Copilot Mastermind 04/04/2025

Hello everyone and welcome to another copilot mastermind. Let's get this party on the road. This past week quite a few updates based upon feedback given from Modern Estimates. The team is shaping together a lot of that feedback and the surveys etc to be able to make another release in several weeks. So thank you all for that feedback. One thing that you'll be seeing coming out next week as well, just a update around the SMS page. They pushed out a release a couple days ago that really really sped that up. It was taking like 1015 seconds to load, especially if you had thousands of customers and it was limiting to how many you know in the search only 2000 messages. So more than a 5x increase in speed on the loading of the SMS page. Especially again if you have a lot of customers. That's it was starting to bog it down. So a couple other little updates this week. As always check out the release notes for the weekly updates. But again thank you all for your feedback on the Modern Estimates inside the customer portal. There will be a fast follow here in a few weeks to release and based upon all of that feedback, if you didn't see it, there was a webinar and we had some direct feedback but also the surveys that were submitted, those were taken into account as well. Let's go ahead and get started on the questions. As always, down below in the description of this video is a link to the Google form where you can get these questions submitted. Tim Wright from the Wright Brothers Tree Service asked, what is the status of wisetac and have you considered using another company for financing? So we currently do not have any plans for wisetax specifically. We are currently scoping and looking into the possibility of actually doing it directly through Stripe's payment system. This is something they're still working on and we will just be seeing if that's an ideal case. We don't have any plans doing rise tack though several reasons why, but mostly around the usage data we have of it isn't that high. However, if we can use something like Stripe where it's baked into the payment and the checkout process, we see that being more useful and just a higher usage rate. So more details on that. Whether or not we even do it, I can't guarantee that but we are currently looking into that option with Stripe since they have their own buy now pay later financing options. Marco from Riptide Softwash we were recently hit with a name trademark violation history. Both businesses were registered within the first two weeks of each other, within two weeks of each other, but we made the mistake of taking a fictitious name as our dba. It was registered with the state, but it wasn't enough to protect us from the registered trademark. After finalizing the name, how do you suggest we roll up the new name exactly? Example 1 Change all print digital web Google Ads. 2. Change uniforms and trucks 2A Introduce co branding names to existing clients. Open to your thoughts? Yeah, I do it as quickly as possible internally. It's like uniforms, trucks, branding and then just send one email out to customers or even better for your existing customers in your database that you're serving. I would just roll it out with your next like invoice or your next estimate email. I wouldn't make a big deal of this. Customers don't lose sleep over the fact that you changed your name. And I actually, I remember on our onboarding call, Marco, you talked about the fact that your logo isn't changing, it's just the naming. So like I actually don't think people will even notice a difference. Honestly I would probably keep this pretty low key. Especially like your trucks and stuff. People see the logo, if that's the same, you're just changing the actual word. I really don't think people will care or like it won't be a big deal to them unless they're writing out checks to you and they're changing the name of the company. They're putting checks too. So assuming you're not taking checks, I don't think this will be a big deal. I would make this either a quick email and highlight positives around it. So if you've just moved into Copilot you can like hey now here's all the positive of that and not mentioning copilot, just saying like hey, our business name has changed to this. No change to you. But we are upgrading our systems at the same time and now you can have automated reminders or your ACH and credit card on file or etc. So. So I would try to just wrap it in with what's good for the customer. Nathan from NLS Lawns Should I be keeping an admin full time at 400 to 700k revenue during Q4? There isn't many calls or tasks but it keeps a lot. It's a lot of work to keep switching admins. This is the challenging part this size of business is you want to keep them during Q4 and Q1 because they're good and it's a pain in the butt to switch out admins like you said. But then it's expensive during the off season to keep them. So I would do one of two things. One, I would focus all of my energy on solving Q4 collapse to get leads during the off season to be able to keep the admin person. So you're not the 400 level. You're much more on that 7,800,000 plus. But more importantly, your leads, revenue and profit stay more stable throughout the off season. Then you can afford your admin person keep them on full time. Otherwise I at 4 or 500,000. If you have a big drop off in calls and leads in the Q4 you can't afford. You cannot afford to pay someone 5, $6,000 a month to do nothing. You just can't. And so that's when I would be trying to maybe do three, four months full time and then maybe they switch to part time for the next four months and then they're off for three or four months. If you're at that 4 or 500,000 annual revenue marker, you have a huge drop off with the off season. That's what I would be doing. But. But if you can fix like I would not be spending any marketing dollars or trucks or anything for spring rush. I mean how do we solve Q4 collapse? So you know mikeannies.com workshop, it's completely free, walks you through how to do that. There's five different ways I would deploy 100% of your energy towards that if you want to keep that admin person full time year round. Jonathan from Amory Lawn Care, will you look at my website, give me feedback. We really appreciate it. Okay, let's give this a shot. I'll just do this quickly. By the way, if you ever have want us to look at these, we can do these more in depth if you go to longcarewebdesign.com call or homeservicewebdesign.com call we will do this for 15 minutes for free. Not with myself but the team. They're all fantastic. Okay, so lots of issues I see with this. You have background image as your background. See how this like I can't even see the name of your business until I zoom out. So it looks like you have HTML. I'm at 90% zoomed in and I still can't see anything. So just very dated. This is a mobile widget. So.

