Copilot Mastermind 02/09/2025

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to another copilot Mastermind. Let's go ahead and jump in. Last week there was no questions submitted, so I did skip last week's mastermind. If you ever have a question throughout the week, fill the form out below. So in the description of this video there is a Google form link. It doesn't change so you can bookmark it if you want, inside of your browser, on your phone, anytime you have a question about marketing, business strategy, anything I can help with pricing information, feel free to submit that information on that form and and that will get answered on the next mastermind. Let's go ahead and jump right in. Today we got seven questions it looks like that have come in on the form and let's go ahead and get started. First question comes in from Cody McLeod from Proscape Lawn Care and Landscaping. If you haven't done the job, how are you calculating budget hours on mowing if you haven't mowed the lawn? I understand from experience estimating, but like you say, your crew won't be as efficient as we are. Will you have your crew mow it once you set your budget hours off of that so you can know how much more you can schedule that week? Yeah, like this will come with experience, be able to be accurate when it comes to budgeted hours. That being said, every three to six months I'm assessing all my job to see which jobs are we consistently not hitting budget hours. I'm going to raise prices on those assuming I'm not at capacity. So if I have lots of jobs coming in, all my crews working full time, all my trucks are out in the field, I'm at capacity. Every three to six months I'm looking at which are the jobs I'm consistently not hitting budget hours on. I'm going to raise the prices and therefore give more budget hours to those jobs. And so if you're just getting started in terms of hiring, you're going to usually take the amount of time it takes you to do the job and add like 20 to 30% at least because you're just going to be more efficient. But really budget hours is simply a function of taking the price that you're charging the customer and dividing it by the hourly rate that you are trying to target. That's your target hourly rate. Now I recommend to be at least $60 an hour for just about any home service. And you're really trying to shoot for $100 plus. If you can get a hundred dollars plus per hour of labor, many times that's when you have really good margins and good things happen. So that would be where I would start is taking your current prices that you have for all of your lawns, divide that by an hourly rate like $80 an hour. It's going to give you your budgeted hours. And then basically you just know now if you hit budget hours you're getting $80 per hour. If you do not hit budget hours, you're not making $80 per hour. So I've seen some people like my hourly rates 80 bucks an hour or $100 an hour and then I go and look and all they're never hitting budget hours. They're taking twice as long. And so now all of a sudden in theory they're actually making $40 or $50 per hour even though their budgeted hour rate, their target rate is 80 or 100. Adam Burkett from Pristine Green Lawn and Landscaping. I'm wondering about the logistics with giving your GM and iPhone for follow ups and upsell purposes. How do you handle when customers respond to the GM's iPhone number? Do you forward all messages to the office or would you have the GM take them through the rest of the sales and scheduling process even though it takes away time for the other things they are doing? And do they? Do you find that customers get confused with all the phone numbers of a mainline text line, copilot, text number, gym, iPhone, etc. How would you recommend navigating this? Specifically when customers will try to continuous contact the GM on their phone when you really want them to contact the office phone? Yeah. So on the office phone or on the cell phone that we give our general managers, their voicemail is going to be. Hey, this is Mike, I'm the estimator at Augusta Lawn Care. If you would like to reach the office for any sales or service related questions, feel free. Reach out, reach out to them and here's their number so they're not answering the phone. They use those phones for outbound only to be able to notify customers if they're late as well as to do follow up phone calls on estimates. So that's how we navigate it. And if you, you know, customers usually figure out pretty quickly that the copilot number, they can't call it, they usually text back but you could. So I've seen some members in copilot just at the very bottom is like text us back or give us a call at and they put their office number there. But I've rarely seen that being a problem in terms of the general managers. They don't tell customers that they're a general manager, they're the estimator. Cause that's really the only role that they are seen as to the customer is the estimator. And so and that that becomes less and less as we automate the sales function. And you simplify services because you need less and less in person estimates. But from our perspective, we are trying to do where the estimator is the general manager to the mind, in the mind of the customer. And so that way when they phone call comes in, they're not expected to answer it. It's going to go to their voicemail and that voicemail is going to point them to the office. Next question is from Adam Burkett as well. For instant pricing, what would be the best way to follow up with customers who decline the pricing? What would be the best way to automate this on copilot tags or something else? Yeah, so we still will, once we do the automate the instant pricing, if a customer declines, we're still going to send them an estimate inside of copilot and we're going to actually measure the property. So