately just walked away from, and you have no control.
823
00:45:46.238 --> 00:45:51.524
And so it's, I tell that story to say, that was a, I was 23 actually when that happened.
824
00:45:51.784 --> 00:45:55.708
And so that's what got, cause I had always wanted to be in technology.
825
00:45:55.828 --> 00:45:57.210
That was my first technology business.
826
00:45:57.230 --> 00:45:59.493
That's what took me out of technology and got me into services.
827
00:45:59.893 --> 00:46:00.613
I got wiped out.
828
00:46:01.093 --> 00:46:13.578
And so my point is, it's that example, and then the example of building businesses where over time you stack these challenging things and you look, if you're reflective and you look back, you say, hey, it works out, it's okay.
829
00:46:13.758 --> 00:46:16.439
I learned to just call that my SMU law education.
830
00:46:16.479 --> 00:46:19.361
I paid essentially for a law degree in that lawsuit.
831
00:46:19.481 --> 00:46:20.841
And you know, I learned things from it.
832
00:46:21.441 --> 00:46:28.104
And then the other one is I always, I had this kind of thing I'd learned to do a long time ago to, cause your brain, my brain will just cycle.
833
00:46:28.404 --> 00:46:30.005
on all the problems, just cycle.
834
00:46:30.085 --> 00:46:34.427
It's like, wait, my brain's worked on this already 90,000 times.
835
00:46:34.487 --> 00:46:35.728
Nothing's new, nothing's different.
836
00:46:35.748 --> 00:46:38.189
I just, it's so hard to get my brain to be quiet.
837
00:46:38.209 --> 00:46:48.174
So I really years, 15, 20 years ago, at least 15 years ago, especially because of service autopilot early days, I'd say maybe this was a early day service autopilot, 2011, 12 thing, where it's like,
838
00:46:50.075 --> 00:46:51.435
Okay, what is the solution?
839
00:46:52.076 --> 00:46:53.596
What is the outcome I want?
840
00:46:53.856 --> 00:46:56.037
What is the very next action I need to take?
841
00:46:56.337 --> 00:47:01.678
And I would constantly in my brain say, because my brain's cycling, and there's a million variations, a million ways this can go.
842
00:47:02.038 --> 00:47:03.859
Have I thought about what the next action is?
843
00:47:04.019 --> 00:47:04.259
Yes.
844
00:47:04.379 --> 00:47:05.499
Am I doing the next action?
845
00:47:05.539 --> 00:47:05.760
Yes.
846
00:47:06.080 --> 00:47:06.520
Be quiet.
847
00:47:06.840 --> 00:47:08.660
Like I constantly do that in my brain.
848
00:47:09.301 --> 00:47:12.041
And so that helps me also come to calm.
849
00:47:12.561 --> 00:47:13.642
So exercise,
850
00:47:14.442 --> 00:47:25.654
a realization that we do figure this stuff out, knowing that I have to appear calm to the team, and then having that self-talk of trying to quiet my brain and calm my brain and saying, am I doing the right thing?
851
00:47:26.555 --> 00:47:30.138
Those are some of the things that have really helped me, and it's just practice.
852
00:47:30.178 --> 00:47:34.103
The negative, I've joked about this, my wife would say, I'm too calm.
853
00:47:34.203 --> 00:47:36.145
I'm too, she wants a little more emotion.
854
00:47:37.126 --> 00:47:39.428
I've heard her say this enough times.
855
00:47:39.468 --> 00:47:40.989
I'd just like you to be a little more emotional.
856
00:47:41.150 --> 00:47:43.252
I was like, I have worked on this so hard.
857
00:47:43.412 --> 00:47:45.434
I don't know how to be that person.
858
00:47:45.454 --> 00:47:47.816
I am just so even now.
859
00:47:47.876 --> 00:47:50.319
But I am convinced it's one of the great skills of business.
860
00:47:50.479 --> 00:47:53.422
And so I highly recommend working on it.
861
00:47:53.522 --> 00:47:56.625
I still remember we just started using Service Autopilot.
862
00:47:57.005 --> 00:47:58.386
And I think it went down for about a day and a half.
863
00:47:59.367 --> 00:48:01.069
And nothing was working.
864
00:48:01.149 --> 00:48:03.351
And everyone was freaking out on Facebook group.
865
00:48:03.451 --> 00:48:05.773
And you were quiet the whole time.
866
00:48:05.893 --> 00:48:12.238
But when you came on, I remember the shift in the talk and what people were saying.
867
00:48:12.719 --> 00:48:16.201
But I remember distinctly, because back then I was just starting my longer business.
868
00:48:16.221 --> 00:48:17.863
I didn't know what was going on down the road.
869
00:48:17.883 --> 00:48:21.346
But I remember, and I distinctly remembered it during our bug hell.
870
00:48:21.866 --> 00:48:26.289
And I remember making those videos where you stand up in front of everyone and say, yes, we are wrong.
871
00:48:26.609 --> 00:48:27.370
We are sorry.
872
00:48:27.630 --> 00:48:32.193
Here's how this works without going into a bunch of techno jargon.
873
00:48:32.453 --> 00:48:35.515
And I'm doing everything I possibly can here.
874
00:48:35.535 --> 00:48:36.656
You just got to trust me here.
875
00:48:37.116 --> 00:48:42.060
And I still remember playing that over my mind, doing multiples of those, especially that year, 2024.
876
00:48:43.260 --> 00:48:44.962
And your level of...
877
00:48:45.702 --> 00:48:53.265
Even the pace at which you talked was something I recognized as gave me confidence that he's in control.
878
00:48:53.325 --> 00:48:53.866
That's good to hear.
879
00:48:54.226 --> 00:48:55.526
And I've learned a lot from that.
880
00:48:55.586 --> 00:48:56.167
That's good to hear.
881
00:48:56.367 --> 00:48:56.607
Yeah.
882
00:48:57.047 --> 00:48:58.348
It's not been accidental.
883
00:48:58.968 --> 00:48:59.128
No.
884
00:48:59.328 --> 00:49:04.290
But I think it's what you've been through in his time and then being reflective on these things.
885
00:49:04.430 --> 00:49:04.931
Yeah.
886
00:49:04.991 --> 00:49:07.632
And I think that's one thing a lot of people don't do is they're not reflective.
887
00:49:08.272 --> 00:49:09.112
They're not reflective.
888
00:49:09.693 --> 00:49:13.214
They just live in a constant state of emotion.
889
00:49:14.094 --> 00:49:16.175
And that is a very dangerous place to live.
890
00:49:16.355 --> 00:49:20.857
And so there's this element of, it's back to the early part of the conversation, like how do you get a little bit out of the weeds?
891
00:49:20.877 --> 00:49:24.178
It's why you want to grow your business to a place where you have other people helping you.
892
00:49:24.638 --> 00:49:31.221
It's why you want to let off the gas sometimes so you can have this moment of being reflective and learning some things.
