From Food Stamps to Multi-Million Business | Jacob Godar

What does it really take to build a multi-million dollar business from nothing?

In this episode of the Gold Coast Podcast, host Eric Winegard sits down with Jacob Godar, Founder & CEO of Scooters Lawn Care, to break down the real journey of entrepreneurship, no fluff, no shortcuts.

Jacob went from making just a few hundred dollars a week… to building a rapidly scaling, multi-state business with ambitions of hitting $50 million+.

They dive into:

The mindset required to take leap into business
Why most people never break past $500K
The reality of risk, sacrifice, and growth
Building a business while raising a family
The truth about work-life balance (and why it’s a myth)
AI, the future of business, and where opportunity is going
Why the journey matters more than the destination

If you’re an entrepreneur or thinking about becoming one, this episode will challenge the way you think about work, risk, and success.

Whether you’re at $0, $500K, or scaling to millions… this is a must-watch.

Guest: Jacob Godar
Founder/CEO of Scooters Lawn Care

👉 Learn more:
Scooters Lawn Care (Florida): https://scooterslawncarefl.com

Scooters Lawn Care (Illinois): https://scooterslawncare.com

Follow Jacob:
Podcast: GROW BY DESIGN
YouTube:  @JacobGodar ​

Thank you all for listening in on today's episode of The Gold Coast Podcast!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the Gold Coast Podcast. I am your host, Eric Weingard. Today I have a very inspiring entrepreneur. This guy, Jacob Godar, not only has a successful business up in Springfield, Illinois, but a few years back he decided to come down to Sunny Florida, just like yours truly, and build a secondary version of his business that is blowing up. And this guy's going to take this thing to nine figures and we're going to help him help him do it. Jacob Godar of Scooters Landscape, welcome to the show. Glad to be here, man. Thank you for having me. I don't know how this works. Like this is this is new territory for me.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Working parents. You know, now your wife has a now obviously you have successful businesses, but I'm talking about the average family. Like, how do like like you have what do they do? Just work part-time? If if a woman wants to work, if she's you know, a single mom, let's say, how does a single mom even like what do they do? Show up to work at nine, drop the kid off, and then go pick them up at 3 30.

SPEAKER_03 1:06

I mean, it just seems like a the woman's part of raising a child is so huge, right? Like the the taking care of the nurturing, all of that, that's such a full-time commitment. That's a 40-hour week job. So yeah, I don't to see a woman that does all of that has to end up doing it on her own and make it work and keep all the ends together, that's just incredible that somebody can do that at all. Because I I don't really have the right answer for you on that either. Well, you know, and and there's so much expense just to pay to have other people watch them that like it's it's a crazy battle, I gotta imagine.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

Well, because I grew up with a single mom.

SPEAKER_03 1:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

And you know, now that I'm you know getting older and thinking about it, and I think I've been reflecting on my childhood a little bit more all of a sudden, you know, for 45 years in, I'm finally reflecting on my childhood, I think, because I'm getting ready to be a parent. Yeah, I've been having interesting dreams, yeah. You know, about seeing my child in the future and stuff. Like it's it's wild. Yeah, yeah. But um, I I'm really I think I'm I was always kind of hard on my mom a little bit because she we really we struggled. Yeah, we struggled bad. But looking back now, I'm like, damn, how did she even how did she even provide at all? Like it's you know, it's I mean she she was on welfare for a little while. Yeah, and then she used entitlement the right way, right? She she eventually became a nurse, and throughout different phases of my life, like I started off in the city, inner city, yeah, schools weren't so good, but then she started making enough money to where I went to like a very working class suburb. Kids, you know, were tough there, don't get me wrong. But it wasn't as bad as the city, and then for high school, I went to um like a very like affluent high school, and that probably did change the trajectory of my uh mental awareness of who I could become. Yeah, but I just I don't know, I like I'm just observing like employees that I have and things like that that have these commitments, and dude, it's it's it ain't easy, dude.

SPEAKER_03 3:16

Yeah, yeah, because I think that question always comes up, and even I I was kind of thinking that in my mind, like, does does your wife work? And even if she's even if she would be a stay-at-home mom 24-7, that's still it's a that's what I went back to, it's a full-time job. Yeah, you know, we're we're blessed that we've got the situation that we're in, and my wife is able to follow her own passions and her own journey and have that where it fits a schedule for her, and we're we're a little more flexible. But on top of that, she homeschools our kids too.

SPEAKER_04 3:45

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_03 3:46

Like, so it's like the ultimate of ultimate jobs, and kind of putting the whole piece together. I don't have an answer. Like, I'm in I've always been amazed, even when she was doing full, you know, like really helping us and doing our marketing, how she could do it all. And I I think that's one thing we have a lot of women in our office that I'm always really amazed by. I think it's just like a natural thing to be able to multitask for a woman. I think it's you, you know, we've all got our natural tendencies that we get from years and years of evolution, and uh they do really well with that.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

Now, let me ask you this how much of a are you a workaholic?

SPEAKER_03 4:20

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

I didn't even hesitate.

SPEAKER_03 4:22

Yeah, I mean it's just like I just I and I enjoy it. Yeah, you know, I can't imagine I feel very blessed to have a full play.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

Yeah. No, I'm the same way. I um, you know, I'm definitely I'm definitely a workaholic, but you know, sometimes at night, you know, I'm uh going over something and and unfortunately TV just doesn't interest me anymore.

SPEAKER_02 4:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Like I wish I I actually wish I could get into a Netflix show. Like I would love it. Like, don't get me wrong, you know, Ozark came back out, you know, like I'll rip it, I'll go right through it. But but I really struggle just to enjoy everything, and and I've just gotten to a point where I'm like, you know, my wife likes to decompress at night and watch something. I said, babe, you watch your thing, watch your two episodes. I'm just gonna put one earbud in, I'm gonna have my laptop, I'm gonna have my phone, and I'm just gonna kind of get a little bit of work done, but I but I'm actually enjoying it. Yeah, you know, it's it doesn't feel like work. You know, I'm enjoying the growth, I'm enjoying the learning, I'm enjoying the journey. But I always have my other ear to her. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? So yeah, I'm a workaholic, but um I well, I guess if you're an alcoholic, you probably enjoy alcohol too.

SPEAKER_03 5:31

But my wife mentioned yesterday because I had uh I had a test that I was doing, I couldn't drink any coffee. Right? And this test was at 4 p.m. or 3 15. And I got like halfway through the day, and I'm like, I might actually have a problem with caffeine. I've got a horrible headache, and I feel horrible today. And I brought that up to my wife, and she's like, Well, you don't do anything, like everything you do is an excess.

SPEAKER_04 5:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:57

So if you do it at all, you do it all the way. And so that's yeah, like the business part, or I mean hanging with the kids, everything. I try to live full out in whatever wherever I'm at, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:10

And business just it doesn't seem you hear so many people like dying for Friday. That's just not how I feel. Like I'm more of a T G I M and T GIF, it doesn't really matter.

SPEAKER_04 6:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:21

Um, it's it's all enjoyable to me. So it's not like so many people are trying to avoid work and they can't be a workaholic because they don't understand that because they hate it. Me, I'm like, what else are we gonna build? What are we gonna change? How's that gonna make us grow? Or we can hire more people, or how are we gonna get through this big challenge so things are better on the other side? It's really easy to get addicted to.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

Yeah. I I have a theory. This is cool. I want you to answer. And a lot of times, just so you know, I'm gonna ask certain things a certain way from you to try to get like some clips that yeah, so if it ever feels like an unnatural conversation, I'm trying to get like something out of you. Because we've had a bunch of videos get a million views now, like it's awesome. That's awesome, it's awesome. So, but I um this damn magnet, dude. You know, I keep getting it's all good. Um so I um I had like okay, I remember my mother said this to me when I was growing up. She said it's impossible for a child to love their parents as much as the parents love the child. It's physical, physiologically impossible. That always kind of stuck with me, right? And I've always I've always asked parents that, you know, I was like, do you think that's true? And every parent goes, absolutely, right? Like they all agree with it. Yeah. So going along with that, do you think it's impossible for an employee to love your company as much as the founder loves the company?

SPEAKER_03 7:57

I think it'd be damn hard. You know, it's just that's your this where we're sitting. This is your child.

SPEAKER_00 8:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:05

How's anybody else gonna love your child more than you love your child? I I I don't I would love to think that there was a world where someone else could. I think people can be really, really passionate. I think we can try to have amazing cultures that drive people to all want to achieve something where a bunch of people get to win from it and create opportunity. But I just don't see a way where someone could be that there's just no way to be as invested.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:29

No, and and trust me, this has been registering with me the past few months, a few months, and what I've been thinking is is that, you know, because the reason I started this podcast initially was, you know, dude, like like you're you're an entrepreneur through and through, clearly. I don't even consider myself like naturally an entrepreneur, dude. I didn't even own my own business till I was 40. Yeah. Right. So I went down the journey of being a great employee, and I was a killer, don't get me wrong. I was a beast. And I was, you know, they even wanted me to be the CEO of the company. So I obviously had some entrepreneurial abilities, but I'm not claiming to be like the world's greatest entrepreneur by any means. But when I worked for somebody, I didn't have the same passion or, you know, like I couldn't wait to leave work. Like I TGIF as an employee, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

You know, when holidays came around, I was like, I'm taking two weeks off. When the Thanksgiving week came up, I was like, that's my favorite week. I'm gonna take the whole week off. I'm gonna enjoy my my turkey, I'm gonna enjoy my week off, watch my football. But now, as an entrepreneur and as a business owner, the last six years, I don't know if there's ever a day I don't do a little bit of work.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

You know, so I think that uh I I think my point is this is that if do you do you think that for someone to actually get the best version of themselves that they have to become an entrepreneur?

