Jonathan Pototschnik on the Long Game, Focus, and Not Selling
Table of Contents
- 1. Play the long game
- 2. A break will cost you momentum
- 3. The CEO has three jobs
- 4. Know your two engines
- 5. Protect your focus like it’s the business
- 6. Don’t sell what you’d just buy back
- 7. Build it so it runs without you
- 8. Keep the message simple
- 9. Change the quality of your revenue
- The real goal post
Jonathan Pototschnik started CitiTurf, a big lawn care company out of the Dallas Fort Worth area, and he also started Service Autopilot. A lot of people know him as the lawn care millionaire. He just came back from a three-year break, and he’s all in on CitiTurf again.
I had a list of questions ready. He gave me more than I asked for. Here’s what stood out.
For more straight talk from operators who have built and scaled, browse every episode on the Pest Control Millionaire podcast.
1. Play the long game
I asked him who he’d want to sit with for a day. He picked Jeff Bezos, not because he studies him, but because of how Bezos thinks about time.
Bezos kept investing year after year and didn’t pull profit out early. He built Amazon, then AWS, then Prime, then more, and most people can’t pull that off.
As Jonathan put it, “the long game is not the way people look at building businesses now.” Plenty of great founders do play long, but most people who say they want to win big don’t think that way. They want the payoff now. Bezos waited. That is the whole point.
2. A break will cost you momentum
Jonathan took three years off. He walked me through three phases.
First he felt off, not sad, just not right. Then he got comfortable. He thought he could ride bikes and race cars forever and be fine. Then phase three hit, and he got tired of the calendar and wanted to build again.
A friend named Dan Martell kept warning him. Every time they met, Dan asked if he was still on his break. Dan had taken time off too and felt the cost. Jonathan agrees now. “You lose a lot of momentum, you really do. It takes a while to get back in the game,” he told me.
He also noticed his health slipped while he traveled. It is hard to eat right and train on the road. Still, he says he would do it again, and he is just glad he came back.
3. The CEO has three jobs
This was one of my favorite parts. I asked what a CEO should focus on. He gave me three clear jobs.
First, cast the vision. Where are we going? What does winning look like? How do we show up for clients and the team? Second, build the team that can get you there. Third, figure out how to pay for the growth.
He added a fourth job for some of us. If your name is part of the brand, you can’t fully step out of marketing, and you become part of the show whether you like it or not.
4. Know your two engines
Jonathan lives by the 80/20 rule. He learned it years ago and still studies the books behind it, like Star Principle and The 80/20 Principle.
For a service business, he says the 80/20 comes down to two engines. One brings in clients. One brings in team members. Everything else is the work in the background that keeps it all from blowing up.
That is it: sell the work, then hire the people to do the work. He says the hard part isn’t knowing the rule. It is looking in the mirror and asking if you really live it. He’ll be the first to say he doesn’t, not the way the experts do.
5. Protect your focus like it’s the business
Jonathan says focus is still a daily fight for him. So he built rules.
He uses an app called Freedom to block websites. He keeps social and YouTube off his phone, and he blocks news too. He writes a list each day of what he’ll do. He doesn’t always follow it, but he tries.
His best line was about ideas. He loves learning, but new ideas can pull him off track. “I don’t need another idea, just need to do the 50,000 ideas I already have,” he said. I do the same thing. I’ll hear something on a walk and miss ten minutes of the podcast because my brain ran off with one idea.
6. Don’t sell what you’d just buy back
People offer to buy CitiTurf all the time. His highest offer was 20 times earnings. On their numbers, that is a huge check.
He won’t take it, and his logic is simple. “Why would I take the money off the table pay the taxes and then come right back to the thing I’m already doing that’s stupid,” he said.
He believes in home services, so if he sold, he’d just put the money right back into the same kind of business. He already has the team, the brand, and the launching pad, so he keeps going.
7. Build it so it runs without you
One of the books Jonathan likes is Antifragile. You can hear it in how he builds.
He’s not hiring one designer, he’s building a bench of three or four contractors. He’ll even hand the same project to a few people and keep the best work. That way he has backups and better odds.
He thinks the same way about social media. He could be the face of it, but if he’s the face and he walks away, it all stops. So he wants four or five people running it instead. Even if that is a little worse than one star, it keeps moving without him. “I’m highly inclined not to make me the focus of it,” he said. He wants people to see the whole team, not just one person.
8. Keep the message simple
Jonathan is rebuilding all of CitiTurf’s marketing. He started with the trucks.
His old truck design was from way back in 2007. Too much going on. He says only a couple of things really matter now. “There’s only two things that matter on the truck… pound in the logo, pound in the mascot,” he told me. Then a short line on what you do.
His reason for cutting the phone number and website? People just Google you. If the name is good, they’ll find you. He’s leaning hard on their mascot, Chester, across everything.
9. Change the quality of your revenue
CitiTurf used to be mostly mowing. Now its top service is fertilization. That shift was on purpose.
Fertilization has better margins, and the costs are better. And it is easier to find people for that work than to staff mowing crews. Mowing leans on seasonal H-2B workers, and some years those didn’t come through. When that happened, the team had to fire clients and scramble with contractors. It hurt their reviews and beat the team up.
So they didn’t just chase more revenue. They changed the kind of revenue they sell. The top line grew slower after they passed ten million, but the business got stronger.
The real goal post
Here is the thing that stayed with me most. Jonathan doesn’t need the money. He could sell. He could sit back. He came back anyway.
I asked why. His answer wasn’t about growth or a number. His measuring stick now is whether the work is fun. He is also honest about luck. He grew up in an area that grew into one of the fastest growing places in the country. A hot, dense market did a lot of the work.
But he’s back because he loves it. He thinks he and Philip can build a nine-figure company together, and he’s having a blast doing it. That is a good reminder for me. Build the thing you actually want to work on.
Full transcript
Every word of the episode, from the video captions
There only been like, maybe five episodes where your name hasn't been brought up, so I think we'll be all right. But, yeah, welcome back to Pest Control Millionaire. We're in episode number 91 already, which is cruising on by. We're making good progress.
You guys probably just heard me say, This guy here probably doesn't me need a whole lot of introduction, but if you guys want one, here is one. He was the founder of CitiTurf, which is a, you know, lawn care company out of Dallas Fort Worth, Texas. Right, yep, he's also was the founder of Service Autopilot, and you guys probably know him as the Lawn Care Millionaire.
