Mike Minute Mastermind 02/22/2023

Hey, everyone. Hope you're doing super well. Let's go ahead and get started. I have a quick announcement, but before I do that, before I forget, let me go ahead and drop the link, copy this into Facebook.

Boom. All right, where are we at? Where are we at? Where are we at? There you go. Paste. Okay, couple things. First and foremost.

If you are wanting command center to set up your mowing, all your mowing jobs, switch things over to weekly or to bi weekly. Or if you're going from winter services into mowing and you want them to set up all your schedule, we need to know sooner than later. As we head into spring rush, the project department will get overwhelmed and they will say no to projects when you just dump something on their plate. Like, I need these thousand clients set up. So if you need that done for the spring rush, let them know now.

And you can just connect team them. So if you are full service, you can send a connect team, say, hey, I would like my. All my mowing routes set up. The switchboard will get that sent over to the department for projects, and they'd reach out to you for definition and clarification of what exactly you're wanting. If you need help in that department, if you're really slow, you should do it yourself because you shouldn't be twiddling your thumbs and command center working way for you. So just to save money, definitely you can do it yourself. Or if you just need help and another set of eyes to look at it, you can also use that from command center as well. So if you are a growth model and you have a connect team chat, definitely I'd recommend doing that now. Don't wait until the day before you start mowing on March 1st. Like, I need, you know, 500 people set up for mowing service. All right, so highly recommend you do that asap. Number two, there's a really good chat I wanted to highlight in the Facebook group. Group.

I know he won't mind me staying this. I'll just pull it up here. So Nick was asking the other day about.

Basically having.

During the spring rush doing estimates during the spring rush and then scheduling the projects for June, July, August, when things slow down in terms of mowing. And his concern was not being able to have the time to do the estimates during the spring rush because he's not able to work with his crew out in the field. And it's tough to leave the crew and go and do estimates for jobs that you're gonna. You're selling in the summer. And so I wanted to go over really quickly. Kind of my response to that because I feel like I probably wasted at least a year or two doing this by thinking that I need to be on the field with the guys all the time and that I needed to be leading from the front. And there's certainly value to that. And I probably jumped out a couple times and helped out in a job or finished, help them finish. But ultimately, if you're trying to grow a business and create more opportunity for the guys, there needs to be a different mindset. So he was saying, how can I justify this when I should be in the field working with the guys in training? The plan is to not be projects for three months. So that would be three months of just doing estimates that I won't fulfill until summer. Should I still do that? My close ratio will be low and we won't be able to take on as many recurring clients. If I'm doing that, what would my estimated availability look like? So I said recurring and mowing should be handled mostly over the phone, so you really shouldn't have to be doing quote unquote estimates for those. That should be all being done over the phone, so you should be able to still be taking on those new mowing customers. And then second, I said hire another employee so you're able to do the estimates, sell the jobs in the summer. And. And I specifically know Nick's situation, that I know he can afford to be able to hire the person and him go do the estimates and that he has the capacity in terms of trucks to grow. He has like four trucks, sell the jobs in the summer, and then when the estimates slow down, you could jump back in the field and do the jobs. Then in the summer, and likely due to attrition, the person you hired for spring would be gone. So the extra person you hired during the spring rush to be able to cover while you're out doing a lot more estimates, trying to get projects set up for summer, they would then be gone and you'd be able to just hop back in the field because there'd be less estimates. Literally, you're going to have compared to like February, you're probably gonna have 5 to 10amount, 10 times the amount of estimates in the spring rush. Then in the summer that will get halved. And so you'd be able to step back into the field. If you're kind of in that 3, 4 employee operation, you're gonna have a lot more estimates during spring rush compared to summer. Nick says, don't you feel like this is bad for Culture. I hire new guys and they are grinding out in the field and I'm driving around doing quotes for that. Quotes for jobs are months ahead. That would be a tough sell to the guys. That's my main concern. Would you do some kind of mixed schedule like estimates in the morning and then mow at the crew in the afternoon. That way I have five day availability and I can do both. The way I look at it was that I should stay out in the field because I can handle 50 clients myself and would really help with absorbing as much possible. On the recurring side, sorry, I have so many questions. I just not feeling certain what my course of action. So in terms of estimate availability in this case, if you're wanting to be on the field with the guys a little bit, I'd recommend trying to throw all of your estimates on like two days. So maybe it's Tuesdays and Fridays and you just stack them with in person estimates and drive bys. Right. I would recommend doing that and not doing a few here and a few there and a few there. It just gets inefficient. And again, these are projects that you don't need. Next week you're booking them out a month, two months down the road. And the three month people are literally only the people in March. So don't over estimate that one. It's most of the people that are going to be in April and May that in your market, Nick, you're going to be booking out in June and July. So it's like eight weeks. And even when we get booked out seven, eight weeks, you're looking at maybe 3 to 5% of people that once you give them a date are like no, we need it done sooner. Once they've already gone through the estimate process, they enjoyed meeting you, they've accepted a price and you've given them a date. Most time there's like okay, great, they know it's taken care of.