893
00:49:31.921 --> 00:49:35.463
And learning in this example would be like, hey, you know, it generally works out.
894
00:49:36.543 --> 00:49:37.465
We haven't died yet.
895
00:49:37.485 --> 00:49:38.566
We haven't ran out of money yet.
896
00:49:38.706 --> 00:49:40.289
You know, we're smart enough.
897
00:49:40.449 --> 00:49:41.090
The team's smart enough.
898
00:49:41.110 --> 00:49:41.951
We'll figure this thing out.
899
00:49:41.991 --> 00:49:44.735
And that gives you a peace of mind.
900
00:49:44.876 --> 00:49:45.376
Yeah, yeah.
901
00:49:45.877 --> 00:49:49.683
I want to, before we end the podcast, I want to ask some personal questions.
902
00:49:49.763 --> 00:49:49.943
Okay.
903
00:49:50.043 --> 00:49:51.365
Or I should say more...
904
00:49:51.926 --> 00:49:52.707
Selfish questions.
905
00:49:52.827 --> 00:49:53.027
Okay.
906
00:49:53.067 --> 00:49:54.128
Things that I've thought about.
907
00:49:54.608 --> 00:49:57.871
And I think I talked to Brianna, made sure she was okay with some of these.
908
00:49:57.891 --> 00:49:57.991
Okay.
909
00:49:58.011 --> 00:50:01.394
And then also, I thought maybe tomorrow night we'll talk more about some of them that's more personal.
910
00:50:01.434 --> 00:50:07.899
But I want to talk briefly on this one, but your relationship personally with money over time.
911
00:50:09.020 --> 00:50:13.184
Mostly because when I first started my long-term business, it came from a place of desperation and lack.
912
00:50:13.864 --> 00:50:16.826
And because we didn't have money and I thought that...
913
00:50:17.627 --> 00:50:20.428
solving every problem was just like everything just came out of more money.
914
00:50:20.708 --> 00:50:20.889
Yeah.
915
00:50:20.909 --> 00:50:23.470
Because like if we couldn't get food, it was like we didn't have money.
916
00:50:23.690 --> 00:50:24.610
Like we can't do that trip.
917
00:50:24.630 --> 00:50:25.631
Like I can't go to that camp.
918
00:50:25.691 --> 00:50:26.871
I can't go play a baseball team.
919
00:50:27.411 --> 00:50:28.012
It's always money.
920
00:50:28.412 --> 00:50:29.572
Always money was the problem.
921
00:50:29.893 --> 00:50:36.696
And so I came the first part of my career very much out of the place of this is the only way to solve this pain.
922
00:50:37.616 --> 00:50:48.623
As you have now eclipsed many levels of entrepreneurship and the monetary side, and that's gone, what has your relationship with money sort of turned into?
923
00:50:48.643 --> 00:50:53.046
Like, what is it like now?
924
00:50:53.066 --> 00:50:53.606
Yeah.
925
00:50:55.547 --> 00:50:57.549
The underlying wiring is still there.
926
00:50:58.369 --> 00:51:03.292
And I, for some reason, have a scarcity.
927
00:51:03.753 --> 00:51:04.273
I have a...
928
00:51:06.383 --> 00:51:08.545
I have a, I need a safety net.
929
00:51:08.945 --> 00:51:10.666
I've, I don't know where it comes from.
930
00:51:10.686 --> 00:51:10.987
I don't know.
931
00:51:11.067 --> 00:51:17.432
I think I have theories on where it comes from, but I feel like I've long, two things have driven me from a financial standpoint.
932
00:51:17.812 --> 00:51:21.155
One is when I was 10, I saw a Ferrari and I'm like, I want that in life.
933
00:51:22.355 --> 00:51:24.876
And so I always wanted cars and I'm into cars.
934
00:51:24.917 --> 00:51:26.037
I race cars, do all that stuff.
935
00:51:26.057 --> 00:51:27.458
So that that's been there.
936
00:51:28.038 --> 00:51:30.399
I want these things that I would never let myself get.
937
00:51:30.459 --> 00:51:35.801
You know, I guess I got them pretty young, but given where we were financially, I was ridiculously conservative.
938
00:51:36.181 --> 00:51:36.721
That was there.
939
00:51:37.242 --> 00:51:43.244
But the much, much more powerful wiring was this fear that something's going to go wrong in life.
940
00:51:43.584 --> 00:51:46.406
Something's going to go sideways and I need a massive safety net.
941
00:51:47.066 --> 00:51:49.427
Like it's going to go bad and I need to protect it.
942
00:51:49.887 --> 00:51:51.628
And so it's save, save, save, build money.
943
00:51:52.408 --> 00:51:55.009
And so for that reason, I've been investing since I was 20.
944
00:51:55.529 --> 00:51:57.130
I've been very conservative.
945
00:51:57.770 --> 00:52:01.971
To this day, I'm unbelievably conservative compared to the life that we could live.
946
00:52:02.772 --> 00:52:05.512
And I think it goes back to that.
947
00:52:05.592 --> 00:52:06.173
And so.
948
00:52:07.213 --> 00:52:09.815
I've had to try to unwire that stuff.
949
00:52:10.896 --> 00:52:15.639
I've had to, and I didn't understand that I needed this safety till later in life.
950
00:52:15.659 --> 00:52:24.665
I was just, as I've observed, like, okay, this is, I think, what's been my driver in life is I need to build, build, build, because I need, and I need to save, save, save, because I need some safety for some reason.
951
00:52:25.725 --> 00:52:32.670
And and I think some of it comes from several places, but some of it may come from the fact that my dad's an artist.
952
00:52:32.710 --> 00:52:36.172
And when I was young, he's he's a very successful artist.
953
00:52:36.192 --> 00:52:37.893
And that's a very difficult career to build.
954
00:52:37.933 --> 00:52:39.874
And my mom never she stayed home with us.
955
00:52:40.254 --> 00:52:41.835
So money was very tight.
956
00:52:41.896 --> 00:52:42.896
He was building his art career.
957
00:52:42.916 --> 00:52:46.018
So I probably grew up in a time where money was very tight.
958
00:52:46.579 --> 00:52:48.300
And so that's probably a little bit of it.
959
00:52:49.040 --> 00:52:56.124
So as my life got better and better financially, I still really worried.
960
00:52:56.304 --> 00:53:03.729
This program ran in my head that was just complete and utter nonsense that wasted brain cycles around safe, safe, safe, grow, grow, grow.
961
00:53:03.809 --> 00:53:06.991
And it became a measuring stick for me in lots of ways.
962
00:53:07.051 --> 00:53:10.933
So the biggest change, it's not that I've won that battle.
963
00:53:11.133 --> 00:53:13.815
It's that I've worked all the time to unravel it.
964
00:53:14.315 --> 00:53:29.265
I'm always trying to or unwind it or stop that behavior and allow myself to, one, spend more money or quit thinking about this stuff or be more aware of why I'm making certain decisions if I'm just optimizing to make more money because I'm trying to build more safety, which is silly.