Welcome to the show, Jonathan Pototschnik How you doing, Buddy, What's up, Jonas, Good to see you. Yeah, you too feel like we haven't seen each other in a minute, but we talked, No, it's been a bit. The lake was the last time I saw you, yeah, and I have people pounding on my door on a daily basis lately saying, Hey, get a hold of JP. We got to get all the guys together, so there's that. So they said on the podcast say, Make sure you bring it up.
Okay, yeah, well, no, I'm up for it. Yeah, I'm game for it's just been my schedule. A couple people have proposed it and we've not been around. And then, Tiffany, I don't know. Tiffany had foot surgery.
That's been a really long recovery. What happened there? She? It was a planned surgery. She's a runner and she had a bunion like a I kind of a common surgery. But it was pretty significant. So I think for 10 or 11 weeks she was non-weight bearing something like that.
And then she's been in a boot and she's back to walking, but she can't run yet. So anyway, that really like, she didn't want people coming and staying at our house and she didn't want to throw a party. And she can't really just let everybody come here and she do nothing. So we've been on hold in terms of having any events at our house. So, yeah, back to your point, I've been hearing, Hey, we'll come through Dallas, or let's all meet up somewhere. We're like, We're g for it. She's just got to get p this. Yeah, well, I'm excited for it right out of the gate. I got to ask you a question because I was thinking about this.
If you could pick one person to sit down with in a room for a day, who would you pick?
Wow, one person for a day. That's a great question What's my agenda? Let's go with business since that's the since, that's what we're working on. If it came to business, I'd go, Jeff Bezos, Really, Yeah, hug, come I mean, you OB?
Obviously. Well, yeah, I me, yeah. He's been a little bit successful, so I thought he'd be kind of interesting. No, he the scale of what they've built, and he is his way of approaching things. As in. He did the time and really took a lot of risks and really deferred a lot of. We'll call it gratification, especially in terms of taking revenue and profit inside the organization. So that he could build something really big and really, really dominant.
Not that other people don't do that. But he absolutely has a reputation for having had the foresight to just keep investing and investing and investing and play this incredibly long game. And I think the long game is not the way people look at building businesses now. Now a lot of very successful people do, but the majority who claim they want to be very successful do not look at business.
And as a long game, and Bezos might be one of the best at it. And so there's other reasons, but just the logistics and the scale of what that guy built, and I'll add one more. I mean, he didn't just build Amazon, he built AWS, and they've done prime, and they've done all these other businesses within the business.
There's not a lot of people that pull. That off successfully. And, you know, Amazon's practically a conglomerate at this point, and that is not successfully done in most cases. So I just think he's one of the most interesting leaders out there. Yeah, what's the percentage of?
I don't even know the of Amazon. Does he even own anymore? It's low, right, like he gave most of the equity away, right?
Do you know, I'm going, Look it up? He owned a pretty sizable percentage. I want to say in the 20s with his wife, but I'm sure that's not the case. I'm sure I'm way high on that, but I know his wife, when they got divorced, has a quarter of the business. Now, yeah, she's like the richest woman in the world. Yeah, or Top 10, yeah, and so I don't know the. Number to that, it's not going to be in the 20s, that's way too high. Otherwise he'd be a trillion. No, he wouldn't, because that company's probably worth a couple Bill trillion.
I don't know, I have no idea I'm gonna look it up while we're talking. But I was curious what, like what you thought of like, because we have you as mentor and I know you have mentor. So who do you look up to?
I was like, What does Jonathan think if you get sit down with one person?
Yeah, I don't. I don't really per, say, read a lot of stuff about him or follow him very. I'm aware of him and I'm aware of what they've done and I've read a book on Amazon. 9%. Okay, I wonder what?
He owned, I what he sold a lot over the years too, but anyway, I. I wouldn't say that I study him or anything like that in terms of thinking about how to build a business. I just think he's probably one of the most impressive business leaders.
Is there someone that you do, read a lot of books of, or watch closely that you look up too close?
Yeah, I would nobody close, but Dan Kennedy was one of them right early on, early on, hands down Dan Kennedy. I just consumed everything that Dan put out. I went to multiples of his events, and then I joined a local business group that he wasn't running. But he was doing the spin-off chapters, and there was one in Dallas, so no doubt about it. And then that led me to meet other people, a variety of people who I also learned a lot from.
But. Richard Koch would be the guy that I would probably say now he's Star Principle, Star Principle Simplify 80/20. I would say if there was one person I would most consume now, it would probably be him. I haven't read that book in probably six, seven years when you told us about it in the 80/20 rule. But, like the 80/20, principles, is pretty easy to figure out. Right?
Yeah, it's seems very self-explanatory, but you know, he adds context to it and a way of really thinking about it. And I would say challenging yourself to say, Are you really doing it living it?
I'm not. Not compared to the way he does, right? So if you haven't heard about GorillaDesk yet, it's a super sick software. It's actually made by one of my really close friends, Chris Moreschi. So. Chris built GorillaDesk to help streamline his own personal business over 10 years ago. But now GorillaDesk is used by over 4,000 companies, and today it's become one of the most premier platforms in our industry. So what's really unique about GorillaDesk is that it's a simple all-in-one solution that's really easy for your team to use. Reales offers a seamless onboard experience in best in class support, with no additional cost. It's all included in your subscription. Inside the software, you'll find a whole suite of features scheduling, invoicing, routing and sales pipelines, integrated voice, text messaging and pretty much all the automations you're going to need, and much, much more so. If you guys are still relying on paper or spreadsheets or fighting with an old software, I highly recommend that you guys check out GorillaDesk. So we have a link in our description. Click on that and it'll take you right to the free trial.
Now let's get back to the show.
So you just had a threeyear sabatical, so welcome back, thank you. How was that been back?
It was really good. What did you learn? I learned that I don't need to do another three years. Sabatical. I learned that I never thought I wasn't going to keep working. Tiffany would sometimes say, When we're out and about and people like, What do you do?
She's like, He's retired like, Ah, God, I hate that, I'm not retired, I'm just taking a break. I hate that language, and so I never thought that I would not work again, but I didn't know what form it would take. I had a bunch of ideas.
What I learned was, I have to work during that. I learned quite a bit trying to put this together, so I went through these three phases. My first phase was kind of just being off and this I just don't feel right. And, you know, not depressed, I'm. I'm not a person that gets depressed. I'm fortunate that that's not really something I have to deal with. But something wasn't right. I didn't feel h like happy, I wasn't unhappy, I was still happy, just I wasn't, It wasn't right, I don't know how to. I could never quite, and that's the way I'm stuttering on. This is exactly the situation. I could not put my finger on it, but things weren't perfect, they weren't ideal. Not that anything's ever perfect, so in like in a good analogy is it kind of like when you're, maybe you and your wife or someone?
