The Secret Behind Building Multi-Million Dollar Companies W/ Johnathan Pototschnick

Summary

Podcast Summary: The WarPlan Podcast – Episode: "The Secret Behind Building Multi-Million Dollar Companies W/ Jonathan Pototschnick"

Host: Joshua Latimer
Guest: Jonathan Ushnick
Release Date: December 19, 2024
Duration: Approximately 74 minutes

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1. Introduction

[00:00 - 01:20]

Joshua Latimer welcomes listeners to The WarPlan Podcast and introduces his guest, Jonathan Ushnick. Joshua highlights Jonathan's impressive track record of building three different companies, each generating between $15 million and $30 million across various industries. Joshua emphasizes Jonathan's unassuming nature and his dedication to sharing valuable insights with the audience.

Notable Quote:
Josh: "Your business success is a mental war and making money is a game... To have what others don’t, you need to KNOW what others won't. Your future fortune awaits."

2. Travel Experiences: Insights from Japan

[01:08 - 03:26]

The conversation begins with discussions about travel, specifically Jonathan's recent trip to Japan. Jonathan praises Japan's organization and civilizational upkeep, contrasting it with the more chaotic environments of cities like Chicago or New York. He shares observations such as the absence of visible trash in public spaces and the organized manner in which people consume food, emphasizing the cultural emphasis on honor, respect, and craftsmanship.

Notable Quote:
Jonathan: "Japan feels incredibly well put together. Like you were talking about eating street food and things like that. ... It's very organized, civilized, orderly."

3. The Mental War of Business Success

[03:26 - 08:30]

Joshua and Jonathan delve into the psychological aspects of business success. They discuss the "mindset" required to overcome challenges and the importance of believing in one's capabilities. Jonathan shares his childhood aspiration of owning a Ferrari, driven by his father's passion for speed and art. This dream fueled his entrepreneurial spirit, leading him to start businesses from a young age.

Notable Quote:
Jonathan: "I fell in love with the process. I love business more than I love cars."

4. Jonathan Ushnick's Journey to Building Multi-Million Dollar Companies

[04:22 - 12:36]

Jonathan recounts his entrepreneurial journey, emphasizing the influence of his upbringing. Growing up without financial abundance, he was motivated by a desire to attain the luxuries he admired, such as Ferraris. He discusses his early ventures, including racing Dodge Vipers, and how these experiences honed his resilience and business acumen. Jonathan highlights the importance of enduring setbacks and the relentless pursuit of his goals.

Notable Quote:
Jonathan: "Business is a mental war. Your success is a mental war."

5. The Role of Mindset and Identity in Achieving Success

[12:36 - 25:09]

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the interplay between mindset, identity, and business success. Jonathan explains how limiting beliefs and scarcity mentality can hinder growth. He emphasizes the necessity of believing in one's capability and worthiness to achieve greater financial heights. The conversation touches on concepts like delayed gratification, the importance of reinvesting in the business, and maintaining an entrepreneurial mindset over an employee mentality.

Notable Quote:
Jonathan: "If you don't believe something is possible for you, then you can't go for it."

6. Marketing as the Backbone of Business Growth

[27:00 - 28:28]

Joshua and Jonathan explore the critical role of marketing in business development. Jonathan describes marketing as a comprehensive tool that encompasses communication, psychology, pricing strategies, and understanding the target market. He articulates how mastering marketing provides control over business destiny and boosts confidence through continuous learning and adaptation.

Notable Quote:
Jonathan: "Marketing gets into things like how do I communicate with my client? How do I think about the psychology of why they would buy?"

7. Critique of Modern Entrepreneurial Culture and Social Media

[39:43 - 45:22]

The conversation shifts to a critique of the current entrepreneurial and social media landscape. Jonathan expresses discomfort with the prevalent culture of flaunting success on platforms like YouTube and Instagram, deeming much of it inauthentic. He stresses the importance of focus and authenticity over superficial displays of wealth, highlighting the potential pitfalls of seeking validation through social media.

Notable Quote:
Jonathan: "I'm generally just completely disgusted because I know a lot of it's fake."

8. The Future of Home Services: AI and Robotics

[55:12 - 63:31]

Jonathan offers his insights into the future of the home services industry, particularly the integration of AI and robotics. He discusses potential advancements such as AI-driven data entry and robotic automation in tasks like lawn mowing. While optimistic about technological progress, he cautions about the challenges of cost, legislation, and achieving perfection before widespread adoption. Jonathan predicts a widening gap between companies that embrace technology and those that don't, asserting that technology will be a key differentiator in business success.

Notable Quote:
Jonathan: "Companies that do implement this technology are going to dominate. They are going to eat the lunch of everybody else."

9. Reflections on Scandals and Conspiracy Theories

[68:33 - 73:49]

In a more informal segment, Joshua and Jonathan discuss various conspiracy theories, including the moon landing and government manipulations. Jonathan remains skeptical of many popular theories, emphasizing logical explanations based on incentives rather than elaborate conspiracies. They touch upon how certain beliefs can shape public perception and the importance of critical thinking.

Notable Quote:
Jonathan: "Most conspiracies can be explained down to incentives. And I think that people basically operate based on incentives."

10. Closing Remarks

[73:49 - 74:18]

Joshua wraps up the episode by thanking Jonathan for his candid insights and sharing the wealth of knowledge gained from the conversation. He underscores Jonathan's credibility as a successful entrepreneur and dedicated father, emphasizing the value Jonathan brings to aspiring business owners.

Notable Quote:
Josh: "You gave some great tips and advice and I really appreciate it, my friend."

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Key Takeaways

• Mindset is Paramount: Success in business starts with a strong, positive mindset. Believing in one's capabilities and worthiness is essential for overcoming challenges and achieving growth.

• Marketing is Multifaceted: Effective marketing extends beyond mere promotion. It involves understanding client psychology, strategic communication, pricing, and product development.

• Embrace Technology: The integration of AI and robotics will significantly impact the home services industry. Early adopters who leverage these technologies will likely outperform competitors.

• Authenticity Over Flaunting: In the age of social media, maintaining authenticity is crucial. Avoiding the trap of showcasing success for validation helps preserve focus and integrity.

• Resilience Through Setbacks: Overcoming failures and setbacks builds resilience, a key trait for sustained entrepreneurial success.

• Delayed Gratification and Reinvestment: Prioritizing long-term business growth over immediate personal gains leads to more substantial and enduring success.

Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Jonathan Ushnick on Business Mindset:
  [00:06] "Your business is a mental war. Your success is a mental war. And making money is a game. And the game of money starts in your mind."

• Jonathan on Marketing:
  [27:24] "Marketing isn't just about how do I create something that will end up in a mailbox or on a door... It's all a version of marketing."

• Jonathan on Technology Adoption:
  [57:11] "Companies that do implement this technology are going to dominate. They are going to eat the lunch of everybody else."

• Josh on Entrepreneurial Culture:
  [41:17] "But we don't want to believe that to be true. If our identity is an orphan... You're never going to actually feel that way."

• Jonathan on Identity and Success:
  [15:29] "You got to believe you are actually deserving and capable and you could become that person or learn those skills or even achieve that thing."

---

Conclusion

In this episode of The WarPlan Podcast, Joshua Latimer and Jonathan Ushnick engage in a deep and insightful discussion on the mental and strategic facets of building successful multi-million dollar companies. From the significance of mindset and marketing to the future of technology in home services, the conversation offers valuable lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs. Jonathan's personal experiences and candid reflections provide a blueprint for overcoming limitations, embracing growth, and maintaining authenticity in the entrepreneurial journey.

Transcript

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Wake up.

[Josh]

Your competition is asleep. It's you against the world. And if you want to win, we need to get a few things straight. Your business is a mental war. Your success is a mental war. And making money is a game. And the game of money starts in your mind. This podcast exists to help you weaponize your brain through advanced marketing mindset and money concepts. To have what others don't, you need to know what others won't. Your future fortune awaits. Welcome to the War Plan podcast. Hey, my friend. Welcome back to the war Plan podcast. My name is Josh. I'm joined by my good friend Jonathan Ushnick. Have you heard of him? He's a monster. He's amaze. He's actually a great guy. He's built three different companies. I don't know, between 15 and $30 million a piece in different industries. He's an overachiever. Okay. He's quiet, he's unassuming. You'd never know it if he just walked across the street and I begged him to come to the studio, sit down with me so I can extract value and give it to you. Is that okay? Is it okay if I over deliver? Jonathan, how are you? Thanks for being here. Yeah. So you happen to live only an hour from the studio?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I do.

[Josh]

Because if that wasn't the case, I don't know if this would have ever happened, you know?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Well, I like you a lot, but I may not have made the trip. Yeah, yeah.

[Josh]

You're busy guy. You've been traveling a lot. One thing we were talking about before we recorded was I'm taking one of my sons to Japan.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah.

[Josh]

Which is awesome because when my kids turn 13, I take them on a rite of passage trip. It's one of our family systems. It's epic. And he picked Japan. I'm kind of nervous, but you just got back from Japan.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I did.

[Josh]

Traveling the world. Tell us about that. How's that been?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Traveling the world or Japan?

