Mike Andes Mastermind 03/06/2023

Super. Well, it's going to get started. We just go ahead and paste this YouTube link into the Facebook group. Of course it hasn't loaded yet.

All right. I know a lot of people are. A lot of people, quite a few are getting started on their mowing today. So congratulations. Let's go. Spring rush has arrived.

A couple announcements real quick.

Good news and bad news. Good news. We always start with good news. I talked with web team on the weekend and we will be creating an ability for you from the website portal, the dashboard, to be able to add multiple estimate pages. So, you know, slash estimate one, slash estimate two, slash estimate three, whatever you want. So that way you can test specific campaigns or anything you want in terms of Google, Facebook, a specific campaign. Even if you're like, I want to hear, try scan a QR code and it goes to a certain webpage and then be able to track that. You'll be able to do all of that. So give us a couple weeks, we gotta just iron it out because when we roll something out now on the website, it's affecting 128 locations. And if we're all creating a couple pages, it gets very heavy. So we are working on that. Give us a couple weeks, we'll get that figured out. That was good news, bad news. Lonnie decided she was gonna go get another job. She's actually an engineer by trade. She was an engineer before working for us. She's been here like four or five years. But she did go get another job is all on good terms. She gave us heads up a couple weeks ago and was able to get everyone from the February training onboarded, which I was really appreciative of. And so we wish her all the best. But her email is getting forwarded over to help the help department and they'll be able to take care of you 100%. And then there's been training going on over the past couple weeks in terms of onboarding and making sure her large shoes are filled. So we appreciate her and everything. I would have mentioned it last week but I was not in the office during her going away party and stuff like that. But I appreciate her and everything she has done for us. Let's go and jump in to the questions. I did not pull them up yet. My bad. There we are.

Okay, let's see here. Questions present.

You know what I look forward to actually real quick is I'm going to be starting my location in North Carolina myself. Looks like we're doing it on the south side of Charlotte. It's going to be great can be south park, we got my 4 mile radius this morning. Let's go. So it'll be fun because I'll be still doing these every day. I'll still be running all the companies. I'm going to try to do it like two to three hours a day, be able to run like the. That started like getting the start starting the business. So I gotta run everything else. I was going to originally try to start with $100, but it would require me to work 10, 12 hours out in the field and I just can't do that. So the goal is to be able to really ramp it up. And I think it's going to be most beneficial for all of you if I take more of the mentality of like, hey, I have marketing dol. I want to hire people right away. I want to go expand. I think they'll help people more. Maybe not get as many views, but it'll get, it'll help people really want to scale their business because I need to be able to like find a gm, get a couple trucks and trailers rolling, find a shop space, do all of that stuff in the matter of a month. So I think it's be fun. And I'll still do these, I'll still run all the other businesses, making sure everything's rolling, ticking and talking. It'll be great. So I'm looking forward to that, getting things organized as we get ready for that next few months. All right, let's see here, where we at? Okay. Joel from Lafayette. If an estimator gives a potential client a mowing price quote that is much higher than it should be, like 50 to 100% higher and you caught it the same day, would you send a revised quote to the client saying you made a mistake or sent them the wrong quote, or you just let it go as a learning opportunity and move on?

I guess it kind of depends if this. When you say estimator, if you mean command center over the phone, I would definitely contact the customer because they know it's done over the phone. I would be careful to do this. If you had met with them in person and now you're like basically retracting an estimate. I'd be careful with that one. I would let this go to the point of them cancel, like saying, no, we don't want it, and then stepping and be like, I apologize, it was the incorrect price. Here's what it should be.

If you actually met them in person. But if this is being done over the phone, you absolutely should just go ahead and Contact them. Because if you have other information that was not privy to the person on the phone and the price should be different, definitely go ahead, contact them. I don't think there's any problem with that whatsoever. It just take a little bit of ego hit. Just be careful. Like, the reason you want to be careful here is you don't want to come across like the type that's going to change price on people or that you were trying to get them to accept the higher price. So what you need to solidify in your brain, in my opinion, this is just me, is you're changing this price regardless they accept or not. If that's where you're at, then roll. But.