Kids are fighting at home? And you go to work and you just feel off when you're at work. Is that little thing still in the back of your head?
Yeah, I mean, that would be. A fair analogy. It's that kind of a feeling. It's like, Man, things should be better. I should be, I should have more energy, I should feel better, I should feel more excited. I should have more optimist, I should have these feelings or and I'm not having them. It's that sort of a thing. So phase one, you're off. That was Phase One, Phase Two. I got to and I was, you know, part of the problem, I think was it was during Co or towards the end of Co or whatever period. So that in general, screwed everything up. A bunch of the stuff I would have normally wanted to do, so I was at home more, and I'm more of a people person. I like a in office environment. I like being around my team, so I had. Lost my team because I sold the business and I had stepped down as CEO in April 21.
And so there was a lot going on that. I think compact. It wasn't just about taking a sabatical. And then I got to a place where it's like, Hey, I could be pretty happy living this life. Now we're traveling more, I'm doing more car racing stuff, doing a bunch of mountain biking again, riding dirt bikes. I'm doing all that kind of stuff, so I feel like I've got a bunch of activities that I can do and I'm liking that. And so I kind of got to this place where I was like, Hey, I could probably find enough stuff that keeps me excited that I could never work again, and it would be okay. It'd be kind of fun.
And then in the third phase, I got to the place like, I can't keep doing this like, This is fun. This has been great, but I am kind of ready to not be traveling so much. I'm ready to be working again. I need something to build.
And you know, what I found is, I was like, I would say to myself, Hey, I want to go race cars all the time. But the reality was I'd look at the calendar and I have an event coming up and I'd be like, Really, just kind of, don't want to do that. I want to go, I want to work, I want to build again. And so that was the three phases. It started out as kind of being lost and then getting to this phase of acceptance of, Hey. I could, you know, I could take a forever break, and then third was I'm ready to go again, I'm energized, I'm excited. There was a long stretch there where I didn't feel super about going again and it was on there. A guy I know friend Dan Martell, he two on two different occasions during this period told me because I. The only thing I did is I spoke at his event twice during this period, and so I didn't really do any other events, and both times I saw him. He's like, Are you still taking your break or something along those lines?
He's like and he just more. I just felt this, Ah, you know, like, this is a bad idea. And he kept saying I took a break and I lost a lot momentum and so that was sort of in my head. I was like, HM, is this a mistake?
And so to wrap this up, I'd say He's dead on. You lose a lot of momentum, you really do, it takes a while to get back in the game. Of course, during a three-year period, there's a lot you could have built and progress that could have been made.
Another thing that I learned was When you're traveling all the time, you don't actually take better care of yourself. From a health standpoint, it's really hard to be in other countries and eat really good and find the get. Have the ability to get in all your workouts, like just a lot of stuff. Slips doesn't have to fall apart, but it slips.
And so I understand fully what he's talking about about losing momentum, and I agree. However, I the summary is, I'm very happy that I did it, I would do it again. That's awesome. And so did you know what you're going to do when you came back?
Yeah, I had five different concepts for what I would do next. And I just didn't know how fast I would do each or what I would do. Or which of the five I wanted to do, because that's too many.
And I had talked to you about the working with entrepreneurs. That was pretty high on the list. And so I had a general idea of where I was going to go coming back. And so before we started going live, you said that you first thing you did went back to.
CitiTurf Right? Yeah, as you know, I for years talked about getting re-involved in CitiTurf. I was excited that you're going back there. Yeah, yeah, and I think maybe maybe a year earlier I had so during the sabatical because it wasn't, I didn't. When I took sabatical, I didn't say I'm gonna take three years.
There was a moment where I had a conversation with Tiffany at dinner one night and I said, Hey, I want to start working again. And I gave her a date, and she's like. I think that was the beginning of 23, so it would have been a much shorter, sabatical something like that. I can't remember my dates now, but it was in 23, I was going to go back to work.
And Tiffany's like, I just don't, I think it. Was the very beginning. I just don't feel like you've really been that much more present on your break. And I'm like, H, okay, all right. And so I decided to extend it and keep going, and it was wise we did a bunch of cool stuff during that period of time. But my point there was. I had been thinking that CitiTurf would be one of the things. And I remember even having Philip set me up in office at CitiTurf, which was really more of like a closet.
And then he set it up for me. And then he said, Like, can you not come up here till maybe later in the summer because you're going to get everybody all distracted?
And so and then I just didn't do anything for CitiTurf like he, you know. We went through that process and then in April of this year, 24, I started working on CitiTurf and I got pretty excited about the work I was doing. I was enjoying it and it got me back into the groove. It was a little bit of a slow start at first and then I started going where I'm back to my normal self. Everything that pops up on the calendar, that's not work. I'm like, God, we really have to do that, you I have to fight that, but that's how I've always been, like, Ah, this is a distraction.
Like, Really, I mean, God, like, we're going to a concert tomorrow night. It's like, Really, we gotta leave at 430. So Tiffany, have a whole debate about what time we have to leave. It's like they really. Gonna is the open?
I mean, the main act isn't going on till later. Do we really have to be there because I'm trying to get my full work schedule now, so I'm fully back?
It took me a little while to get back to that. And are you at your new office?
No, no, I'm now working at the house, so I'm not even using the office and that so a number of things have happened. So I start working on CitiTurf full-time, and then I think, Well, I'll go up there and then I'm like, Man, I'm really being productive right here if I go up there because I'm focused on very specific stuff. So if I go up there, what's going to happen is I'm going to see this thing and that thing, and I'm gonna get this idea and that idea. And then I'm gonna get all distracted, and I'm going to work on. Want to work on all these different things or help Philip with all these different things. Because I'm really there just to help. I'm not running this thing, say, I'm not, those guys do not need me. They run a very good operation. I'm not coming to mess with their world, I'm just there to help, like, What do you want me to do?
Kind of thing, and so. I just decided, if I go up there, I'm gonna get myself distracted, so I'm gonna, stay here. The other part of this here, being my house, and so I like where I'm sitting right now, is where I work every day, all day. And then the second part of that was that I was going to start, for example, launch a new YouTube channel. I was going to do these other things and I then decided, You know, I'm not even going to do that.
I because I expected to have launched new social stuff months ago. And I decided, if I do that, it's going to get me distracted from being full-time on CitiTurf. And so I have roughly stayed almost fulltime. I got another thing I'm working on, but I've stayed almost fulltime up until now on the CitiTurf business. And I'm going to stay really hardcore on it until next year. Sometime, that's awesome. So one question Is Philip happy that you're back?