965
00:53:29.785 --> 00:53:31.527
I don't know if that's a long answer.
966
00:53:31.547 --> 00:53:33.208
I don't know if that answers your question.
967
00:53:33.508 --> 00:53:35.009
It's not that I've won this battle.
968
00:53:35.069 --> 00:53:42.314
It's just that I've observed that this is the challenge for me, this need for safety, and it's trying to get rid of that self-talk in my head.
969
00:53:42.334 --> 00:53:42.614
Mm-hmm.
970
00:53:42.874 --> 00:53:44.095
And what are you trying to solve for that?
971
00:53:44.175 --> 00:53:53.039
Like, is it a matter of being able to feel free to send the money or is it a matter of increasing enjoyment and happiness because you have it and it's not, you can't take it with you?
972
00:53:53.519 --> 00:53:56.361
It's, I spend, I mean, I live an incredible life.
973
00:53:56.621 --> 00:54:00.583
And so, and we've been living a phenomenal life for a very long time.
974
00:54:02.784 --> 00:54:06.386
So I have really done a good job of being willing to spend the money.
975
00:54:06.426 --> 00:54:09.928
Now friends that know my situation might say, well, why don't you own all this other stuff?
976
00:54:11.123 --> 00:54:13.865
And I don't own the other stuff because I think stuff complicates your life.
977
00:54:13.885 --> 00:54:15.786
And that just creates a different kind of problem.
978
00:54:15.806 --> 00:54:15.927
Right.
979
00:54:16.507 --> 00:54:19.709
And so I don't really feel like I'm struggling so much with this.
980
00:54:20.310 --> 00:54:22.171
I'm not spending enough or living a big enough life.
981
00:54:22.691 --> 00:54:23.132
That's not it.
982
00:54:23.212 --> 00:54:25.814
It's more of the noise that plays in my brain.
983
00:54:25.914 --> 00:54:26.034
Yeah.
984
00:54:26.334 --> 00:54:32.038
It's so that my relationship with money has evolved and that that noise is dampened and quiet.
985
00:54:32.258 --> 00:54:34.039
But that that's still playing there.
986
00:54:34.059 --> 00:54:36.601
It's like where you feel like you need more or.
987
00:54:36.982 --> 00:54:38.683
And I think that goes back to a safety thing.
988
00:54:38.783 --> 00:54:38.943
Yeah.
989
00:54:39.183 --> 00:54:47.996
One thing you said, just as a side note, in one of your videos that also impacted me, is about second homes and how you had talked to so many people and so many regretted it later on.
990
00:54:48.036 --> 00:54:55.767
Most of it's just a mind space of this other piece of real estate and maintaining it and the maintenance and all this other stuff.
991
00:54:56.427 --> 00:55:00.812
And what's funny is I had a little tiny house that I had on a secondary property I was renting out.
992
00:55:00.892 --> 00:55:02.895
I put a little tiny house and that was like my escape.
993
00:55:03.035 --> 00:55:03.275
Right.
994
00:55:03.535 --> 00:55:05.017
Especially before I got married.
995
00:55:05.558 --> 00:55:07.400
I'd go there, especially on the weekend when I was working.
996
00:55:08.201 --> 00:55:14.448
But it became that like if I was out of town on the weekend, I'm like, wait a second that it's sitting there like and it's got to be maintained.
997
00:55:14.468 --> 00:55:15.309
There's a hot tub.
998
00:55:15.809 --> 00:55:20.295
And it became this thing that saffed my energy as another thing to manage.
999
00:55:20.535 --> 00:55:20.715
Yeah.
1000
00:55:21.156 --> 00:55:24.420
And so hearing you say that even about, like, other things that you could be adding on.
1001
00:55:24.480 --> 00:55:25.221
Cars, everything.
1002
00:55:25.241 --> 00:55:25.622
Yeah.
1003
00:55:25.742 --> 00:55:26.843
Everything comes with a cost.
1004
00:55:27.124 --> 00:55:30.648
The house thing is this funny little money thing for me, too, where...
1005
00:55:31.589 --> 00:55:32.670
I was always going to buy it.
1006
00:55:32.690 --> 00:55:36.293
When the kids got a little older, we were always planning to buy a home in Colorado.
1007
00:55:36.313 --> 00:55:41.358
In fact, what we never expected to sell Service All Pilot, I went to Boulder and looked at real estate while we had Service All Pilot.
1008
00:55:41.518 --> 00:55:47.424
And John and I were like, let's open a new office kind of in Colorado somewhere because we both wanted to live in Colorado.
1009
00:55:47.504 --> 00:55:48.965
And we could build an office there.
1010
00:55:48.985 --> 00:55:50.947
It's a great place to recruit tech people.
1011
00:55:50.967 --> 00:55:51.187
Yeah.
1012
00:55:51.367 --> 00:55:53.728
And so it would give us an opportunity to live between the two places.
1013
00:55:53.968 --> 00:55:55.269
That was we had talked about it.
1014
00:55:55.329 --> 00:56:01.591
I'd look there and then so I was certain as soon as my kids were a little older after we sold the business, I was going to buy something.
1015
00:56:01.711 --> 00:56:05.652
It was really more about them being where we could spend time there.
1016
00:56:06.073 --> 00:56:09.254
And so this house conversation, I've had this house conversation with everybody.
1017
00:56:09.674 --> 00:56:10.394
And I can't.
1018
00:56:10.454 --> 00:56:12.195
This is another loop that plays in my head.
1019
00:56:12.275 --> 00:56:12.635
I can't.
1020
00:56:12.795 --> 00:56:14.816
I know it makes zero sense to own a house.
1021
00:56:15.276 --> 00:56:18.137
But now my problem is I have had this goal for so long.
1022
00:56:18.157 --> 00:56:19.778
I just wanted to own a house in Telluride.
1023
00:56:20.478 --> 00:56:22.900
That now it's like, well, this box isn't checked.
1024
00:56:22.960 --> 00:56:26.242
I got to check this success box, but it makes zero sense to check it.
1025
00:56:26.262 --> 00:56:29.143
So those money things are my funny little loops.
1026
00:56:29.624 --> 00:56:33.026
I know what to do and I keep myself from doing them, but that noise is quieting.
1027
00:56:33.126 --> 00:56:33.826
Yeah, no, that's good.
1028
00:56:34.086 --> 00:56:36.388
Okay, I want to get to some of these other questions I had.
1029
00:56:37.048 --> 00:56:48.055
So this term, post-economic, kind of where, theoretically speaking, after you've made money and you can literally, you could put that money in an S&P 500 and basically never think about money again.
1030
00:56:48.075 --> 00:56:48.775
Yeah.
1031
00:56:48.975 --> 00:56:58.645
Once you've hit that, what have you found helpful in terms of finding the next goal or problem to solve or the quest that you kind of create meaning still in life other than it's just sitting there?