the goal is that we get instantly the pricing to the customer they accept. But if they decline, we're going to double check the pricing and measure the property. And we've actually seen about 10 to 15% of people that will decline an estimate. Once we send it to them from copilot instead of from our website, 1 out of 10 will accept the estimate. So sometimes it's just like they get it again or they did the instant pricing that next morning. We came in, measured the property, sent it to the customer and they're like, okay, well they were the only ones that got back to me. I contacted five other companies, they didn't even get back to me. I'm just going to go with it. So most of the time our pricing on instant pricing is the same as our measuring over the phone. But we like to triple check it just in case they have a weird property that they said large and so they're, they think they're like a 99 per cut. And then we measure the property. It's like it's actually 59 bucks. And so we will still measure the property and send them a quote even if they decline it from the instant pricing on our website. Cody asked as at what revenue do you need a non revenue producing employee. We have two owners, two mowing crews of two and one landscape crew of two. They will also mow as we fill our third route this spring. Looking to do 500,000 this summer. Our season is, is only May and October. We are looking to pull one of the owners out of the field to manage operations and sales. This is a smart move, this revenue. So really what you want to think about is instead of, instead of how like, um, is it smart to pull someone out? Is like, can we simplify, simplify and standardize all operations and create systems in the business to where we can hold our breath as long as possible without having to pull someone out of the field? Because as soon as you do this, you're going to take someone that is earning the business 100, $120,000 a year and turn them into a straight overhead expense. And so I would imagine last year you probably did 300, 350,000. So you're in the wilderness of profitability at 500,000, you're not going to make any more profit compared to where you were last year. And it's because likely you will need to pull someone out of the field. And so it's not a matter of is this a smart thing to do? It's a matter of it probably is likely required just to handle the emails, phone calls, sending out the estimates, admin work around payroll, et cetera, now that you have six, seven employees. And so this is why I generally like to have a working general manager over six to eight field technicians. And then if I simplify and standardize the services enough, they can still spend a majority of their time out in the field. If, if you outsource your admin, as soon as you get admin in house, you've got to scale, you got to get above 500,000. And so the vast majority of us, when we're growing our businesses past 300,000, start to really feel the pain of needing an admin person, someone to answer the phone, do the email, send out the estimates, et cetera. If you can hold your breath on getting someone full time, that would mean that you won't need as big of a shop space, you won't need to have a payroll, full time person, the office answering the phone, if you, if you can automate that. And again, the more you simplify your services, the better chance you're able to outsource this and get somebody to do it for you at a 80 to 90% of as good as you could do it. Because this is the why. Like if you have so many different services and complex things and moving parts and ways that you do your estimating schedule and the way you do your pricing, if it's all over the place, you will never be able to outsource your admin and you'll have to hire someone full time. And because you have to, the reason you need them full time is because you need them to like, understand all these very intricate aspects of how you run the company. And so you'll never be able to outsource it. So you'll need someone full time. And at 300,000, if you're managing operations and managing the crew and they have a full time person in the office with an office space, etc. You're just not going to be profitable. And so this is why it's so important to simplify, not go way far service areas. Because if you can't, if you can't make sense of the business Financially, at 300, 350, you'll go to 500,000, make just the same amount of profit, but, but way more work, way more effort, more crews, more liability, et cetera. So just know you are in the wilderness of profitability between 200,000 and 500,000. Typically you don't see any more profit added to the bottom line. Even though you're growing revenue. It's usually because your profit margin drops due to the fact that you as the owner, or in this case, one or one of the owners is stepping out of the field and becoming an overhead position. And that is damaging the bottom line. So just keep that in mind. I'm not saying you shouldn't do this, I'm just saying you shouldn't. You will do this. You will get to 500,000 this year. Awesome. You're growing probably 30, 40, 50% a year, over year. Actually, probably more. That's great. You're in growth mode. But keep in mind that you're probably not gonna see as much on the bottom line. That's fine. Because the year after, what I would love for you to do is hit 500,000 and then the year after, keep it at 2, 2 landscaping crews, 2 mowing crews, 7, 8 employees. But raise your prices substantially. I'm talking 25 to 30%. And if you do that, you're gonna make 600 to 700,000 the year after. But be very, very profitable. So I'm not opposed to what you're doing, just I would highly Recommend hit that 500,000 level and then take a year and be in profit mode. Raise your prices, reduce your marketing spend, really focus on up sales through text and email. Inside copilot.