I think so we talk every day, every, I mean, we're we don't necessarily talk on the phone every day, but we I use Loom and. Got Philip using Loom?
He used to use a different product and we talk through Loom all the time, like every day. I've got at least one message or two messages stacked up from him right now, so we're trading video messages all the time. So I really like working with him because, and I've always liked working with him. I just couldn't. Because the service, all he is like, he's good, I mean that guy, he's a hardworking guy and he's smart and he's creative and he doesn't put up. My take on him is he doesn't put up with much like this needs to get done, we're going to do it. He does not, he's not really a compromiser, he's like, This is the path. We have to go down, we're going to go down this path. And I just really like working with people like that.
He's, he's a keep your foot on the gas kind of guy, and so we comp ment each other wonderfully because he's a great operator. I'm not as good of an operator I can. I can be a CEO, but I need to be surround and I think I can do a good job as CEO. But I need a operator COO around me and then I'm. Philip can sell, he says. He can't sell, but it's baloney he can sell and.
And so, and he doesn't necessarily like the marketing stuff, and I like the marketing and so, and I love strategy and business model. And I would say he's not bad at that, either, but so together we're just a great team, so I really enjoy working with him, that's cool. So my next question I have a couple questions that I already had pre-written before this started. So, but so you're going back there. I assumed it was going to be for marketing.
That's where I was starting. Yeah, so I had two. I have three objectives, one of which I think I've barely talked to him about. So one was rebuild. Everything, marketing, branding, communications, rebuild it all. That's what I'm focused on. I mean, you look at my trucks, and that was the design that 2007, I mean, way back the beginning and. They're there's just a lot going on on those trucks, they're not, they're not, they're fine, they work. I mean, the trucks kill it in our market, but they're just a lot. I mean, it just doesn't follow.
I've learned a lot since them. Times have changed and they can be vastly simplified in terms of what you're seeing. There's only two things that matter on the truck, in my opinion, in today's day and age. Pound in the logo, pound in the mascot.
Phone number doesn't matter. Website doesn't matter because we have a good name. People are going to Google it anyway if they want to find us. You can put the phone number on there. That's fine, but there's only two things that matter in, ideally a short statement of what services we offer now. You know, we're in a privileged position because we've been around a while now that people generally know what we do. But we have a problem where people think of us too much as, say, mowing and PES. Sorry, mowing and say bush trimming. And we're revenue-wise moving more towards fertilization. We control arbor and pest still doing the other stuff, and so we got to really pound those three services into people's mind. I would like to keep irrigation forefront as well, and so that's about all that needs to be on the truck. So that's an example of branding.
We're moving way more heavily towards the use of Chester, who's our mascot and just doing a bunch of cool stuff with him rewriting everything. I mean, there's so much marketing, it's communication with the client. So what do you do when, for example, we discover they have a shade issue?
How do you preempt the conversation about a shade issue from a fertilization? We control standpoint where they're going to eventually say to you, Hey, I hired you three years ago when you took over the lawn, look great. Three years later, my last grass looks bad, you're killing off my grass. No, not really. You have a shade issue in the last three to four years, your trees have really grown like you've got. A million of these scenarios that all require education, and the team at the door can't always do that education based on their knowledge level skill level. Does the client even answer the door?
So I've got a bazillion pieces of education communication have to be built. Then you've got all the selling back into the base and you've got driving revenue from selling to new clients. There's just so much, so by the time I'm done, I'll probably have built 60 pieces that are print. That touched the client and then untold number of multi-step emails, text messages so much the branding. I mean, what gets left on the wall next to the irrigation system, the thank you cards that get sent out to the client, the review system. I mean, just so much, and it's a huge, huge project and I've made a lot of progress. I'm also building a team, a marketing team around me. So z you must. I'm assuming that you hire content writers, you know, yeah, I, so I actually was going to build an in-house team, and where I stand at the moment is predominantly building a team of contractors.
Yeah, and I'll eventually build some element of In-House, but for now I'm just building a team of. Contractors. So, for example, if I, from a design standpoint, I will have three designers or four designers that I can use at any one time. So I've got redundancy in a way that I wouldn't have, because the business could only probably justify one full-time designer.
And actually, I don't even know what the business can justify long term. Once we get through building all this content, however, with the social side, I think there's a lot of creative. So I think we could still justify a full-time. But I just like, Could I divvy that out across four contractors and have some redundancy?
And also what I've been doing is I give the same project multiple people, and I like, I take the best. And so that's kind of where we're at right now on that cool. That's objective. One is marketing, yeah, objective, one is marketing objective, two is a play on marketing, it's the marketing around.
Recruiting like there's two things that matter in the business. I mean, there's more than two things. But it's like the engine that brings in all the clients and the engine that brings in all the team. To do all the work that you sold and then in the background, you've got everything operational. That makes the whole thing work. So it doesn't all fall apart and blow up.
And so being that, you know, go back to 80/20 like 80, what's the 80/20, the 80/20 is?
How do we bring in more clients, and how do we bring in more team members?
So FAC Two for me will be assisting the team in bringing in more team members can. Only. There's an element there where it's marketing, it's the marketing that we go out into the world to where?
They live. It's the marketing that happens on Indeed, or LinkedIn? It's the marketing happens on our social channels, it's the marketing that is all the advertising digital advertising happens to recruit. And then there's also, and they've got some of this already.
But could we and I don't know the answer to this? Could we make some improvements?
If we all get together and put our brains together on the physical action that happens in the field where PE humans are out physically recruiting. And so that's Phase two, and then Phase Three is something you know. You and I and many of us have talked about many times, and a lot of people do it. We don't run an EOS type model or Verne Harnish Scaling Up type model inside CitiTurf.
And so that's my third objective. Is to bring that to that business mean we did a lot of that at Service Autopilot?
We don't do it at CitiTurf now. I can't speak to exactly what they do because I don't run the operations. They've they. It's not as though they don't do anything, it's there's a lot of good communication in the business. But could we bring a little more formality to that process as an example?
And I'll wrap with this as an example. I have been incredibly distant from the business over the years off distracted with service autopilot and then un distracted with academy. And while we would have periodic conversations, we and when we had a conversation, I never went to the business. We'd meet at Outback or like a restaurant and have a conversation there for a few hours. And that would happen randomly on no schedule, no cadence.