[Josh]

Yeah, yeah. Japan specifically. And traveling the world because it's a couple years. You've been traveling everywhere.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Three years probably. And we traveled a lot before, but this is another level where we're gone a big part of the year. Japan's awesome. You want to talk about a country that is well put together and well organized, and I kind of wish we had a little bit more of that here in some ways. I mean, really, I wouldn't want to totally live in their world. But I'll give you a couple examples. There's no trash.

[Josh]

No trash.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

No trash. Zero.

[Josh]

So just like Kind of like Chicago or New York. That was exactly.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I was trying to come back with sarcasm. Exactly the opposite. I mean, I'll give you an example. I was in Japan for three weeks and I saw one coffee cup, like a little coffee cup sitting out in a public place.

[Josh]

Because they like behead you if you.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

No, no. It feels very civilized. They feel Japan feels incredibly well put together. Like you were talking about eating street food and things like that. And I know that I was only in three areas of Japan. You don't really see a lot of street food and you tend to see a lot of street food in Thailand and Vietnam and other places. Not. I didn't see that much in Japan. I'm sure it's there. But for example, if you go buy food in Japan, you either eat it there or you take it home. You don't walk around the street eating and drinking your coffee. It's very organized, civilized, orderly.

[Josh]

My understanding is it's just a culture of honor. Everything's very. It's all about honor and your family.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Name and respect and deep respect for the craft of creation. Creating things and building things. For example, we went to an umbrella place where they handmade umbrellas. And there's no way you can appreciate what goes into making an umbrella until you go to this place. You're like, wow. And they'd only been doing it for 100 years. They were a young.

[Josh]

They're a startup.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah, exactly. I mean they kind of talk that way. It's a very young business. Oh, I'm imagining like 10 years.

[Josh]

I heard somewhere that some Chinese people have entrepreneurs have 500 year business plans. You ever heard that?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I had heard the hundred year, but it could be I would heard which is so insane, meaningless, right?

[Josh]

But it's still, there's, there's meaning in the sense that they're so long term legacy focused instead of just short term pleasure.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Dopamine, Fortnite Quarterly, the quarterly make the profit number.

[Josh]

Right.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Destroy the business in the just let's make sure that we hit the number this quarter kind of thing that we do in the U.S. exactly.

[Josh]

And I think because I know you personally, you didn't grow up with like a silver spoon, you didn't have a trust fund, but you've back to back to back trifecta. Built these large companies, made a ton of money. And I know you're humble about it and all that, but take us back and help me understand how that happened. Why are you the way that you are? Because you didn't come from money, right? Tell us about.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Not at all. I think I'm the way I am because there were a few things I wanted, and then some things got reinforced. So as an example, my. When I was growing up, my dad like cars. He raced bikes for the U.S. racing team. Bicycle. So he likes speed. He wanted to fly jets for the Air Force when he was in Air Force, but he couldn't because of his eyesight. So I grew up in this world where my dad liked speed, and I liked, as a result, speed as well. And when I was really young, and I very clearly remember, at 10 years old, going to a car show and seeing two Ferraris and thinking, that's what I want in life. And then my dad's an artist, and he had some clients that were in the one specifically that was in the world of Ferraris. And so we'd go to some car shows, and I'd see more Ferraris. And I just remember as a kid, I'm always looking in the window saying, why does this Ferrari only have 400 miles on it? Or this Ferrari has 900 miles on it? Blow my mind. And I remember learning people would buy these cars as art. That's how they thought about it.

[Josh]

Wow.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

And so cars were a big thing for me as a kid, and I just never saw them in Dallas. Now they're everywhere. But back then, I didn't see that many because we were growing up in the country, and that was a driving force. Like, I want to learn how to make money so I can have one of these.

[Josh]

Right. The money was just kind of an annoying inconvenience that was necessary to get what you.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I just want Ferrari. I don't care. You know, I just. This other stuff is just what you do to get a Ferrari.

[Josh]

Do you ever. Russell Brunson used to tell a story because he got a Ferrari and he's in Boise. Yeah, there's less Ferraris in Boise than there is in Dallas.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[Josh]

So. But the thing would break down all the time, and how humiliating he'd be at an intersection the thing wouldn't start, and everybody's mocking him and the whole thing. But when did you get your first Ferrari? And then, you know, there's business stuff in between. When did it finally happen for you?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

So I. I got. I don't. Maybe 12 years ago. I don't remember exactly when I got the first one. And even that's interesting. When I bought my. Probably 20 years ago. Yeah. 20 years ago I bought. It was between a Ferrari F355 and a Viper and my wife told me to quit talking about this thing. I was in my 20s, late 20s probably, I don't know, somewhere in my 20s, and she told me to quit talking about this thing and just do it, buy a car. And I wanted the Ferrari so bad. But to your point, you always heard the narrative about him breaking down. And back then, those Ferraris, F355 was my favorite. You had to pull the engine out for everything that needed to be done, which is expensive. So I went the viper route. And so I had all these other cars over the years, and it took me a while to finally get to the 450.

[Josh]

Those Dodge Vipers are like little death traps, weren't they? Were they dangerous? Just.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah, there was. The percentage of vipers that were crashed was really high. And so the insurance was really expensive. And when I started racing that Viper in 2009, and I started out going to kind of be like racing training, where you'd have a drive, a coach in the seat next to you. And I remember when I went, there were nine other guys that had vipers. And the origin story was generally I accelerated at a light, spun the car in the intersection, almost crashed, and I decided to learn how to drive my car.

[Josh]

Okay.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah, for me, it was a little different. I just wanted to do this thing. And so I went to that. But it was. Yeah, the viper had a reputation of killing you, potentially killing you with your businesses.

[Josh]

Were you always building so that you could travel to Vietnam and Japan and Europe and have Dodge vipers?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

No.

[Josh]

And Ferraris.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

That was just the. That was just the thing that got me going.

[Josh]

It was just the thing that got you.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah. So really what happened is you fell.

[Josh]

In love with the process.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I love business and more than I love cars.

[Josh]

Okay.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Oh, yeah. And. And I love cars, but I love business more. If you were going to take something away from me and say, you know, the rest of your life you could have all these cars and. Or. But you'd have to give up business. I would not make that trade.

[Josh]

So let me ask you a weird question. Anybody watching this, there. I'll just label them a regular person.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Okay?

[Josh]

I wouldn't label you a regular person. I'm going to label the viewers regular people.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

All right.

[Josh]

I'm in a lot of ways more like them than I am like you. I still feel very connected to this regular blue collar dirt under their fingernail trying to figure it out. People, in your opinion, why is everybody so stuck and broke and suffering and in pain? It's a big Question. It's broad, but what is the reason or handful of reasons why? What do you think?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Wow. A lot there to unpack. So one would be something we were talking about today when we went to lunch and it's mindset, it's what do you believe you're capable of? I think that's one we can elaborate, but I'll just rattle off a list.

[Josh]

Sure.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Another one is there's a belief that as your thing gets bigger it's going to be harder and the pain you're experiencing now while it's small is going to be bigger.

[Josh]

Yes.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

To the degree that the business gets bigger, which it's exactly the opposite.

[Josh]

That's so true. Yeah, we didn't even talk about that.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

No, I do.

[Josh]

I actually, I call it uops. Units of pain.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Okay.

[Josh]

I say when you, when you're like a small company and it's 63 units of pain to exist in the life that you have.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Right. That.

[Josh]

Okay, when you hit 2 million you're thinking, okay, I'm doing 500,000 at 63 units of pain. Pain. So 4, 2 million is 4 times 63 unit. No, no, no. It might be 56 units of pain to be at a million and 39.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

To be at 100. That is what that is.

[Josh]

There's this inverse correlation. Or like I'll draw a graph sometimes and I'll put effort and I'll put results. And so results are low, effort's high and then it flips. There's like this nexus point and then here's the quit zone. Everybody quits. You know, it's like the effort's high, there's no reward at all. And then it flips 100%.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

There's just no question in my mind. I just, I. Over the years I've had friends that have said you're just always pushing people to go bigger and have a bigger business. And for me, when I'm saying a bigger business, I'm only talking 5 or 10 million dollars. I'm not talking like some of these guys are saying you need to build a hundred million dollar business. I'm just saying build a 5 or $10 million business. I understand that's a bigger business. I understand really even is it. It's not in the broad scheme of things. It's a tiny business. But I'm advocating for at least a million dollar business for most people. At least that. And most people are kind of more imagining 2 to 300,000 and that's a safe, comfortable place where they can still control everything that Control gets to maybe a third point. I think what happens in business is you are largely needing, desperately needing to outrun burnout. And what I mean by that is if you look at what happens in most of the trades, and this is probably true in most businesses, but I live in the world of trades, you will find that your industry has a plateau. So maybe in the lawn care industry, Your plateau is 350, 400,000. If you're a project based company, maybe it's 500,000. Why is there a plateau? The plateau is a couple things, but the biggest being that's about the size you can build where you can still sort of control everything. And past that, you have to start handing things off. So maybe at 400,000, you're working 75 hours a week and there is no more capacity in your life. And so everything on the other side of that moment is burnout. It's the creation of burnout. So eventually you wind down. So you had this dream when you got started. You met somebody and you said, hey, that person has a $3 million business. I can do that too. I would love to have a $3 million business. It would change the path of my life. And that was your dream. But then over time, you got kicked in the face so many times building this thing and you weren't hiring enough people to help you. You got yourself into maybe some debt, maybe you upgraded your lifestyle too quick. Some variety of things happened. And now you're at 3, $400,000. You're in charge of everything. It's pure misery. Everything's hard. And now two things are happening. You're being crushed daily. All the life and excitement and that ambition to go get that goal is being sucked out of you.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

At the very same time, you're starting to think, why would I want more of this?

