mechanic installed a bad engine!

We kind of already broke the news because Zach likes to break secrets and things like that. But.

It'S Monday morning. I'm headed down to the Mount Vernon.

Location per usual for my weekly meeting.

And I wanted to get there early because we have a new hire there.

I wanted to say hello. But literally standstill traffic here Monday morning.

In the middle of nowhere.

We never get traffic here. Never. Is it throwing a monkey wrench into my morning? This guy is very pleasant this morning. Very pleasant. Cutting me on.

Let's go.

I'm late, I'm late.

Well, I'm not late. I'm three minutes early, but that's technically late. This is probably the second to last time you'll ever see this shop because we are moving now that the property is going to be closing next week for the Mount Vernon location. And so this is probably the second to last time you will ever see this place. At least they started out here this morning. I just got these laminated. These are two page document for P4P. Got a new hire, so they were getting onboarded. There is the document we have for all the owners at Augusta Nation in terms of their scorecard. So we kind of go over the main metrics, the KPIs for their location every single month. So that was our first scorecard at this location. So getting up and rolling here Monday morning. Check this thing out. Man, this thing is torn apart. I have no idea how to do this stuff. This is like literally Chinese to me. So.

So last week this truck literally got thick fixed. I. E. Got a brand new motor in it. I should say brand new because it was not brand new, but it was new to this truck. However, we are suspect that the mechanic gypped us because literally within two weeks the motor is sputtering, burning a bunch of oil. So I think they put in like a piece of garbage motor in it. GM here, Caleb, he knows mechanics and looked at it and like, yeah, this thing's been sitting around for a long time. So we're gonna have to go back and be the squeaky wheel because you can't give us a motor, charge us $7,000 and it's not working two weeks later. And using a motor that is pretty apparently sitting around for the past couple years, probably in some scrapyard. So that stinks. Honestly, sometimes these meetings where I come for like a few minutes seem some bit of a waste. And eventually they are waste because the general manager completely takes the whole thing over. But a location like this one where the GM is new especially I like to show up at least once a week just to show my support. But my big thing is I also don't want to get in the way of them managing. And so even when a few weeks ago I found when employees start contacting me for operational issues or time off requests, things like that, it's not a good sign. So I actually back off a little bit. And that's why I don't want to show up more than once a week. Because if I do then, then they start contacting me for things that no, no, that's a gm. And I don't want to disarm the GM by answering back the employee and giving them permission for something that the GM potentially might not want to be giving them permission for or has already talked to them about. So it's kind of a fine line. It's weird when you have general managers but you're still the owner because sometimes the employee will still look to you as a decision maker when you're really trying to empower the general manager to.

Make decisions in the business.

See, big is not always better when it comes to your business. Some people think you just need to grow, grow, grow. Because you hear someone like me say you need to build a million dollar business.

This is partly what I'm talking about.

At our Mike Minute mastermind with the franchisees this morning.

Because see, I actually believe that there's a few different distinct stages of a business in terms of size where you can still run really profitably and efficiently. When it comes to home improvement, I typically see that number, that annual revenue number being 200 and 800 plus thousand dollars in annual revenue at sort of three different stages of a business in terms of size that you can be very profitable at. At 200,000, you're a solo operator. You're typically gonna have like a helper working out in the field most of the day. At 500,000 in revenue, you're either gonna have a GM or you as the owner are going to probably working two or three days a week out in the field and the rest of the day is doing estimates, admin work, et cetera. And if you're gonna grow to 800,000.

That'S typically when the business can run on systems.

But your, you as the owner are going to be a full time non revenue producing employee because you're basically just doing estimates all day long, hiring, training, and you're not producing any revenue out.

In the field for the company, which.

Is a big drag when it comes to overhead. And in this morning's Mastermind, I really Want to talk about how I feel the best way to grow is sprinting to a certain level and then making it profitable at that level. So instead of spending three or four years trying to get to half a million, I'd rather you scale to a million quickly and then spend a couple years there being profitable by raising your prices and thereby reducing your close ratio and slowing down growth.

This is an example of something called penetration pricing. All penetration pricing really is is where.

You lower your price in order to.

Penetrate a market, gain market share, and.

Then you raise your prices down the road knowing that you're going to be able to convert 80 to 90% of.

Those customers because you have a high quality service and people don't want to switch providers.

Now, how fast you jump from stage to the next, how deep you try to penetrate the market and use a.

Lower price to increase your close ratio.

There's a lot of different factors that go into that, and that's what we're talking about on today's Mastermind with the franchisees. Some of those variables include, like, the time of the year, whether or not you have enough employees, and a big part of it is how much capital you have on hand and have in reserves. The moral of the story is stop asking people on Facebook and online about what your pricing should be and how fast you should be growing. There are so many different variables, and no two people's situations are the same. You've got to make sure you do what's right for your business and grow it to the size that's right for you, your family, and your goals.