Yeah like this isn't clickable the phone number. So I like this. This is pretty good in terms of having above the fold. It's hard to read this. So it's mostly just design things. I have problems with like this purple on Green is hard to see.

This whole thing is very mobile. Like I'm guessing this is. I don't know what you build this on me. Squarespace or something. A wix? Yeah. So it's entry level. It's good, it's better than nothing. But I do see a lot of flaws with just the design and I think you could double or triple the conversion of this page just by of this website by simply just optimizing that, cleaning this up, the background image like lots of things like that. So I think it can be improved. It's better than nothing. But even this like get estimate is just a loop to your homepage. It doesn't go anywhere. So mostly design elements in here that I think could be improved. But again feel free as always. Lawn carewebdesign.com call if you are in the green industry. Homeservicewebdesign.com call. You can book 15 minutes with the team. They'll give you tips and tricks. They'll see if working with us is beneficial. But usually we really recommend doing at least 200,000 to be able to afford those services. But until then, like watch my videos on YouTube. I break down like 20, 30 websites at a time and you'll see the commonalities of the design things that I recommend. It's based upon just the data of what we see all the time. Hundreds of sites. Thorsten from Anytime Lawn Care Services. I've handed out 3,000 door hangers so far. I started in the middle of March and still handing them out. Now out of the 3,000 I have six clients from them. These are instant quote mowing door hangers, the one sold on longer web design. How can I get a better return from these without going back and knocking on every door telling them selling on my service? Also is there any good time to put these out? I will not be cutting till the middle of April so I still have time to hand out more. What should I do? Target higher income houses? Should I hand them out when starting service? Why isn't I turning so bad with the door hangers? Yeah, so every, any, any sort of direct response marketing is going to be most beneficial at the highest point of pain. If you haven't started mowing grass and you aren't going to for a few more weeks, people are not thinking about this. The six people that contacted you first off, I'd say another five or six are going to contact you in a few weeks once their lawn actually starts to grow. But you want to do direct response marketing when there is pain. Otherwise People don't take action. And so instant pricing is helpful. When they're looking at their, their yard, at the door hanger, and they're looking at their lawn and it's overgrown and they're like, oh, I can fix this very quickly. And they call you, submit it however you have it set up, email you, etc. So I would, I would venture to believe that if you got six out of 3,000, that you have 10 or 15 out of 3,000. If you did the exact same houses in three, four weeks once, the lawns a little shaggy. So timing of this is very important. Also, I would say if you're just getting started and that took you, you know, a week to get those 3,000 put out. You know, we had someone yesterday, put a thousand door hangers out in one day. Like, I just say you had 3,000 in a week, five customers a week. Not bad. Just keep scaling that. If you have more time than you have money, I'd keep doing that even with those numbers. But I do believe they'll substantially increase just given the fact that right now you haven't even started mowing grass yet. There's no pain for the customer to actually take action. Joe Roth from Rothco Lawn Care. Mike was the best way to open our books to employees because they don't seem to believe that I am being genuine. I was accused of having two books. The one I showed the team and the other one that I kept hidden. That is not true, but I have a hard time convincing them of that. Any ideas? We have two owners and currently no employees anymore. We are hiring against that next week. He said, I don't believe this is an issue because you have no employees. So this is actually not a current problem. This is a past problem you've had. So what's good about that is that these employees coming in, they have a new culture that you can set the standard for. But the only reason that this would happen is because you're hiding something. There's something you're hiding. Like if you actually open up the books, means everything is sound. Like pricing.

The profit loss statement. You can show them bank balances, you can show them everything. And I wouldn't do it from a form of like, I'm doing this. So you don't you do you trust me? You just show everything. Like, there's nothing to hide. And every single line of the P and L, I can open it up and explain it to them. Another thing you could do is have a bookkeeping service do it for you. So there is no ability for you to cook the books.