SPEAKER_03 10:01

I'm gonna spin this on its head real quick. Go ahead. Because as you say this, it just makes me think about my life. And this started out with being a parent, right? And how much you love your kid. I'm adopted. And so the more I listen to this conversation, even listen or kind of replay what I said, I know that my dad's my best friend and he loves me more than he could love almost anything, you know? So there could be something to it where we go into this like, are you gonna get the best version of yourself unless you're an entrepreneur if you don't actually become an entrepreneur? Maybe there is a level of it where you could become an entrepreneur and you could still really, really love it and be invested. And maybe it doesn't take truly being the business owner, the title, the CEO, whatever the person decides them the you know, the flavor of the day, the name is. Maybe it's just really, really being involved. Maybe that's even like having a little bit of ownership in something. I've got another friend that's a perfect example. He's a part of a 60 to 80 million dollar lawn landscape business, and he's just got a little freckle, you know, a couple percent. He's all in. He was not any different than me. He's goes to events just like I would and loves business just like I do, fights the same things, talks about employees, talks about leadership and development. So I guess I'm redacting almost some of my statement. I think there's a level of it where you could get a lot. But I think it's about being if you're not an entrepreneur, if you're not a business owner on your own, it's about being an entrepreneur. It's not about having a job. It's about being taking full ownership of that and wanting to see it succeed. And and then because you push so hard just like you did and and got offered the position as a CEO, you're almost getting brought in to really be a piece of that company. You're not just, hey, we pay you this an hour to work. You get rolled more into the fold and you are almost there at just being a business owner.

SPEAKER_00 12:05

So how you've so you own, is it, and I apologize. I looked, I looked at your I saw you the website, and hopefully you're happy with it, by the way. There's a lot of work that went into that, I want you to know. Okay. Um, you know, but is it the same brand in Illinois?

SPEAKER_03 12:21

Same brand. Same brand. Same brand. Because yeah, they're working because the websites are kind of copies of each other. Okay. Just with I mean, we really do the same services, so copies of each other with different landscapes. You know, it's it's we don't have palm trees in Illinois.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:35

But yeah, same brand. It's really developed the same way. Um really where the owner's at seems to develop a little bit more just because I'm like really, really pushing and it's hard 1700 miles away to keep it pushing at the same stent. So now we're really trying to, with a lot of the management focus we've had, we're really trying to bring a lot of that together now and get it all very symbiotic.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

So what when did you what was the first time you're you're in your late 30s, right? I think you're 37. 37, okay. So at what how old were you when you started your first business? And were you like when was it you took this like leap of faith to become a business owner?

SPEAKER_03 13:17

I would have been 25. And business was just something that like I didn't without knowing I wanted to be a business owner, I always wanted to be a business owner. I remember like before I could drive, my mom took me, there was a chamber of commerce business, uh, how to write your business plan, right? And she brought me to that because I wanted to, I wanted to understand what I hated, I still remember it to this day. I was like, you're telling me we got to write this business plan, and it's gonna take this much time to start a business. This is insane. Now, knowing the other side, like, no, it does not take that much time. You should be making as much progress as you can. Like, years of planning is wasted time. Um, but so the the original question I started in 25, and I would, or when I was 25 and I was working for somebody, I was a body man at a body shop, so fixing dents, repairing cars, and I had a really big role in that job. Like it was a it was one of the best shops in town. Like the the techs that have been there for years, they were all making six figures, 120, 130, 140 grand. At that time, I was like, whoa, that's a lot of money. Yeah, and uh and it is and in rural Illinois, where you rural.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

Yeah, yeah, it's great money.

SPEAKER_03 14:30

But as a kid, like when you're 20 years old and you see that that's the tail end, and I'm not saying it's not much money now. It's all relevant and really, like you said, depending on the area. For sure. But um, but yeah, I was looking at that, and while I was there, I was there for four years, I kept just what I what else can I do? And so I was working around the clock. I'd work there all day, I'd paint cars all night, I'd paint cars on the weekend, fix dents on the weekend, and I eventually got burnt out and I was like, this is just like I want to do something else. And I'd worked at a landscape company, and I had a weed eater and a mower and a blower, and I remember my roommate at the time, I'm like, hey, I'm gonna just take some little printed uh door hangers and I'm gonna go up and down the streets in my cowboy boots and blue jeans and hand these things out, put them on doors. And I asked him, hey, if we get going on this, you wanna you want to help and do some of this? I think he helped one time, but that was kind of the beginning of it, and it just started rolling and rolling and rolling, and I jumped really, really quick. It was scary because I was making, you know, probably 60 grand a year. For me, that was awesome. The most I'd ever made. You know, I didn't come from like a family where we had a lot of money. We did well, but it wasn't I was doing really well for myself.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

No Porsche in the driveway growing up.

SPEAKER_03 15:43

Yeah, no, no Porsche in the driveway, you know. Um we had a lot of cool things, but it wasn't like a life of luxury. Yeah. But we get going. I I'm starting to do this business on the side, and I I just remember I jumped really quick and I don't know why. Looking back, I feel like I was crazy. But after just doing this on the side a year, so working 60 hours at work and doing this on the side of it weekends and nights, I said, Hey, you know, next spring we're I'm going all in. I gave my owner a month's notice because here again, I was a big I played a big part. I was one of the two people that repaired all the cars that went through the shop. And um I took the leap for looking back, I don't know the exact numbers, I probably was mowing five hundred and ninety dollars worth of grass. I think that's the number that sticks out. I'm pretty good with numbers. Right around five or six hundred dollars worth of grass a week. And I was gonna go from making sixty grand to now I'm gonna make this before expenses.

unknown 16:40

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:41

And so that was like a huge jump. And so in this month, you asked me about how many kids I had, in this month of here's my notice. Well, I got another notification of that month that we had a first kid on the way.

unknown 16:53

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_03 16:54

So that was happening. I decided we're still going all in on it. And yeah, I mean, at first, dude, we were on food stamps like the first probably six or eight months of starting the business because I didn't I cashed in my 401k, I had like six grand in it, and we were going all in to make it work. And it worked. So Amen.

SPEAKER_00 17:13

God bless, go for you. Yeah, I think um I think you know, I have this friend who he works at this company, and he could theoretically come work for me, similar industries, and he could do very well with me. The potential is way higher with us, yeah. Way higher. But he would have to go through six to nine months of I don't know about food stamps, but but you know, some chaos.

SPEAKER_03 17:44

Hey, pain. It here again, it's all relevant. Oh, no doubt. Yeah, you know, it's all the the pain, it doesn't matter like you know, for that area for where I was at. Like, yeah, I was doing well, but I'll I I could handle that. So if you're way further down the line, still a big drawback is hard. Yeah, very hard.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

So, what what is it in that what is it? Is it DNA? Is it conscious? Like, what is it that makes someone willing to take that leap?

SPEAKER_03 18:10

I wish I knew. You know, I listen to Andy Fur Sill a lot. Yeah, big Andy Frasilla fan, and I was listening to one of his podcasts the other day. And I do think that some people are just I don't think I'm special when I say it. And he says it all the time, but some people are just built for it. And I do kind of feel like I I mean, I have a couple screws loose. I think that like a lot of this is because I was too dumb to stop, too dumb to know better, you know, in a lot of in a lot of instances.

SPEAKER_00 18:38

I think her mosey calls it like naive optimism or something, or yeah, I forget what he calls it, but he's got a name for it. Yeah, it's better language, unrealistic optimism. I don't know. Yeah, but then it turns out pans out for you.

SPEAKER_03 18:51

But I I don't know, and I was always a risk taker. Like I raced motor motorcycles, you know, broke a lot of bones, oh yeah, had done lots of stuff that was extremely questionable, and I mean this kind of fell right in line with it. The what I realized is the consequence of business wasn't death though. And the consequence of a bad day at the racetrack is you could die. I've crushed three vertebraes in my back, I've broke my pelvis, I've broke collarbones, I've had double-digit concussions, you know. This is less risky. So this was an improvement on the risk side of things.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

I have I have a theory to the question I asked you, and I'd love to say this to Andy Frasilla, right? I think I think a lot I think my observation, and I could be totally wrong, is that it's my observation as to why people are unwilling to take the entrepreneurial risk is perception. Because I think they think this is the risk. I could lose everything, I could die, right? Uh I might not be able to pay for my kids' school, whatever it may be. But they think this is the reward. The reward isn't as big as they think. But in reality, this is the risk.

SPEAKER_02 20:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:06

And this is the reward.

SPEAKER_02 20:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:08

Right? I mean, so you went from making 60 grand a year to having a couple multi-million dollar businesses.

SPEAKER_02 20:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

You know, I mean, you're I would consider you wildly successful, especially in your 30s. And another 10 years, you're gonna have, you know.

SPEAKER_03 20:23

I can't wait to see you. The the best part, the best part of this though, is I remember forever, I've always been like, I know I'm gonna do something big. I don't know what it is. What I love is when I was younger, I would have thought what I'm doing now is big. And every day I still look at it like someday I'm gonna do something big. And I think that's a really fun fire to have. That's still how I look at it. It looks like I haven't done a thing, and in reality, I know we've done a lot. We've made a lot of mistakes, we've had a lot of wins, we've made a lot of ground, but I still now I know that there's so much more ground you can make.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

Yeah, so like I we just I can't say what it is, but we actually just signed the biggest contract ever for in our company's history, and it it trumps trumps every opportunity by a hundred. It's it's obscene. Well, now there's a lot of things that have to happen, and a lot of it's not even under our control to really make it go right. But if there's a hundred different scenarios, it's probably not the worst case, it's probably not the best case, probably falls somewhere in the middle, and that's gonna be wild, right? And I looked at it, and this is my sicko mind. I'm like, okay, done deal. Love it, cool, moving on to the next. Yeah, and I don't know what that is because if you would have showed me that, the text message I just got a few hours ago, yeah. Five years ago, I I would have I would have thought I hit the lottery. Yeah, but I don't feel like that today. And I'm answering my own question because if you won the Lottery, there would be like this elation about it because you kind of don't deserve it. But when you work for it and you build it up, you know you kind of deserve it. So it's just you're just climbing the mountain. You know, it's not about getting to the top, it's just I'm climbing the damn mountain.