1032
00:56:58.745 --> 00:57:04.751
Or is that in and of itself sufficient enough for you to be able to go and just enjoy life without having another thing to conquer?
1033
00:57:05.071 --> 00:57:05.612
It's not enough.
1034
00:57:05.652 --> 00:57:11.417
And I think the vast majority of entrepreneurial friends that have had massive outcomes, I don't think –
1035
00:57:12.537 --> 00:57:16.079
I think everybody just tells themselves a new narrative and they all just go for more money and stuff.
1036
00:57:17.160 --> 00:57:18.460
And sometimes it's not really the money.
1037
00:57:18.520 --> 00:57:20.421
They're just going for that next accomplishment.
1038
00:57:21.042 --> 00:57:27.705
So my narrative for myself that I've had to work through, I took a break, a long sabbatical over three years now.
1039
00:57:28.626 --> 00:57:30.187
It had been probably three years or so.
1040
00:57:30.987 --> 00:57:32.288
that was one of the best things I did.
1041
00:57:32.488 --> 00:57:33.629
And almost nobody does that.
1042
00:57:33.689 --> 00:57:35.310
I think it's one of the greatest things I've ever done.
1043
00:57:35.610 --> 00:57:40.214
It does feel like I got a little behind, you know, but for, for what?
1044
00:57:40.294 --> 00:57:43.436
It's just this scorecard that, you know, I'm keeping in my brain so stupid.
1045
00:57:44.036 --> 00:57:46.078
And so, but I, um,
1046
00:57:47.845 --> 00:57:55.687
What I constantly remind myself of is a life well lived is not a life where I'm thinking about optimizing for me every day.
1047
00:57:56.007 --> 00:57:58.147
My life is spent optimizing for other people.
1048
00:57:59.007 --> 00:58:07.669
And so when I think about what I'm doing next, I'm doing CityTurf because I'm working on CityTurf exclusively right now because it's my baby.
1049
00:58:08.269 --> 00:58:08.869
I started it.
1050
00:58:09.669 --> 00:58:11.070
I got very distracted from it.
1051
00:58:11.090 --> 00:58:12.110
I was building service all by it.
1052
00:58:12.750 --> 00:58:13.551
I love the business.
1053
00:58:13.631 --> 00:58:14.411
I love the team.
1054
00:58:14.852 --> 00:58:15.772
And I think about in two ways.
1055
00:58:16.012 --> 00:58:17.213
One, it's fun.
1056
00:58:17.573 --> 00:58:20.716
So my that's one of my core things is this fun.
1057
00:58:20.876 --> 00:58:23.958
It's fun for me to get back into the business for a while, not forever.
1058
00:58:24.258 --> 00:58:29.382
And then two, it allows me to help my partner and my team.
1059
00:58:30.840 --> 00:58:32.642
have an even more successful outcome.
1060
00:58:32.662 --> 00:58:35.306
So that feels like it's not about me completely.
1061
00:58:35.646 --> 00:58:36.868
It's accomplishes the fun thing.
1062
00:58:36.888 --> 00:58:38.409
So that's cool.
1063
00:58:38.930 --> 00:58:40.091
Riley has every chat.
1064
00:58:40.112 --> 00:58:43.896
I'm not really helping him much with it, but I would like to help him more with it.
1065
00:58:45.220 --> 00:58:48.583
spending any amount of time helping my boys get to where they want to go in life.
1066
00:58:49.163 --> 00:58:53.366
Since I've already built a software business, I can help Riley shortcut some stuff.
1067
00:58:53.406 --> 00:58:54.727
If he wants to help, I'm there to help him.
1068
00:58:54.847 --> 00:58:56.488
That feels like a great use of my time.
1069
00:58:56.608 --> 00:58:58.169
Can I help Riley engage?
1070
00:58:59.070 --> 00:59:00.050
Not going to do it for them.
1071
00:59:00.231 --> 00:59:01.071
They don't want me to do it for them.
1072
00:59:01.091 --> 00:59:01.792
They're their own people.
1073
00:59:01.812 --> 00:59:03.613
But how can I help them get to where they want to go?
1074
00:59:03.773 --> 00:59:05.254
That feels incredibly rewarding to me.
1075
00:59:05.374 --> 00:59:06.935
So that feels like on track.
1076
00:59:07.375 --> 00:59:13.220
And then as I think about what I do in a career, it has to, whatever I start next has to be completely focused on other people.
1077
00:59:13.420 --> 00:59:13.620
Mm-hmm.
1078
00:59:14.080 --> 00:59:23.605
And so I don't know if that's quite answering the question, but that's how I'm thinking about this idea of just building another software company, another service autopilot to have another big outcome.
1079
00:59:24.106 --> 00:59:27.307
It like I wanted to fix all the stuff we got wrong in service autopilot.
1080
00:59:27.327 --> 00:59:30.649
So it's exciting to do such a thing like to maybe do another service autopilot.
1081
00:59:31.490 --> 00:59:32.530
I loved that business.
1082
00:59:32.550 --> 00:59:36.913
It'd be exciting to rebuild it, but it and I could help a lot of people, but I felt like.
1083
00:59:37.493 --> 00:59:40.114
That was more motivated around just making money.
1084
00:59:40.214 --> 00:59:41.654
And so that's how I'm thinking about it.
1085
00:59:41.894 --> 00:59:42.934
Where am I going to have fun?
1086
00:59:43.514 --> 00:59:45.935
And where am I going to be able to serve other people?
1087
00:59:46.035 --> 00:59:48.055
And that's what I want to do next.
1088
00:59:48.115 --> 00:59:51.736
And I feel like I see a lot of entrepreneurs, they sell their thing.
1089
00:59:52.316 --> 00:59:53.657
They are immediately bored.
1090
00:59:53.697 --> 00:59:55.197
They immediately jump into several other things.
1091
00:59:55.237 --> 00:59:57.138
And those things, there's nothing wrong with making more money.
1092
00:59:57.178 --> 00:59:57.818
I'm all for it.
1093
00:59:58.078 --> 01:00:01.659
But it's really just a great business idea that will make more money.
1094
01:00:02.059 --> 01:00:07.260
And I just don't see that as the most rewarding way to live the next chapter of life.
1095
01:00:07.780 --> 01:00:12.424
And so I'm trying to fight against that and be thoughtful in the way I just described.
1096
01:00:12.464 --> 01:00:13.986
Did I answer the question you were asking?
1097
01:00:14.006 --> 01:00:14.386
Absolutely.
1098
01:00:14.426 --> 01:00:14.806
Absolutely.
1099
01:00:15.227 --> 01:00:21.873
I wanted to—the last question, this is very selfish, and I made sure I got passed from Bree to ask this one.
