Copilot Mastermind 01/05/2025

Hello, co pilot members. Welcome to another Copilot mastermind. We're going to go ahead and jump right in and get this party started. A quick reminder, if you are or you are not coming to Blue Collar Summit in a couple weeks, make sure you sign up for the MVP award and when. $10,000 for a vacation to Italy for you and your family. You do not have to be in attendance at Blue Collar Summit, but people at Blue Collar Summit will be the ones that are voting on the mvp. The MVP is going to be whoever had the biggest transformation in their business and their personal life. And all the details of how you can register for this is@copilot CRM.com MVP now, even if you don't win the $10,000, everyone who applies and submits a video for the submission will be getting invite to a in person one day with myself at the headquarters and and we will spend time just talking through your business and improving it one on one. So I think, I think it'll be really helpful whether, regardless of whether you win the prize or not, that you can come out here in person, get some training for myself and hopefully help you grow your business in 2025. So again, copilot.com/ MVP. I think about a week away from those being due. So it is time to chop, chop. Get to it. Let's go. All right, so we're into the questions. Number one of five, it looks like today. First one's coming from Victor Bulldog Turf Management. I would like to implement P4P in 2025. Our main service is fertilization and weeding control. Many of our customers have additional services during the year that are complete at the same time as a fertilization app. Additional products are mixed to the tank and applied in one pass over the lawn and build accordingly. For instance, a customer could get a $75 fertilization and $125 fungicide application all in one pass. How do you suggest paying the technician using PvP? No additional work is being done. It's just a higher invoice because of multiple services. Worried about technicians arguing over who should service what customers. The technicians do not have dedicated routes. So if they don't have dedicated routes, you kind of get around this because it's going to be somewhat random throughout the days and weeks where you'll be putting them. And so as long as you aren't being showing favoritism, then you should be fine. I would also say I still don't mind them getting a percentage of the revenue, even though it doesn't take them any longer for like one fertilization versus one that's $50 more because then they're incentivized to upsell because if they know this, it's like, hey look, it's 75 bucks if you're gonna get 10% of that or 15% of that or whatever you're giving them. Look, you could, if you could just double the amount of revenue you're getting for the business, you will double the amount you're making on that job and then really incentivize upselling. So I would very, very, very much use the upsell feature inside copilot because you literally could just have like five or six different types of fertilizers that they could upsell the customer based upon the needs of the of the lawn. So I would highly recommend this. I shared this last week in the Facebook group. But literally just having the upsell feature toggled on in settings, the average revenue of users inside COPA went up by 29%. And again, if someone does that, toggling on doesn't do anything. But it does show me that that person is thinking about upselling. They're constantly trying to sell more products and services to their existing customers. So I highly recommend that. And even though they don't do anything for this revenue, you want that to be the incentive and that is get more revenue per spray per visit that you're there and incentivize them heavily by simply telling them you just make more money doing the exact same thing if you can upsell these customers more services.

Brendan from BH Landscape what is the best way to track data for man hours with Copilot? With 17 plus crews, our only option is to have the crew leaders clock in for their crew in copilot. Some crew members don't have a phone or aren't able to utilize a cellular app. Is there a smooth way to compare budget hours versus actual hours specifically with multi member crews? If not, what would you suggest as an alternative to collect this data? Example, if a six. If a budget. If a visit has six budget hours, three men for two hours, the crew leader will clock in all three members. But once the visit is completed, copilot only shows the duration is it took for one of the members to complete the work. The approved track time tab then shows shows general work for any non lead crew members even though they were added onto a specific visit by the crew leader. Yeah, so we're scoping this out. We're looking at several different ways that this could be done. Basically for crew leaders to clock in their crew. There's. There's several ways that can be done. And so we just want to make it sure it's the smoothest. Right now. There isn't a way for someone to clock in a whole bunch of other people and then track those other people's times. Everyone needs to have an access and a user account. Now, when we did this, everyone thought that the reason we did this is because we want to make a bunch of money on individual user accounts. It's not literally like user accounts make such a tiny piece of our revenue. So what we're trying to figure out now is like, what's the easiest way for this to happen? Whether it be, do you have to select who you're clocking in on your crew? Does it automatically clock everyone in that's assigned to a job and do the job at one given time, et cetera? So there's a plethora of ways to do this. We're trying to figure out the best way to do it right now and we are scoping this out. We've talked to several members already how this could be done. The easiest way for crew leaders to clock in their crew members, you can already have people, users inside of copilot and employees without having a mobile app user. It's just a matter of clock. Like tracking their time right now is not possible possible if they're not clocking in and out of the job. So it's not perfect for in the instance where you might have non drivers or people that don't have a license or they don't have a phone, et cetera. So that's become bigger, a bigger problem for the, the companies that do have 15, 20, 30, 40, 50 employees and something that like, we always have