Copilot CRM Live Q&A with Mike Andes

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I'm late. I apologize. We had technical difficulties. I forgot that this camera was used at conference last week. And so it shows all the settings and all the numbers, and it looked really bad, so I had to fix it. I apologize. All right, we're gonna go ahead and get started. It's gonna be great. We're talking about Copilot, Copilot CRM. I'm gonna be doing a live Q and A, answering any and all questions you might have. Oh, man, things are breaking. Okay, we're gonna jump right in. There's already 40 people on here, so let's go ahead and get started. I will answer a couple questions in the Q and A or the chat here, but I would like to get some callers on if possible. So let me go ahead and pop this call in our phone number here.

Let's see here. Where's my phone number? My phone number is in here. Call in, Joe. There it is. All right, this is the number 361 right here. 361733. 3332. If you're in the queue, I will give you priority on the phones because we're already getting a bunch of comments coming in. All right, Today, the objective is to answer any and all questions about Copilot CRM. The good, the bad, the ugly, and any question you might have about features. I'll tell you exactly where we're at. I will not try to sell you on anything because I just want to be open and honest about what we can and cannot do from day one and where we're going in terms of the future of the software. So if you have no idea what I'm talking about. Copilot CRM.com is launching next month. We're going to roll it out in phases over the course of three weeks or so. So that way we don't overburden the servers. Because we have an overwhelming amount of people wanting to join, which is great. I'm thrilled, but I just don't want to have any problems. I don't think we should have any problems with that many people joining, even if we did it in one day. But we want to make sure it's all very, very smooth. So let's go ahead and get started. We already got two people in the call queue, so I am going to prioritize. People in the call queue then if there is no call, will work through your Q A on the chat. I will stick around for a very long time today if needs be. I'm just gonna answer as many questions as I possibly can. So let's go to the call queues first. I apologize. I'm somewhat disheveled because I was messing up all sorts of things on my. My tech side this morning, but we should be ready to go. All right, without any further delay. First caller is coming from. I think it's Massachusetts. 9, 7, 8. Brandon, you are on the show. Welcome. Thanks for calling in.

Hey, Mike. We're currently using Lawn Pros, our current software, and I have two questions about it.

Go for it.

First off, is it going to be easier to switch to Copilot since we're coming from Lawn Pro, and I know.

It'S the same cto.

Not necessarily easier. I think you'll find, especially at the beginning, a lot of the tech side is similar, but it's forking. We're already making a bunch of changes in terms of cockpit, the AI side of things. And so I think the familiarity might be a little bit higher at the very beginning, but it's not necessarily going to be easier down the road. Our plan is to take probably about five other competing softwares that we know are the most common and then download their CSV files when you're trying to export data, and then make a very specific onboarding process for those specific CRMs. Because every single CRM exports data slightly differently, we then can change our inputting how we take that data and make the most use of it. So I would say by summer or fall, let's just go with fall 2023, we will have one at least for service autopilot, and then the next would probably be Jobber and Yardbook. We'll go after those three, hopefully in 2023, and then probably do a couple more as we head into 2024. And those would be very specific onboarding for specific CRM. Just so it's very smooth.

Awesome. And then my second question has to do with the wave implementation. So we put our thing in the first day, but I know you said you could. It's going to be released in waves. So if we're not in that first wave, how long do you think the waves are going to be? Is it going to be like every two weeks, every month? Just because obviously we don't want to switch in the middle of the spring rush.

Yep. No, totally. I'll make sure that everyone that is on the current list. So if you go to copilotcrm.com get yourself on the list. Everyone on that list will be in before the end of February. Ideally, we literally can roll it out over the course of like five, six days. But I'm going to be tracking, just making sure speed is exactly where I want it. Because if we have 500 people join in two days and then everyone's importing data, it could potentially. I don't actually think it would. I really don't. And we talked to our cto Patrick and him and I talked and everything. I don't think it would. But we're just going to play it careful because the last thing I want you to do is start importing your data. And then it's slow, it's a little bit lethargic and that's, you know, I do not want. So I would guarantee you though, though if you're on that list by the end of February, you'd have full access and be able to import all your stuff.

Cool. Thanks, man. Appreciate it.

You got it. Take care. All right, next caller is coming from Alan, 909. Real quick though, I might drop you guys after you ask your question. Don't be offended. It's just we're going to have to go through questions today, a lot of them. So let's go ahead and jump into the next question though. 909-area- CODE from Alan, I believe. Go for it.

Hey, good morning. How are you? I guess, afternoon.

How you doing?

Hey, good. How are you? Good. Hey, my question is, okay, here's the co pilot compared to jobber in today's system. How would you compare it and contrast with co pilot? And then is it one of those. Do you recommend to wait until all the systems are in place with copilot before swapping out a jobber or are you comparable presently in their current state?

I would say if you're doing under half a million in revenue, that I would probably. If your objective is to switch over to copilot, I would probably do it right from the get go. If you're doing over a million plus in another software, you might want to wait a little bit just because there's probably going to be features that we don't have at the beginning that you are leaning on. Here's a big three that we do not have currently. Number one, job costing number two, price matrix and number three, there's a third one I was blanking on now.