[Josh]

Right.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

And so. And so you get stuck. And then you never achieve what you're capable of in life.

[Josh]

So true. Delayed gratification is a huge part of it, like you said, because especially if you have an employee mindset instead of an entrepreneurial mindset where you have some extra money in the business operating account and you start telling yourself the story of how much you deserve the bass boat. Right. And it's not that hard to convince yourself, you know, I worked hard for this. I work hard for sure.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I deserve this.

[Josh]

Right. And so that chokes the business 100% because it's expensive to grow. You have to buy customers, pay for them.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah.

[Josh]

And people have no capital and they have no money way to buy Customers. What are your thoughts on that?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Oh, I couldn't agree more. My. My argument there is, you know, the analogy would be you can have a boat today and a 75, make up a number, $75,000 a year income, or you could forego the boat and you could eventually make a million dollars a year in personal income or some number. Basically, you're trading the future, trading your wonderful income for a boat today or a car today or a bigger house. And why are we doing all that? Yeah, sure, maybe you like the boat, but a lot of times the house, the car, it's because your friends are buying the house and the car and you kind of want to keep up with them. That's your circle. And it becomes hard, there's pressure or whatever the. Or we were talking about this earlier. You've got this chip on your shoulder because of how you grew up or whatever the scenario is. We've got all these reasons that we justify why we're going to do these things, but they're really just justifications most of the time to have a appearance to other people. And that stuff destroys your future potential, just destroys it.

[Josh]

We were talking earlier a lot about identity, which sounds like this weird, cheesy tie. It's not cheesy. Pay attention. This will change your life. But we're talking about income in the way that we build a business and how it correlates, in my opinion, with your identity. You've coached a lot of people too, because you built a huge software company, but you also built a large coaching company. Talk about your thoughts and opinions on that and how you've seen people level up their identity or people that can't, or people that are struggling, stuck, what the tendencies are of the people that achieve.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

And when you talk about identity, I know we did talk about this, but in this scenario, are we talking about your identity as related to your business or in what way would you. Or how you see yourself and what you're deserving of?

[Josh]

Yeah, I guess I should define that. I mean, it's who you think you are. And nested inside who you think you are is what you're capable of, what you're worthy of, what you deserve. I think some people feel capable, but not worthy. It's very complex.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

It is complex.

[Josh]

Yeah, but I think identity is. It's who you think you are, why you think you're here, what you think you're capable of, what you think you deserve, what you think you're worth. It's all of that stuff. And so business affects business but it affects everything. Relationships, all of it.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah. So, number of thoughts on this. I'll use myself as an example. I grew up in a world where I didn't know anybody that was rich. I didn't know anybody that was an entrepreneur. I had this uncle that I saw every, call it three years that lived up in the northeast or north, and they had, to my knowledge, money because he was a C level person in big companies. And I thought that was cool. But that was the only person. I had no experience around him. So I would read an Inc magazine or Entrepreneur magazine and you'd see these stories of people that were making a lot of money and had these successful businesses. But I didn't. So I knew that people did that, but I didn't necessarily know if that was possible for me because I didn't actually know anybody. There was nobody close to me where it was real. In a magazine, half the time, on YouTube, on Instagram, whatever. Is it real? Is it fake? It just isn't as real as knowing a person and having a conversation with them and then sort of breaking down. This is how you do this. This is how you could get this. Yes, you can do it too. I didn't have that, and a lot of people don't have that. And so when we talk about identity, there's a lot of people that, especially in today's world with all the social media, they know other people are getting it, but they don't have a close enough connection to them to know it's actually possible for them as well. Or there's this mystique. You watch somebody online like Alex Hormozi, and he's a very smart guy. And I think a lot of people are at risk of thinking, well, I'm not as smart as him, or I haven't had this advantage, or I didn't grow up. Cause he sounds like he grew up fairly affluent. His dad was a doctor, he went to high level college. So they say, well, I didn't have any of that. I grew up in this little town. I don't know those things. When I listened, the gap between where they're at today and what they hear somebody like Alex saying is so big that they don't know how they're gonna cross that chasm and be that person. So they hear it, they want it, but they don't know if it's really for them. They think it's for these other people, whoever the other people are. I think so many of us are guilty of this stuff. And so what that is Is your identity, your belief is, yes, I believe those things can happen for some people, but I may not be one of those people. Maybe you can't articulate that, but at the subconscious level that's what your brain is sort of telling you. You again may not be able to specifically say this is my problem, but that's what's happening to you now. If you don't believe something is possible for you, then you can't go for it. It's kind of like, you know, the age old analogy of when somebody finally broke the four minute mile, suddenly a bunch of people did it. This is true in business, this is true in relationships, this is true in some. So many different things. When we see somebody else model it that we're close to and we know them, then it's real. It can be. And then when it's real, it could be, it could happen to us as well. And I think we could talk on and on about identity, but I think that's a big part of identity is first you got to believe you are actually deserving and capable and you could become that person or learn those skills or even achieve that thing. And just most people don't really believe it at their core. And for me as an example, it took a long time to get there, to really believe that I could these things. Baby steps.

[Josh]

Yeah. You didn't go from down here to up here with your identity.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

It was this weird, lots of stacking.

[Josh]

Getting kicked in the head and believing, even though everything with, with your, your eyes told you the opposite, but still holding onto the faith. And that got you up to here. And then it's all that. It's like walk by faith, not by sight. Changing your network, your, your proximity to people, consuming the right content 100%.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

And, and, and also having a fire inside of you, you know, that, that really if you don't have an easy path to get what you want, you've really got to have a fire inside of you where you're willing to get kicked in the face quite a bit and keep getting back up.

[Josh]

Yeah. What is it about people like you? Where did that fire come from?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I don't know. I don't, I, I don't.

[Josh]

One thing I say, well, I say, I say lots of nonsensical things. One thing I like is like the one thing you can't give another person is hunger. People just are hungry and some people are not hungry. If you don't have hunger, you're dead in the water.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah, I don't know. I think I Think maybe it's a couple things for me, it's hard to say. One would be, there was that spark, the whole I want a Ferrari thing. That led to me starting to mow lawns when I was 14. That led to that. I got a win there. My win was I started making a bunch of money and I started making more money than my teachers. So I theorized that somewhere in my psychology, that reinforcement of a level of success. I was different than everybody else in school. I was.

[Josh]

Did your parents lean into that? Do they tell you you're different than everybody else? Jonathan?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I don't know. No, I don't know. I'd have to ask them. I don't remember them.

[Josh]

Do you remember you were thinking it?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I do. Well, this is me reflecting on it. I don't remember so much. I do remember thinking, I am successful and I like this. And so I do remember thinking because I was a kid that went to school and I didn't really care about. About what everybody thought, but I think. But I was not like the popular kid. I wasn't an unpopular. I was just like right in the middle, friends with everybody. But I sort of this kid that didn't really care. I didn't need to be in the popular crowd. I liked everybody. And I don't know how to articulate it, but I think where that was a little bit coming from is I had this other thing that was fulfilling this thing in me of success. I was building this business, I was making some money, I was moving towards my goal. I was growing. So I had. So I didn't need to get my. What's the words, like validation from a group of people. And so I. I use this example to say I think I had, I just, I had some setbacks for sure, but at these little wins that sort of got stacked, that probably helped develop me into chasing.

[Josh]

Yeah, but built your confidence.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yep. Going back to my parents, one thing I will say, I can't remember if they were like really leaning into this thing. What I more remember that my parents. I think, you know, I think this is good advice for parents. I think my parents really got this right. My parents did not try to protect me from my work. Whatever I wanted to do, work wise, failing, they didn't. If I said, hey, I want to go do this thing, my parents would have said, oh, Jonathan, I don't think you really should really go put out those flyers. You know, you might lose a bunch of money or people might not call you or don't do that. You're Going to be at school when they're calling and you're not going to be able to answer the phone. It's not like I didn't get any of that. And I give them massive credit for that. They just said try. They just let me go and run and try stuff and didn't constantly put the brakes.

[Josh]

That's huge though.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Oh, I think it's massive.

[Josh]

People think we're weird because Ashley and I are always talking about how important entrepreneurism is for kids. Now, just to clarify, I don't care if my kids are entrepreneurs or not. I don't worship the word entrepreneur, but entrepreneurial thinking is a life skill. It's a shortcut. It's a hack. Being a value creator, being a producer, not just a consumer. How do you make one plus one equal three? If they want to be an employee, go ahead. But think like an entrepreneur. Think like a value creator and a problem solver. I think it's huge when especially young people. Because my oldest maverick had a candy machine business. I don't know if you know this.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yes, I remember this. This is a while back, right?

[Josh]

You know, it's. Yeah, he was only seven. Yeah, yeah, he's seven.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

And he sold it, if I remember.