Otherwise you're just basically like crossing your fingers and hoping they accept this larger price. And if not, it's gonna come across like once they decline the estimate, it's gonna look like, oh, I was, you know, now it's a cheaper price. It feels like a bait and switch. So just be careful of that. So if you're gonna change the price, I would just contact them immediately. So that way it feels like you're not trying to bait and switch them. Joel from Lafayette. How has the Mount Vernon tiny house Airbnb been going? Has it met your expectations in terms of revenue? Book nights? Any guest complaints about the trucks business on the other side of the fence? You know, it's funny, this last part has not happened. The reason for that is setting clear expectations in the listing is very important. So we make it very clear. Like there's trucks and equipment there from 7 to 8 in the morning and then you're going to see them trickle in the afternoon. And it hasn't really been an issue because it's not like we're doing like really heavy machinery. Don't. We don't have skid steers. It's like they, the employees drive in, they drive to get their trucks, maybe they start their mowers and that's about it. So we are very clear about that in the listing. So we haven't had any complaints about that. And we make sure we have like a warning on our listing saying, like, warning, this is a shared property and all the rest of it. We also have fences that are pretty privacy based. I'm really looking forward to the spring, the summer, because our, I'd say it's like it's booked like 60 to 80% of the time right now. It'll go up to 100% in the summer. And then I like to see how, how high I can get the Rates, because right now we're charging like $110 per night. I'd like to get to 200 during the summer, and I think we can, but it just. You gotta get enough of reviews and traction and then booking people out, etc. And the thing about the tiny house is people don't stay there for a month or two. It's just too small.

So because of that, you have a lower occupancy because there's more gaps in between.

But, yeah, it's. So far, so good.

Yeah, pretty good.

Forest from Modesto. Modesto. Google pages not require people to be signed into a Google account to leave a review. But, Tracy, Google does require them to be signed into a Google account to leave a review. Is there a reason for this?

You cannot leave a review without being logged into your Google account. It's impossible. So this might be happening if someone's already logged in and just taking them directly there, you're logged into the back end. But I guarantee if you logged out of all your Google accounts, you would not be able to leave a Google review on either account. You have to be logged into Google. Max from Burnaby. I recently expanded my service area within my territory. Previously, we were only offering projects within the area, but now we are offering recurring services. Start marketing within the area. Will command center know to accept leads for recurring services even though the map they use won't be updated for a month? Should I wait to market in the area until the map is updated?

You're saying yeah, I would wait until. To market in that area until your service area has been updated 100%. So if you're changing service areas, totally fine. But just know that we have to. We have to manually. That's a file we have to download in every single computer at Command Center. So we do that once a month. So I would just wait until that time.

And then. And then go ahead and proceed with marketing in that area. I know it's not optimal, but it just. It's just a matter of if we were trying to. If we could tell you, oh, it's like we can change it within a day or two, that means every single day across the whole system, we'd have to be like, revamping everyone's app and sending out files for. It's. It's a mess. So to make sure that there's just consistency, we have to say once a month. So I would just wait on marketing that area for services, for mowing until that has been updated on a monthly basis.

Travis from Clayton, North Carolina. Are there rules to hiring someone that's 17 years old. I'm sure the rules are different from state to state. Yeah, they are different in our state. For example, two things have to be done on your.

Business license. You have to do a provision for hiring minors and actually you have to like file with it. And it has to say on your business license that you're allowed to hire people like 16 to 18 or whatever you've asked for. You have different. When you're registering your business, you have to put in which one you're trying to file for. And then it also changes your insurance. And that's the big one. Be very careful about hiring someone that's 17 years old. It's not so much the state because the state's like as long as you're registering it correctly, they're usually fine with it. It's your insurance. There's a lot of insurance for auto insurance that won't even insure you if there's even someone hired that 17. Not if they have a driver's license, not if you're telling them they don't ever drive. But even if you hire a minor, they'll say they'll be out. So just be careful with that. But it is different from state to state. So I would contact two things. Your department of licensing and then your insurance broker. And just make sure that you're not putting your general liability or your auto insurance into jeopardy. Kevin From South Haven, Mississippi on Google are review reading rating is 4.7. On our Augusta website it says 4.0. That's weird.