our team. Everyone has to have a phone, everyone has to clock in and out so we can track everything a little more. But I can see completely see the, the use case for it. We have talked to several members that also have a lot of crews and are having the same issue and we are scoping this out. So I don't have any timeline or like when this is going to be fixed, but we are scoping this out, Brendan. And I would say for now, worst case, you're going to, you're manually, you know, changing the budget hours or the clocked hours on a job to match how many people you know are on the crew. But it's not, you know, it's going to take you an extra three to four minutes probably every day for each crew. Not Ideal, but probably the only workaround right now if you're trying to get the accuracy of the clocked hours. If only one person's clocking in on a crew, that's probably what I would say for now. And then just know we are scoping this out and seeing what we could do to make sure that that is remedied. Next one's from Brendan. Also, in a larger business, it seems easier to justify more costs and expenses, particular in labor and staff. How do you determine which areas you can trim the fat? Alternatively, if growth is a goal, how do you go about encouraging growth in those fatty areas as opposed to just cutting them off? All of this with the assumption that ownership doesn't want to micromanage everything and build the business to be as self sustaining as possible.

Yeah, so I think the main thing is tracking your direct labor because even if you're trying to go into hyper growth and like if you go into a bunch of growth, assuming you're not changing your pricing strategy, you should be able to keep your direct cost relatively the same. And I say that because that way it gives you the flexibility to be able to continue growing massively in a growth. By hiring salespeople, more admin, generating more leads, doing door knocking, you can go go crazy, but not affect your direct costs, which is mostly revolving around your direct labor. So that's the most, the biggest thing I'm kind of tracking in terms of trimming the fat. What I'm literally looking at though is fixed cost. So if I'm going to go into growth mode, I don't want to hire estimators, I don't want to hire full time salaried office people, I don't want to have to upgrade the size of my shop space. So the more I can reduce fixed expenses and turn them into variable costs, the better. So for example, I'm going to go heavy into growth. I'm going to try to get a door hanger person that is on as a subcontractor. I don't want a full time employee, I don't wanna put them on salary. If, if possible I, if I start growing a bunch, I would rather use my current shop space and be able to double the business instead of doubling the business, but also getting a shop space that costs two to three times as much every single month. So what I'm really looking at is can I go the business without increasing or ideally decreasing the percentage of my revenue, it's going to fix cost every month. So the thing that I like about growth and this is why profits are your highest at your max capacity. Because when you're fully utilizing your shop, fully utilizing your crew, fully utilizing all of your trucks and equipment, this means that I have the lowest percentage of my revenue being going out to fixed expense that is possible. That's why it's the most profitable. Because if I have fixed expenses, let's say 2,000, $3,000 for a shop, I have payments on my trucks, payments on my equipment, et cetera, all this fixed expenses, my insurance, et cetera, if I can get everything to be used every single day, six days a week and the shop is like packed but not like completely jammed like we can make do. But I can make things more efficient to work within the confines of keeping those fixed expenses without having to increase them. Because if I can do that, as I grow the top line revenue, if I can keep my fixed expenses the same, my fixed expense ratio might drop from say 50, 15, 14, 13, 12%. And that's good. And those are fixed expenses. So obviously having debt is going to be a fixed expense. You're paying your, on your loans no matter what. So this is why the number one reason why in home services getting debt is risky is because during your off season when your revenue dives, your, your, your fixed expenses stay the same. And so if I'm in growing, going in growth mode, the number one thing I'm looking at is can I keep my fixed expenses low? Or better yet keep them actually decrease the percentage of my revenue that's going to fixed expenses as I scale the revenue. Because what you can do to artificially grow is just pump money into fixed expenses. For example, you can just go sign a lease for a massive billboard and yes, you'll drive more leads, but you just increase your fixed expenses. You can go hire a full time salesperson and that's great, but you just increased your full, your fixed expenses. You put them on salary or payroll or whatever. So like I'm trying to keep as many things as possible flexible in terms of can I, can I use a call center during my peak hour, peak season? Can I have a salesperson that's on commission that does door hangers or some other commission based something or 1099 instead of W2. Do I need to have an admin person? Because if I have the average person, I also have to upgrade my shop space and I have to upgrade my Internet and have to get utilities like your utilities from Comcast are not changing. So you're going to pay $300, $400 a month for that. Great Fiber optic Internet, great. But then during the winter you're still going to be paying that 3, $400 even though your revenues half or less. So that's what I'm always keeping a track of during hyper growth is can I keep my percentage of fixed of revenue that goes to fixed expenses at the same or ideally lower. And this is why again I want to grow to capacity because anything less below capacity I am, I am paying a higher percentage of my revenue to fixed expenses. So I want to have full ma, like maximize asset utilization. So I would always be looking at like again capacity based growth. How much revenue could I grow to without having to buy more trucks, Hire, hire more people, get more equipment, get more shop space, hire an admin person, hire a salesperson. These are all levels that I know as I grow I want to sprint to them each and every time so I can maximize my profit each level.

