Mike Minute Mastermind 06/10/2022

Augusta Nation. Happy Friday. Let's jump in. Let's do this. Sorry if my hotspot's not the greatest in terms of quality, but let's go ahead and get started. They have several updates. Let me jump to those first and then we'll do some questions.

First off, we got if you go to this is for service autopilot users. If you go to academy, more training. Service autopilot. Scroll down, you're going to see under invoicing. This is a new video Liz made checking clearance payments and is exactly what we do at command center to ensure that you are actually getting paid despite whether or not the check or card was being used. So definitely check up on this one. If you are using service auto part and command center is not already checking your clearance. If you're on full service. We already do this every single month for you and if you'd like us to do it, just let us know if you're on basic service because like the last thing I want you to do is work hard and not get paid. It's stupid. Last year, like I said, hundreds of thousands of dollars were not collected even though they said paid inside service autopilot. So you gotta just reconcile. Some people do it daily, which is great. We usually do it monthly at command centers. Go through all the payments real quick and make sure they actually came through. That's the first thing. Next thing is for zooper people. Let me just take this out. You're gonna see some pretty cool updates coming to the dispatch board. You're gonna see where there's a map on the right hand side and then your dispatch board on the left hand side. I really like this because as your company grows, you get hundreds of visits in a day. What's a little bit annoying about service all PI is always going to the very top to see the map. Now on Zoopr, you're gonna see the map on the right hand side and you'll scroll through your dispatch board on the left hand side. It's not anywhere close to where we want it. This dispatch board is still not there. We still need to make more of a list view instead of a chart view in super for the dispatch board. There's a lot of features in the map that we still super is working on. Keep saying we. It's super. Bless their heart. So but really happy though with the fact that they've added the map. And it's a good feature in the fact that until you, when you have like when you start getting about 50 visits a day, it's Very annoying to be scrolling every time to go up to the map and draw a new boundary. So it's really cool. It's going to be floating on the right hand side. So that's the first update. Something else that we're working on, but we are not going to roll out to next spring. But already is the functionality inside of Zooper and that is the ability to use the map to automatically schedule people based upon where they're at on a. Inside your service area. To actually draw on a map. If someone accepts mowing and they're inside this area, I want to schedule them for Mondays if they're inside this area. So instead of you having to do that manually, it'll all be done automatically. And that's really, really a cool feature inside of service Autopilot or sorry, Zooper. And that's called assisted. Assisted scheduling. And so we'll be digging more into that in the winter and then going into next spring. But the functionality is there and I'm happy with where they're headed with the dispatch board. It's not anywhere close to where we want it to be yet, but it's at least a step towards getting the map connected with the dispatch board.

Will you have them add me to the list automatically? Check my clearing please. Andy, Just send an email or connect with them. Just if you send it to helpgustalongerservices.com if you are on basic service, just drop them an email. They'll be able to get that done for you if they probably Monday. I just don't know how filled they are today with all of those. But you definitely for sure. All right. Other update.

For some of you that are shrinking your service area, good job. However, if you're going to do that, you've got to wrap up stuff with customers outside the service area. We had a few instances this week where people have shrunk their service area and then the customers call in and. And then the response back to command center is oh, they're out of my service area. I'm not going to service them anymore. If they're complaining, if they're saying stuff is not done, you got to go back and wrap things up. Right. So even the location that we're turning around like now you is yes, there was like multiple customers that we no longer in our service area, but we wouldn't fix their properties. We took care of them and got them back on track. If you just say, well, I'm not showing up again, you're either you're going to get an Online review, that's really bad. And like you're not going to get any money. And we're probably going to have to refund them if you're just not going to come back and service them. And it's an obvious mistake. So just keep in mind if you're going to shrink service area, that's fine. That's great. I love every single time that happens. I've never complained when someone raises their prices or shrinks their service area. However, when you do that, make sure that you still do service the customers that have complained about previous service. Or there's the yellow slip from last week. You can't just tell command center, oh, like they're out of my service area now. We don't serve them. You just can't do that. So. And this is actually leading to some. It's gonna be really helpful because in side Zooper, they're gonna have the. It's going to be better integrated because like right now we check, we have to check Google Earth for service area. Then we go into service autopilot, for example, and then set up the customer. What's going to be really cool with Zooper down the road is we can integrate so that way we don't have to use Google Earth. It's just on the back end and integrated with Super. So that way.