Then my response here is I'll talk straight because I know I love you. I know you know I love you. You will have to change your mindset to grow the business. This mindset kept me back for years. As a business grows, you will not be able to be out in the field working with the guys. I know exactly how you feel. But you are short changing the employees by not growing the business and focusing on will actually move the business forward. That mindset is what kept you from growing last year. I'm just talking straight to Nick because I have a lot of relationship with him. I wouldn't usually do that with someone, but I also know what happened to him last spring rush. So I said that mindset is what kept you from growing last year in spring rush and caused burnout because you were trying to work hard in the field and do tons of quotes. So ended up where Nick turned off all quotes last spring rush. You do not need to be in the field with the guys to be a great leader. Your job is to keep the jobs coming in and if you want to provide upper mobility for your team members, you will need to grow and show them that it isn't a dead end job. I feel bad every day when I leave the shop and the guys are working the pouring rain while I'm in a warm office. My responsibility is to grow the company and provide opportunities for them. Opportunities that you took advantage of with the 3F program. The 3F program wouldn't exist exist if I was trying to be a good leader and work with the guys every day out in the field. Hope that makes sense. Not trying to be corrective. I just know that what you are feeling and it held me back for two to three years when I should have just just delegated and let P4P run the business. So I wanted to go over that. Thank you Nick for allowing me the opportunity to share that with everyone. I think it's very helpful. Quick questions here and I'll jump into the form. Is CC routing just for mowing routes or are project days routed as well? Is CC routing just for mowing routes? Are project days routed as well? Let's see. This is so so the only way that projects are going to put on the schedule for you is if you are in the scheduling department and you've been accepted and invited and accepted into that. In terms of the mowing side, we can help you get set up initially, but we aren't going to put on the scheduling unless you're in the scheduling department and that is you've been invited and then you're in that program. But if you're not, we can definitely still help you get everything set up on the initial so what we're going to do is look at all your mowing jobs, look at the map, make sure it's on certain days that you want, et cetera. So we can help you with that if you're full service. Did you know that the video on how to track your did you make the video on how to track your competitors for Google Ads? Yes. If you go to the Google done for you ads and you go to Google performance max, there's A set second part of the tutorial that is literally how to just do this against your competitors. So yeah, watch that one. I'm going to be making a new video. Facebook ads just updated something on their forms that I think is actually really, really good. And I'm seeing better, better click cost per click on Facebook forms simply because people are not spending money on Facebook anymore. Like so many advertisers have left. It's interesting. So there's a lot less quality of leads that come from Google Facebook forms because people can just click one button. All their information is pre populated but the cost is just dropped like it's a third of what it was even a year or two ago. So I'm gonna make a new video on that. They made some changes that I think are really positive. I don't have enough data yet to say that's like really awesome or great. It's definitely not what Google local services is. But I am going to make a new done for you ads this week for everyone this weekend and that will be up on done for you ads. I'll make a post in the Facebook group once that has been completed. All right, let's here. Boom. Boom. Jump into here. Remove this up into here. Questions. Let's make this screen a little different. Boom. Okay, Evansville. So I was checking out Google and some other things related to Google. I noticed that they have a money back guaranteed policy that customers could use against us. Do you know how this would work and how would Google make us give a refund should someone offer that picture attached? All right.