SPEAKER_03 22:21

Yeah, and we're meant to make progress. That's what we're meant to do as humans, or you're either growing or you're dying, whether it's your business, it's your relationship, whatever it is. And you know, I just think that you make ground, we all set these bars, like you have your next goal. And well, when you hit a goal, how long do you celebrate? How long does it feel good? It's less and less today. And I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I just think that you realize like it's not about the goal, it's about the journey. It's about getting there, it's not about this thing you achieve. That's why like it's so important to keep having things further and further out there to keep pulling you down the line. Yeah. Because the whole deal, yeah, it was cool that we did this. I remember the first, like one of the first interesting things in business. I got 30 under 30 in the town I was in. And I'm like, whoa, that's awesome. Yeah. We did it, we went, I was like, yeah, really good. Okay, cool. What what same as what you said? Next thing. Are you are you a sports fan? Very similar to how you said about the Netflix. Okay. Pretty much motocross only, is what I'm I'm just obsessed with. But just what you said about Netflix, I envy the people that like they love it. Yeah. Because I just I TV in general, a little bit I get, but I'm more mainly just trying to consume stuff that's gonna help me grow.

SPEAKER_00 23:41

Yeah, no, I get it. Well, I just wanted to give you an analogy. So I I used to always hear to people, I I would hear successful people say, it's about the journey, not the destination. And it never really clicked with me. Yeah, right. It was just kind of like, is it really? You know, this is me being young and dumb and naive. And I'm like, no, it is about the destination because you know, if I have a million dollars, that's the destination and I'm rich, right? That was my 27-year-old mind, right? And I do like sports, I like football and basketball. Yeah, not as much as you know, 20 years ago, but I have my teams that I follow and I still enjoy it, right? Um being a sports fan proves that it's about the destination, or excuse me, it's about the journey, not the destination with this. Because if you're a um a New York Yankees fan, you don't just look at the final score. You watch the whole season, and I don't like baseball, by the way. You watch the whole season, they're gonna have ups, they're gonna have downs, they're gonna have injuries, wins, losses, and then the drama, the emotional drama of the playoffs, you know, the high-intense, high-stakes moments. Yeah, that's why you watch the sports. The final score is just a product of the of the journey. Yeah, the journey is what it's all about. It is all about the journey and finding a way to embrace high high pressure situations, right? Like, like today, I don't look as at a high pressure situation as an obstacle, I really do look at it as an opportunity. Yeah, right. So it's like, oh, if I handle this the right way, look where the look what look what may happen here. So so yeah, no, I agree with you. It's um but but an entrepreneur, anybody thinking about entrepreneurship has to embrace the journey.

SPEAKER_03 25:40

Yeah, I agreed. You really have to embrace the journey, and I think for me, I think a lot of people get well, they want to be a business owner. I've heard so many people say the reasons. It's all about having the right reasons. If you get into owning a business because you want to be able to set your own schedule and you want to be able to create free time, you fucked up. That's not how this works. You get into business to go all in or probably just don't do it at all because it's not gonna be enjoyable to you. And so I've seen I I got really lucky, I don't know why. I I don't I didn't really have anybody guiding me, but I knew going in that it was gonna be a lot of work, and somewhere along the way I kind of learned to like the journey.

SPEAKER_00 26:22

Yeah. I I told my my wife last night, I'm like, because I've been going. I've been going, right? You see the office is kind of cleared out. I love seeing there's one guy left here. You know, I've been going, and you know, my wife is five months pregnant, and you know, I mean, we're in a great place, but but the company for the next three to five years really needs me to be, I gotta be exceptional. Like I gotta I gotta be unbelievable. I gotta be the best I've ever been. And I and I had a talk with her. I said, babe, you know, not that I plan on being distant, but like, you know, I gotta be locked in here, you know, for the next three to five years. And and she says, No, no, I know, I'm I'm I'm I'm ready for it. Like I know what you're about to do. How important is it to have a wife that supports your ambitions?

SPEAKER_03 27:17

I think it's everything. Yeah, I mean behind what beside behind every successful man's a strong woman. Um it takes a strong just all the things we talked about earlier. It takes a very strong person to put up with us and then help manage like not enough credits given to the house is a full-time job. It's a huge undertaking of raising the people that are future versions of us. And how what what do you want your kids to be? I mean, you're about to have your first. You want them to have as much opportunity, be as successful as possible, start on a good track. That's all from upbringing. That's all from raising your kids. And so knowing that job, I think it's funny because even I hesitated at first. Yes, does my wife have a job? And I'm like, she has all these things, you know. It's hard to freaking answer. Um, but so many times people don't even look at that like a job. And so that's going back to yes, you have to have an amazing person by your side, and you have to have someone extremely supportive. They gotta be multifaceted because you're you're you're gonna hold down so much stuff. There's gonna be your end, and there's gonna be that there's a whole family dynamic that is uh I mean it's a huge challenge, but it's a worthwhile challenge.

SPEAKER_00 28:33

You know, the last two the last two women I was with prior to my wife for the past six years, they they were they're great girls by the most for the most part, right? Yeah, just wrong fit, you know. Um my fault, their fault. Equal blame. And they weren't they were not supp they were risk adverse. So the two and I always wanted, I had this burning desire and this burning belly to just be be an outlier, like, like be great, and and and really just like I'm motivated by uh Patrick Bett David calls it madness. I want to prove people wrong. Yeah, you know, I do. It's me. I want to prove people wrong. I want to prove that you were you you miscalculated me. That's me. I'm sorry, I'm a sicko. I'm gonna say I'm the exact same. Like I've got stories to go with the story in my mind. So we get it. Yeah, so like, you know, I'm motivated by that, and and the two women I was with beforehand were very risk adverse, and and the relationship was never gonna work because I I I want to risk it. I want to risk the whole damn thing. You know, I want to put all my chips on black and I'm gonna go for it because I believe in myself. I I don't doubt myself one second. So I needed to be with a woman, dude, that was that was like ready to risk it with me, within reason. Yeah, you know, not actually going to the casino and putting it all in black, but I'm gonna put my trajectory of my life and my family on me. I'm not gonna bet on anybody else.

SPEAKER_02 30:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

Um, so yeah, dude. I I um I'm sure your wife is what's your wife's name?

SPEAKER_03 30:18

Nicole.

SPEAKER_00 30:18

I almost feel I'm sorry for asking the question, Nicole. Does your wife work? Because you know what? Once you told me you had three damn kids, I know she's working. Yeah. You know, so I apologize, Nicole. Hopefully you watch this and and uh no, I didn't mean it as an insult. Um yeah. Um anything in in specific you want to talk about? Um I'm happy to I'm just always just open to talk about business.

SPEAKER_03 30:45

Okay. Yeah, that's like that's you that that's my main focus all the time. You know, like that's that that's that's the question. Like even on over way over here. We were talking about marketing me and you before, and I told you about some of the interest I have in marketing. And my mind's just all all the time hunting down what should be the biggest focus, you know, with marketing. Well, no, well, marketing, no, just as a whole, as projects, right? I've all got all these little projects, and I think you know, and you've probably starting to see that with just in this. Oh, yeah. Um, it's really easy to get the whole shiny object syndrome. Oh yeah. Staying focused on what, you know, the actual golden goose and not losing track of that's very, very important. So I think that's what that's why I focus so much on business. I'm always trying to be like, where do we need to be that makes the most sense?

SPEAKER_00 31:31

Yeah, I think um so oh, so this is a great way to talk about this. This is already making me money. This is crazy. We're already, we're already making this profitable. That's awesome. It's unbelievable. And and like not for you know, not for my clients and stuff like that, but we're already, we have guests that want to pay money to be on here that's awesome to be interviewed. So, like, this is this is this whole new element, right? So for me, like I did this whole video the other day, but I'll kind of say it again. You know, the business plan that you guys wrote out at 25. I mean, I don't know if I ever actually wrote out a business plan. I mean, I kind of think things through, and you know, I probably should document things a little bit better. Obviously, I document our numbers, I document, you know, for our workflows and our processes, but like an actual business plan, I I kind of just do it.

SPEAKER_03 32:32

Well, so that's where the business plan part was before I even had my degree. Oh, I know. I know, yeah. No, I'm not sure. My 25 part, yeah, that that's where I got to is I realized you don't, you're this is changing so fast that 90-day planning is probably like yeah, you can have your three-year goals and your five-year goals, but 90-day planning for what you're actually battling with now is like the real realistic thing. Like if I started something up, I'd come up with like, here's my rough idea of what we're gonna do. Yeah, yeah. Let's just rock and roll.

SPEAKER_00 33:01

Yeah, you're in great shape.

SPEAKER_03 33:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:03

You you go to the gym and you work out and you eat well throughout the day, right?

SPEAKER_02 33:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:08

You don't have a 90-day workout plan, do you?