Will Kelly from Military long cuts. Right now, our Office manager gets 10% profit sharing guaranteed each quarter from 4 our main location, I promised her profit sharing around that percentage. If you stuck around when we opened our second location, we likely will hit profit mode on that location this year. And the GM gets 30% of profits since he helped me build it from the ground up. If I give the office manager 10% of the second location, that would put me at 40% to managers plus the 10% goes to the perfect new, perfect attendance field cruise. Am I overextending myself with profits? I'm trying to take care of my people but not give it all away. What's the most profit distribution percentage you would give out? So yeah, my locations I'm willing to give over 50% assuming I am never in the business. So like one of my locations, I've never even been to the shop, ever. The other location, I haven't been there in five, six, seven, seven months. Something like that. Probably. Yeah, at least. So like the reason, the reason I'm willing to give so much higher in profits is because of that. And so if you're, if you're talking with the general manager every day, you're playing regional manager. And so I usually am reserving like at least 10 to 20% of profit sharing just for my regional. So if you're, if you're serving as regional, I would be trying to cap this at 40%, no more to me, have enough meat on the bone to pay yourself as the regional manager plus owner's distributions. But if you're very heavily involved in the business, you want to keep that as low as possible and then give them incentive to get to the higher levels if they take things off your plate. So the fact that GM is getting 30% of profits, I would hope that they are making almost all buying decisions, hiring decisions, etc. Because that's basically where I'm at. Like 35% is where I start location. Brand new GMs that start with from zero, they can get to 35% of, of distributions. I don't know if you're doing distributions or doing profit sharing because, because I'm willing to even hire in distributions. But if you're doing profit sharing 35%, that's pretty good and they've earned it. It's just a matter of is there enough meat on the bone. And if you're doing profit sharing, be careful of you having an off season, having a negative quarter. If you have a negative quarter, the question is, are they going to put money back in business? No. And so be very careful with doing quarterly profit sharing unless you are doing distributable cash or where there would just be no profit sharing if you have a negative quarter or you take into account the fact that you're going to have months where if you have a quarter, especially when you're growing growth mode, that there's negative $30,000 in profits. Well, if they have 50% of profit sharing, are they going to contribute $15,000 business no. So instead of actually giving 40 or 50%, you might be getting 60, 70, 80% of profits away. If you're not, if you're only giving them the upside of good quarters and not participating the downside of bad quarters. Be very careful of this when it comes to quarterly profit sharing. If you're not doing distributable cash, so will I'm guessing you're doing distributable cash.

Use profit distribution percentage, but I don't know. I'm guessing using distributions, I would just say if as long as you don't have a bunch of debt will try to get into where you're doing distributable cash instead of just regular profit sharing because you just, unless you have where every quarter of the year you're profitable, then you'll be okay. But I see this time and time again I ran into the same problem. I made big mistakes where I'd give people profit sharing based on quarterly PNLs and then they'd have 1/4 here usually Q1 after Q4 collapse. Q1 would just be horrible in massive negative territory, but yet like they didn't have to contribute to that massive hole. And so in Q2 they, they make profit on the PNL in Q2 only and then I'm paying a big chunk of profit sharing where it's like, look, I'm still haven't even dug myself in a hole from Q1, so don't do that either. Do distributable cash where you set a threshold of how much money needs to be in the bank and anything over that becomes distributable or have some sort of like, okay, if Q1 is negative Q2, we're taking out Q's 1's losses before we distribute profit sharing in Q2.