Google guaranteed passes certain checks. This service comes with a money back guarantee of up to $2,000, a lifetime cap if you request reimbursement. So yeah, this is all on Google. So this $2,000 thing is on Google. So as part of being in Google guaranteed program, this is why they vet you have background text. All the rest of it is if the customer gets ripped off by you, Google will give them up to $2,000. It's like an insurance policy for the Google guarantee for your customers. It's not on you the $2,000. It's for the Google will do that. It's like their insurance policy. It's an interesting take and I think again, this is a unique thing that they're doing compared to like HomeAdvisor or Andy's List where they're actually giving a guarantee like this. But that by doing that they're able to have that Google guarantee check mark. They're able to get customers to click on it because there's like an insurance policy somewhat on using Google guaranteed ads. So.

All right, next one.

Is Waco. I believe you mentioned on Friday the new marketing material on the pro shop was not printing correctly so we should not order it yet. Is this correct or can we order any more material that's posted on the pro shop right now? Is there new marketing materials for this season? If so, when will be available on the pro shop? So what we're going to do is when the media team posts on the Facebook group it's ready to go. Vistaprint is a very weird operation where we have to update, we have to upload the designs, request them to edit certain boxes and then it takes them a few days. There's a usually three to seven day period where you're going to see a design and you can order it but you can't make changes or edits and it's even it won't show the edits we've made like spelled spelling changes and things like that. So when there is a post in the Facebook group from the media team about certain designs that's when it's good to go ahead and order those. So everything in there currently should be good to go. Should be able to order those and there are plenty of new ones in there. So definitely just scroll through and see all the new ones. Specifically the ones for new customer flyer. I'd recommend everybody, everybody get two things. Number one, new customer flyer it's going to be great to hand to people on every in person estimate. Number two, the door hanger is basically that flyer condensed down into a door hanger and a place for you to put the date and time that you showed up for the property for drive bys as well as.

Anytime you're doing estimate and the customer's not home like they don't show up to their appointment. It's a great Ryan painted requested this one and it's like when you show up to a client's house at a specific time they requested and they're not there so you can put the date and time to prove like I was there. So when they call freaking out command center like they didn't show up they said and it's like no they're here. You have a time that they literally you really have written down and what I would recommend doing is literally taking a picture of that door hanger and and attaching it to the your estimate notes and then forever it's on their profile that you were there at a certain time. Highly recommend you know, loud command center be like, actually, no, I had their estimate. Your estimate notes right here. And they were at your property at 306 and they had said they would be there between 3 and 4. Like immediately puts them in their place and immediately they're like, oh, oh, sorry. Okay. Like I wasn't there. So it's a great way to. Where Command center is not trying to apologize for you when you were actually at the property. You were there during the right time and it was the customer's fault for they showed up at 3:20 when you had said between 3 and 4, for example. So highly recommend those two designs. At the very least, there's multiple other ones like the property inspection form, so you can do a full property analysis and upsell them into certain services as well as the welcome to the neighborhood door hangers. Those people that are new to the neighborhood, you can put those on there as well. There's a bunch of new ones we're going to be putting up there in terms of upselling, et cetera.

Braden Morris says when a customer submits a quote request from our website, does that go to that location's email or does that go directly to Command center where they can set up a quote on the schedule for us? So you determine this on your onboarding call with Lonnie. She would have determined whether this was going to Command center or going directly to you. If, if you have Command center managing your email, you can just have it go to your email address and then they're going to see it already. But this typically is just going to go into the email for Command center so they can get done most efficiently. And that is, it's in a funnel where all of them are coming in and then we're pounding through those much faster. So that's been typically within an hour or two they're getting completed is when they're going to Command Center. And so it's completely up to you if you want that changed, whether that be going to Command center or going just to you yourself, and you're handling those, you can definitely let us know. So just reach out to Command center help@augustalongerservices.com and we can make sure that that is being diverted whichever way you want.