SPEAKER_03 33:11

Well, I mean, I'm kind of like a psycho with all the things. You do. So after I I had I had a major, I don't really write now, but I had a major accident in 24. That's when I had my most recent dirt bike accident. Drove my femur through my pelvis in front of my kids. We were all at the track. It was very, very traumatic for everyone. Spent uh several days in the hospital, had surgery, had to get it all put back together. That year, though, my goal was to do, I'd ran a my first marathon right before that. And my goal was to do an Iron Man and a hundred mile ultra that year. Never I was not a swimmer. I had not yet learned to swim. And uh, and so to kind of answer that question, like all the planning and whatnot, that year I did that. I did my first iron I broke my I broke my pelvis in on January 27th. October 27th, I ran my first Iron Man. Wow. December 12th, I ran my first hundred mile ultra. It was what? Jacksonville Daytona. And so the progression of that, I've got really obsessed with long distance sports because it's like business. You can always keep chipping away and getting better. You can there there's no end in sight in how you build it, and you really have to get used to endure in enduring and enjoying the journey because, like the race day, that doesn't really last that long. Like I guess a hundred-mile race can last hours and hours and hours, yeah, but it's still it's the it's the journey that lasts a long time. And so all that's just to go back to you saying, Do I have a plan? Yeah, for a lot of times I've had a plan because I've been doing tons of training for Iron Man and in different sports, but it hurt my ankle in the last few months. So as of recent, I've been a little more laid back.

SPEAKER_00 34:52

Dude, I not to bring it back to me, I I I was actually a great long distance runner. I know my body type doesn't look like it, but when I was in this, you won't even believe this. This doesn't this doesn't sound real. But this this will tell you a lot about my psyche. When I was in eighth grade, they made me run the run the mile. Okay. This isn't gonna sound real. You can go look up the freaking school record books, okay? Eighth grade, there I'm like, I gotta run this thing. I'm like, I hate this. Yeah, I'm like, I'm just gonna run it and so fast and be done with it. This is how crazy my brain is. In eighth grade, I ran it in 503. Wow. Not out of practice, not out of, you know, I was fit and I was very athletic, and I played football and basketball. I played varsity basketball in ninth grade. I was a quarterback, punt returner, kick returner. Like I was a weird, strong, solid athlete, you know. And uh, but but I I was so great at long distance because I almost hated it. And I remember one time the long the furthest I ever ran was 14 miles. Like, and I remember thinking to myself, at the end of 14 miles, I just kind of stopped and I remember thinking to myself, I could go on forever. Yeah, that's really how I felt. I was like, it was like a euphoria and a numbness, and I was like, I think I could just run for the rest of my life. I could be like Forrest Gump. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, like that's how I felt. And like, how how does it like when you're doing a hundred miles? Is I mean, there's gotta be a point where what is describe a hundred miles to me.

SPEAKER_03 36:33

So this was my first, obviously, and I've I'm getting ready to probably try to make another couple runs at doing some more serious ones that are trail ones, because what I've learned is you don't want to run on the road for 100 miles, it beats the hell out of you. Um, but that my goal was to do it in under 24 hours. So that's kind of the first metric that I was looking at. And a hundred-mile race, it's crazy. There's a lot of people that run these like at wicked fast times. Like it's people finishing stuff in 16 and 18 hours going that far is is stupid fast when you start looking at how quick they're going the whole time. But for me, yeah, that was uh it was kind of a wild journey of two weeks before I ended up rolling my ankle and it hurt my knee a little bit because I fell in like a pothole doing a long run at like 4 30 in the morning, kind of like a lunatic, you know. And so seven miles into this race, I started having weird pain in the side of my knee. By marathon distance into this race, both both knees, my IT bands are like blowing up. So by so that's when I had to start doing a walk jog, and then I think by 65 miles, all I could do is walk. So I had to walk the the tail end of it. Oh wow, but it was one of those things that I was committed to finishing it. I was still gonna finish it in decent time. I finished in like 26 hours, didn't hit my goal, but um, yeah, I that journey is much different for everybody. All kinds of people that are really good, just DNF. Like there were people on this one, it it was down A1A. So right down the water. I remember showing up, and just like everything, we blow out of work on a Friday night. I realize we're not gonna get there on time for the mandatory sign-up. So now we're racing 80, 90 miles an hour up to Jacksonville. We blow in there last second, they're packing everything up, and we get signed up. I'm like, cool, checkbox, let's get to the hotel. When we're walking in to the hotel, I'm like, it looks like a hurricane out here. It better not be like this tomorrow. Rain would be horrible.

SPEAKER_01 38:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:33

It fucking rained and it poured and it rained, and we were going down the water line right along the beach, where it was so rough out there that even if it wasn't raining, the mist from the ocean would be soaking you. But for probably 20 miles, we were just going through puddles and water. So it was the most miserable thing. And on the tail end of that, I found out some like really good distance renders. They all pulled out of the race like 20 miles before the end. So it was a brutal, brutal experience. But it was a very it was another one of those things that like you're not quite the same after something like that. Yeah, but you just realize how much you can do. So I I think that's probably the coolest part of the whole deal. You can do way fucking more than you think you can.

SPEAKER_00 39:17

I feel I feel there's an element of like tough guys. I'm not saying there's not tough guys in the south or out west. There is something about growing up in a cold community.

SPEAKER_02 39:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:30

You know, like uh John Bones Jones is from Rochester, New York, David Goggins is from Buffalo. Um, a lot of MMA fighters come from out there. There's something about growing up in the cold, shoveling, dealing with cold, dealing with miserable temperatures that people just I don't know. Um, like you you kind of learn to endure more stress in a weird way. Like, do you think there's some merit to that?

SPEAKER_03 39:59

Yeah, I can't compare it to what it would be like growing up in the boiling hot heat down here or like in a desert area. But yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot in getting used to just dealing with any like harsh extreme. I can only imagine like bad water is uh ultra. It is so it's like the hottest one. You race race through like Death Valley. I don't know what it is. The the stripes on the road, if you don't run on the white line, your shoes can melt depending on the actual temperature out there. Yeah, it can be like 120, 130 degrees. And people are running in that, yeah, yeah. An 80-year-old finished it this past year. Which isn't that's what endurance sports has taught me. There is like a lot of longevity in some of these metrics like VO2 Max and things you get from running a lot. Seeing some of these freaks that are super, super old, that still are like in incredible shape because they've been doing this stuff forever, when the normal thing that people tell you is don't run, it'll tear up your knees. This is bad for you, you're gonna have all these problems. It I think just like everything, we're fed a lot of bullshit.

SPEAKER_00 41:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:04

And uh usually do the opposite of what you're told a lot of times.

SPEAKER_00 41:10

Well, if you if you look at a lot of like uh like for example, lifting weights is stressing your body. Yeah, cold plunge is stressing your body, um uh hot temperature, sauna stressing your body. Yep. So there's obviously something to stress helping you, sure, right? It obviously releases some type of hormones and you know, transmitters, whatever it may be, that creates like a growth process, and it just makes sense that there must be some psychological growth going on too. Yeah, right, you would think, yeah, no, definitely.

SPEAKER_03 41:45

That that's another piece of it. I mean, you've heard of 75 hard, I'm sure, and nobody hasn't. Um you end up getting fit, but the whole thing is a mental development program. Like everybody looks at it and talks about, oh, I got so uh I got so in such better shape from this. I got ripped. That's not what you're going for, it's the mental reset of doing the thing, and I think that's what I get out a lot of like any of the things that are hardcore discipline. I just feel like it stacks your ability. Doing that hard thing stacks your ability to go out and do what we do better, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:16

So, yeah. No, I I always tell people I I like the statement, and you have to kind of have gone through this to know the statement, but the work that you put in, the work works on you more than you work on the work, yeah. Right, and I love that. And when I say that to a young man or a young woman, they they're like, wait, what? What does that even mean? But when you go through a 75 hard or you go through being an entrepreneur, or you know, for me it was going into the military. I was in the Navy for four years, you know, you go through boot camp and you go through that type of uh regimented lifestyle, you know, that that worked on me way more than the work that I put in. And I would attribute that foundation to helping me become the person I am today. Um, so yeah, I think I think we're meant to do hard stuff, dude.

SPEAKER_03 43:12

What you what you said, the work working on you. I frequently say, like, I look back to when I started my business. And if I had to just drop into my shoes, even though I love where I'm at and I made all this progress, if I had to day one be me now, I'd probably wake up and cry every day. Because the work has worked on me so much that I am who I am now. Like I wouldn't be able to handle the pressure I'm under now, and now it doesn't really seem like that big of a deal. But then it would have totally freaked me out because everything just compounds. Like we've said it a couple times, it's all relevant, or I've said that a couple times. There keeps me in business, there keeps being more zeros, there keeps being more things, like there's always this new level, and I think that's what's cool about business is it's a never ending mountain of hard. Shit.

SPEAKER_00 44:00

Yeah. Yeah, and I what what's your how is um how is AI impacting your business today?

SPEAKER_03 44:08

It's kind of forcing its way or or working its way into a bunch of different facets. You're seeing it really get involved in um a lot of the service softwares that we use are trying to implement it in different ways to to better their systems. Uh we're dabbling with um AI phone assistants, like answering all of the calls, working on workflows for that. There's there's just a ton of technology. And there's so I mean, even dabbling with taking a design that's a quick sketch and using AI to make that into a better rendering. I think a lot of what we do right now is minimize anything we can do to reduce cumbersome office tasks and make those quicker, that's probably the biggest leverage point we have. I mean, there's been a lot, I mean, there's so many little integrations into the technology where making workflows better with it is just profound for us. Yeah, it's and it's a very play-with state, right? Like there's all these new things all the time. So it's like, what's gonna be the best one? What's gonna be the best, the first software that allows me to link to all this stuff that really allows me to start blowing up?

SPEAKER_00 45:19

Yeah, it's still in its infantile stage, you know. And do you follow Dan Martell? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:23

Yeah, he's yeah, Dan Martell is the one that kind of pushed the your atlas on all his videos. That's the AI uh phone assistant stuff we use.

SPEAKER_00 45:32

Yep, yep. I have another uh I have another thing for you there too. We can talk about it another time. Do you run I are we running LSAs for you?

SPEAKER_03 45:40

I I run I just ran LSA.