Chris from Green Unlimited, which strategies can you recommend to motivate or move on production tech that is happy making less than everyone else and just barely making the minimum standard. I'd like to get this person producing at a higher level or free up the truck and spray team for someone to produce the higher numbers. So ultimately you can lead a horse to water, but you might spend more time trying to force them to drink than just getting another horse. So this really comes down to you probably care about them. Uh, and because like if this was just a, an employee, you would be looking for the most utility from them. And if they can get, you know, use from the business and use from the wages you give them, awesome, fantastic. They get to the next level of their career, Fantastic. They can move on, make more money, fantastic. Gain more skills. But ultimately if you've done everything in your power and someone still is just like they're not basically this person is probably not money money motivated either. And so it's a matter of like, well can I give them something else to motivate them? Whether it be rank, title, position, incentive for something else besides money. Well now it becomes if you have too many incentive structures inside the business, it starts to get complicated. And so I've seen some people do this where it's like, well okay, well this employee, they really wanted to have a truck, so I gave them a truck. But then they make less on pay for performance and less per hour. And then they don't get, they don't get benefits because they got this other thing. And then they start customizing every compensation thing inside the business. It gets so confusing. And then what happens is People start comparing to other people. So I can guarantee you there's people that are comparing to this person's low performance and saying, well, they hardly work. Why they even keep this person on. And keep in mind, especially if you're in a smaller organization, that people will revert to the lowest denominator of effort. So if, if the lowest person organization is somehow able to stay on, like they're not getting fired, you're basically telling everyone, hey, you can perform at this person's level and still work here. And so sometimes we always look at, we're always looking for great talent, ie, if you look at like stack rank of all the talent in your team, we're always looking for like the top performers instead of just think constantly thinking about another way to bring up the average talent pool of your entire company is just cut your bottom people. And so that seems vicious, but it sounds to me like you've done everything you can just from reading this, that you, you've done what you can like encourage this person and you know everything. Like I'm assuming all of those things have been done. If you've tried to talk to them, you care about them, make sure there's nothing personal in their personal life going on, preventing them from performing, seeing what does incentivize them or motivate them to be able to grow and get more skills and hustle and make more money. And so I would only judge this person if they were by the way, on pay for performance. So for me personally, until I have a compensation model that rewards better work, I'm not going to judge someone because if you're just saying, well, like it's our, it's our culture and everyone works that way. Good luck trying to find people that just intrinsically motivated to work hard. That is a harder system to win with versus making working hard in their best interest by giving them more money now. So I'm assuming first and foremost they're on a pay for performance model. If they're not, I would be looking at that very, very first. Because some people are actually very money motivated, but they also have other things in life that they have going on and they just realize, okay, I can make a few dollars more less per hour and work half as much. And you're like, that's not good. Yeah, but you haven't incentivized them to do otherwise. And so I've seen some people be low performers and then all of a sudden pay for performance gets involved and they get money, their money motivated and they just go for it. You say, well, why wouldn't they have done that in the past? Because in the past you're paying people two or three dollars more per hour for someone that works twice as hard. So it doesn't even actually make sense for them to put in 100% more effort to get 10% more wages. And so this is why P4P. Until that is in place and the benchmark is set in terms of incentives, I will not judge the team member. That's always how I've looked at it. Assuming they are in production and labor type positions, there are definitely creative positions, there are managerial positions. You're not going to be able to do pay for performance. But for a crew member in this like production tech, like you're talking about here, who's just happy making less money, realize if I'm not incentivizing them to do more production, why would they like they literally might be doing the math in their head and like, okay, I make 10, 15% less, but I work half as much and I'm still not losing my job. Cool. I'm doing TikTok. I'm doing stuff. I'd rather just make 10% less because it's not worth me putting in so much effort. But make it worth them putting in the effort and then judge them. That would be my $0.02 on pay for performance. But then just realizing if you've done all of that and you've done everything that you got to improve the talent average of your team, we can all try to find the unicorns, the highest performers. I can guarantee you it is easier to increase the talent density of your team by cutting your lowest performer than finding someone who is better than your top performer.