Well, Kelly has another question. What makes a better GM, a money motivated GM or a purpose and driven GM?

This is difficult because money isn't dependent on you. Purpose and vision is dependent on you. So you're gonna have bad days, you're gonna have good days. If they're basing the purpose working for you based on your purpose and vision, there might be times you Question that, doubt that, or make mistakes and they might leave over that. So I like to have someone's balance between the two. They're money motivated, they like to have annual targets, annual goals. They like a lot of commission. That tells me that they're money motivated. Typically if someone wants a higher base pay and they don't want more commissions, I'm usually okay, that's great, that's fine. They're playing the safe route. But I do take that into account when it comes to like leadership roles and future prospects of moving them inside the company. Because I want someone that's extremely motivated by the business winning. And when the business wins, they win big. And so I like money motivated because it's just so black and white. It's numbers driven purpose and vision for the business, it'll change. And for them, their purpose and vision in life will change because they'll get married, they'll have life events, they'll have personal circumstances. And so that can actually be very difficult. Especially if your purpose and vision for the business is simply to make more money. Like if you actually, if your vision and purpose is, hey, we just make this thing as profitable as possible, grow it. Like, there's no shame in that. It's great to be able to provide jobs, make more money for your team, make more money for your family, create a better life and be able to provide local jobs, that's awesome. But like, don't try to feign vision and purpose. If you start making these big claims that you'll never be able to measure up to, you will, you will take someone who is purpose and vision motivated and then they will, just over the course of two or three or four years are like, oh, they don't do what they say they're going to do because your visions and goals are so massive. Like if you don't have benchmarks to be able, for me personally, I do not talk about the vision and mission of the big thing until I know I'm going to hit it. And like I have all this, all the benchmarks in place, I have the people in place. Like we're going, we're going there because you have to be very careful. If you talking to purpose and driven, purpose and vision driven team members that if you don't have evidence that you actually do what you say, you're going to actually lead to a very, very jaded person. And so I like money motivated, especially in growth mode. And then as purpose and vision driven people, assuming they've been with me for a long time and they've seen a track record, then that's what they're really basing their entire trust on is that, oh, they've done this in the past when they said they were going to do it. Therefore when they give this 5, 10, 15 year plan down the road, I have trust and confidence they'll actually deliver on it. So just be very careful if you have someone's purpose and vision driven to not just suck up to them essentially and keep them around by saying really big thing that one day we'll do this. And be very careful. You want to make sure you have a plan in place and you know you can actually produce on it. So even inside of Augusta Nation, it's been 10 years since I started Augusta or 11, almost 11. And it was only in 2024 that I started talking about like what our future, future goals are like eight to 12 years down the road with bringing copilot Augusta, the media side together and going public together so that we can fund robotic development. That's a long ways down the road. But I'm very confident now that I have the polices in place. Even though that's been the back of my mind for two or three years and it's been something I've been planning. So I just, I think if you talk to the people who have been with me for five, ten years, that that's, that's the thing that they can put their flag in the ground is like, even if he has something big in his mind or will say something like he's going to have a plan, he's going to execute like religiously towards it. So I, I would, I would. If you have vision and which is great, they're not, I'm not saying that those sort of individuals are not, are lower quality money motivated. Just be very careful that you don't get sucked into just promising the world to them without having measurable elements and benchmarks of success. It's like, hey, if we're going to get here, well, what's year one look like? What's your two look like? What's your three look like is are we making measurable progress towards that goal and that massive vision that that's been put forth? Next question. Would you hire another purpose or visionary type GM to run your own locations? Typically your purpose and visionary type are going to want to go start their own location or start their own business. They're usually very entrepreneurial. So unless you're growing extremely fast, you're probably going to lose them, to be honest with you. And so I Was talking with new owners inside of Augusta last week. We had training, we have another training this week. And so they were talking about like, how do you retain people, et cetera. And I said, I said, hey, like off the top of my head, these are some of the things. Number one, you got to be able to pay them well and you got to, you want money, money motivated people and you want every year to three years be able to pay them more. As long as they just constantly are working their, their hand like their face off. If they're working their face off and you're growing the business, awesome. That's the first thing, money. Second, growing the business. If you look at like people like Elon Musk that attract really good talent, they're constantly in growth mode. Like they're just growing and growing. And growing is about like grow top line revenue, grow infrastructure, grow technology, grow the team. Like it's all about like risk. Usually people that are very visionary and purpose driven, they're entrepreneurial and they want to be in that sphere. So if you want them underneath you, you need a vision big enough for them to fit their goals and dreams inside of. And.