SPEAKER_00 45:43

Okay, okay. Yeah. Because one of the challenges with LSA is missing the phone calls, right? So, but that we have an AI that can kind of handle that stuff now, which is cool too. Very cool. So your like rating doesn't come down. Yeah, I think like, you know, AI for me personally, right? Like, like workflows, great. You know how nice it is for me to do a zoom with somebody for 50 minutes, and then at the very end, I'll say, okay, do me a favor, tell me exactly what you want out of this. Okay, this, this, this. I say, great. And then I take that summary, throw it into an AI, and say, hey, do me a favor, write this out. And obviously, you have to direct it well and proofread it. You know, I had some dummies on my team that don't proofread their stuff, and I'm like, dude, like these need a little human interaction in it. Like, don't just don't leave every M-dash of the thing.

SPEAKER_01 46:37

Like it look like I mean, okay, you just stamped it ChatGBT, right?

SPEAKER_00 46:41

Yeah, yeah. You know, it's funny. I I noticed that our like our many chat that we use for our for our Instagram, like it was us and like a dentist. It was the craziest thing. It was just like AI just messing each other back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and uh nothing was getting accomplished, right? And then I finally stepped in and I said, AI talking to AI, L O L, and then I got an actual response from the person. That's funny, you know. So, you know, something that's interesting about social media is we're seeing a clear, what's the word I'm looking for? Uh, exhaustion, or what's the word fatigue, fatigue of AI already. So it's like if I if I do a post of mine and it's AI, there's actually a couple versions that work pretty well. But if I do an AI post and it's AI captions and it's an AI look, I might get six likes. Okay. If I do an organic picture of me and you right now, and I put an organic caption on there, like um saying something like um, you know, every uh I'm sick of hearing sad stories about people's childhood. You either make it or you don't. It's up to you. I say something that kind of punchy. Punchy, and I post that of me and you right now, boom, 600 likes. So it's it's interesting this world we're living in right now. Like, obviously, we're all using AI, but then there's a fatigue of it. So I I don't know where it's I don't know where it's going. I don't um I don't know. I I'm just thinking out loud here. Like, do you think we're ever gonna live in this world in 20 years where we literally don't have to do everything because you know AI is running everything?

SPEAKER_03 48:37

I mean I I hate that I don't see how it couldn't start getting that way. Um, but I totally see there's a lot of things that about AI that just really turn me off. Like just AI, just some of the AI renderings of images that you're it's just so evident that it's an AI. Um I don't know, the cartoonish images it creates and stuff. I think there's a lot of that that just turns people off. Now, on on the flip side of that, like the phone answering systems, that's gonna get so real so fast that I just don't know how you don't adopt that. Like that's we we had a lot of pushback on one side because Illinois just did not, it did not adopt it as well, it didn't work as well, and plus we didn't make enough changes to it and and update it as quick as we should have, so it kind of pulled back because we're still in a testing phase. But in Florida, we'd had good results, and we'd had a couple people say that's awesome. It sets up landscape appointments, it does stuff in the off hours when we can't and answers every time if we don't get to it. Um that's technology is what separated our business in the beginning. Like when we I started in 2014. When I started the business, something that rocket shipped us in a time where now you'd be an idiot to feel this way. It was a question of was a website important? Was a CRM important? And I was like, hey, we're gonna do all that. That all makes perfect sense to me. I don't know how you don't have that stuff, and we leverage that, but now you're silly to not have it, so now we don't have now we've got great customer service, but we don't have that competitive advantage with technology. And that's where when I've been implementing this and talking to the team, I'm like, hey, it might not be great now. There might be problems with this, but it's about getting over the hump because just like with all that, once we got over the hump, when I when you call me for a mowing estimate or a fertilizer estimate, and someone on the phone answers you, and you have an estimate in your email before you get done with the conversation, versus the company I watched companies that were massive companies in the town where I started, they would have to go to your house, look at it, evaluate it, write on a piece of paper, put it in the mail and send it to you.

SPEAKER_04 50:42

Yeah, right?

SPEAKER_03 50:43

We lost that advantage, but this is the next big advantage like that. And it's gonna be hard at first, but once you get over it, for someone else to come behind me and catch up that doesn't adopt it as soon, we'll already be running and sprinting. So that's the stuff, yeah. It's very infant beginning of it and figuring out like where's gonna be the area where you use it the most, where's gonna be the area that really takes off because yeah, the the whole drawback and people being less it kind of turned off by it. There's a huge sector of that as well.

SPEAKER_00 51:13

There was um, this is probably a year ago, huh? I had this uh business, I'll just say, and the guy was being just asking a lot of questions, like almost making problems that don't exist. Like, and he wanted to, he was interested in buying a service from us, right? A bunch of services. And some of the questions were just I could tell, oh, he's never done this before, it's okay. But it was these long freaking emails, dude. And I'm like, man, it was like eight o'clock at night, and I remember I copied and pasted the email, and I said, do a response to this guy, just say yes for everything, send it back to him. He sent me back, you know. He's writing these out, he's writing out all these emails, and I just wasn't in the mood that day. I it was one of those days, you know, and I copied and pasted again, put in Chat GPT. I said, just answer this. And then after about three of those, he, you know, he said something to me. He goes, Wow, you're you're you respond so fast. He goes, I'm in, let's do it, let's sign up, you know. And and I, you know, that just makes when that happened, it was basically just AI responding to him. I mean, obviously, I was proofreading it. I mean, you know, I wonder if AI will just be able to handle our sales too one day, you know.

SPEAKER_03 52:31

Um I I'm pretty I'm pretty impressed to watch AI audibly handle objections. It's very impressive. I I mean some of the stuff out there is crazy. So yeah, I just I think we have always been in the we we were edging closer and closer and closer to people that want instant answers for everything. That provides instant answers 24-7. If it's connected to your system and like for a lot of stuff for us, it's purely GPS measurements and things that you can just AI could do. So I do think that there's huge upsides. I think it could handle a bunch of sales, I think it could expedite so many processes, calculations, things you run through on like a project design and installation. I feel like you could get it and train it to hey, this can read this video, and this is kind of where we're wanting to go with this, put together lists of materials and all the things, and you're talking about a huge big project of work to prepare something that you could probably turn around instantly.

SPEAKER_00 53:29

Yeah. Is um would you say in in your line of work is like 15,000 would be like that's like a high ticket item in your line of work, would you say?

SPEAKER_03 53:40

I mean, we do like$100,000 projects. Oh, wow. So it really depends. That's not it's a big variable. Like and for our why I say it depends so much is for our specific business. I would say$1,500 to$100 is kind of yeah, okay. That was that that's kind of a range, but what's wild is there's two, three, four, five hundred thousand dollar residential projects. Wow. It's insane the amount of money people put into projects here again, very relevant to where that place is at.

SPEAKER_00 54:09

For sure. Well, they're at the it's not just curb appeal, it's the value of their home. 100%. So it's it's really is an investment. Yeah. Um, okay, so just take a hundred thousand dollar job. Do you do you do you think for a big ticket item like that, like, do you think do you think it still takes the nuance of talking to somebody?

SPEAKER_03 54:26

Yeah, I think that there's so much. Uh I'm falling back. I've always been so obsessed with marketing, right? And learning new stuff and what you can do. I have gave a lot of credit to networking and making connections, but I feel like I haven't gave it enough. And recently I've been pouring into that, and some of our awesome jobs and some of our big projects is just from who we know. Yeah, I do. And obviously that's common sense, but the bigger it is, I think the more people want to meet you, shake your hand, and talk about it and feel good about it. I don't see very low-ticket items, mowing lots, fertilizer. I think that's just people want to process and get it done. When people are, you're making a massive investment into your property. And I mean, I I don't want to discredit it. A$10,000,$20,000,$30,000 thing is still a big project for someone, right? Some that's a lot of money for someone to drop on something. I think even that people want to know who they're dealing with because people still buy from people. I don't know how you would take away people buying from people at the end of it. Because it's not even my business's name, your business's name. They're buying from the connections and and liking and trusting someone they end up working with.

SPEAKER_00 55:30

So here, so if we fast forward this 30 years, think how crazy this sounds. You don't want to meet somebody off of the internet, right? Yeah, don't you dare jump into a stranger's car. Yeah. Uber, online dating, you know, you're gonna put your credit card into that and you're gonna buy, right? So are your children just gonna make six-figure decisions on, you know, is this just is this just gonna be the norm in 30 years? And are we being old fuddy duddies going, no, never.

SPEAKER_03 56:10

Yeah, stuff changes a lot and much more than you would ever think it would.

SPEAKER_00 56:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:16

So, yeah, I think my my answer's relevant for right now. Yeah, and it's probably got a lot, it's probably got a shelf life on it.

SPEAKER_00 56:23

And you're probably good. Like, you know, I think, you know, who knows how fast this is gonna go. I I think um, yeah, I mean, I mean, people make uh, you know, I I could really you know, because I remember um I remember this is kind of a funny story. I remember me and my high school buddies, like we're on America Online, and like we would get into these like little chat rooms, and like we'd be talking to some girls from like you know, some other high school or something, but you couldn't see them. Yeah, you couldn't Google them, you could there was no Instagram. And I remember it was always like, hey, should we go meet them? We're like, but what if they're ugly? And you're like, no, let's still let's go meet them, right? And you know, we would get in our car and you know, we'd find a meeting place, and like, you know, sometimes they'd be really ugly and we'd drive away, and then there'd be there'd be other times, you know, it'd be the jackpot, you know, and and uh whereas like and it was weird, and I remember telling like it was like our secret, like we're meeting girls off of the internet, right? Like in 1997. I'm like blushing now because I was like I'm still embarrassed by it. But today, dude, people just I don't even know what a dating app looks like, but people just swipe left and swipe right, and it's just so it's actually more normal to meet someone on the internet. So, you know, in 30 years, I'm just thinking out loud, I you know, it'll probably be way easy to talk to somebody to to buy a thing.