Job costing price matrix and there's a third one, I'm forgetting it. But those things will be resolved within the next six to eight months. And so you might want to wait until the end of 2023 and then evaluate then. But I think for, for 95% of users that do not use very, very, very specific integrations with Automations, Infusionsoft and the likes of price matrixes and job costing 95 of people are going to be just fine from day one going forward. And so if you're in Jobber I'd say the, the downside of going to copilot right from day one is we aren't going to have as many integrations because they have some really cool ones with like company cam etc. I would then say that we do integrate with, with Zapier Zapier so that you can a lot of those integrations. We will be from day one be able to go with the, the the downside is going to be the lack of integrations from day one. We will beat jobber on automations. From day one we bought 30 pre built automations using tagging systems using we can do SMS and emails to employees. We have a lot of automation that are pre built for you. So if you've used the software before like automations are kind of freaky and you feel like you got to hire someone else to just set them up for you. We will dominate on automations from day one. When it comes to pre built what we don't have, that's the third thing is fully customizable automations where everything is customizable like every single last thing. We have 30 pre built that I would go to bat and say that you can. It'd be hard to go and find a use case outside of these 30 honestly but if you're using them to a very, very minute level inside of service Autopilot specifically or infusionsoft you're probably not gonna wanna join from day one because we're gonna have to build the customizability the same customizability throughout 2023. It's a big lift, it's a big financial development side of things. But yeah, job costing price matrix and fully customized automations are the three that if you're using those to a high extent and you're doing a million plus inside of another software I'd probably just wait. You'll get the free version of co pilot, check it out, keep you know, stay inside the group and things like that and then just wait until you know everything you need is on there. All right, next caller is from 573 Columbia. What's up?

I'm like. So I had a bit of a loaded question.

Cool.

I know in previous videos and stuff you've kind of always talked about how the franchisees will always have a majority of your attention just because a lot of these people has been their last dollar and really investing in the Augusta lawn care franchise. So I guess, I guess my main concern is.

Just with you coming. I feel like you came out with quite a few new things here, here in this, in the recent times with I guess the C Suite podcast. You have the courses, you're doing the, the event again this year and now you're coming out with the CRM, which, which I am super excited for. I guess I'm just concerned because companies like Jobber and Yardbook, all they do is just 100. They just run their CRM. I guess I'm kind of just worried about if, you know, something can maybe get flipped upside down within the Augusta franchise. Will this have an impact on the users of the CRM or is there maybe like a just a dedicated team that's only going to be working on the CRM?

Yep. So it'll be completely separate, if that makes sense. Yeah, totally. So it would be completely separate teams in terms of who's working Augusta versus the co pilot team. In terms of like all the things that I have going on. This comes down to in my opinion, finding really awesome people. So you mentioned several. Let me just talk about the ones you mentioned. So you mentioned like C Suite unfiltered. I spend 30 minutes a week doing that, recording it with Lee. He does all the recording, it's his, his podcast, et cetera. Everything else that I'm doing, it's the same way. For example, home service, cpa. I have a meeting with them once a week, mentioned maybe every two weeks with Lisa, Brad and the team that works on taxes and bookkeeping, all the rest of it. Our goal with Augusta, and I've been pretty clear about this, is we're trying to vertically integrate every single aspect of the home service industry. Right. And so whether that be the CRM down the road, I want to do a bank. I want to be able to control every single process from start to finish and have that as a service for our franchisees, but then also be able to rent that out to you. For example, Amazon competes directly with, with Walmart. However, Walmart uses Amazon to sell their products. And so even though they are quote unquote competitors, Walmart still sees the benefit of being on their platform. Even though they are quote unquote competitors, it's still better for them because the amount of logistics that are solved, the pricing power, et cetera. So how I see it is someone can join Augusta, get all access to the full Integration, they're going to get the cutting edge of everything. Or you can, you know, if you want your own brand, et cetera, totally fine, totally awesome. You can rent out elements of these different systems that I offer. In my opinion, they work the best when they're all fully integrated. And that's why we have Augusta lawn Care. But if someone does not want that, that's fine. I. My goal and the goal of Augusta is to change the level of professionalism in the landscaping industry, period. Full stop. Therefore, having a better CRM for us at Augusta is important, but having one that all of us in the industry can benefit from, also very important because that is the entire goal of why we ex list. So in terms of my attention and, you know, Augusta affecting it, like you said there at the very end about what happens if something happens with Augusta, how to affect Copilot. We are. We are cash flow positive at Augusta. We are profitable. Now, I don't ever foresee that changing in 2023. I made sure that every one of my businesses were profitable. Had hard conversations about with the managers at the very beginning of 2023, try 2022, and said, you know, we must become profitable, we must cut, we must do really hard stuff. Whatever it is, we must be profitable. I foresaw the recession and we really took that seriously. So I don't think that there'll be a problem in terms of, you know, negatively impacting from Augusta to Copilot. I would say that every great founder led CRM in this industry has come from someone that is in the weeds of the industry, not people that are good at software. And so whether you look at Jonathan Patosnik, who started Service Autopilot, no longer involved. Other CRMs have been built by these founders and have been sold off. Yes, City Turf, for example, in Texas, they compete with a lot of people, but there's a lot of people in their competition that uses service opera in that area. So I would not look at this as competition. If someone's really concerned, like, oh man, me supporting Copilot is going to be somehow supporting Augusta. And that sort of mindset, like, okay, fine, you're probably going to fall behind over the next five years as we develop this.

And.

And I would just say that a rising tide floats all boats. People inside of Augusta have to embrace this because they realize that the reason that we are also, we're not able to develop the software in house.