I felt like it was a really solid mastermind this morning. Very foundational to what we believe in and growing to capacity and switching to profitability. So sometimes I feel like I just am just answering questions, but other times I feel like that was a very foundational piece of content for Augusta Nation. So this morning was very successful.

Back on the road, we are rolling back towards Command Center.

I'm gonna be calling, having an appointment.

With my attorney, and I just notified.

That the person that we interviewed for Anytime Fitness is not gonna be able.

To take the job because their other.

Position offered them, I think, more money and they didn't want to leave. So very sad. We're gonna have to continue the search for the office manager at Anytime Fitness Point.

You can find the video version of this interview over on the Mike Andy's YouTube channel. But without further. But without further ado, here's Mike and Layla with the breakdown.

Sorry, do you want to explain what you're Doing?

I'm just talking into the void.

Do you like how much deeper my voice goes for the podcast? It's like knowing your business and I'm.

Like, hey, I forgot it. Let's show them. So the iteration of what's happened. Let's start with the first one.

Trash.

Absolute trash.

Garbage. Never use mowers and dollar signs. It never works.

Doesn't look professional.

Oh, that's a mower.

Well, it's supposed to be someone's mowing.

Through the dollar sign.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like creating two tracks. You didn't get that the first time around.

It almost looks like a.

Like a broom.

Oh, yeah, you're right. Or like a. Like a lightsaber. Oh, man. Anyway, yeah. So garbage. If you guys want this logo, hit me up.

And this is our second logo.

A little bit better.

A little bit better.

Kind of still like it. Like, it's very professional looking like it looks like bank wise insurance.

Yeah. We thought this looked a little bit like an R. So we were like, I don't know.

Lcr Lawn Care rookie would get.

Yeah, Lawn care Rookie.

That's.

That's the one. And then. Yeah, so then this is gonna be our final logo. You guys are looking to sell your lawn care website. Let's go.

Long care business.

Business. Sorry. Long hair business for sale dot com. Let's go.

Yeah, Pretty cool. Yeah, that's good.

It'll shrink too, like the preview.

And then Ro. He has it. So it's like a. When you hover over it, it goes yellow.

That's cool. Andrew, do you want to explain what.

You'Re doing right now? Not to put you on the spot.

Redesigning the entire MBA website to better represent where we're going with the new MBA program. I'm very excited about it.

Let's go.

Very sleek and refined and its own.

Site, mbaforantrepreneurs.com coming soon. Actually, wait, by the time we launch this. Will this be live?

Yeah, this coming in a week, right?

Let's go.

Yeah.

So check it out today. Check it link in the description below.

We kind of already broke the news because Zach likes to break secrets and things like that, but we definitely have a new project we're working on. It's not done yet, but it's gonna be really helpful for business owners, especially this coming winter. In my opinion, there's gonna be a lot of people selling their lawn care business trying to get out of the industry just because it's been so hard with hiring and inflation. So because Zach likes to Share secrets. I'm gonna go ahead and let him do that.

What's up guys? So check this out. Spinning around. Stephen, cut this out. Oh, you can't spin around here. Oh, that's garbage. Alright, check this out. So we got a few logos going here. We already kind of shared a little bit about it. But what's gonna be is kind of a site that you guys can go on, you can upload your information and your financials and hopefully it'll help you guys get connected with people are interested in buying a business to help you guys get out of the business.

So the day was just mostly operations. I didn't really have a whole lot to video. A lot of calls, emails, text messages. It's only 5:30.

I was able to get out of the office early tomorrow.

You'll figure out why I got out early today. And yeah, today we're just, we have.

One of our franchisees, they are selling.

Their location, so they're selling it to another person that's going to be joining the franchise. So setting all of that up, getting ready for the training. We are changing our training for the franchisees from three days to four days to accommodate a whole bunch of new stuff that we're wanting to incorporate into the training. So that's gonna be great today. I also made sure that we got what we call one click estimate email sent out for our franchisees. So a one click estimate email is basically where you email all of your customer base and you pitch one service. You have one call to action and.

Basically they click on the button and.

It initiates an automation that says, hey, this person wants an estimate for this specific service. So finished that today. Just a whole bunch of calls, emails, texts.

Today it was a pretty boring, boring.

Day in terms of the vlog. But now I'm gonna get out here, go do some shopping because I gotta get some juice, go do a run.

It's gonna be great.

And then I got a bunch of stuff I gotta do this evening and tomorrow you'll hear more about that.

Life is short. Eat tortilla chips.

I eat pretty healthily, but what would life be without tortilla chips and guacamole?

That's all she wrote.

We'll see you guys tomorrow.