And by implementing something like an EOS. As I move out of the organization again because I'm back for a season, I don't want to ever go back to being as uninvolved as I was. And a model like EOS will keep me involved on a weekly and quarterly basis to a degree, but only a small amount of my time. And so my long-term objective is to keep my foot in that business long term. Again. Not to run it, not to take over, just to assist and. And so I think that third leg that I'm talking about is will will not only benefit the business, it will help me.
It'll create structure for me to stay involved in the business long term. That's awesome. One of the pre-t pre-written questions that I had is, What do you think a CEO's job is what is the biggest thing to?
He should focus on? So you pretty much answered those right there. Yeah, well, there's a couple. I mean, I think, think it's the number one. I don't think the COO's job is necessarily marketing and recruiting. I think there's a strong argument for it. This is, let me give you the three, the three are the CEO and the vision, the vision. I just said it. The CEO's first objective is to cast a vision. So we're creating as the CEO, a vision of where we are going as an organization.
This is what we're going to accomplish. This is when we want to accomplish it. This is what successful will look like. That's the vision. Who will we be in the market?
How will we show up to the client? How will we show up to the team, etc?
Then their objective? It's kind of like the old sports analogy is we want to win, we know what the vision is. We want to win the Super Bowl all right now. I got to go build the team. That could make us a winning team so that we can get to the Super Bowl and then have a shot at winning it. So I cast division and then my job as CEO is to build. The team to accomplish that vision, who needs to be on the team, who doesn't need to be on the team?
And then I've got to pay for that somehow, and you got to pay for growth, and how are you going to pay for it?
And so those are three, your three big things that I, as I think about it. You have to do now, depending on like, when I kind of came up learning marketing in the Dan Kennedy world. Dan Kennedy would have said, as I remember it, that you should, as CEO, own or zoner, you should own the marketing, and I don't totally disagree.
That's obviously what a marketing guy would tell you that selling marketing stuff is like you should own marketing. And I've tried to own I, even at Service Autopilot towards. The end?
I still generally own marketing. I had a marketing leader, she owned it, but I still way more involved than I needed to be. And so I don't necessarily think you own marketing. But the reason I bring up this specific topic is if you're building a somewhat personality-based business where you're part of the brand. And there's real power in that, then you can't really. In that example, as CEO, ever escape being part of the brand and being somehow involved in marketing.
And it may be as simple as you've built a team around you and you show up to do the videos and the pictures. And, you know, do some of the PR and things like that, but that's the fourth item that I would like. Add to your CEO role depending on what kind of business you build. But most people do not build a personality based business, and so that one does not apply to them. Gotcha.
Going back to social, you and I talked about it a few months back. But will you be doing more YouTube videos for CitiTurf?
You mean me personally? Yeah, I don't know. I am addressing Social in my. I have a massive list of what I'm working on and it's down the list a bit, I don't know. I mean, it's one of the reasons I've always been interested in kind of following what you're doing and talking to you and hearing how it's working. Because I'm I still am slightly unclear on what that model that best model looks like and knowing how many other things I'm really interested in doing, I don't know if I have the time to do that as well, right?
Does it really move the needle that much, and how long is it? Going to take to move the needle?
Yeah, yeah, there exactly. There's just all these things, and so there's an element of social that I think we can do. Without me falling into that role, my preference would be that I have my team very involved in that. And it's not one person, it's five people.
And that would be my preference, but I don't know if it will work yet, so that this is all yet to be decided. I mean, because, as you know, social is a lot of work. It's tremendous amount at this level, it's just it's content every day, or at least one day, full time a week, you know, like. And as I get busier with all these, I just have so many opportunities and so many things that are interesting as I get busier.
Am I going to look back and say, Hey, man, I got to drop this one?
Because the size of this opportunity, me being the face of this is so much smaller than all the other things, and then that's kind of difficult on. I mean, if suddenly I disappear and I was the face.
And so that's if you put a gun to my head and said, What are you going to do?
I'd say I'm going to try to build a team around social. Maybe it's not as good as having one person, maybe it's not as good as having me. Who would be very passionate about it. But so what?
But if it's diminished, returns by 30% still better. That it's not my time. And we have five different individuals in the company all play a role we get. You know, one of the things we're we're working towards and we've done a few things around it now is we want to start showing off the team more like, Who, what do they look like, who are they?
Who are these people you're talking to? Are these people that are taking care of your property?
And so there's an element of social where you just start to introduce more and more of the team. So people see who CitiTurf is like. We're real people, we're good people and. And so I like the team element as well, so I'm highly inclined not to make it about me. I don't want to, I never not that I want to make it about me. I'm highly inclined not to make me the focus of it. And what I like about that is going back to one of the books that you recommended early on was antifragile.
Yeah, yeah, if you walk away like, then your social drops, like, How do you make that thing?
Where there's four or five people working on it, where it still keeps going without you?
If you lose one person, it still keeps moving on. So I like that. Yeah, I like it too, because, yeah, it revolves all around Jonathan or all around Jonas like for content. And so I have to start getting away from that, too. Like, get more, my more technicians involved, more sales, guys involved, create more content. That it's not just about me, it's about the brand, so I agree with you. Yeah, I'm totally willing to do some of it, but how, frankly, if I just do some of it?
In the beginning, I don't even think people know who I am, nobody knows who I am in that business. I mean, I'll sometimes I'll meet somebody and they'll ask, and like, you know, they say, Yeah, I own CitiTurf, I'm an owner in CitiTurf. And they'll be like, Oh, I think I've seen your video on the website or something like that. I'll hear that every once in a great while. I mean, very, very seldom. Nobody knows who I am. How do you stay so focused and how do you know what to work on?
I've learned to be focused, I still fight, focus, no doubt about it. You said to like, 3:00 a working, yeah, and I tended to be most focused after the kids and Tiffany went to bed. I. That's when I really could just go from about 10:00 on I was. I felt like I moved the ball forward, I regret that I stayed up that late, sometimes. CU. It's really messed up my sleep and a variety of other things. And most of the things I like to do are early morning kinds of things, or like a lot of the activities.
Yeah, by meaning it gets really hot in Texas. So if you want to go mountain bike or ride dirt bikes or race cars, you really got to be up at, like, six o'clock and it doesn't go well with staying up till, you know, 3 o'clock. So my schedule I kind of regret that I live a late night schedule, but at the same time I'm like, Nah, it moved the ball forward and got me where I wanted to go in life. I got a lot done during those hours. That's when all the progress was made. So is your schedule back to 3:00 a.m. Now?
It had slipped back to it. Tiffan, he was out of town. She went up to Seattle in Oregon with her SIS, took her sisters up there on a trip. And I think I went to bed at three or four every single morning. She was gone for a week, I was working and I mean, I can slip back into that schedule like that. Yeah, so how do you stay focused?