[Josh]

He did. He sold it to two brothers from the neighboring town. The local newspaper did a story on it, took pictures. He wore a tie. They signed an asset purchase agreement. It was hilarious. The whole thing was awesome.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

It's awesome.

[Josh]

And. And he actually sold it for twelve hundred dollars. And I have a recording in the call somewhere. I think I might have lost it in this Dropbox loss. But I had him practice the script. I said, they're going to. He was asking $1,500 for the bit business. They offered him 900.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Okay.

[Josh]

I said, no matter what they offer you, I want you. I made him memorize the script. Thank you. I really appreciate the offer, you know, But I think 1200 is a more fair. So he had memorized this. So these two kids are talking to each other and his little seven, eight year old voice, he's like, thank you, I really appreciate the offer. But. And then he said 1200. They said yes. And he made 300 bucks in five seconds from that script. Right. But here's the thing. His confidence totally changed when he was holding twelve hundred dollars in his hand. That he did. The reality is, is he was so little. Like I had to do all the annoying hard work. Like he did go in and sell these and talk to the managers and I made him do all that. But like I had to take him every there, every week there, he would complain he wasn't like some amazing crushing entrepreneur. Really. But sure, after that successful event, the way he remembers and romanticizes that story is like, I did this big thing and it pre frames the next part.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Of his life 100%.

[Josh]

It's like he can't even tell differently.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Now I have.

[Josh]

He treated his brothers differently, treated his mother. He was always a good kid. Always, always very. He was just different in all categories.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Love it. I love it. I mean, this is why you and I, you know, we talked. We've talked about this before. It's why we're both passionate about young people becoming entrepreneurs. You used a line and I noted it my phone and it was. I gotta. I. Business is. Well, hold. Crap. What is the line? Business is. It's something around like practice for self improvement. And dang it, I'm gonna memorize it because it's so. That's why. Say it. It's so good.

[Josh]

Business is a personal development program with a compensation plan.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I mean, that was one of the best things you said today. I love that statement. I have to remember it because it's back to why we're passionate for young people or passionate for entrepreneur. It has the ability to grow you into a different kind of human being.

[Josh]

Definitely a buddy of mine, Brad Gibb. Shout out to Brad Gibb. You ever watch it? He's a super genius ninja finance guy. I should introduce you to him, actually. But he's a former Goldman Sachs guy. Freaking so smart.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Okay.

[Josh]

But his whole thing is like, there's. There's only three things you need to work on to be successful at anything. And it's mindset, skill sets, and network. That's it. And I like that reduction. It simp. It simplifies it, but it's really true mindset, like identity, who you, blah, blah, blah. But then there's hard skills. Hard and soft skills you have to have. But you won't even do the work to acquire the skills if your mindset's wrong. Yeah, you won't finish the learning how to code or you won't finish the how to sell program if you just think you're worthless. You know, I taught a workshop a couple years ago and I was talking about confidence because the word confidence means what comes from the word confide. And word confide means to with trust. Which word? Confidence means to trust yourself. That's what it means. So as I was thinking about that, I'm like, actually, I think everyone already has confidence. I don't think there's someone that's not confident. I just think we have inverted confidence. Like, somebody might have been sexually abused or raised, really had a hard life, and they think I'm worthless. I'm not lovable. And so they weigh 400 pounds, for example, is one way that can manifest. They're 100% confident that they're not lovable. They have certainty.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

You know, I see what you're saying.

[Josh]

You have had all these positive things happen. Where does that certainty come from? I know, I know. Part of it is you had initial success and that compounded and stacked. But you didn't have all these, like, huge mentors pouring into you at the time. Did you? Like, how did you just do it that big? Because it's not normal.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I don't know. But I've definitely had setbacks as well.

[Josh]

Is it team building? I mean, if you had to.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

You mean what? How did I build the businesses?

[Josh]

Yeah. Like, what's your core competency or your superpower?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Okay, I see what you're saying. Okay, well, two things. Two, if I could. There's many. But I'll put two that were most important for me. One, getting involved in the world of marketing and learning marketing and being more in control of how to drive business.

[Josh]

That has allowed speaking my love language.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

That has allowed me to build everything. Marketing. Because marketing isn't just about how do I create something that will end up in a mailbox or on a door on the. On the phone, you know, some marketing piece that's going to convince somebody to buy. But marketing also gets into things like how do I communicate with my client? How do I think about the psychology of why they would buy? How do I think about pricing? How do I think about building this product so that more people will want to buy? How do I think about the market I'm serving? What's my business model look like? It's all goes back to a version of marketing. And so as soon as you don't.

[Josh]

Even know that one of my main taglines at war plan is everything is marketing and marketing. Marketing is everything.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I know.

[Josh]

It's on stickers. It's on T shirts.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Well, I agree with you because I.

[Josh]

Think even the way we talk to ourself is marketing. I think parenting is marketing.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

100 it's marketing everything.

[Josh]

Literally, actually, because marketing is. Is choreographed communication. It's nuanced, thoughtful communication. 100 or even not nuanced, not thoughtful communication. It's still marketing. It's just communication.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Just bad. Or maybe bad. Right?

[Josh]

Bad marketing.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah. Yeah. So I. If I had to point at maybe the biggest thing, biggest shift, it was that I felt that as I started to learn marketing and I went all in, that I suddenly felt like I had more control over my destiny and being able to build things. And it upped my level of confidence. And again, like everything, it upped my level of confidence. As I started getting some wins, I definitely had a lot of things go bad trying to figure out marketing where I wasted a bunch of money.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

But that'd be one.

[Josh]

Well, that's. When I'm working with small business owners, sometimes I don't let them use the word money. This is just a brain hack. But I'll only use the word capital because there's so much here. This is a thing. Right. It's like poverty mindset. Growing up with nothing. I had a lady tell me last week she's a sweetheart, and she's like, you know, I'm just so scared to spend money. I said, when we're talking about your business, you're not spending anything. You're deploying capital. You're allocating capital.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Your.

[Josh]

Your job is to re. You know, and like, reframing that, you know. So in your opinion, I like that. Why are so many. Because wealthy people talk about capital, poor people talk about money. Wealthy people talk about value creation. Poor people talk about getting money, paying a bill.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah. Return on investment. Versus. Yeah.

[Josh]

Like, the timelines are shorter. Like, the more poor you are, the shorter your time frame and your language patterns are different. They just are. But in your opinion, because specifically with marketing, people just don't do it. They won't do it. They avoid it. They're scared of it. They're scared to death of it because they don't understand there is some sort of a learning curve. It's research and development. That's all it is. It's R D. But you have the earning potential of a professional athlete the minute you figure it out, and they still don't follow through.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I've thought, I'm sports, I'm competitive. I would have loved to have been a race car driver or something, but there's like 21 Formula One drivers. And I've often, often thought about this. Now right here, what you just said about sports, I've made more money in business than I would have been made being a professional athlete. Maybe there are a few professional athletes that I haven't made that much. But.

[Josh]

But most of.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Versus most of them, I've made more money than the vast majority of them.

[Josh]

Yeah. And that's what people don't understand.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah. We don't think about it properly.

[Josh]

Well, I also notice people start a company oftentimes because they're running away from something, not because they're running towards something. And I don't think that was the case with you. You had like this fire in your belly and you wanted to. You're a builder, you wanted to build and create and go. But a lot of people, they like hated their boss so they said, I'll do it myself.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah.

[Josh]

No, that's like a running away instead of running towards.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I've thought about these. I will say that I do think I. There was definitely an element of fear and scarcity in my life and so I think that has been highly motivational for me. That is as I've reflected over the.

[Josh]

Years from your childhood, not being able to buy nice Christmas presents.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah. And we bought all our own stuff. My dad was building an art career and so, you know, while he didn't have employees or anything of that sort, it's very hard to build an art career like he's built. It's kind of rare to. It's hard to be an artist and have a stay at home wife that raises the kids and make all your money selling paintings.

[Josh]

He must have been a baller artist.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

He's a good artist.

[Josh]

To even pay for anything.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

My whole life. That's only.

[Josh]

My really good artists are poor.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah, yeah. No. Yeah, yeah. My dad, my mom has never had a job while I've been alive and he supported everything. Wow. What kind of art? Fine art. Oil paintings.

[Josh]

Wow.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah. So, you know, you paint something and you put it in a gallery and hope somebody buys it.

[Josh]

Wow.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah. That's all he's done. I mean, I mean he was an illustrator before and he switched to fine art in 1980 and yeah, that's his entire career. But. And he's a great artist. He's a, he's very good artist.

[Josh]

In what way did that create scarcity in you? Was it little sayings? They would say, money doesn't grow on trees, you can't get everything you want. Because you said that you had some scarcity that was drawn.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Well, I think they both grew up in worlds where money was a limitation, so they carried that forward. But where I was going with this is he didn't just wake up one day and say, I'm going to be an artist. And suddenly we were golden. It was very, very, very hard to build an art career. There were very lean years, very challenging financial years. Right. When I was Growing up in sort of my formative years, there's like no negative here whatsoever. But they had to be extremely careful with money. I mean, I remember very clearly I never had cool tennis shoes in school like everybody else. I never had the cool clothes. I just, they were fine. But we would go buy my school clothes for the year and when I was little and that's what we had sort of for the year. And we did. My parents didn't really buy us many things. They were great parents. There's no negative here whatsoever. It's just my dad was building a career in art that almost nobody pulls off, and he was willing to do what it took, and my mom was willing to go with him on that trip. And they built this thing. And so it just meant for us we didn't have a lot of money in our lives. And as their financial life, what's a gift?