Yeah, so make where they can make more money where they, where the business is growing very, very quickly. Because usually if you don't grow quickly enough, you'll lose them. And this is why like years ago I actually went like a year or two advance of franchising because I knew I would lose Lee and Liz. I would like another year of just like, hey, make a bunch of profit. The one location they would have just got bored and I probably would have lost them because they were more purpose and visionary and those people are entrepreneurial and you gotta grow in order to be able. There's gotta be challenged meat for them to sink their teeth into. So mine was like money be growing the business really fast, be able to yourself work like hell to be able to put in front of them what is required for them to make more money and grow the business. And then the fourth thing was off my dome. Sorry, it was.

Oh yeah, you say you do what you say you're going to do. Kind of what we just talked about, honestly, in terms of when you say certain things, it's not hot air. When you put projections out there, it's not just airy fairy. You actually look at them as promises. And that's how I've always looked at it is like if I'm going to give goals and visions to my team, I look at these as targets and I look to them as promises. Even if it's like this is what we're trying to do. I look that personally, I will not say those words until I have a roadmap, I have a plan and I look as a promise to my team. So if you execute on that and constantly are delivering, then they get you gain their trust and then that's usually when someone's more entrepreneurial or vision minded will stay inside the company because it's entrepreneurial led. Instead of like all of these systems in the next 10 years do the exact same thing. Usually someone is going to move on if they're really that excellent. And honestly, if you're not trying to grow massively and you're not trying to constantly add new things, et cetera, that's fine. Just realize you're going to need to tap into a more operationally driven general manager or leader that likes incremental progress, that likes tweaking things. And there, there's not that they're any better or worse. Like you need both, you absolutely need both. Because as the entrepreneur, your career entrepreneur even creates and builds new things. They need operators behind them to systematize, make it more efficient, et cetera. So like even, even like Elon for example, he does Tesla well now he's doing like, he goes and buys Twitter, makes that x, he has SpaceX, all these other things, like there's still some hardcore operators inside of Tesla that made it profitable. Like it's only become profitable in the past five years. Before that was burning money all the time. And when he was involved the most they were burning money, it was in growth mode. But then he gets operators behind him that believe in the vision. They like tweaking things, they like looking at the manufacture, manufacturing process and tweaking the software and just making it just right. And that's when it becomes profitable. So if you just have a bunch of entrepreneurs in an organization, it'll usually be, be an absolute mess, it'll be chaos. That's what led to like 2021, 2022, these startups getting tons of funding and then just burning out and never actually making a profitable product. You have a bunch of entrepreneurs building things, but no operators to actually get in the weeds and systematize, operationalize and make things profitable and efficient. So I think you need both. But if you're trying to attract the former and entrepreneurial vision type person, you're going to be growing fast, you need to have money incentives, you need to be working like crazy and you got to be saying, doing what you said, you're going to do. All right, everyone, hope you have a fantastic rest of your day again. If you have comments questions down below in the description, there's a link to a Google form. Fill that out and I'll answer it on the next week's Copilot Mastermind. Thank you all. Take care.