Like that's hardest, like part for me is just staying focused. I fight it all the time. I mean, it's like, I'm a 10 in quick start, so I'm like, Oh yeah, I'm a seven and I just fight it. I need to be in a more confined space.
Where I don't have too many distractions around me, I have to block. I use a app called Freedom to block out all the websites I have, basically every website I care about. Reading blocked. I don't have any social or YouTube or anything on my tele, my phone, and so if I bring up a on my phone, it's almost 100% blocked from all news, even on Sundays. I mean, almost because it does nothing but suck the life out of you. So if I want to look at that stuff I have to do on my iPad, I make a list of what I'm going to do each day. Don't necessarily follow it, but I try.
I do the same. Yeah, I, you know I'll give you an example like I was thinking about something. This happens every minute of every day to me. There's something I looked at yesterday and I, my son Riley, still lives at home. He's got like part of the house and.
And so you have to make an effort to go see him. He's in the east wing. Yeah, he's got an office, he's got the whole deal going on. And so I just had some idea. It's like, I just remember this yesterday, it's like the most important thing. I just had this idea. I need to go tell Riley about this idea for his software product or something like that.
And it's that kind of thing that happens to me all the time. So I try to just write it down on a piece of paper and not let myself do stuff like that. So it's just a bunch of little rules like that that I use to try to stay focused, and I don't always follow them. But I try my best.
Yeah, do you? Are you reading any books right now? And the reason I ask is I have something to say with it. Like when I start reading a book and or walking or listening to a book. Like it'll make me think about something totally different while reading the like, listening to the book like, Oh, that's a really good thing, yeah?
I think I don't, if it's just get my brain firing or what. Yeah, no, it does the same for me, but that that stuff can also get me a little distracted. So not, no, there's nothing I mean, I've got actually have a ton of books right now that I've started and I'm not finishing any of them. I'm just kind of losing interest, and so I was going to look real quick. Yeah, I get the same way, and if I get into those books I just don't care for, I just don't finish him. I'm gonna be honest, like I'm just gonna move on to the next one that I like. I have no problem not finishing them.
I've got a ton of, I'm just looking here, I'm looking to see if any have jumped out of. I'm look scrolling my list there almost all fiction right now. I got Alex Hormozi's book. I haven't read either yet, but I some point want to read them, but I haven't been able to get excited. Although he's awesome, there's no negative there. His books will be great for me working on marketing stuff to get my brain turning again, but haven't got through them.
Play Bigger is a book that I wanted to read for a long time. I hav a book. I haven't read it either. Yeah, I started it again, haven't read it, just see if there's anything. H I mean, another Alex Hormozi book that's there's two. I got bought a book called Buy and Build Made It like 10 minutes through that book, that's about it. Everything else is fiction. So no, and I've unsubscribed for almost every podcast I only subscribed two podcasts. So which ones do you subscribed to?
Then? Lex Fridman and All-In Lex is awesome. Yeah, and so everything else I still look through them. Sometimes I try not to let myself listen to me. I'm trying to work because what happens is I go listen to something, and then I just get a new idea, it's. Like, I don't need another idea, just need to do the 50,000 ideas I already have.
And so that's what I remind myself of all the time. It's like the 80/20 principle, right?
And I love learning, so I like listening to other stuff. I find it highly, it's just, it's I have to be careful. A lot of that stuff is just pure, frankly, entertainment. You could call it learning, but it's entertainment. I'm blowing through it at a fairly fast speed. I'm not taking notes, I'm not writing down the takeaways, I'm not doing any of that stuff, I'm just zipping through the stuff.
And then, like you said, You know, if I'm out walking and I'm listening to something, I'll miss eight minutes of what was just said thinking about a new idea, and then I'll hear. Something, and then my brain's gone for 10 minutes and I'm like, Oh, crap, I'm, you know, I gota rewind to know that I'm not the only one. Oh no, this is what happens to me all the time.
And then if I let myself listen to that stuff at night, I'll lay in bed till 3 o'clock in the morning. Listening to stuff with all these ideas I'm writing notes In the middle of night, on phone, Tiffany will be like, Turn off your light on me, you know, it's like two weeks. AG I did the same thing. I was listening to this podcast and like, get jumped up out of bed, grab my iPad 2:00 in the morning. I'm writing out the scripting for what the next five offices are going to look like the playbook. Basically, what I was building, I was like, Holy Man, I got a good side of my head on the paper, so I didn't forget it. Yep, so I'm same way what was, what was the goal to get back into CitiTurf?
I know you always said you wanted to, what's the goal like you're trying to do. You want to grow revenue, do you like, want you wanted something to do?
I love that business? I mean, I, you know, was my and then, you know, as I said, Philip, who runs the business and. He's just done a great, great job building a well-run business operationally, and it's a business that I personally would like to hold. For the long term. We get we get tons of offers for it, people approach us constantly. And I think that's Happ. That's happening in the market in general, but it's pretty significant. And so we've absolutely had time to reflect on this because some of the numbers have been amazing.
Yeah, that was one of my questions. Are you building it to sell? No, I don't think so. I mean, we might we're, we're, we might someday, but I don't think I don't think so. I mean, I. I actually think there's an argument that if we are going to do it, we need to do it pretty quick because of evaluations are so strong. Right now, but you know, I don't, I don't know you, just you never know what's going to happen. Need to sell it either, right?
You're in a good spot financially, you know, yeah, I mean, and then I'll just take them. As I tell these, Cuz I mean, seriously, I've got my highest offer is 20 times. Eida Yeah, it's not a written offer, but it's a serious group and serious offer. I mean, but it's like, I don't know, until you write the check, who knows?
You could just be trying to get me, and so I don't put tons of tons of. I don't give it a lot of credibility because I have no idea it's coming from a serious group. But you can't not look at that number and say, You know, multiply that by three million bucks. It's a decent number and so, but it's like, Ah, the business has so much more runway that.
Why would we do this now? Even if valuations come down, let's say, I mean, I'm not even counting that value, but just say the valuations get cut in half. I'm still eventually going to be. It's going to be worth way more than, you know, that number. We'll make up 60 million at the moment, like and what?
And if I we took that money off the table, what am I going to do with it?
I'm gonna, this is what I tell everybody I'm going to turn around. Put it back into home services because this is what I believe in it. A great place to do money. So why would I take the money off the table, pay the taxes and then come right back to the thing I'm already doing?