[Josh]

I agree.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

There's no negative. That's why I want to be clear. There's zero negative here. And so that's why I probably had a little bit of that. And then I grew up super religious. And so there's an element in depending where you go, what kind of what your beliefs are, you might believe that the world's gonna end at some point, God's coming back, things are gonna get tough. Oh, yeah, there was that and that. And I, you know, back then I didn't think I'd be here at 40 years old because I thought it was all gonna, you know, implode. And so that wired stuff into my brain from a young time that I had this fear and scarcity mentality. And so I believe that there's one thing I want Ferraris and then there's another thing, and that is I don't want to be poor and broke and have a hard life. And I need to build a security blanket. And even when I had millions and millions of dollars in my house was paid off and my cars were all paid off, which that happened a long time ago. I still had the same scarcity mentality. It still felt like it could all implode. The stock market could crash, the economy could crash, something bad could happen. And I felt that there. And I try and I tried and tried to unwind that stuff. That stuff still running in the back of my brain to a degree. I can for the most part, get it out of my brain and talk through it logically, but it's still wiring that will never get out of my life. And so I think that was very.

[Josh]

High level friend group these days, you Know a lot of really successful people.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

And I have for a while.

[Josh]

And that's had an effect on you.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Sure, sure. But it still doesn't mean the tape doesn't play back there. I think so.

[Josh]

Then the question becomes, how do you even change the identity then? And what's fascinating to me is scarcity. You're basically arguing that. That scarcity is part of the reason for your success.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I think it is.

[Josh]

And I'm watching people, and scarcity is definitely the reason for their failure. So what's the difference? You know, because. You see what I'm saying?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I think so. I look back, I know that my. You've said I've been very successful, and I have. Unusually successful, but to me, it's been not very fast. To me, it's been like, gosh, should have been so much more successful.

[Josh]

You totally suck.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

No, I don't think I suck. I just think I.

[Josh]

It's so fun.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I should have gone better. It should have gone faster.

[Josh]

I appreciate you saying that.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

It's silly. It's so. It's not even logical. It's silly. I'm incredibly thankful. But, yeah, it's just. I'm obsessed with speed. Speed. And I've always hated the idea of getting older because older means there's still so much I haven't accomplished and I'm running out of time or. Oh, crap.

[Josh]

Why do old people drive slow? They should be driving faster than anybody else.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

It's almost over. So, anyway, so I do have these weird obsessions, and I've kind of lost the script on where we are at here. But the point was, no, that wiring's been back there, and I've had to fight that. And I think it's been one of the elements of why I have tried so hard and had a fire. I think that's what it goes back to, like, why I've had this fire to keep going, going, going. But it's a. It's. It could be a positive for a period of time, and then it's majorly a negative. And for most of my life, it's been a massive negative, not a positive.

[Josh]

Even though it drove you financially forward.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

All you need is a spark.

[Josh]

But was it making you miserable while you were successful?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

No, I wasn't miserable, but it's unnecessary noise in your head. That's not productive. The way it manifested for me is I would have invested slower in the stock market. I would have invested slower in some financial investments that I should have put more money into, too, because there was a fear element there. Or I would have invested slower in my businesses because I felt I needed a bigger safety net. Or I would have paid off all my debts before I applied more money to grow the business, or I would feel that I should have a pay. I did all these things.

[Josh]

I need to pay off my house, $100 million business. If you weren't having a foot on the brake and fear that whole, sure.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I have a $700,000 paid off house, paid off, Ferrari cars, 5 million bucks at least in the bank. And I prioritized that over splitting that money into growing a business that could have been much bigger. And I already knew the formula to grow the business bigger. So I should have poured more gas on these businesses.

[Josh]

But let me ask you this. Before the business was big and healthy and stable, were you pouring on the gas to get it to there or were you like that the whole time? Slow, steady, trickle, quiet growth? No, because in the beginning you have to just do crazy hard stuff to spin it up.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

So, because I had lots of things going. So I've never done one thing, I've always done lots of things, too many things which have been borderline bad for my personal life.

[Josh]

Part of that art brain you got.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

From your dad, probably. I just love, I'm very much the squirrel mentality. Like that's a cool idea. You know, you listen to another marketing podcast, I go home, I stay up till 3 o'clock in the morning and I write a marketing campaign. And then the next morning I get up and I gotta deal with something else and I forget about that. And then I read a book, it's like, oh, and I write a new marketing campaign. Before you know it, you look back and you got like 90 half finished marketing campaigns and none of them have ever been out. You know, I did a lot of that kind of stuff. And so I like that. I love the creation, I love thinking about the business model, like how do we build, start business. I love all that. I've never so much loved the building of the business, like the operational side. But I've learned you have to do it. So now going back, because I had multiple things going, there came a point where I could live. And so, for example, when I started City Turf, I didn't need any money from City Turf. So it wasn't that I put 42,000 into it, if I remember correctly, to.

[Josh]

Start it up, to start it.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

And then I put all the money back in the business and took no income for five years. Yeah.

[Josh]

And that company, I don't know how big? How many trucks does that have? How many crews? It's like huge.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

130 maybe. I don't know.

[Josh]

130 maybe.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I'm not. Yes. I'm not quite sure, but yeah.

[Josh]

There's gonna come a day in your life when you don't even know how many hundreds of trucks you have of a business you still own. For the love of God. That's a very good thing.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah.

[Josh]

And look at all the jobs you created.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[Josh]

You know, man. Okay, so I'm going to pivot a little bit.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Okay.

[Josh]

So I feel like culture is like worships entrepreneurs these days.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

These days. I think it's a good time to be alive.

[Josh]

Religious.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah.

[Josh]

It's like, wasn't always this way.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

This wasn't. And it's not this way in most other countries. If you go to other countries, I travel a lot, you know, go to Japan, go to England, go these other places. It's like they call it the tall Poppy syndrome. You sort of like going to get cut down if you pop up in some of these other places. It's not as we're very fortunate. If this is the life you want to be living right here.

[Josh]

Yeah. When I don't think it's good. I mean, I don't think everyone should be an entrepreneur or be a millionaire and 10x everything. There's a guy at an event in this studio a few weeks ago at Neil's event, shout out to you, Neil. And he asked me a question. I could tell by the way that he asked it, there's something under the surface. And he's like, how do I achieve this goal? And he has to think, long story short, I'm like, you don't even want that goal. And he was like, oh my God, I don't want that goal. And so without having a 10 minute explanation, the point is, is he was aiming at something he didn't even want. It was just the expectations of others and what he thought he was supposed to want. And really he. Tony Greb Meyer, how much of life is that?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

How much?

[Josh]

So much.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

How much of this country has been built on that one? One stadium? All of it.

[Josh]

I think. I think like all of it. Tony Grubmeyer says there's nowhere to get and you've already won. Yeah, that's a right. You would love him too.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Okay. I don't. Yeah. I don't know him.

[Josh]

He's amazing. There's nowhere to get and you've already won.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

There's so much.

[Josh]

But we don't want to believe that to be true. If our identity is an orphan and like part of our success is proving that we're lovable, that we're loved, that we're worth it, that were worthy, you're never going to actually feel that way. Right. Until you. I don't know. I just. What are your thoughts on entrepreneur, celebrity culture, how gross it is, gurus, people making a million a month, selling courses on crypto and whatever. I mean, everybody. It's a wild west on the Internet. You know, what we do at war plan with is coaching for small. But it's very different. And like, what's your take on the whole thing?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Well, this gets to another conversation we've had and I've talked about how I. I want to rebuild my reputation on social media and how unbelievably difficult it is for me to state what level of success I've had to set authority or credibility or the idea of showing off anything that I have. I think part of it's rooted in. We talked about a few reasons, but one of the things we didn't talk about is when I log onto YouTube or I look at Instagram, which I don't look at Instagram. I'm really the wrong person to build social media because I have no social media on my phone. I don't look at social media. I've never. I posted one time on Facebook in my entire Facebook career.

[Josh]

Really?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah. I just don't. Do I call it fake book. Well, I tell you, real fast deviation. The reason for that is we keep talking about Dan Kennedy.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

One of the things I felt like maybe one of the most influential things I felt I learned from him was this imperative need to get hyper focused. And he had this book called no BS Time Management. I read that book many times. It's a little more over the top than the direction I went, but I applied a lot of it. It was a game changer for me. Just hardcore focus. You can't be hardcore focused when you're all over the place listening to podcasts, reading this on social media, on YouTube.

[Josh]

All the time, your dopamine, everything gets out of whack.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

So I'm kind of. So I got off on a little tangent there. But my point is when I do look at that stuff, I'm generally just completely disgusted because I know a lot of it's fake. I know a lot of the people giving advice are.

[Josh]

Even if it's real, it's still gross.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah. And so I just really struggle. But I also know how incredibly. Because I care about getting information out to people and helping them build their world, their thing. I know that's what I have to do, but I'm repulsed by the general activity or that, you know. And so.