All right, number five. Mr. Anonymous, when submitting our MVP award videos, we have a feeling that a large, a local, larger competitor of ours will be there and we'll see all our numbers, specific things we did to grow extremely rapidly, etc. They've been to one of your summits before and have tried taking info out of us acting as a fake client. Do you have any advice to alleviate this concern? I do think this concern is unwarranted. I understand this fear. I felt this way a long time. As for some from someone who has shared all of my numbers that I constantly share the numbers with my frontline team members. Those frontline team members have gone on and they are competitors in some of my markets now. It's still just best to invest in my opinion share. And so when it comes to like sharing the numbers externally, I think you could reach out to this person. I genuinely believe that. I really hope that the community inside of copilot, as time goes on, can grow to the point where we make this the standard. That's why we have the map. So if you go to the copilotcm.com map, you can actually see all the members on the map and see who you can meet up with, etc. Because I truly believe that a rising tide does float all boats. And I also believe this is like one thing I talked about last year at conference. Let's assume that everyone, everyone figured out your pricing. Okay, what are they going to do? Let's assume that they're higher than you. You know what they're going to do? Oh man, they're lower than us. What are they going to do? Lower their prices, which is a good thing for you because they just made less money. And then that's. Assume that you're way more expensive than them. You know what they're going to do? Raise prices, which goes. What's that going to do? It's going to make you more money because you'll increase your close ratio because now the average of what everyone else is getting bids for is also higher. So like, whether your pricing is higher or lower than a competitor, them knowing your numbers doesn't change anything. And so people knowing the secret sauce. I can tell you from experience, and I'm going to talk, I'm going to actually share the numbers of this at conference, blue collar summit. I'm going to share how many people have actually used P4P. And I have shared everything openly. And at the very beginning, when I started sharing this stuff publicly, owners inside of Augusta nation were afraid that, like, then everyone's going to do this. It's insanity. Like, it's crazy. There is less than 150 businesses that use pay for performance software.

To, to this day, after years of me promoting it and having a book boom, boom right there and, and people talking about still less than 150 people outside of Augusta nation still use it. So what I propose is that your, your, your, your competitors, let's assume they are malicious first and foremost. If they're following what you're doing, it means you're ahead. It means that you're leading. It means that you're ahead of them. And so realize that as a leader, you will have people that will follow you and they will copy you. But guess what? They're behind you. And that's a good thing. And so first off, I would be trying, if I was you, to reach out to them and, like, have more of a partner, not partnership, but like a good relationship. That would be my first goal. And I know that's not easy and it's hard and people say stuff sometimes and it's weird a little bit sometimes. I get that. If they are at summit, I would recommend trying to be there and meet with them. Um, don't share things in. In the video then also that you feel is like, super proprietary. I promise you, there's not a lot proprietary in this industry. It is doing the basics that makes people successful. And so for every whiz bang that is talking about some crazy technology they're using or some lead strategy or whatever, those are not the big companies. The big companies are the ones that have done the basics for year after year after year after year. And so I would just. I. I don't believe this is a valid concern, but if you, if it makes you feel really, really horrible, don't share anything proprietary or you think that's like a secret sauce, just glaze over it. Like if you have a certain text message that you send out, that's just beautiful. Just say you send out text messages because that's just a normal thing. And you're like, well, it's. It's my secret sauce. Then keep the secret sauce. That's fine. But I promise you, what makes big businesses big in home services is not secret sauces. It is the people that are executing, they're implementing, they're on the edge of technology and they're constantly testing out what's working in their market. So I would personally not be concerned about that. But I understand the concern from someone that has, you have local competition, etc. From myself. I have local competitors too. And when I first started creating content, I wasn't making money from my content for the first few years. I was sharing all of my numbers, all of my pricing. And yes, there were times where people would use it against me. Ultimately, you know, if you fast forward today, like, I'm ahead of them. And so if you're. If someone's copying you, it ultimately means you are ahead of them. So I would look as a huge compliment if your competitor is doing that. I realize that you will be far ahead of them in the future because that will only compound as time goes on. I love you all. I hope you have a fantastic rest of your weekend. If you haven't already, do submit that MVP video. I look forward to seeing you all at Blue Collar Summit. And until next time, I'll see you next week. Take care.