Let me look this up. Augusta lawn care, south haven.

Four. Okay, I see exactly you're saying 4.7. That's really interesting. I wonder if that's coming from your Google Local services.

Let me grab this. Give me a second here. I will ask the web team why. Obviously it's our plugin. I'm guessing this is just a guess. So I completely could be completely wrong here.

Sorry, I'm sending this out.

Web.

I'm gonna guess. And that is that when people use your Google Local services, they're leaving a review and it's not being calibrated into your site ranking here. It's only being taken account here. I could be completely wrong. So let me get a better. A better.

See even down here it's saying 4 out of 5.

Weird. I wonder if this no you because you didn't convert your old business into Augusta. I'm just gonna guess, I'm just gonna guess that.

This has something to do with Google Local services. Not being calibrated to this number, but it has the number of views. So I'm a little confused. So let me get a better understanding and I'll figure that out. By the way, for anyone wondering, this is what it looks like for when you do Google Performance Max, the get quote button with an actual form when they click on this, that's what it looks like. Pretty slick. Pretty slick. So that's what we develop inside of the Google Performance Max when they. It has a form now. So that's what it looks like right there. Gotta love it. Yeah. So I'll. I'll do a little more research on that one, Kevin, and get back to you on that one.

I'm guessing it's Google local services, but I just don't know. All right.

Travis, Clayton, North Carolina I noticed that. I noticed the follow up email automation has my personal number and not my Augusta number. Where do I change this in essay Go to your settings, top right hand corner. Go to your settings and just make sure your company phone number is changed to your command center number. It's likely it is your personal because when you signed up or created your account or created your user, you use your personal phone number. You just need to change that one thing and you'll be good to go.

Good catch though. If you have trouble with this contact Command center. But yeah, go to your settings, go to your business settings, contact information stuff and you can change your business phone number. Kyle Tarvin can we get a need flower bed maintenance sign on the pro shop like for weeding?

It's not a bad.

I want to say yes because it's easy for us but the fact of the matter is like I don't know if advertising flower bed maintenance is the lowest hanging fruit. I feel like you get someone on mowing and then you upsell them into flower bed maintenance because it's rare that someone's going to get you on flower bed maintenance, but they're also going to either A do their own lawn or B have someone else do their lawn. But we could do this. Yes. This is not a hard lift for us. So I will confer with the media team and see what we can do about this. But I just, I personally would not be taking that attention being given by the customer and trying to get them on flower bed maintenance because it is a lower like you might be able to charge 15, $20 to weed someone's lawn every week where you can charge 50 or $60 for their mowing service. And then like more people need mowing service than Weeding typically. And if you get them on mowing, you'll get them on flower bed maintenance really easily. So dowdy just my like my asterisks next to. I'd rather try to advertise my mowing services typically, but I will confer with the media team Austin from Burleson, Texas.

Hey, Mike, So just wondering, was just wondering, should we be trying to jam pack our schedule with the jobs we are getting? Accepted example had three to four landscaping property cleanups accepted and we are doing three of them this week or should we be scheduling these out so we aren't feeling rushed on the jobs?

So this is when you talk to your coach. All right, so you got to figure out how many budget hours per week and per day you are putting on the schedule and then stick to that and then book yourself out into the future based upon budgeted hours. Right. So if these four budget, you know, four landscaping jobs have 10 budget hours each and you only have 20 budget hours available on your capacity this week, you're going to get two jobs on this week and the next two are going to go into the next week or whenever there's next availability. So you've got to understand this. You've got to talk to your coach, understand what your budget hour capacity is. And this is a great example when you have a actual scheduling dilemma like this to get on the coaching call and be like, hey, I need to understand my capacity for budget hours. And how would you schedule these three to four projects? They're not going to have any guesswork. They're going to look at your board. They'll tell you exactly where they should go and then ask them to like walk me through the logic of how you determine that. And it's going to be based upon your budget hours and your capacity for each day and each week.

Boom, boom.

All right, let's see. We got some comments coming in.

No, not a chance. Never.