[Josh]

And you. It's true you. You don't like talking about your success, but just because you talk about it doesn't mean you're bragging, because it's just like, can't you state a fact? Or, for example, if I asked you a specific question and you just answer the question truthfully, that's not bragging. That's just. Or for. If someone is devastatingly handsome, are they supposed to wear a bag on their face everywhere because they're bragging by letting people look at them, you know, like, it's just true your face looks like that, or it's true your business did that much or you sold it for this much. They're just things that happen.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah.

[Josh]

What do you think?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I think it's very logical.

[Josh]

That's the thing about false beliefs and subconscious programming. We don't know why. It's just a feeling.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah. It's just the thing I have. And I'm a little sensitive, too, because I tend to have business partners in a lot of what I do, and so they don't have any desire to be public or known in any way. So when I talk about it, even though I may not say their name, they sort of indirectly have just given out their private information as well. And so I'm sensitive to that. I don't know. Probably something back to my childhood. We'd have to diagnose it.

[Josh]

I was wired long chairs. You can lay back.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I will tell you. When I was growing up, my mom very. Was very secretive, and she still is to this day. She's very secretive.

[Josh]

She doesn't want anybody to know about money specifically.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

She doesn't even want anybody know I'm successful.

[Josh]

Really?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah. So I.

[Josh]

That's a culture thing. Yeah.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I think there's something probably wired into me as part of it, and I. Yeah, I think.

[Josh]

But you talk openly about this with your family, right?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[Josh]

Your kids know revenue and number.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

My kids do. I don't talk about it too broadly, but.

[Josh]

Are you teaching them investing?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Oh, yeah. My parents know. My kids know everything.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah. But, you know, the advantage here is I have talked to my boys about. Hey, we don't talk about these things publicly.

[Josh]

And.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

And so I remember Gage had some of his. Gage is my youngest. He had some buddies over at our house a couple years ago, and these kids had no idea of some of the cars and stuff we had. Like, he had never ever said a word about it. And I remember being so proud of him. Cause there's this element where you shouldn't be ashamed to talk about things, but there's also this element. It's like, hey, how many kids are running around bragging about whatever stuff they didn't even earn? And. Yeah, and so I value. So it's a. It's a balancing act here. There's a lot of noise in my head on this topic. And me too.

[Josh]

I mean, I. I'm not dogmatic on all of these things. Like, I'm still learning and trying to learn. Because on the one hand, like the Bible says, you know, a wise man leaves an inheritance for his children's children. That ain't. That's two children's.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Okay.

[Josh]

Like you children, generational legacy. Like, that means it's our imperative, it's our responsibility. Meaning we need to respond with ability to do that thing. But we also know that like silver spoon stuff can be a real thing.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Now.

[Josh]

I think it's interesting. People hate on people that come from resources. As if that's bad. Even though every single person watching this wants your kids to be the ones that come from resources.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

And, you know, and that's. And I'm not really worried about haters. I just, like, that's not really my. Because I. I know I'm very proud of the way I've lived my life. I just. There's no like, hidden little thing. There's like, where I feel some level of guilt or I feel that I'm not legit. I'm very real. And so hater would mean very little to me unless they were. Unless there was a risk that the broader market or my friends or family would believe that what they're saying is true. That would bother. But just somebody crying on social media. I'm down to that. That nonsense. So that's not really the thing. I don't know. You know, something I was just thinking of. So Martell, he talked to him about this a fair bit. And I don't know if you have ever watched his stuff, but he has really stepped up his game.

[Josh]

I haven't watched a ton, but he's blown up.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Well, you can directly.

[Josh]

I talked to him about. Send Jim years ago, before he was Internet famous and. Cause he's a SaaS guy.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a software coach.

[Josh]

SaaS coach.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah. But he. If you look at his YouTube stuff, when he started talking more about his Cars. And now he's doing stuff like in fitness with no shirt on. And he's talking about, I think maybe net worth. I don't see enough of his videos. But he's. When he changed all that you can. And I know he built a media team around him. He said he was time to go pro, but you can see like a line in the sand. When they changed, all that thing took off. So I'm aware if I was giving advice on the other side of this. I feel like I know what to do, but it just bugs me.

[Josh]

Well, you. I mean, with the lifestyle you have now, it would work, but you would feel so uncomfortable. People follow the cameras, your cool stuff, doing your thing, traveling the world. I mean, the reason I want to interview you because I know you're a good father.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah.

[Josh]

You're a smart entrepreneur. I. I perceive you to be like really steady. I'm always trying to learn from people. Like, you know, don't take advice from someone you wouldn't trade places with. Right. Like, I respect what you've done at your family and you've done really big things in business. You clearly know things I don't. So I'm trying to like figure you out, understand what's going on.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I think maybe I am of yours.

[Josh]

And I also feel like you relate to the little guy. You didn't start with nothing. You just did it.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I love the little guys.

[Josh]

I just did it.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah. Yeah. I still feel like I remember what it takes and how it felt.

[Josh]

But you know, I like your one out of 300 of them does what you did.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I know, I know that.

[Josh]

But I still difference. I don't get it. Delayed gratification. It's really mindset, skill sets and network. Like, it's really true.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I mean, my mindset grew. I don't know. I don't know how to answer these questions. I can just say here are things I think might have contributed. I really. There came a place where I started spending money, but man, it drove me nuts. And I didn't spend enough to start to get around other people that were successful. I know that played a role. Seeing. Making it real is what I would describe it as. Back to what I was saying earlier. You see somebody in a magazine, you see a Dan Martell or an Alex Hormozi on YouTube, but you don't know them. You don't even know anybody that knows them. You want to be them, but it's still not real enough to you because you don't know them. You can tell yourself a Story about how they got there and why they've got extra luck you don't have, or whatever. And so it's not real. And so as I got in the room with more people, and some of that was really before I ever got in a group that was just going to conferences. And then you start to be around other people and you meet somebody at event and they're having a lot of success and you don't know if it's real success or not. But you talk to him and it makes sense. You're like, oh, I met this guy. He seems like a very normal guy. He doesn't seem that much smarter than I. He doesn't seem like he's that much more articulate than I. I think I could probably sell as good as him. You just start to do a little comparison stuff. You're like, I could be him too. And you do enough of that. And then you get into a business group or coaching group and you meet other people. People are ahead of you, and you're like, well, I can do that too. Oh, that's how you do it. And so it's that. It's the marketing thing. It's the way back I realized I needed to pair myself with an operations person because I don't love that stuff. And I can build. I could start a bazillion companies tomorrow and take them from zero to call it a million. But the act of me having to do a million to 10 or a million to 20 by myself and manage all the people.

[Josh]

God, soul sucker sucks.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

It's the same thing every single day. Who wants to do that?

[Josh]

Yeah. What does the timing play in some of your successes, too? Because I like when I look at click funnels, for example. Russell's a genius. Like, best marketer of our generation.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

He's awesome.

[Josh]

That's true. But what's also true is literally he had the perfect product at literally the perfect time.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah.

[Josh]

It just made sense.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

And he was able to build a smaller product and go to market and get success. Whereas now you've got to build a much bigger platform to be competitive in the space he's in.

[Josh]

So, like, how many funnel tools are there? Yeah, but at the time there wasn't. And it was, like, so serendipitous. And then you. City turf.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah, Time.

[Josh]

This area has grown like crazy.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Oh, sure. Yeah, I've talked that.

[Josh]

And then also with your CRM service, Autopilot, you were pretty early on, like you had the vision to do that.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah. So from a timing thing, I say maybe Two things on City Turf. A couple things came together. One was, it's definitely been good that our market's grown. I've talked about this lesson a lot because I'll just repeat something I've said before. There are all these really smart individuals that are in little bitty towns with little markets, and they're looking at me and saying, why can't I be Jonathan in half City turf? And I'm saying, you can't be me because you have 20,000 potential clients.

[Josh]

It's just math.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

And so you're beating yourself up thinking you're a loser and you're not. You come to Dallas. Yes, I have won in an unusual way, even in Dallas. But if you come to Dallas, you have a much higher probability of using all the gifts you've been given in life and your skill sets to actually build something. And so that's part of it for many people. So that was advantage number one. Advantage number two, I'm in a market that is growing. Advantage number three, I learned how to program because I never wanted to be in lawn care or in cleaning or in any of the trades. I wanted to be when I went to college. I want to be in virtual reality. I want to be in technology. That's my whole life. My first software company was 23. It failed after two years and cost us all the money we had. It was a massive setback in life. All I wanted to do was software. So then later, when City Turf gets started, I understand how to build my own websites. I understand how to do. SEO is way more elementary back then. It's still not that hard now. I know a lot of people would hate that, but it's, you know, I knew how to do that so I could pair an opportunity. I could do those things myself at a time when maybe Dallas, Plano, the markets I serve, where more and more younger tech kind of professionals, a higher level professional in our market would be buying online in the early days. So it gave me a competitive advantage over other people that weren't really online in any major way. So there's little things that you could say, okay, timing is right. When we started service autopilot, we were early because we were just early in a whole bunch of stuff. But being early because we never raised capital and we never used debt, gave us time to build the software. And so we were there to capitalize on the transition from all the old archaic desktop software solutions to SaaS. We were also there the time when we started in software versus what today looks like. Everybody buys software now they buy Jobber, they'll buy Housecall Pro, Everybody's buying some software. That was not the case. We had to do massive.