1100
01:00:21.893 --> 01:00:26.176
And it was something that you and I kind of mentioned or talked a little bit about a year or so ago, and that is—
1101
01:00:26.937 --> 01:00:52.032
having the successful outcome you have had, being married to a partner that wasn't involved as a business partnership in those businesses, how have you navigated having a spouse that also needs to have their own thing and their own goals and things that they're going for while you were either A, in that grow phase and very concentrated on growing the business and it was doing successful, but then even after that, after the exit,
1102
01:00:52.472 --> 01:00:59.717
the ability to allow them to thrive and have things that they still are trying to go for when from a financial perspective, there's no need.
1103
01:01:00.058 --> 01:01:00.278
Yeah.
1104
01:01:01.479 --> 01:01:06.262
So yeah, that's, this is a tough one.
1105
01:01:06.742 --> 01:01:09.945
I actually think it was good for Tiffany and I that she wasn't in the businesses.
1106
01:01:10.522 --> 01:01:21.767
Now, when we started CityTurf, she was folding lead letters and getting door hangers, or not door hangers, postcards out and doing mailers while the kids would be at school or kids would come home.
1107
01:01:21.787 --> 01:01:23.667
She was doing that kind of stuff.
1108
01:01:24.007 --> 01:01:26.829
And then she did the books for CityTurf for a while.
1109
01:01:27.269 --> 01:01:29.290
And then she did the books for Service Autopilot for a while.
1110
01:01:29.310 --> 01:01:30.530
They were all pretty simple.
1111
01:01:31.551 --> 01:01:33.251
So she did some stuff like that.
1112
01:01:33.311 --> 01:01:39.794
But it was really good that she wasn't in the business, I think, for us, because the conversations were not about the business.
1113
01:01:40.930 --> 01:01:50.554
So there was this very clear line of Jonathan works, and then Jonathan is home, and we're not having dinner conversations about work all the time.
1114
01:01:51.294 --> 01:01:55.896
We're having dinner conversations about the family and the future and the kids and all that kind of stuff.
1115
01:01:56.196 --> 01:01:57.576
I think that was really good for us.
1116
01:01:58.097 --> 01:02:01.558
And so I like that division that we happened into
1117
01:02:04.071 --> 01:02:06.733
And so tell me, help me expand on this a little bit.
1118
01:02:06.753 --> 01:02:07.834
Where do you want me to go from here?
1119
01:02:07.854 --> 01:02:09.975
Because I feel like I'm going the wrong direction.
1120
01:02:09.995 --> 01:02:10.395
No, totally.
1121
01:02:10.435 --> 01:02:14.098
I think for a lot of, I'll take home services generically.
1122
01:02:14.318 --> 01:02:16.319
Mostly the guy makes the money.
1123
01:02:17.120 --> 01:02:20.242
The spouse, the wife is at home raising the children.
1124
01:02:20.642 --> 01:02:22.123
The business now has become successful.
1125
01:02:22.384 --> 01:02:23.685
There's money to be had.
1126
01:02:23.745 --> 01:02:24.925
The kids are now moved out.
1127
01:02:25.386 --> 01:02:25.846
And now.
1128
01:02:25.906 --> 01:02:26.586
Oh, they're out of the house?
1129
01:02:26.747 --> 01:02:27.087
Correct.
1130
01:02:27.147 --> 01:02:27.327
Okay.
1131
01:02:27.367 --> 01:02:28.327
And the business is now mature.
1132
01:02:28.347 --> 01:02:30.068
We're past like a $10 million business now.
1133
01:02:30.128 --> 01:02:31.588
I'm talking to that size of business owner.
1134
01:02:32.468 --> 01:02:36.669
And maybe their spouse doesn't feel like they've gone in the workforce.
1135
01:02:37.429 --> 01:02:43.031
Was it more a matter of conveying to Tiffany her value in what you were doing as a family, as a unit, as a team?
1136
01:02:43.471 --> 01:02:48.892
Or was it a function of like also stepping back and being sensitive to she might need to scratch that itch professionally?
1137
01:02:49.652 --> 01:02:52.133
So this is where everybody's different.
1138
01:02:52.213 --> 01:02:56.854
So Tiffany was a teacher until Riley was born and she stayed home with the kids.
1139
01:02:57.694 --> 01:03:00.756
Uh, Tiffany does not feel the need to scratch the edge of working.
1140
01:03:01.757 --> 01:03:04.339
Um, and that's where we're a little different.
1141
01:03:04.479 --> 01:03:11.544
I'm the one that's like, Hey, I don't want her to work, but a life well lived is having a purpose.
1142
01:03:11.564 --> 01:03:11.784
Yeah.
1143
01:03:11.804 --> 01:03:11.944
Yeah.
1144
01:03:12.204 --> 01:03:15.766
And she's like, I just wanted to be a mom and I wanted to be a good mom.
1145
01:03:15.826 --> 01:03:18.408
And I wanted to do these other things in life.
1146
01:03:18.448 --> 01:03:19.909
And I've got to do those things.
1147
01:03:19.989 --> 01:03:22.371
And I, that's, that was the life I wanted.
1148
01:03:22.951 --> 01:03:26.454
And so her challenge is she would like to do more volunteering, uh,
1149
01:03:27.454 --> 01:03:30.455
but we travel all the time and we're gone six months of the year.
1150
01:03:30.495 --> 01:03:31.336
How do you do?
1151
01:03:31.416 --> 01:03:32.636
How does anybody rely on you?
1152
01:03:32.676 --> 01:03:38.278
So this is a conversation in our family that's been had for years that we haven't quite figured out.
1153
01:03:39.019 --> 01:03:42.600
I will say rewinding when the kids were little and she felt like she needed more.
1154
01:03:43.901 --> 01:03:51.726
When she was in her late 20s, early 30s, she was doing... We didn't need to do it for the money, but she wanted to do fitness boxing with women.
1155
01:03:52.087 --> 01:03:53.007
She had ran marathons.
1156
01:03:53.027 --> 01:03:54.368
She got into fitness boxing.
1157
01:03:54.728 --> 01:03:57.150
Not like fighting, but she does the workout boxing stuff.
1158
01:03:57.230 --> 01:03:57.751
And it just...
1159
01:03:58.620 --> 01:04:00.521
it really helped her in so many ways.
1160
01:04:00.581 --> 01:04:07.586
So she started doing personal training and she had her thing that she felt like she needed more, something more than just the kids.
1161
01:04:08.407 --> 01:04:10.929
And, but it's just something she could do out of the house.
1162
01:04:11.629 --> 01:04:14.071
And so she kind of, she did a variety of things like that.
1163
01:04:14.111 --> 01:04:15.852
She did volunteering, she was involved in school.
1164
01:04:16.252 --> 01:04:21.756
Then as the boys got older and they got cars and you're no longer driving them to sports, that was when the big change happened.
1165
01:04:22.117 --> 01:04:26.440
And that's when our conversations really started changing more and more about what could you be doing?