SPEAKER_03 57:47

So I guess I can kind of see that. I think of a project. There's this project I sold years ago, it was probably one of our biggest projects at the time. I literally show up to someone's house. Um really weird deal. It ended up being like a place where my ex-girlfriend used to live. So it was the weirdest appointment I've ever had. Like, why am I here? So it started off weird, but it ended great. Yeah, it was a very quick meeting. We went over what this person wanted, and I drew something on a napkin because that's what we had. And I said, Hey, I think that this is kind of what you're talking about. And I put together the numbers with measurements. I was probably there for an hour and an hour and a half, and I was like, Yeah, it's gonna be about$65,000 to do what you want to do. And it wasn't sold, like signed, but she was all in ready to buy it from just being there for that short amount of time. Yeah, and knew it was gonna cost that, we were gonna do it. I was 100% sure we're moving ahead. So, talking about the development, what they could do, I can see a world where AI is powerful enough that you could take a picture of the backyard. People love DIY and people love being involved in the decisions on their property. So if you could take a picture of your backyard and you could put it in somewhere and you could start saying, hey, let's do this. I want to do this. Maybe you talk to it, maybe your typing interface, I don't know, maybe both. And you can actually visually watch it get built, and it's also on uh combined with a company that's got raving good reviews about how they do, and you can get someone on the phone after that, like you might be able to get someone to build their cart on that and say, Yes, that's what I want. So I can see a version of that, of how you could still have social proof of in the real world these things get done well by this company, and then have this digital tool that gives them a lot of ownership on their project, and someone might be able to. I mean, you could probably really reduce some of that physical touch that needs to happen to kind of push the sale over the line.

SPEAKER_00 59:43

You know how if you go to the coastal areas of the country, you know, usually the both coast are, you know, forward thinking in fashion, music, and usually technology, right? Like there's a whole lot more companies in Boca Ratone that do social media than there are probably in, you know, inland northern inland Florida, right? Yeah. So I wonder if there's going to be this world where AI is running all the big cities, and then you get to rural Nebraska, and it's kind of like, you know, hey, we don't want that here. And we're right, like it's almost like you might have coastal communities and inland communities. Because I could see small town Texas being like, uh-uh. Never. Yeah. You know, like, no way. Because that old school 65-year-old guy who's got an old school 35-year-old son, you know, he that 35-year-old son, there are people that they intentionally have a flip phone. And they're like, I don't want that, I'm not typing in my information on the internet. And that had there are some real rural communities that you know are doing are thriving and doing pretty good. They have a nice little economy in Texas and you know, Louisiana, Arizona, you know, the really the whole South, right? Um, I I don't know. I could see a world where there's like two different kinds of communities. And I could see where I could see where a beautiful young 23-year-old girl doesn't want to live in Hillbilly, Nebraska and moves to New York. Yeah. And I could also see you and your wife in 15 years being like, dude, we made our money. Like, let's let's go back. You know? And you can kind of choose your society.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:28

Or am I getting like far-fetched?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:30

I don't know. I don't I don't know. I think that it's it's really weird to me that like people like Elon Musk and and so many others have like warned about how out of control it could get, and then yet we've still kind of w pedal the metal. And um I don't know where you fall on this, but every wild TV show with some kind of technology or some kind of robot or some kind of crazy virus, I feel like there's a lot of thing in the world, of a lot of things in the world that like when you see it and you think it's wild, that's usually something that like it's prepping you for what's coming down the line.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:07

And I think there's a lot of things that have been normalized with all this that I think it's gonna be a lot wilder than we can comprehend. And I think there's probably I don't want to be a Debbie Downer, I think there's a lot to worry about with it.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:21

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:22

And so, yeah, I hope that just like every technology, when there was the car, everybody was worried about losing their jobs when when they started having better machinery and farming, you know, put all these farmers, it changed the whole industry, and everyone's always like, hey, this is gonna ruin all these jobs, and jobs just shift. So my hope is that jobs do that, just like they have with every development technology into something else, and it isn't negative, but I also see a world where it's just wild that so many big figure heads have talked poorly about it, and yet we're still going pedal the metal on it, and we're all seeing the very good side of it now. But I wonder what I wonder what the flip nobody knows. Nobody knows what the flip side of it's gonna be.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:00

Yeah, does it just eliminate the economy as a whole?

SPEAKER_03 1:03:03

Yeah, does it eliminate the I mean does it does it own I mean everything everything is on the everything or your phone right there, like the infrastructure that allows us to all communicate, connect, worldwide web, you know, like right, this big thing that's changing the world. Yeah, the internet now, it having total control of that, and it being like the the the power behind that and us kind of losing that, I kind of see a world where that sounds like sci-fi.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:34

But I don't know how something like that's not possible. You the event just look how quickly technology advances.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:40

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:41

You know, there's a limit where that quickly surpasses what we're able to control. Are you are you spiritual at all? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:47

Are you would you are you a Christian?

SPEAKER_03 1:03:49

Yeah, a Christian. I was raised Catholic and just was, you know, a little put out by I was in a uh Catholic college prep school. It became a little more than I it kind of pushed me away, and then I realized, yeah, you know, just considering myself a Christian, that's more in line with me.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:04

Yeah. So I become much much more um spiritually what's the word I'm looking for, um, awake, I guess, the past nine or ten months of my life. And Alexis and I call ourselves proud Christians today. Um I need to keep go, I need to practice my faith more. I I I've been doing it more like my relationship with God personally and and in our household. Yeah. Haven't made the step to going to church yet, but but Alexis and I have already talked about it. We want our child raised in the right church, and and and that's a that's gonna be a big step for us. But we just I think we want to do it on our own time because it's a bit it's a big decision for us. Because when we do make that decision, like we want to like that's gonna be our community. Yeah, make sense, yeah, right. So it's it's like it's almost like this is probably a bad way to say it. Looking for your community in South Florida, what neighborhood you want to live in, right? Like we want to figure out what community we want to be a part of, right? So my faith allows me to believe that what you're saying is possible, but at the end, I I I think everything's gonna be just fine.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:11

Yeah, I think everything, I think, and when I say all these things, yeah, I just talk about the bad that can come down the line and what that means. I have a lot of faith that things happen the way they're supposed to happen, and it's just gonna be another hard thing that we have to deal with, or that we have to figure out. So we've dealt with many bad things. We look at the the world changing because of a virus, you know? And that's just one version of a horrible thing that everybody had to deal with. This probably will just be another horrible thing at some point, or maybe it won't at all. Maybe it'll be a beautiful thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That would be great for everybody. You know, but I'm I'm open to I'm not I'm not pessimistic about really anything. I'm just open to there's a lot of variable there that we just don't know and don't unfortunately have much control over.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:57

Would you consider yourself a conspiracy theorist?

SPEAKER_03 1:06:01

Yeah, probably so. No, heavily. There's just certain things I feel like pharma. I have a real hard time with pharma. Oh, yeah. You know? Um, and it's pretty easy to listen to some wild stuff and say, I can totally understand how that makes sense. And everything's uh a conspiracy theory till it's not.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:20

Yeah. I think uh yeah, I I'm definitely the definition of a conspiracy theorist. I I just got to a point where I like once you realize what's actually going on, yeah, you're kind of like, you know, you just you just realize, and I hate to say this, I don't think we actually have a vote. I don't care if you vote left or right, yeah, I don't think we actually have a vote. I I think it's that deeply controlled.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:44

Yeah. I was thinking I felt a little less like that, and I'm more and more thinking that there's not like is there really even a side? Right. Like it's one side of the same fucked up thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:55

Yeah, they're laughing in the back room together, you know. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I I um, you know, basically every conspiracy I think is real. Um you know, Jeff Jeffrey Epstein. I don't know, like, does this whole Iran war have to do something with that? Because like they're releasing all these files, and now you haven't heard anybody say anything about Epstein. It's all about this Iran war, Iran war. And the Epstein is that is gone. Like the concern about it is gone. And it's not just about Epstein, it's about you know, how deep does this actually go? And I wonder if you know, is there something to do with that? Is this like are they trying to eliminate the ability for it to come out? I I mean, who knows? But but I never but here's what I will tell people. Yes, I'm a conservative, but I don't care if you're a conservative or um progressive, I don't believe shit that I see on the news. Yeah, whatever I see on the news, I know yeah, very loaded, very loaded. Very loaded. It's called pro like you said, it's a programming, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:01

TV programming. And that's where I'm like going back to AI. I'm not trying to be wildly negative, yeah, but just like all of this stuff. I'm also not trying to be the echo chamber of whatever I feel the best about. I'm over here because it's very easy to go to the happy side or the freaked out side and verify you're right on either side. Same with politics, same with everything. Anywhere you want to go, you can get everything that affirms what you're thinking, Eric, is right. Keep thinking what you're thinking. And I just want to be somewhere in the middle where I kind of think of this going down the road. If I'm on the interstate, it's three lanes. I really like being in the middle. You know why? Because when chick gets crazy, I've got two options. Either side, I'm kind of pinned up in a I'm in an area where I can't break free and have options. And I think that way about like all of the stuff. I want to be somewhere close enough to the middle to be able to make the best decision for my family, for my business at that time that allows us to get through whatever we're gonna get through. Because my wife is terrified about the stuff. Just terrified. And I I think rightfully so. There's a lot of things to be worried about. There's a lot of, I mean, just think of like the marketing industry. Obviously, it's gonna change a bunch of things, but it is sad to see videography, all of these things where so many skills acquired to do things that took a lot of time now, are so quickly done with something at the click of a finger, and it's taken that skill part out of it. Now that's gonna shift it to something else, right? Now you can have ownership over this thing and learn to do that and bring a whole new level of value. But she is very terrified. I still stay by the I like chaos. So when we had um Ian, that went right over pretty much like it got light when the eye went by and it rocked us. Wow. And after that, I realized, and I've had several different times like where wild catastrophes like that have been involved in in my life. I really thrive in that moment of like I want to help people, I want to get things going, like I'm not freaked out by it at all.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:06