Brian Connor. This is not Augusta related, but I thought this platform would be better than reaching out personally. Please disregard if this is not the platform for the question. We are ready to launch shipping for seamless suites. Let's go. Promotion. We'll be using Facebook and Instagram and our initial budget for testing will be 20 per day. Would you recommend targeting. This is totally fine to ask these questions, by the way. If they're business related, please ask them here. Is there any question like this is part of me Augusta, you have other businesses, real estate, stuff like this is what we're here for. Would you recommend targeting a larger city within two to four hours from Augusta or to a blanket United States covered area? If we go with one area, I'm thinking of picking Atlanta, Charlotte, Savannah or Columbia with seamless suite dot com. Let me know how I did. I am thinking about applying for a long care media position. All right, let's see what we got here. So this is the website. Okay, great. So what I would recommend doing in this case is actually doing two different campaigns. One for more of a United States reach where you're going to be pitching the shipping side of things. Another one that is more local would be going for like people picking up, et cetera. I think those need to be two different campaigns because everyone that is shipping food is thinking very different thoughts than people that are thinking, I'm supporting a local business, I'm going to come pick it up. Your cost per click is going to be probably 10, 5 to 10%.

Let's rephrase that. It's going to be a tenth of the cost cost per click to do the US versus your local market because the reach is just so much bigger. And so you're going to be able to get the lowest hanging fruit at $20 a day. Way better. So you'll pay, you know, a few cents a click for the US versus you might pay 50 cents or a dollar per click for the local market. But again, that local market person is going to come pick up your thing and potentially keep doing it over and over and over. So I would do two different campaigns and I would test both of those. I would just make your copy different because to the person getting food in the mail, very different than the person that's. You're potentially going to have someone picking up the food.

That'd be my two cents.

Okay, nice plug there, Brian. Let's go. I, I'll, I'll definitely be in line. See, I tried to order my favorite thing from stimulus suites and it would not ship to Washington state. So if that's changed, I'm in. I'm all game. I would literally buy it right now. Landon Smith. I know we have an automation that texts customers when an estimate is completed, but it seems like my open and response rate is slower than last year. Last year I had an automated text for when the Estimate was sent. I believe the text I used last year provided them a link to link on the estimate view and accept. Would this be good to implement? Landon, you. I think we're using Lawn Pro. I think now you're in Zooper. There is a text message that goes out. I'm not failing to see what you're asking. Last year.

Yeah, this is in Zooper. We don't have this in service autopilot right now. You can build it in service autopilot. You absolutely can integrate their sms. You can do all that. We just don't support it right now and like set it up for you. But if you're in Zooper, this is already being done. Just make sure that your texts are firing through correctly and things are being done correctly, like test it yourself.

Vlad from Winter Garden. Do you and or Chuck recommend interviewing candidates if not looking to hire someone or only interviewing when actively looking to hire? I think always interviewing is a good thing. Definitely talk to Chuck on a coaching call. I would just not be spending a lot of money on, you know, indeed ads when you don't need a hire within the next three to four weeks or even five or six weeks, I should say. But there's no reason to be spending a bunch of money if you have all, you know, plenty of employees. You don't have like a crunch of labor and you don't plan on growing within the next couple months. I probably wouldn't be spending a lot of money on getting new applicants.

Would you recommend running local services at alongside performance max? Yes, I would. If so, would you split budget between the two? I'm planning for $3,000 marketing spend per month in spring. I would max out your local services budget and then whatever's left over of the 3,000 on the performance max. And I would probably split those that the rest the remaining money between a search only and then a performance max. The reason I say that, you gotta remember Google Local Services a completely different product than Google Ads. When you look at a Google search, the very top is Google Local Services. Then it's Google Ads, then it's Google Listings, then it's native search. Keep in mind 97% of clicks still go to native search. But that top part is different products completely. So you can absolutely show up in literally all four of those. And I've seen it many times if someone's running a Google Local Services, they're in the top. Then I see their Google Ad because they're running a performance max campaign or just a Google Search ads campaign. Then I see them in the. In the local listings or in the Google listings because either they're running an ad or they just have the most reviews and they rank there. And then I see them in the top couple spots of Google's native. That's when you do. You're crushing SEO and you have everything lined up. So I would. That would be my personal recommendation. Is there a brand deal for Augusta headphones in the future? I don't know if we have enough pool in terms of product. I don't think we push headphones quite enough to get a deal anyways. Alright, guys, have a fantastic day. I'm hopping on the plane and it's gonna be a lot of fun. That was sarcastic. Okay.