1166
01:04:27.040 --> 01:04:34.907
And so she's done, you know, other things like being involved in church and Bible study, like some things like that she got more involved in or she'll do more volunteering.
1167
01:04:34.927 --> 01:04:38.190
She's gone and done some trips like to Mexico and things, volunteering.
1168
01:04:38.530 --> 01:04:41.092
And she loves that stuff and she'd like to do more of it.
1169
01:04:41.572 --> 01:04:48.078
And I think that would in her world would perfectly satisfy it in someone else's world where the spouse feels like they've missed a career.
1170
01:04:48.919 --> 01:04:49.779
That's just not Tiffany.
1171
01:04:49.799 --> 01:04:52.041
And I think in that case, you try to engineer that.
1172
01:04:54.243 --> 01:04:55.303
I don't know how it's answered.
1173
01:04:55.323 --> 01:04:57.784
I think you do become hyper aware of that.
1174
01:04:57.824 --> 01:05:00.886
You try to engineer so that the spouse gets what they need.
1175
01:05:01.606 --> 01:05:05.228
Taking a step back for a moment, last question for the audience.
1176
01:05:05.828 --> 01:05:14.392
And one thing I've always talked about with Brianna, kind of still staying on the relationship side of things, is I'm very grateful that she didn't come into my life when I was in the grind phase.
1177
01:05:14.612 --> 01:05:14.812
Yep.
1178
01:05:15.472 --> 01:05:16.793
And- Definitely went through the grind phase.
1179
01:05:16.953 --> 01:05:23.556
Yeah, and that's what I want to ask because I think most young guys, they're torn between I need to be a good provider.
1180
01:05:23.576 --> 01:05:25.377
I also need to be a good husband.
1181
01:05:25.837 --> 01:05:31.220
And these things come in conflict with each other because I'm working from 7 a.m. till 9 p.m. every single day.
1182
01:05:31.460 --> 01:05:33.481
And if I don't, I don't know if we will make the mortgage.
1183
01:05:33.981 --> 01:05:35.422
What can you say to that?
1184
01:05:35.442 --> 01:05:39.184
Because I actually can't speak to that person because I don't know what it's like to have a dependent.
1185
01:05:39.844 --> 01:05:45.926
and someone that I'm supposed to be pouring into when I could be very selfish in my 20s and just pour all of me into the business.
1186
01:05:45.966 --> 01:05:50.527
Yeah, I would say the 2007, eight range were very, very hard for us.
1187
01:05:50.547 --> 01:05:55.089
I was before service autopilot, but I had a bunch of other thing, businesses.
1188
01:05:55.589 --> 01:05:56.949
I was working all the time.
1189
01:05:57.029 --> 01:05:58.229
I had two little boys.
1190
01:06:00.812 --> 01:06:02.272
it was really, really tough.
1191
01:06:02.532 --> 01:06:09.214
And I was, it was, it just, it created a lot of stress inside the marriage because I'm just gone all the time.
1192
01:06:09.294 --> 01:06:11.494
And then I used, I used to be a partner in a cleaning company.
1193
01:06:11.514 --> 01:06:13.515
So back then we clean movie theaters.
1194
01:06:13.555 --> 01:06:15.275
And so I'm in, I'm traveling for that.
1195
01:06:15.595 --> 01:06:16.555
I was writing code.
1196
01:06:16.575 --> 01:06:21.536
I was doing contract programming and still probably bill in a hundred grand a year doing that back then.
1197
01:06:21.596 --> 01:06:26.697
So that was a pretty significant amount of hours plus the cleaning thing, then city turf.
1198
01:06:27.237 --> 01:06:30.558
And like it's so, and then, uh, one of my clients, uh,
1199
01:06:31.538 --> 01:06:37.602
basically raised a bunch of cash, gave me equity in a healthcare company that I helped get off the ground, healthcare software company.
1200
01:06:38.002 --> 01:06:38.922
We had four things going.
1201
01:06:39.202 --> 01:06:40.123
It was insanity.
1202
01:06:40.943 --> 01:06:47.187
And so I was always present at dinners if I was in town, and I always put the kids to bed.
1203
01:06:48.247 --> 01:06:51.189
Tiffany would say, you're a better dad than a husband.
1204
01:06:51.989 --> 01:06:53.429
because it was all back to work.
1205
01:06:53.469 --> 01:06:57.270
I was just trying to hang on and just build these things.
1206
01:06:57.330 --> 01:06:58.650
I had too many things going.
1207
01:06:59.070 --> 01:07:01.331
And so I think it's brutal.
1208
01:07:01.691 --> 01:07:02.831
It can be it's brutal.
1209
01:07:02.891 --> 01:07:05.812
And I think relationships get destroyed at that period of time.
1210
01:07:06.312 --> 01:07:18.434
The reason why I most people that came to know me when they knew me only did two things, CityTurf and Service Alpine starting in 10, and that is a direct result of
1211
01:07:19.374 --> 01:07:24.319
all the other things I had going, I literally gave all my equity away in two companies to just completely walk away.
1212
01:07:24.819 --> 01:07:31.506
I quit doing all tech consulting and I just said, what are the two things I'm most excited about in life?
1213
01:07:31.946 --> 01:07:35.430
And they were, which meant no income for me,
1214
01:07:36.170 --> 01:07:37.852
which was CityTurf and Service Alpi.
1215
01:07:37.872 --> 01:07:45.718
I went to zero income, got out of everything else, gave up and to do those things because I felt that that was critical to my future marriage.
1216
01:07:45.738 --> 01:07:49.841
And I also thought it was gonna be better business wise in the longterm, but it wasn't obvious at the time.
1217
01:07:50.281 --> 01:07:56.566
But that was directly because of my, what I felt was not ideal from marriage and a kid's standpoint.
1218
01:07:56.747 --> 01:07:58.348
And it was just too much.
1219
01:07:58.848 --> 01:08:03.152
And I think we're very fortunate that we navigated, everything went okay.
1220
01:08:04.602 --> 01:08:15.052
But I think most people do so much destruction and damage to their marriages that it's there are so many negative feelings harbored long term, they never really recover.
1221
01:08:16.013 --> 01:08:18.275
And I'm just very grateful that didn't happen to us.
1222
01:08:18.335 --> 01:08:18.895
Things are great.
1223
01:08:19.716 --> 01:08:21.037
And I think you have to be.
1224
01:08:21.718 --> 01:08:27.941
You have to protect that more than anything else, which is why I made the business decisions I made, which were brutally difficult.
1225
01:08:28.242 --> 01:08:32.564
Some of the hardest decisions I've made in my entire life to walk away from things that were very successful.
1226
01:08:33.965 --> 01:08:37.267
But I think at the end of the day, the single most important thing in life is your kids and your spouse.
1227
01:08:38.287 --> 01:08:39.848
And and so that's what I did.
1228
01:08:40.169 --> 01:08:43.031
And I felt like there's one other thing I want to say about.