[Josh]

It was like weird massive.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

It was us and Jobber and then a bunch of desktop software solutions. That was it.

[Josh]

And people didn't trust the cloud.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

They didn't trust. They thought we were gonna steal their data. We thought we'd lose all their data. I signed a couple agreements in the early days of service all pilot, saying I'd never steal your data or look at your data. I was like, why would I wanna do that? But sure, I'll sign that agreement. And so there was a timing element there, answer your question, that was advantageous for us.

[Josh]

Where do you see home service industry going? You know, because let's just maybe round out and talk about. And I appreciate you taking so much time. I'm loving this.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Whatever you want. Yeah.

[Josh]

We have AI Robotics.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah.

[Josh]

Yeah. I mean, people don't understand what's happening. Yeah, I don't think at all. I don't. Not that I do when I'm on the high. I'm just saying people are asleep at the wheel. And you have not just LLMs with like ChatGPT, but you have like audio stuff now and you have visual stuff now. So AI can, it can see, it can hear, it can talk and it can write. And then you put that in a mechanized suit and you have essentially a freaking human. That's just. Specifically just that you. But technology, it's cheaper to code interest rates, the economy, like, what would you do if you had a home service business right now? Where would you be aiming your company? What would you think is gonna happen the next five to 10 years? What do you think?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Before I answer a question, let me give you an example that I just think is so awesome. And this gives kind of an example of where we're going. So there was a time where I thought I was gonna build another software company. And so I've really been thinking and the only way I could get excited about. And this is the greatest. This feels like the greatest moment in time right now to build a software company with what's going to happen in the shift in technology. And I feel like by not building a software company, I'm missing one of the greatest wealth creation events that could happen. But I just can't get that excited about it. And so as I'm working through this software company idea, we were very innovative at Service AllPad. If you look at a lot of the functionality we had, it led the market we were the first to do thing after thing and then everybody would kind of come in afterwards and so I could only get excited and that may not be the best way to run a company. John and I have joked about it like our joke is that John and Jonathan would build an entire Automations platform so you could do everything you could possibly want. Jobber would say these are the 10 best automations, they just hard code them right in their software and they move on to the next place. But John, Jonathan loved to build stuff.

[Josh]

And so Jobber is VC backed right?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Oh yeah. They've raised hundreds of millions of dollars. Yeah. And anyway where I was going with this is I could only get excited about doing something again if I could again lead the market. And so one of the little things I was just kind of playing with is, you know one of the challenges in software and this is getting to a point, just kind of the beginning of answering this question. One of the challenges in software is getting your field team to actually fill in the data. Even on a mobile device. Yeah, it's really hard to get people to fill in the data. It's like kind of the lifeblood of the business. Why can't we do this? But no, we can't get it done.

[Josh]

We won't do it.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Okay. Or you've got some people that are just uncomfortable typing and writing in there. Maybe there's a language barrier. There's a variety of problems. So at City Turf we've done a bunch of stuff where we just have people fill out stuff on like for example maybe we have a little a board in the car and it's pre filled out fields and all they have to do is just fill out a couple fields, snap a picture and then erase it for the next job. They don't have to fill, you don't even have to fill in a mobile device. We've really shortcutted some stuff. So I was playing with some technology. It's like okay, if I build a new software company could I just not even use a mobile device? All the guy has to do or gal has to do is just write in whatever language they want to write in Spanish, English, I don't care. And then we will just use visual recognition and AI and read it and auto put all that data into technology and it's insane. This is a big buildup here. But my point is right now it exists that all I have to do is take a picture and I could translate everything. It can read the writing and it could auto input all the data and nobody Even has to fill out mobile devices anymore. Anymore. That's an example, like a really low level example where this is going just like one little thing. And it's going to be, it's going to be incredible and it's going to take a while. And the reason it's going to. And so there's two sides to this one. It's going to happen like whether it be robotics or AI, and it's going to be game changing on the other hand, and that feels like it's going to be quick. On the other hand, some of it's going to be a little slower than we think. Because if the AI answer or result, like let's do a customer service scenario here, if you used automated technology, like AI technology, where they're talking to you, but it gives your client the wrong answer 10% of the time, you can't actually adopt it. So there's this point where we have to get to such a level of perfection before you can actually implement some of this that it's going to greatly.

[Josh]

Slow it down because the one time it's off is like humiliating. It goes off the rails.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

And so again, kind of jumping around here. And so I think what's going to happen is this stuff is going to happen. It's just going to take a little longer than some of the noise out there. And what is going to happen is we are going to have a bigger divide between the companies that win and the companies that don't win. And the companies that win are going to implement massive amounts of technology and they're going to be willing to write big checks, bigger checks. When I was in the software business, so many people are like $100 a.

[Josh]

Month, $25 a year just to completely build a foundational thing to build my entire company on.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah, I just like, I will dream this for the rest of my life. The volume of people that look at the cost and do not think about the return on money, the return. And that's going to happen to a ton of people as we move into this world where they can adopt these technologies. But there's going to be a cost. Like for example, in AI, there's a cost just to do the data processing. You're running so many scenarios to keep it very simple to come back with the answer. There's a lot of processing that has to happen. There's a cost, a technology cost. And so that means the software might cost more or maybe you don't want to implement texting because there's a percent texting cost. But texting is such an advantage over your competitors that don't do texting. And so people, a lot of these companies are going to make decisions on cost and not on outcome. And the companies that do implement this technology are going to dominate. They are going to eat the lunch of everybody else. They're going to become more efficient and more profitable. And so I think the gap is going to get bigger. So I also, if you're willing to get really good at marketing, if you're willing to really understand your data and actually put your data into your system every day and capture it, if you're willing to use lots of different technologies and someday robotics, you are going to dominate. And so it's super exciting to me. It's. And you're going to be very profitable. So I think it's an insanely awesome time to be in home services. What's coming in the next 10 years is going to be insane in my opinion. So I'm optimistic I could have compressed all that into. I'm super optimistic. But I had to give a few examples.

[Josh]

I think like conversations around, like ubi, for example. It's becoming more and more clear to me why that is a.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Might have to be.

[Josh]

Might have to be.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah.

[Josh]

Because the middle is just being. It's, it's, it's disappearing.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Well, and a lot of the, well, fortunately for a lot of the lower, man, it's a tough one on the lower income. Like you can see how some of those jobs are going to get disrupted, but you can also see how some of the jobs are going to be. The manual labor isn't about to be replaced by a robot. So you're right, it's probably lower and.

[Josh]

We don't know yet. But man, some of these robots are like, like it's crazy. The actuators they have and how articulate the movements are and it, and, and, and think of the number one pain point for every small business owner is labor related.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yep.

[Josh]

And so robots promise to solve the. Keep you up at night, biggest, most painful problem. Not saying they will. I get it. They used to do robot lawnmowers. Remember that? They still have them.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I spent five years involved in that.

[Josh]

You did?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Uhhuh. Okay, well, I've had one moment I've.

[Josh]

Been involved there too early or something.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

But no, no, I can tell you all about that. But, but. And it has informed my opinion on robotics for home services.

[Josh]

Yeah. So you think it's just going to be way too hard for it to really.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

No, no, I think it's Going to. I think.

[Josh]

It'S gotten exponentially geometrically more advanced in the last. It's getting better, faster every.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah. So a number of years ago, what happened in robotics. We use lawnmowers and you can apply this to robotics in general. What happened years ago in robotics for lawnmowers is a lot of venture capital money rushed in and that was a massively transformational, fantastic thing. Lots of new players showed up, lots of new advances happened in the mowing robots. Really cool. The couple problems, one, to put all the technologies on the mower to do a really awesome job and not need a guide wire and just eliminate some of the, the pain in the butt stuff about it really escalates the price where you can't make the economics work to actually use that mower in a business model. That's one of the problems that will come down over time though. It's just like, okay, well is that going to be three years, five years? How long is it going to take?

[Josh]

You're just amateurizing it and comparing that to the cost of a human. Right?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah, general. Yes, you are. But it still doesn't. The math doesn't work unless you get to a really big.

[Josh]

It needs to be dramatically better.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

It does.

[Josh]

It can't just be a little bit better. It needs to be way better.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

It has to be dramatically better because think about who is going to adopt this technology and the amount of debt they will have to take on. And these companies can't even. Nobody will give them the loans for the amount of debt they would need to replace their people with a robot. And then do you even want to be in that business? Like, okay, I could be in the lawn mowing business and I could have 2,000 robots and I could have. I'm making up this number. I'd have 20 million in debt to make. Let's call it a 25% profit margin. Or I could just go start a pest control company. It also makes a 25% profit margin. And I have no robots, I have no debt and I have little trucks like, okay, I'm going to do pest control.

[Josh]

To me, that makes people want to be owner operators. It's speaking to your own point, which is you're going to want to stay small. And I always tell this, I say go big or stay small. Don't go in the middle. Middle. The middle is going to get killed.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah.