Yeah, you're a leader.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:07

And I well, I just and I just look at this whole thing too, like I'm not being pessimistic either way. I just know that whatever happens, we're gonna have to deal with. I'm gonna figure it out, whatever that is for us. And I'm sure you feel the same way.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:21

Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. Um yeah, it's it's interesting. The the um I was never a political person. Like I like politics were were never on my mind. They really weren't. But COVID, COVID shifted me to a new perspective.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:37

Because it really just it made me it really made me realize how bad things could get if we just give the government too much control. And you just kind of have blind faith in scientists, and and and and now it's just like now everybody's just kind of just over it, and it's like, damn, they just forget about it. Yeah, like like it's clearly, it was clearly an agenda, clearly manufactured, clearly, you know, clearly there was criminal thinking behind it. Clearly there was an agenda, and now it's just you know, it's just passed over, and I I feel like they could, I hate to say it, I feel like they could kind of pull it off again if they really wanted to. I mean, maybe maybe not with certain people, but certain people I feel like they would just jump right back on, throw a bunch of masks on again, and and stay inside.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:31

The masks are a good indicator who you're dealing with, though. Yeah, right? Like when you were someone's pulling up to an interview or whatever the case may be. I'm just using not saying that it was an interview. However, you see people someone's driving by in a car alone and they've got a mask on. Dude. Okay, man, I know who I'm dealing with. Dude. But so that whole thing, it kind of feels like uh, how far can I push Eric? How can I far can I push these people before they say no? Because we're just gonna test the limits. And and what I really learned about myself during COVID was I have a deep down in the depths of my soul attitude of for me to follow a rule, you have to make it make sense.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:12

And if you can't make it make sense, I don't give a shit about your rule. Like, you're gonna tell me that I I was still flying a bunch, and we actually got a motorhome during that because my wife, my my wife and kids, I don't know, or my kids have never worn a mask. Right? Like, so we were traveling in the motorhome doing all the things, everybody else was freaking out. I was still flying, so you know I was dealing with it. But I remember I fly American all the time, and I was going to some some different events, sitting in first class, and they're serving you a meal. And you can take off your mask for that. But the second that I'm done eating, if I don't even have it up over my nose, they're threatening threatening you. And like you realize that doesn't make sense, right? We're in a tube. Yeah, it's filtered air. I get it. It doesn't matter. If this is off, it doesn't matter at all. Same with like a restaurant. I need to wear this until I get in the protective bubble of my table. You're crazy. That makes zero sense. It it was the whole land of like how much stuff can we just make up and how many people will fall for it. And that's just wild to me.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:22

Yeah, it's it's what it's what slingshotted me out of New York State. Like, you know, I I went through a divorce and I wasn't really liking working at my company anymore, and it was just all kind of perfect timing. And I was like, I I just and here's the other thing. I knew that there were a lot of people like me thinking like me, and I knew that if I came down to Florida, which felt like it was drawing a line in the sand is the freedom state, yeah, right. I I knew that there were a lot going to be a lot of other people like me thinking like me, coming down here, and a few years, a few years later, you know, I meet all these cool people from you know, really up north that have all become my my circle of people, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs, right? So it's it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. Um you know, I want to um I I want to dig into your business a little more, yeah, right? Because I can go down conspiracy rabbit hole forever with you. Let's I want to talk about your business a little bit. So like what's what's your so you have two two businesses running all under Scooters landscape. Sounds like you've built quite the quite the operation in in both areas. Like, is your is your plan to continue to expand? Like, like what's what's the what's what are the next next five years of scooters?

SPEAKER_03 1:14:41

Yeah, so for me, I would like to see definite expansion. I want to have a top 100 company. I love the idea of you know, I always write it down. You always figure out like how how we're gonna get this much done in so short time, but I would love to see us 10, 20 million in the next five years. That's a huge jump from where we're at now. So I would have to actually figure out how do we make that that real, right? But definitely 10 million in in the next five years, I feel like is very achievable. Um and and the growth goal, that's a another piece of why I moved to Florida. One, I loved it, and I love the it's not like everybody talks about beaches and all that shit. Like, I I don't care. I just don't want to be cold. And I want to be able to go outside and and run or ride it, do whatever I want to do any part of the year. And I'm a heat freak as well. So like when I I'll work in my office and I'll run right out and go on a run, and I'll do them at one o'clock during the summer here. It doesn't matter to me, you know. So that's why I love this place. You enjoy the heat. I well, I yeah, me too, actually. You know, I yeah, and that's how my dad is. I moved him down here with me as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:43

Because you can lather up and get sweaty and get oiled up, like you're like moving.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:46

Yeah, it feels great. You you feel great, you you end up being tan from it, you get like all the positive benefits of it ain't a good workout. But so a little bit of moving down here was one, enjoying that, but two, where I'm at in Illinois, and everybody looks at Illinois and they're like, oh, so you're from Chicago.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:02

It's actually a big state. It's actually a big state.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:04

There's like a thing that like I think most of Illinois would like for it to be its own state. But so where I'm at, it's not that big of a town. I mean, it here again, when I was younger, I thought it was a huge town because it was big compared to where I grew up.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:16

Is it west or south?

SPEAKER_03 1:16:18

South. We're closer to St. Louis. Okay, St. Louis. So it's Spring, it's Springfield. It's actually the capital of the it is in Springfield.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:24

Oh, I've been to Springfield. Yeah. Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:26

Yeah. So not a huge town.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:28

Oh, it's not terribly small either. It's not a regular size town. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:31

But in comparison, like if you want to have a monster company, it would be much easier around Chicago. No, no. Because there's so much, so much there. Dense. But then you get back into the okay, we're gonna we're gonna have to do snow too. And so I ended up here knowing that we could do it year-round, and I've seen other companies. There's a company that's on both coasts that several years ago, before they even moved to both coasts, they were doing 75 million just on Naples to Ponegorda area. Wow. You know, and so all of that is touching. For us to grow outside of Springfield, we're talking another 40 minutes to get to the next place. It might be an hour from my office to get to my floor or my Naples office, but every inch in between that is properties that you could be working on.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:12

So, yes, the goal is massive growth. Um, I don't know what the limit would be. I feel like it would be very achievable to be 50, 100 million, and that interests me. And for whatever reason, growing something massive is what I've always wanted. I want to have a I want to be able to need andor have a jet to go between locations, and whether that be charter, it's just a thing I want.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:39

Yeah, you want it all.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:40

I just want, yeah, I just nothing wrong with it. And there's no limit on what you can achieve. And it's not about flashiness. Like, I really love Rolls-Royce, but I've realized I don't care. I don't care about anybody even seeing the car.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:53

Just like if I'm not a big supercar guy, but if I had a Lambo or something, yeah, I would also haul ass down a gravel road with it. Because I don't really like this is for me to enjoy. This isn't for anybody else to to check out and be like, oh, I'm so cool. So yeah, a lot of growth, and I'm very intrigued in how much we can do, what's our maximum opportunity in Illinois, where we're at, and then what all can we start chewing up down here?

SPEAKER_00 1:18:20

I mean, I think this area is a no-brainer for you.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:23

You know, I mean, West Palm. I this is called the Gold Coast Podcast for I mean, West Palm down to Miami is absurd. Yeah. Absurd. Um, you know, the business density, the residential density, the financial acumen. Um I mean, I I don't see how you couldn't flourish in Palm Beach County. Yeah. I mean, flourish. Well, so that's the thing. Like the big Like you know who lives over there? Taylor Swift. Yeah. Right? That's where Taylor Swift and Jason Kelsey live, right there. Jason Kelsey, Travis Kelsey, right? Yeah. In the offseason, right? Um, you know, Mark Wahlberg just bought a house down here. Like, it's that type of affluence. Like, like I have a uh a contractor, he does um residential remodels, and I go, wow, it looks like you do really nice work. And I go, Oh, I bet all your jobs, like I bet you don't do a job less than half a million. He goes, I don't do a job less than six million. Wow. I'm like, I was like, what you know, and he's you know, he's crushing, yeah. Crushing. So like, you know, so I I just know that if you got in with the right people here, and actually you're gonna you might meet some tonight, which is cool. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like, like, so if if you had a business here and you came with me where we're going tonight, I mean, you know, that's where you get those 400k jobs. I mean how how many, how many, you know, when you're doing when you're doing big ticket like that, how many of those you actually need to have a good business? Yeah, you don't need to stack up hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of those, but good. Yeah. So why need a whole bunch of mulch, you know, jobs, you know what I'm saying? You know, and that's the opportunity over here, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:08

That's a lot of why we've started to extend and push even a heavier presence into Naples. Yeah, because it's another area that's just so affluent. You know, we're very Cape Coral, it's been really good to us, but it's still a very retirement 401k. There's money, but there's also a lot of areas where people aren't gonna spend as much money. So that's kind of the thing. We're moving continuously moving to areas where there's bigger and bigger tickets, and that's what's so cool about the state. We can do that over there. We can do so much. I I think you'd easily do 50, 60 million in sales just in the stretch we're in. And we can still just jump across the state and then do even more.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:44

Yeah, you just thought you got a good thing going there. It makes sense to to build that out. Yeah, you know, maybe maybe go as far as Sarasota. Do you go?

SPEAKER_03 1:20:52

Do you do we don't go up that you start getting into the thing of where stuff's more spread out?