And so the only reason someone would say this is if they're, if you haven't explained the entire, like if there's anything that they can't see. So even like when I opened up books originally, I just showed everything. Like I always just let them click into every single line item if they wanted to. I'll explain everything, wages, insurance, everything. But then also explaining, okay, this is why, you know, debt, how would the debt payments work? This is how interest works, this is how, how much I make. And these are my wages, my owner salary. And I make that like a very reasonable amount. Like I would any general manager. So like there's always something being hidden here, something because they won't think that if you literally every single thing they ask about you have an answer for and it's there. Sometimes having a third party though doing their payroll is also helpful. Payroll and the bookkeeping. So like I never saw did my books, I never did my payroll. So like it was being given to me and they knew that person. So like if they really thought something was fishy, they go to that person like hey, there's something weird. And that person be like no, I'm doing exactly the way it's supposed to be done. Chris from Green Unlimited. I know we need to keep our online request online estimate request form short and sweet and stay away from the what is your home address? Big killer question. So a lot of people misunderstood me on this last email I sent out to everyone, basically encouraging everyone to keep their estimate request form short. By me saying about the 30% drop off on home address does not mean that you shouldn't ask for the home address. You need the home address. My point there is by asking for more detailed information from a customer you are going to have a drop off. And so avoiding those if possible is good. But you need the home address. Like I'm not saying that. I am simply saying that when we split test so many things at long hair web design and home service web design we can see like oh, if you just ask for someone's home address, 30% of people drop off. But I need the home address. So I'm not saying you should not have the home address. What I'm saying is asking more information will always having a longer request form will always lead to more drop off. Having a shorter one will lead to a higher conversion rate. So what fields do you recommend in this form? Name, cell number, email. And since most people have don't have landline home phone numbers anymore, anymore, should not specify shell number and ask for a phone number. Yeah, I don't recommend asking for a cell. Like is this a cell, is this a home, is this an office? I assume it's a phone number. I'm putting it inside copilot and when I send a text message out I'm sending it to everybody and if it's a landline, they don't get it. So I don't worry about asking if it's, if it's a cell, I just say phone number. I.

I'm still going to ask for their address. If you're doing like instant pricing, for example. But for example if you, you ask for the address and they're, they know they're going to get pricing for that, it increases the, the amount of people will stick on the form because if I just ask for their, their address right off the rip less. Now the thing that that whole reason I wrote that email is because most time when I see people's SM request forms they're asking like what's your price range? They're asking for what services are you looking for? Like it doesn't matter. I am trying to get like very like if you have a list of 30 services you offer and you're asking them to read all of them to push the bullet point on which one or check mark which one they want, you're having a huge drop off. You just never see it. And so that's the essence of that email. It was not to say you should not include an address like we include an address request on our request forms. The point is every single layer on that form has a drop off percentage. You just don't see them. And so yeah, that was the essence of that email and that post I made. But I don't think you'd ask for the cell if it's a cell phone number. I think, you know, you need your name, your phone number, your email and your address. Those are probably the four major things you need. And then if you're trying to push them to say call you, I'm going to make that as easy as possible. So if they don't want to enter that information, they can call me. I'm going to make sure that there's a chat on my website that pops up after 10 seconds that they are on that form. They don't like the fact that they put their address great, they'll chat with me and they'll give it to me there. So I'm just trying to make it as easy as possible and meeting people where they're at. And I just know that if I increase the number of forms and I have big paragraph things that takes the whole page, the form takes the whole page instead of a small section of it. If you can get it to where your estimate request form slowly loads out instead of just this massive block of text and page and wide. It doesn't integrate well with your website if it has HTML in it and it's clunky. It doesn't format well for mobile devices. Like, a huge percentage of your estimates are coming from your website and a huge percentage of the people on your website are coming from a mobile device. So if it doesn't look good and the estimate request form looks really, really janky on mobile, you're having a big drop off. So.

The reason I talk about that is because you don't see the drop off, you just see new incoming estimates. Someone drops off, you're like, you never even hear from them. But like, the reason I was bringing it to light is like when we track stuff like this, we can see what's happening. And as people dropping off that longer that form gets, the clunkier it gets on mobile, the slower it takes to load that form, etc. So, all right everyone, I hope you have a fantastic rest of your weekend. We'll see you on the next mag. This is the Copilot Mastermind Questions down below in the com in the description there is a link. Leave them for next week. Take care everyone.