What's your budget for the new location? I don't really have a budget. I'll probably stick to what we the same thing that we did for other locations, 85,000.

But I'll also be like pounding pavement, doing some door hangers knocking on like, so we'll see.

It mostly be late in the year. By the way, the fact that I'm doing, I should be starting like I should have started last month. So February, March, April, I'm really starting three to four months late, which is not good. But there's no way I'm leaving during spring rush. Do you have a business license Each city you service in, Washington state, you do one business license and then you have endorsements for every single different city that you operate inside of. But every single state's going to be potentially different. I know, I know. New York, it's a pain in the butt to do, to operate in different, like counties and things. It's. It's a pain. I wanted to get in New York so fast, move over to Connecticut, even Connecticut is pretty bad. But like New York is, was a pain. Like the amount of licensing for every single city and county and district was.

What is the best way to market to maximize web traffic, to rank higher, faster in Google, the most clicks, right. So if you're just trying to get traffic to the site, it's going to typically be Facebook ads and you're just trying to get impressions and you're trying to get as many clicks as possible. Same thing with performance max. You'll get a lot of clicks from performance max because it'll put you on banner ads, YouTube ads, etc.

How much revenues Bellingham generate from mowing monthly? My goal is to do 70 to 100k monthly. Is this too much? No, that's not too much. I'd say about, I think about 75% of their work is recurring and I'd say probably half of that's mowing. So probably 40% I would say is for mowing, maybe more. I just haven't seen the numbers recently.

When, when writing budget hour capacity, should I be counting mowing on or everything on the schedule? I'd be counting everything on the schedule. And if you're a solo operator, you're going to be considering your estimate number of estimates as well. So we consider a.

A drive by or in person estimate to be a specific number of budget hours. If it's an hour or 30 minutes, whatever it is, a drive by is going to be less. Right. So you could potentially say, okay, for every drive by, I'm going to put as if that's 30 budgeted hours, 30 minutes, half a budget hour. And for every in person estimate, I'm going to consider that one budgeted hour. If you're a solo operator, that is important because you can't put 35 budget hours worth of work and do 25 estimates right. Without working crazy hours, which is totally fine if you want to 100%.

I've gotten trying to get better at that.

I can't assume that someone doesn't want to work 50 to 60 hours a week. Like it just takes what it takes. Like I think sometimes what I hate is when people get successful and then they're like, oh, like, we should have work, life, balance. And like, everyone should be like, you know, make sure you meditate and everything. It's like, look, what did you do to the pet for 10 years to get to where you're at? Because everyone that's trying to follow in your footsteps, that's listening to you, they're also going to have to go through 10 years of working their face off. And so, like, even at command center, we're going to take from March, April, May for spring rush. We're basically taking away the restriction on overtime. It's like, look, work overtime. If you want to work very hard. If you want to get ahead, make some more money, this is the time to do it. I don't want to cap someone's potential. And if they're hungry like I was, and I was trying to figure out how to, like, you know, not live with my parents and be scraping by all the time. Like, I want someone to be able to have that opportunity. And so, yeah, don't. Don't take away the fact that you could. What I just said there. You can do 35 budget hours a week and 25 estimates. 100%. You're just gonna have to work 50 to 60 hours a week. And if you want to. Let's go.

Facebook user. How to set up Facebook ads for website traffic. The one on Dashboard is more calls. Just take the call one off. Just when you're doing the Facebook ad, take the ability for someone to do a call. You can take that one off and just do the Facebook. Like the lead form. There's a lead form, but there's a regular Facebook video one and there's a regular Facebook picture one. Just take the ability for them to call off. If you're just trying to drive traffic to the site. Same thing with Google, by the way. If you don't want to have the ability to have that form that I just showed or the call, just don't put those. Fill those in and just drive traffic to the site. If your goal is traffic and trying to elevate your SEO position before spring rush, totally fine.

Cool. All right, guys, have a fantastic Monday. Have a fantastic weekend. For those starting mowing today, let's go. We'll see you tomorrow. Oh, when is Roundtable again? It's going to be the first week of April, so probably next couple weeks, I'll have an exact date for you for the zoom call. All right, guys, we'll see you.