SPEAKER_00 1:20:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:56

But yeah, the Tampa, Tampa, Sarasota area, there's tons there as well. Beautiful. There's so much that that's the thing. I envision locations uh just kind of all over. Whatever we get drawn to that is the next area we're growing into. And so I just want to keep chewing up in whatever direction is the most positive for the business.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:16

You know, it would be real, you should do it. You should do your own podcast. I do. Oh, you do? Yeah, I didn't even know that. Okay, tell me about the podcast. I didn't realize that.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:24

So it slowed down a little bit. Um, I actually just started it back up. I'm doing it every other week. Okay. And it's Grow by Design, and it's all just about business. You know, it's specifically, it was originally me and my wife's podcast. And then, you know, I'm the person who just never lets anything go. Yeah. Like my wife got to the point where she's like, hey, you know, we're constantly doing this, we're doing this weekly. This is more than I can do. We got the kids, we got everything. I'm like, hey, I get it. Yeah, I can't stop. So we'll we'll figure this out. And it's evolved into um it's evolved into a cool thing. I took a little bit of a break. I started back up in January, and it's really focused around service businesses, like the things that we do to grow, sharing that with others. Because I even I don't know, I saw other people doing the YouTube channel thing right when I first started business, and I was like, you know, I think I'm gonna do that too. And I remember the very first video I kind of said, hey, this was inspired by this person and this person that shoot videos. And oh man, I I still look like a dork a lot of times on camera and on on the air, but I look back to that and it's crazy how far that's came.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:29

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:30

Because I've like the amount of YouTube videos I've shot is insane, and it's never been a thing that's taken off, but it's been a thing that's been it's I've seen so much progress and tracked all that time, and I can look back at the whole ride of my business. Yeah, I've shared a lot with a lot of people and helped a lot of people, and it's still something that, yeah, YouTube's been cool. That that's probably more my thing than even a podcast. So we got about 10,000 subscribers on YouTube. Wow, that's always been the thing that I share the most on there. But yeah, the podcast's really cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:59

Well, just for my my brain is going, so I'm um, I don't want to name drop here. So I'm I'm starting an entrepreneurial community, right? On school where entrepreneurs join, share info with one another, um, you know, a few zooms a week where you know people are basically giving insight and knowledge in their industry, but then it's also a community where people are sharing information, but then they can share discounts. So, you know, if you're looking for if you need a CPA, the CPA will do work for you at X. Or if you need legal work, you know, he'll do work for you at X. But it's about building a community, but you know, but if you can get I could see you having one, yeah, you know, easily. Yeah. Because you've built up like they're like you've built up such a good business. Now you've done it in two areas. I mean, I could see you having the landscaper, entrepreneur, whatever the heck, and or or any any contract, like I could see you having five, like I don't know how many contractors technically you would need a landscaper, HVAC, a plumber, maybe a home remodeler, maybe a roofer, right? Maybe there's like five or six of you guys, and you're all kind of taking turns, just kind of talking about your business and your journey, journey. I'm just thinking out loud here. Yeah, but like there's so many ways to monetize what you have up here, you know. Um, so like I could see you building your$50 million a year, you know, boots on the ground business, and then your$12 million a year, you know, community. Like, there's so many different ways to monetize your knowledge, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:24:35

Yeah, that's so funny you bring that up because I think that was the big push for me when I first started in Florida at one point. I mentioned this to you before. We got the office we got because we wanted to start a marketing agency. And yeah, I know I remember, yeah. And that ended up being a piece that we went away from. We hired some people that were gonna be involved in marketing, and it just went more back to focusing on the main thing. And that's also been another piece is I've started people all on YouTube turned into a thing where I just can't respond to everything, and there's always questions, and we've created like a little bit of an online community, let that kind of die on the vine. Then we had another one going, and that's been something I've kept going for a long time now. But you're right, like there's always but that's also been the conflicting piece for me. It was a focus, but it's still, even though it could be great, I I I like all this stuff less for money, more for I like just to try to make it easier for other people because there's gonna be plenty of hard stuff you find after that, right? Um, but when I told you I'm kind of like trying to refocus on what makes the most sense, I kind of see myself pulling more and more back from this and pouring more and more into the business because I just see how much ground we can make in the lawn and landscape industry. But you're you're exactly right. There's so much knowledge to be shared, so much where you can help and assist people and make their life easier. Um, I think the hardest part about all of it, I used to do some like one-on-one coaching a long time ago, just helping other business owners, yeah, uh service industry stuff. I always found myself very frustrated because I would be like, this is exactly if you do this, it'll be awesome. Just trust me, do it. And you can't force anybody to listen to you.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:13

No, no doubt.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:14

And it is infuriating. It's like, I don't even want you to pay me. If you're not gonna listen, I I just I don't want to do this anymore. So that became very, very frustrating. That even the little amount I did of that and I and started enjoying like the more group atmosphere, kind of like what you're talking about to it to an extent. Um but still I've realized a lot of that. It's it's hard to see people not even in a community, if you see people that aren't taking massive action, it can be I don't know, you just it can be disheartening when you're wanting to affect change.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:44

Yeah, and I think that's a thing that especially they give you a couple thousand bucks too, and you're just like, Are you gonna do anything here?

SPEAKER_03 1:26:50

Yeah, yeah. So, yes, you're right, and there's a ton of value to add. I think for me, I'm always just I'm trying to figure out where it brings the most value and it makes the most sense. But yeah, there's some really cool stuff that you can build out there.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:03

My my humble opinion, just hearing you talk, like um, you're very likable, you come off very honest. Obviously, you've put together your physique, your marriage, your child, like you've put you you have you have the whole package, right? I would I would just if I was in your shoes, I would just continue to I would commit to you know, just putting out content that's you know just free information. Yeah. You know, just talking about the shit that the problems you deal with all the time.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:36

You know, to tell your marketing secrets. Yeah. You know, hey, I I tried this in marketing, it doesn't work. I tried this and just and just keep building I I don't know, man. I think that I I could I could see a world where you have ten thousand landscapers in your community and they're all investing in your community. Because they all want to get from 250,000. Do you know how many people I talk to that that do about 500,000 a year? I mean, it's crazy. About 500,000. Yeah. They can't. It's not a million they can't break. It's 500,000. It's 40 grand a month. They got two guys. It sounds like a lot of money. It's not.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:22

It's it it's especially in business. It's not a lot of money. When you look at people here at$400,000, and that that's the common misconception that's hard. People look at the business, they say, Eric makes a million. Yeah.$100,000, whatever it is in the business, right? And they're like, he gets it all. That is not it. It is so easy. It could be a hundred million dollar business. It'd be easy to spend$101 million. Easy. All day.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:44

I know a guy has a hundred million dollar business, he only takes home five million. They think he's so rich. Five million is not as much as you think.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:51

For a five million is not as much as you think when you look at the amount of moving parts for it to be a hundred million. Exactly. And the amount of liability that goes into the market.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:01

Oh no, yeah. It could those costs could go up to 102, like you said. And yeah. And he, yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's a transportation business. Um that gives me anxiety hearing about it. He's got a private plane, too. I'm like, you sure you want to you know keep investing that two million dollars a year into that, you know? Um, yeah, I I mean obviously I think you have a a bright future, whatever you do. I'm not even trying to like give you advice. I'm just trying to give you perspective on on I think I just know this. When you come back on this podcast in like, let's say two or three years, and my podcast is huge and we have some freaking studio, I just know you're gonna talk, tell a story about how you know, Eric, I went and I did this little video, and then and you're just gonna have some other big revenue stream that's yeah that's paying dividends.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:49

Um I appreciate I appreciate that feedback, and you solidify my kind of thought processes and just with all of it. Just keep chipping at the stone. Yeah, because so many people just stop. That's kind of where I got with the the podcast I laid off of it, and I'm like, well, this is silly. It doesn't even well, what's it matter how many people listen? Because just like anything, and and that's not why I stopped. I stopped just because of the volume and keeping up with everything, and I needed to re-systematize and have the right structure to get it done and not kill me. Yeah, but just like anything, it only takes one, you only have to meet one person. One person can change your life. And so all of the stuff, and that's how I've always felt about YouTube, and why I've always been so consistent with at least doing something with it. Because I know if you just keep building, there's nothing but positive down the line. Yeah, you don't have to have the answer for what that is right now. You help enough people, you're gonna get all the help you need.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:39

Yeah, sometimes just do. That's that's how I work. I just do. Do me a favor. Um, I want you to look into that camera. And, you know, if somebody's interested in learning more about scooters landscape, maybe they live on the west coast of Florida, near Naples, Cape Coral, and they want to learn a little bit more about scooters, or maybe somebody from Illinois, Springfield, Illinois, is listed. Where can where can they find you?

SPEAKER_03 1:31:02

You can find us at scooterslawncarefl.com or take that FL off, scooterslawncare.com, and that will get you to Illinois. That is S-C-O-O-T-R-S Lawn Care. Uh, you can find out about all of our services, everything we do, all the way from our maintenance to our design and installation divisions. And in Illinois, we even sell equipment. So we've got a wide array of what we're involved with, and we are excited to meet any homeowners and help them.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:29

Guys, thanks again for tuning into the Gold Coast podcast. Um, you got to hear a little business, you got to hear a little conspiracy. Um, but hopefully, hopefully, this inspires one of you to take your business from you know 400 grand up to a million dollars because this guy's going up to 50 million dollars, he says, in five years. I'm gonna help him do it. Uh, make sure to like and subscribe. We'll see you again.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:52

You can also find the podcast at Grow by Design. That's the podcast on Spotify, on anywhere where you want to listen to podcasts, iTunes, whatnot. And Jacob Godar. If you look for that on YouTube, you're gonna find my YouTube channel. I've got over a thousand videos. It can be ranging from business to health to anything on there that I'm involved with, and I've been sharing that for years, and I'd love to share it with you.