[Josh]

Being an artist and business owner, you're fine.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

You can make a one.

[Josh]

If you are a killer auto detailer who has a six month waiting list.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

You'Re fine, you're fine.

[Josh]

Nothing you can do.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Phenomenal.

[Josh]

But it's all this mediocre stuff that's going to get killed.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Well, I'll give you one more on the robotics thing. Just as you're kind of thinking about that. I've learned from being involved legislation. So we will be there technology wise, we'll eventually be there cost wise, when whatever robot you want to talk about. But the slowdown is legislation. How long will it be till the government approves a robot in your house, A full bladed robot on your lawn that's not being monitored visually by a person with an emergency stop button? And so that's going to network together.

[Josh]

They're all learning in real time from each other.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

The tech is getting really good. But we've got these other things that we don't get. We just look at the tech and say, oh, we're about to be there.

[Josh]

It's like, well, you can't just Let you know 20 million people now have a job and act like that doesn't affect everyone.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah, it'll have a big impact.

[Josh]

It's a major thing. And these companies. When I moved to Costa Rica in 2015, just because I'm a dork, I, for whatever reason I looked up like the SEC's website, like I don't know what it was, a balance sheet for Apple or something. And I'm, I'm trying to like learn more sophisticated numbers.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Okay.

[Josh]

I mean the financial reports for companies like this, this are insane.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

They're ridiculous.

[Josh]

Insane. But I just noticed at the time, back then, I want, I could get the number wrong. I don't, I think that they had about 40 billion in cash. It might have been 80 billion.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Oh, I mean they got, I know.

[Josh]

It'S way more and a lot of.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

It was outside the United States.

[Josh]

This is exactly. And I was looking at like one page. I don't even know what I was looking at.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Okay.

[Josh]

The point is, is they had in an account somewhere at least 40 billion. So then I went to treasury.gov and you can actually look like how much cash the government has on hand.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

And they had less than Apple never done that.

[Josh]

They can create it. But my point is, is these tech companies and this is like 10 years ago. I'm looking. They have more money than nations.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Oh yeah. Some of their market cap is greater than.

[Josh]

Yeah, it's, there's nowhere to even deploy their capital. I mean, how do you even invest 100 billion if you bought a billion dollar company once a week, you deployed 52 billion. By the time that year ends, you've got accumulated more than you spent. And the enterprise values. You literally can't do it.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah. You see a lot of them start to return it to shareholders.

[Josh]

Are they doing dividends?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah, a lot of them do. A lot of the tech companies, as they mature, they just.

[Josh]

They can't even do that cash fast.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Enough, and they start to do dividends. Some of the companies that took really hard positions, that will never do a dividend. In the tech world, it's better to just continue, reinvest. Finally, it's like, okay, we're doing a dividend. They got too much money.

[Josh]

There's too much. Yeah, that's a real thing. It's an actual. This is funny as this sounds to you out there watching this, you're like, there's people legit stressing because they can't spend their money. There's not enough stuff to buy. There's not enough quality company. PE firms are stressed out.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah. Yeah. That's why valuations are.

[Josh]

Yeah. Well, do you have any prediction on private equity as it relates to home service going into next year? You know, is the Fed gonna lower rates, which would increase valuations a little bit? Right. If rates went down. But then there's other implications. What do you think?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I don't know. Cause I don't know what Trump's gonna do. Trump. Trump and some of the things that he wants to do.

[Josh]

The Fed doesn't have to listen to Trump.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Well, but if things get too hot or there's just a variety of things that can create inflation, they will have to raise interest rates, and then that would change the outcome.

[Josh]

You ever read the Creature from Jekyll Island?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I think I bought it.

[Josh]

I never read it, but you get the idea.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Josh]

What do you think about that, you conspiracy. What conspiracy theory do you believe in? Good. We got moon landing. We got jfk. We got. What else do we got?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah.

[Josh]

Will, help me out.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I tend to. Not the.

[Josh]

What, Mandela?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I don't know that one.

[Josh]

Okay.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I don't know that one.

[Josh]

It's. It's where people believe that, like, the past is being changed. Like the Bernstein Bears. It was a children's book. Like, it's spelled different than it really was.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

And, oh, they're going back and revising things. Is that what we mean?

[Josh]

I think that one's totally kooky. But people believe it. Right.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

So. Wow. I mean, this is. This is a.

[Josh]

It's edutainment. We got to do some entertaining.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I tend to not be super conspiracy based. But I am surrounded by lots of friends and family that are the reason I tend to not. I think most conspiracies can be explained down to incentives. And I think that people basically operate based on incentives. But I don't believe there are six people running the world. And I'll give you I don't believe that. I'll use this analogy. I have 200 employees and I want all 200 of my employees to march in the exact same direction. Not question what I'm saying, keep it completely secret, totally buy in. I can't pull that off. I don't think Elon Musk can pull it off. I don't think anybody can pull it off. But somehow when it gets to a lot of conspiracies, we have decided that the government, who we also argue that is completely inept, incapable, stupid, wasting our money, these complete losers. But they are good enough to orchestrate keeping thousands and thousands of people in line. And what we say is well, yes, because they'll kill them if they don't. Okay. I don't know, it's just a little too far for me because the guy that's like 80 and about to die, he's really not going to eventually speak out.

[Josh]

Right. He comes in his wheelchair and he's like.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

So then the argument to that one is well, they're going to kill all his family. You mean the dude from 70 years ago who has also died who said he was like. I don't know if I'm making any sense. Like I just can't reconcile a lot of them. It doesn't mean I don't believe in conspiracies, I think.

[Josh]

But you believe there's evil, diabolically bad people, power brokers.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Sure.

[Josh]

That are making moves 100%.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I believe there are conspiracies and I believe believe that.

[Josh]

Did we land on the moon?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I think we did.

[Josh]

You really do?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah.

[Josh]

For real?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I really do because I think we had so many. Yeah, well, we'll see. We'll see.

[Josh]

I want to believe that the reason I believe amazing.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I believe there are multiple countries that have a vested interest in proving we didn't and they have the technology to show that we didn't.

[Josh]

It's just the 60s.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I. Hey, I know all the arguments.

[Josh]

All the tech was deleted.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

My mom doesn't believe we land on the moon. I've had this conversation many a times. I, I know a bunch of people.

[Josh]

My father in law got really mad at me when I brought this up even as a possibility. I mean cuz his your mom's age and my father in law's age, they were little kids when this happened. It's a core memory.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah.

[Josh]

Okay. They're like at school Neil Armstrong. Freaking Neil Armstrong's on the moon. It's like telling them that didn't happen is like so disruptive to their psyche. Sounds like your mom.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

No, she doesn't believe my father in.

[Josh]

Law was having a breakdown. He's like what? You know we absolutely landed on the moon.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I think I'm.

[Josh]

Maybe we did. I'm not saying we.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I think I'm stating correctly. I've talked to John, my business partner about this and one of his relatives was one of the core people in the room in the when they did this whole thing.

[Josh]

Really?

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah. So he, he too believes they landed.

[Josh]

On the moon and they streamed video in 1960s Back to Earth so we could watch it.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

I've heard of the radiation bell. I've heard all the different.

[Josh]

How do you stream video in 1960s? That's insane. Oh man.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

But how do we also create the atomic bomb and some of the physics and stuff you can get into. Have we modified physics so that we can't produce so that other countries did. We infected physics so that other countries can't reproduce a lot of the things we did. Yeah, we've. That's a big belief out there is that we've infest. We've messed with how physics really works and operates how and how we teach it in colleges.

[Josh]

We teach it wrong on purpose so they can't get.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

And that's why there's been a stop in the. The breakthroughs in physics.

[Josh]

Oh and that would be genius if someone did that.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

There's a million of these things. I think they're fascinating. But no, I don't know aliens. I don't know. My brother is really, really on me on that one. I've watched a lot of alien stuff lately.

[Josh]

To me it seems very obvious that they're pre framing us to definitely eventually show that there is alien because it's been happening for decades. So that's the one I think Hollywood through it's just a CIA psyop thing they've been seating.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

This is the one I can get the closest on I can go there way before the moon.

[Josh]

I think it's demonic.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Yeah, that's how I hear other people describe it. So I have no idea how they're real.

[Josh]

It's like a real biological suit thing but there's some sort of demonic thing there's something demony, something, hey, Jesus loves you. Just remember that. But man, I appreciate you talking about all this stuff and we talked about race cars, we talked about your childhood, we talked about, talked about you building three companies up to $30 million. How do you do that three times in a row? You're not normal, but you're a great guy, great dad, love your family. You gave some great tips and advice and I really appreciate it, my friend.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

Likewise. Great seeing you again. It's been a while.

[Josh]

See you next time, everybody.

[Jonathan Ushnick]

See you.

[Josh]

Bye. Do you want to weaponize your brain and turn it into a money making machine? Consider joining War Plan coaching. You'll get 30 thousands of dollars in exclusive courses and training, a private community, a chance to come to in person meetups at Warplan Studios, and access to myself for Q and A every single month. Want to know the best part? It's free. Plus we'll send you a private weekly newsletter full of money making tips and cutting edge ideas. Just go to warplan.com to sign up. Hey, I'm your biggest fan. I'm rooting for you. We'll see you next.