That's stupid, and why do I? I don't have to rebuild the team, I don't have to rebuild. The brand like this is we have got this perfect launching place to just keep going. So I can't fathom selling the business, and, you know, I'm in a completely different financial position than, you know, partners in business and even them are like, Why would we do that?
I don't want to do that so. Yeah, so no, I don't I can't, I can't, can't foresee selling it. Is there like a percentage of revenue that you want to grow this year?
I'm not so worried about growth this year, that's not my focus this year. I'm not really involved in that. I'm just they're running the business. I am more about building everything for 2025. Gotcha That's sort of how so I'm there, for example. I'm not trying to put a lot, I've built a bunch of campaigns, but I haven't put any of them into now. They're putting some stuff into play, but I'm not like I'm not paying attention to that. I'm just building everything that needs to get built so that we're fully ready to go for 2025 and 2024 will be a good year for us. Last year was a good year and but it won't be crazy growth or it hasn't been in years. It'll, but it'll be a solid year that I think we're all going to be happy with. It's least that's how it looks, and so I'm more thinking. 25 on How do We Go faster?
Are you going to expand your footprint like meaning? Get a little further from the shop or you don't need to. Yet, no, we can go away further. We're in a very fortunate position that the market is continuing, grow and our footprints.
It's been slightly ex extended over the years and I U maybe didn't even realize it, and some of that simply came from. You'd have a city that's just got a huge footprint, and it would. That city has expanded in our, in my example, here North, and so we serve another market. It's not one of our biggest markets, but there's a market called Frisco and Frisco's got like the PGA there. There's Disney thing coming, there's all this stuff coming like that. City was nothing back in the day and that city just keeps expanding north, and so our footprint naturally extends. We're still in the same city, but they just keep going north, so our trucks go further and further north. And so to a degree, it's been extended.
I can't really get my head around. Expanding this market for years to come. I just like it all the money's in density and like, and just get better at marketing and actually do it. We haven't been marketing the business. I mean, there's no need, we're in again. It's that's not the situation for many. It's a fortunate position for us that I happened to be born in this area.
That was tiny. And it's grown into one of the fastest growing places in the United States. I mean, it's a massive advantage for me and, you know, I've said it before. Other people are sitting in Arkansas somewhere or in your city, and they're beating themselves up. Saying, What's wrong with me?
Why can't I grow a business like, Well, the math isn't there? It's absolutely impossible to grow a business like mine I've just. Incredibly, I grew up in the country with hundreds of acres around me, and now my parents have a school, a church behind them. They've got apartment complexes around them, they've got a senior. Living place is about to be built on the land directly behind their fence, and they're about to be like this. Little three and a half acre property surrounded by City. I mean, in a sense, it's just insane. And we lived in the middle of nowhere when I was a kid.
Nowhere and so we just. I'm very. It's very fortunate, so that's what's happened in my market, and that's part of the formula. It's not the story, but it's a little bit of the formula of why CitiTurf has be been able to become CitiTurf. And one of the reasons why we've been able to keep growing without spending any money on marketing in at least eight years, at least maybe longer.
That's awesome. I don't want to shift gears too much, but automation as far as like. AI And maybe some robots soon. Is that something that's on CitiTurf's mind?
No cool. And then did you guys get your H-2B guys this year? I have a lot to say about robots, we can talk about it later. I mean, just real briefly, because I have a bunch of stuff coming on that sweet. And so no is a little bit too brief of an answer. But no, it's not something on the short-term horizon for us right now. Did you guys get your H-2B guys?
We did thank goodness how many? Usually in the past, you've got over 100, right 80 to 100ish 30. I don't know, okay, in 20, was it 2020, where you didn't get them 17 and then again in 20 20?
I think twice, how do you overcome that? Like, I mean, that's your model, right?
You get H-2Bs, you got 150 part of the model. I mean, we have a bunch of guys that we've helped become citizens, Yeah, and then we've got a bunch of people we hire here locally. We need H-2B visa have for the lawnmowing part of the business, and so and then we. We use. Some of some of those guys do some irrigation, some will do some assist on F, some will do bed and bush.
So they're mixed. But it's heavily for mowing. And when we didn't get them, it was, you know, it's been a disaster, and it's required just all. Hands-On Deck to go recruit and to a large one year, we had to recruit predominantly all contractors, which is not something we like to do.
And, you know, that's how we survived. It was bad, but we survived. Yeah, you got rid of a lot of services too, like by or by got R of all the bi-weekly. Yeah, and that was bad. That's really hard on reviews. People get mad when. You let them go. I've been a loyal CitiTurf client for six years, and then you fire me and I understand their perspective.
And we did it as gracefully as we could. And we had a full onepage letter that an email that sent out to everybody explained exactly the, you know. And so then somebody will post, Oh you fired me. I understand I don't make as much revenue, but you fired me because I don't make you as much. Money is out. You know that people put their spin on. It just hurts your reviews in a serious way. So it's destructive to the business in more ways than simply having to recruit contractors who will not do as good of a job. And haven't been trained by us for years and years. Yeah, I know. One of the things that you preach from day one was gates, gates, gates, gates, gates, shut the gates, lock the gates. Don't let the dogs out. It's like your one, your contractor's first year during 2020. And then they let two dogs out, they both got it, ran over. M Yeah, it's been terrible.
Yeah, so it's not not ideal. No, it's not perfect, but how do you overcome?
A. Not getting 150 guys? We did the best we could, I mean, and I shouldn't even say we because I was not part of that. The team they did that, I mean, they every. It was all hands on deck as I understood it.
You know, we weren't selling, we just stopped selling new revenue. We mve people into different roles as I remember to do inspections and just anything. We could do to assist in getting the contractors up and running and watching them closely.
And, you know, just it messed the whole business up for quite some time. It was very difficult, but it was something we, you know. I think there was five or six million at Rep. Maybe more than that, there's a lot of revenue at risk having lost that many team members. And so was about How do we?
We've over the years built these relationships with these clients, how do we not lose them?
It'll be very hard to ever get them back. And so it's about as protecting as much of the business as we could. And we just did. They did what they had to do to get there, and we had some very unfortunate S situations that I think were.
That beat the team up pretty hard. Which makes them never want to have to go back to contractors or live through that stuff, for sure. Going back, would you do it any differently?
I'd have to ask them because it was boots on the ground for the team. But no, I think we did what we had to do, right?