1229
01:08:43.131 --> 01:08:48.575
Oh, it's also why I think that she not being very involved in the businesses were critical.
1230
01:08:48.895 --> 01:08:55.580
Had we been going through all that and then every time we had dinners or we went on a date night because my mom would come watch the kids.
1231
01:08:55.620 --> 01:08:56.100
Thank goodness.
1232
01:08:56.120 --> 01:08:57.021
That was so important.
1233
01:08:57.401 --> 01:08:59.322
Dinner at six thirty every night was so critical.
1234
01:08:59.342 --> 01:09:00.363
I look back on those things.
1235
01:09:00.643 --> 01:09:05.507
Tiffany as a spouse being you said you were going to be home on Fridays nights.
1236
01:09:06.187 --> 01:09:17.750
or you know, for dinner, or you said you're gonna be home on the weekend nights for dinner and just holding me accountable versus a lot of spouses who are a little, like Tiffany's a process person, so she would hold me to the process.
1237
01:09:17.930 --> 01:09:28.033
I'm so thankful because I think a lot of spouses will, the husband will use the guy in this, it will overpower the situation, say we've gotta do this, we gotta do this, I'm not gonna be home tonight, I gotta work the whole night.
1238
01:09:28.373 --> 01:09:33.695
Like in the breakdown happens, we don't do date nights, we don't have dinners together, I'm not with the kids.
1239
01:09:34.415 --> 01:09:40.082
And my spouse, I would encourage spouses to be hardcore and know you're doing the right thing for your husband.
1240
01:09:40.442 --> 01:09:42.364
If it's a husband situation, it could go the other way too.
1241
01:09:42.745 --> 01:09:44.226
Or you're doing the right thing for the marriage.
1242
01:09:44.366 --> 01:09:46.349
And ultimately, I think you're also doing the right thing for the business.
1243
01:09:46.689 --> 01:09:48.451
You have to keep these boundaries.
1244
01:09:48.972 --> 01:09:49.993
Or what have you gained in life?
1245
01:09:50.153 --> 01:09:50.954
Great, you're rich.
1246
01:09:51.214 --> 01:09:53.136
Great, you get to brag that you have a $10 million business.
1247
01:09:53.416 --> 01:09:53.856
Who cares?
1248
01:09:53.916 --> 01:10:01.583
Because you can't be a happy person when you can't look at how you've raised your kids and how your kids see you and feel pride.
1249
01:10:01.603 --> 01:10:04.725
And when you can't look at your marriage and say, this is a good marriage.
1250
01:10:04.865 --> 01:10:06.947
If you can't do that, I don't care what else you have.
1251
01:10:06.987 --> 01:10:08.528
You can't be completely happy.
1252
01:10:08.929 --> 01:10:11.871
So you need a spouse that has been given permission.
1253
01:10:13.532 --> 01:10:15.033
Meaning you're on the same page.
1254
01:10:15.073 --> 01:10:15.954
Permission is what I mean.
1255
01:10:17.035 --> 01:10:23.840
And you respect that spouse enough to listen to them and shut it down when they say this is what we agreed to.
1256
01:10:24.520 --> 01:10:25.941
This is how we're going to live our lives.
1257
01:10:25.961 --> 01:10:28.803
And that's what I did because Tiffany wouldn't let me off the hook.
1258
01:10:29.183 --> 01:10:32.204
And I give her incredible kudos for that.
1259
01:10:32.644 --> 01:10:36.685
And so back to my last thing, I think it was a real blessing that she wasn't in the business.
1260
01:10:36.705 --> 01:10:39.525
Because if we were going through all this, all I do is work.
1261
01:10:39.585 --> 01:10:45.727
And then when I come home, all I do is talk about the business and the problems and the clients and the partners.
1262
01:10:46.087 --> 01:10:48.547
And that's all we do on a date night or at a dinner.
1263
01:10:49.108 --> 01:10:50.248
Then we have no marriage.
1264
01:10:51.088 --> 01:10:52.690
you have to have all that other stuff.
1265
01:10:52.710 --> 01:10:54.973
So I think it's really cool to have them.
1266
01:10:55.173 --> 01:11:00.680
Like, I think it would be really awesome to be married to a spouse that was like, we'll use Alex and Layla.
1267
01:11:01.121 --> 01:11:05.867
Like combine me with an operational person that's absolutely killer that could be a COO.
1268
01:11:06.147 --> 01:11:07.389
That sounds really cool.
1269
01:11:07.869 --> 01:11:09.371
And like, wow, what you could do,
1270
01:11:10.292 --> 01:11:13.475
But I also see massive negatives, massive negatives.
1271
01:11:13.815 --> 01:11:15.997
Like, I don't want to just be a business partnership.
1272
01:11:16.097 --> 01:11:18.539
I want to be a relationship.
1273
01:11:18.559 --> 01:11:19.559
I'm not saying it doesn't work.
1274
01:11:19.599 --> 01:11:28.606
But for me, I'm really thankful that I didn't have a partner in my businesses or a partner that was so involved in the business we talked about all the time.
1275
01:11:28.626 --> 01:11:30.328
I think it was really healthy for our marriage.
1276
01:11:30.808 --> 01:11:31.289
That's a lot.
1277
01:11:31.329 --> 01:11:32.850
Like, my normal answer is fairly long.
1278
01:11:33.130 --> 01:11:38.354
But I think you also get me going here because I think this is one of the fastest ways to destroy your life.
1279
01:11:38.715 --> 01:11:43.359
One of the number one reasons Augusta Long Care locations close is because of divorce.
1280
01:11:44.460 --> 01:11:44.880
I believe it.
1281
01:11:45.520 --> 01:11:48.623
When I did Academy, I don't know how you—well, you would know.
1282
01:11:48.903 --> 01:11:54.508
You know, 50% of the score in our competition at the end of the year was how did you change your personal life?
1283
01:11:54.948 --> 01:11:55.669
Like, it just—
1284
01:11:57.144 --> 01:12:01.290
A life would, I think about everything through the lens of when I'm 90, I'm looking back at life.
1285
01:12:01.370 --> 01:12:05.075
A life well lived is not making another whatever amount of money.
1286
01:12:05.516 --> 01:12:07.899
That's only a little piece of the entire puzzle.
1287
01:12:07.920 --> 01:12:13.227
And it's a very important piece of puzzle to me because more than money I get, like you and like so many entrepreneurs we get,
1288
01:12:14.208 --> 01:12:24.214
real outcome and benefits and confidence and happiness from building things, from creating, from imagining something and then making it happen.
1289
01:12:24.234 --> 01:12:26.776
That's a very important part of our lives that can't be diminished.
1290
01:12:26.796 --> 01:12:28.357
And our spouses have to let us do that.
1291
01:12:28.497 --> 01:12:31.239
If they don't, we can't be a full person.
1292
01:12:31.859 --> 01:12:33.300
But that's still just part of it.
1293
01:12:33.720 --> 01:12:39.042
If it's important to you to be married, if it's important to you to have children, that's another part of it.