I agree me, how do you overcome that many people you just don't? I mean, just after seeing the just seeing the way people react to being let go, even in a client being let go. Even in the doing it as nicely as you can and kindly as you can and explaining the situation, people don't react to it well. So if we had to have fired 4,000 clients instead of call it, the thousand we did I. Don't remember the numbers, exactly. That would have been really hard on our reputation in the market. It's another argument for, you know, why we wouldn't have wanted to do that. So obviously another question like, I know you want to go out there and do new marketing for Indeed.
And, you know, in the marketplace to recruit more people, is that to get away from H-2B as much as possible?
Are you still all in H-2B? I don't think we're going to leave, we're not going to leave H-2B. I mean, our dream would be that that program's expanded. I don't believe it will be. And so I mean, I have no idea, but why would I believe that?
I've been in the business long enough to have my dreams dashed every year? To know that it's not gonna happen. I'm old enough to know how politics works. It's all pipe dream. Nobody wants to solve this problem, and so.
So I feel like we'll just continue to play the game. And we want to minimize H-2B in the business. But it's important to the business model of lawnmowing lawn. Mowing doesn't work without H-2B to a large degree, and then it's a It's a source of some amount of team members. I mean, if you think about, we've been doing H-2B so long enough that a lot of our team has been with us for a decade.
It's the same guys that keep coming back. These are phenomenal people that are well trained and we trust. And you know, why would we would not want to get, we would not not want to use them. They're are some of our very, very best people.
And so, yeah, we'll keep doing it. We just don't want to build. We don't want to, we don't want to bring in 300 H-2B guys. So are you changing your business model?
We have, we've changed, we've changed it over the years. I mean, we are our, our number one revenue source service is now fertilization. We, yeah, so it's been evolving. I mean, back in the early days when you knew me, it was like 80% of all revenue was mowing in bed. And Bush, you know?
Then there was some irrigation and fur. Maybe it's never 80, maybe it was more like 60, and then it was irrigation fur. I don't remember, but yeah, no, it's we've evolved. The business model, it's one of the reasons why the business, the business top line, hasn't grown very much. After we reached 10 million, it's slowed. I mean, we're we're well past that, but it's just slowed in terms of percentage of growth.
But also during that time, we reinvented what I would call the quality of the revenue we shifted more to the higher margin. Better Cogs type services and on top of that services, where it's a little bit easier to recruit team members. Are you, do you have any mentors now, or do you?
Are you in any other groups? No, I've been in a group called Tiger 21 for about four years. But that's more of a financial thing than it is a business group. And I'm not in any other groups. I might at some point depending on what I do next, but I don't have anything in mind. I don't know what I would, I don't know what it will be, but I believe in them so probably someday.
Next question Are you going to start any group soon? 2.0 I don't know. I, you know you always ask me that question, and I think when?
I was at with you at the lake house. The answer had moved up here, and now that I'm gone again, it's moved back down here. I going to talk to you more often. So, yeah, I think I left there being pretty persuaded that, yeah, I'm probably G to do this again sooner than later.
And I still have incredibly fond feelings about it. But I've got so many things that I look at that and say, Well, I need to stay focused over here. I've got these other things going right now, I've got three things essentially going and I want to stay on those three things I've got right now.
And two of them are pretty new. And so I think that might happen. But I mean, the frank answer to that is it depends on. What I do if I do another software thing with Jon, if I do another business with Jon at some point, then probably not. But if I don't do another business with John, probably so, but then something else might come up in the interim. I just don't know yet, I won't hold you to it, but like you told me last week, or maybe it's early this week. Just stay focused on what you're doing, don't get sidetracked.
And you told me, I told us and I me a long time ago, like, the bigger you guys get, the more opportunities you'll have. So the hardest part is just to say No, yeah, that's kind of where I'm at, it's constantly some new opportunity. I feel like I'm getting hit up with. Yeah, that's super awesome. Are you happy to?
Be back to CitiTurf. Oh yeah, I'm really happy. Yeah, I mean, I. I could see a vision. I mean, I feel like Philip and I could build a nine figure company together doing this. I mean, I don't need to do anything else. I could just do this if I wanted. I mean, we could. We could go into all kinds of other markets and build this thing, and that would be cool. I've thought about it like, Oh, maybe I just do that like, but I love.
I like teaching and education, and I like technology, and so my sort of guiding principle right now is, I'm I. It's, you know, go back to the AG0. I'm not really making my decisions on what will make me more money or what will I think about that?
I, of course, would like to make more money. I don't know why just can't help myself and. But that's not my that my really, frankly, my goal post is this fun?
That is my goal post. I'm, there's a lot of things I'm doing, that I should hire somebody else to do this thing. I should be delegating and I know it. I've done it, I like, but I don't care. I just want to do this right now, so that is really my.
My measuring stick is this what I want to do and is this fun?
And that's how I feel about CitiTurf right now. It's just fun, super awesome. Since we brought it up. You said they had some stuff to talk about with robots where you at with all that. Oh yeah, so I'm still very optimistic on the robot thing, and I've got some new.
Maybe we'll mention it here a little later. I've got some new social stuff coming new YouTube channel, and I've got a Six-part series coming on robotics. And so I really, I've been very involved, you know, one of the things that I have done during the sabatical. I've been on the board of a business in robotics, and so I've stayed close to the robotic space, but I haven't, really. I don't build the business, I don't run the business, I'm just very aware of what's going on. I still feel very optimistic about robots.
I just don't love the business model right now. In Home services, the business model for robots is working in commercial, and it's working in very specific segments. A commercial. And it's working right now and it's growing. And so the story of robots is it works in certain use cases and in other use cases, it sucks for a whole variety of reasons.
And so for the market that CitiTurf serves, it does not make sense for us. And then, if you think about opportunity cost, it doesn't. There's not enough margin or profit in robots in the space that we serve. Even if we said, Hey, we want to build a big business, why would we build a big business in robots right now?
Versus doing it in a different space? I mean, a different industry or. A different vertical market. It just doesn't make sense for us. And so for that reason, that's why I said, No, it's not something we're considering, but it doesn't mean that the space can't work, it doesn't mean it won't work, it doesn't mean it's 20 more years away. It doesn't mean any of those things. I felt like that was a teaser to part two of this. Hey, guys, thanks for listening to another episode of Pest Control. ER, we don't charge any money for the show, obviously, but the podcast isn't free. You can pay for the podcast by sharing it with your friends and your family. So please like and subscribe and give us a Five-star review on your favorite podcast app. These things make a huge difference for us. If you have any specific questions you want answered about the business or your life by me or my guest, send an email to info at pestcontrolmillionaire.com. And if you want to get in touch with me about any personal business coaching, check out our website at www.pestcontrolmillionaire.com.
Thanks again for listening and I'll see you guys again on the next one.
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