1294
01:12:39.062 --> 01:12:44.525
And then I think the physical element of the body, like the health side, is another element.
1295
01:12:44.785 --> 01:12:45.605
I could keep going.
1296
01:12:45.745 --> 01:12:49.307
And if you don't, that's why the academy was 50% that.
1297
01:12:49.347 --> 01:12:52.008
If you don't get the other stuff right, that's not a life well lived.
1298
01:12:52.849 --> 01:12:53.470
It's just not.
1299
01:12:53.650 --> 01:13:04.040
And so this is a big topic that I think people talk a big game and they set goals every year and they say, I'm guilty of all kinds of things.
1300
01:13:04.100 --> 01:13:05.141
I say I'm going to change and I'll change.
1301
01:13:05.161 --> 01:13:05.682
We all do it.
1302
01:13:06.983 --> 01:13:08.144
But it never changes.
1303
01:13:08.364 --> 01:13:10.486
And then it's just it doesn't it's not a great life.
1304
01:13:10.787 --> 01:13:11.728
And it's so destructive.
1305
01:13:11.828 --> 01:13:12.008
Yeah.
1306
01:13:12.454 --> 01:13:14.115
And I think that is a great way to end it.
1307
01:13:14.555 --> 01:13:15.456
Five for 50, though.
1308
01:13:15.596 --> 01:13:15.776
Yeah.
1309
01:13:15.836 --> 01:13:29.904
I know you've taken a sabbatical from the YouTube panel, but that really leans into this whole idea of five years, being able to really focus on the business, grow something that over the next 50 is enjoyed, has benefits to others and yourself, your family.
1310
01:13:30.344 --> 01:13:37.289
And so very shortly, maybe just plug that, but also just kind of speak to that being sort of the mission behind what you're trying to do now with the education side of things.
1311
01:13:37.329 --> 01:13:38.429
And I'm starting it back up.
1312
01:13:38.529 --> 01:13:38.909
Let's go.
1313
01:13:38.929 --> 01:13:39.390
I, uh,
1314
01:13:40.310 --> 01:13:44.233
And I actually just recorded a video about this, but I've been following my advice.
1315
01:13:44.373 --> 01:13:47.795
I have been 100% focused every day working on the city turf business.
1316
01:13:48.256 --> 01:13:49.457
And we've talked about this.
1317
01:13:49.477 --> 01:13:51.498
You gave me a lot of advice on building out a team.
1318
01:13:51.858 --> 01:13:56.141
And so I finally found a video person, and I've still got more to do.
1319
01:13:56.161 --> 01:14:01.585
And so until I could just get some of that dialed in, I just put a temporary pause, but I'm coming back to 5 for 50.
1320
01:14:02.045 --> 01:14:06.388
5 for 50 is just my general belief that people beat myself.
1321
01:14:06.708 --> 01:14:08.009
There's two ways to look at it.
1322
01:14:08.029 --> 01:14:13.853
There's young individuals today that think that they should immediately have an incredible outcome.
1323
01:14:14.073 --> 01:14:15.394
I start this thing, I should be rich.
1324
01:14:15.694 --> 01:14:17.095
I start this thing, it should be big.
1325
01:14:17.575 --> 01:14:17.955
And why?
1326
01:14:17.995 --> 01:14:22.698
Because that's the BS baloney you see on social media that's not real.
1327
01:14:22.879 --> 01:14:25.860
I know too many people that I'm very, that,
1328
01:14:27.261 --> 01:14:31.604
that I know on social media and I know them in real life and it really makes you pessimistic.
1329
01:14:32.805 --> 01:14:34.847
It just isn't the way most people portray it.
1330
01:14:35.547 --> 01:14:43.232
And I've known too many marketing guru guys that we know all the big names that have had big rises, giant falls, big rises, giant falls.
1331
01:14:43.873 --> 01:14:45.334
Life is not what people think it is.
1332
01:14:45.354 --> 01:14:53.159
And so they beat themselves up and they get discouraged and they get out of the game as a young individual when my goodness, what a gift you've been given.
1333
01:14:53.179 --> 01:14:55.681
If you can start young and learn all the lessons
1334
01:14:56.421 --> 01:14:59.002
become a good marketer, become a good leader.
1335
01:14:59.462 --> 01:15:03.423
If you can learn that stuff now, you are going to kill it in life financially.
1336
01:15:03.543 --> 01:15:09.505
And so I'm just really all in on young people going all in and knowing this is gonna be a very hard five years.
1337
01:15:10.165 --> 01:15:13.467
But if you do this, you will probably get to live a life unlike everyone else.
1338
01:15:13.507 --> 01:15:20.589
And you'll probably have additional five year journeys along the way, getting to the next level and the next level where you're growing yourself into a completely different kind of person.
1339
01:15:21.389 --> 01:15:30.497
And it also, the five for 50 also comes from this belief that in every business I've owned and I've owned a bunch and everybody I've known, it seems to somehow always take a good solid five years.
1340
01:15:30.577 --> 01:15:31.557
It just always does.
1341
01:15:31.577 --> 01:15:35.120
I was talking to Josh, our VP of product the other day, same exact thing.
1342
01:15:35.140 --> 01:15:36.742
I'm like, okay, Augusta media.
1343
01:15:36.782 --> 01:15:37.822
Okay, now it's homework.
1344
01:15:37.882 --> 01:15:40.024
It's the same, same amount of years.
1345
01:15:40.044 --> 01:15:42.766
You can have money, talent, knowledge.
1346
01:15:42.806 --> 01:15:44.568
You can even have the right people hired.
1347
01:15:44.628 --> 01:15:46.309
It's still just as hard.
1348
01:15:46.589 --> 01:15:49.752
And so that's the basis of where the five for 50 comes from.
1349
01:15:49.852 --> 01:15:58.355
I want to encourage people to go all in, grow yourself into somebody that is incredibly unusual compared to the rest of the world, and you will win for the rest of your life.
1350
01:15:58.375 --> 01:16:01.217
You will get to live life unlike everybody else for the rest of your life.
1351
01:16:01.717 --> 01:16:01.917
Awesome.
1352
01:16:02.057 --> 01:16:08.700
Well, I want to say on behalf of everyone in the home service industry, thank you, specifically the green industry, for everything you made years ago for myself.
1353
01:16:08.740 --> 01:16:13.802
I remember watching the videos in my truck between estimates, being lost, and finding a lot of...
1354
01:16:14.582 --> 01:16:15.745
answers in what you said.
1355
01:16:16.046 --> 01:16:21.157
And so I want to say thank you, and I hope that the next leg of the media side will also be something that people like myself can learn from.
1356
01:16:21.217 --> 01:16:21.498
Cool.
1357
01:16:21.518 --> 01:16:22.059
Well, thank you.
1358
01:16:22.079 --> 01:16:23.603
I mean, you're killing it, so thank you.