Because right now the problem is this, if you shrink your service area and someone's like, oh yeah, you did service for me last year, we're just going to probably be like, okay, great, let's go ahead and get you set up for another estimate. But if you shrink your service area now, potentially they're not in your service area. And I saw a negative review this, this last week where someone basically said that it's like, hey, they said they no longer service my area. Like I'm going to complain. Basically they left a bad review, but it was basically, it's like they're out of my service area anymore. And so what we got to make sure happens with this integration down the road. Super. Is that just because someone has done service with you in the past doesn't mean you want to do service with them in the future. And that can be a little bit awkward at command center. Like, yeah, I know last week we did service for you, but we can't this week. So that'll be better when it's integrated inside super instead of we have to go into Google Earth and then we're second guessing ourselves because like man, they just did a job for them. You guys still set them up for an estimate. So all that say that will improve too down the road. Last thing I just want to mention about a couple of you, we detect this morning about CPI data, Consumer Price Index inflation is still running rampant. It was supposed to start ticking down. We got used prices going back up. Just watch rent for the next 12 months, they're going to go sky high. Guarantee that. So as a landlord, I'm happy about that. But as renters, it's going to be brutal.

The next 12 to 24 months. What we've seen right now is the cost of a real estate has gone up right in terms of values, but the cost of actually paying for the mortgage has gone up even more in the past few months. Even though the price of real estate has kind of like leveled off or come down a little bit in the past couple months because interest rates have gone up. The cost of a mortgage because of interest has gone literally up 30% in the past few months. That is going to lead to rents going through the roof because the cost of living for buying a house is so much higher per month. So it's a delayed metric. Rent is always lag. So I kind of look at this is probably the worst economic way to look at things. But when I look at the real estate market, I look at short term rentals and hotels are going to have the fastest impact in terms of cost of living. And then you're going to go to buying houses, which is like single family homes, people buying homes, and then it trickles down to rents and to renters in terms of the cost of increase. Because the immediacy of short term rentals, which, which is overnight rentals, Airbnbs, et cetera, I can see the immediacy of how that affects the cost per night in a given area. But it takes longer to kind of hit the real estate market because the real estate market moves slow. Things take months to close. That's why in a couple months we're probably gonna see this horrible economic data from real estate standard point of view, that was all the way back in February and March. It just takes a long time to see the data and then you're gonna see it in rents over the next 12 months. So rents are going to keep going through the roof. And so little secret, you know, down this location that we just turned over, the landlord is I'm trying to rent as long as I possibly can because I'm waiting if I can at least hold out for six to 12 months, things will come down. On the real estate side of things, the Real estate market and then I can buy a lower point. That's the goal. Because right now rent, you're going to keep going up and up and up. All right, that's all I had for updates. Let's jump into questions.

Okay, I think, let's see here. I haven't seen these rooms yet. Okay, is there a way we can get a notification when command center accepts an over the phone mode? That way we can put them on the schedule. Yes. So you should be getting an update as soon as the estimate is accepted. So maybe run a trial on this one and make sure your, your automations are set up correctly. But triple check that because yeah, every single time an over the phone estimate happens, they create an estimate so it's still in their profile and they mark accept as soon as they mark accept, that's when you get an alert. And so that is set up. Just make sure it is working correctly inside your account. If you still have problems that let them know at command center.

There's no one here. Okay. Being a solo operator, I'm having a hard time justifying the extra cost of Command center. I'm happy to pay my franchise fee because everything I get. But I'm so used to taking my own calls and giving up my own and giving up my own estimates, I'm struggling with the fact that I have to pay someone else to do it. What would you say is the solution to this? Yeah, in terms of the mindset like this is a completely normal when you're coming out of being a solo operator and that is you look at the extra cost of you say 500, $600 a month for someone to answer your phone calls, send out estimates, etc. And like oh my word, like that's really, really high. But you've got to remember if them taking a few calls a day for you, sending out a few estimates allows you get one project, one cleanup. If you look at the lifetime value of a mowing customer, let's just say even the annual value of a mowing customer, the annual value of mowing customer for most of us, between a thousand dollars and $2,000. And if you have.

You know, a 25% profit margin, let's say 30% profit margin as a sole operator, let's say about $400 in profit per month or sorry per year per mowing customer. To be conservative, that means basically you just need to get one new mowing customer a month because of having them take the phone calls and the estimates. Right. And so I know it's easy Especially your first six months, to look very closely at the gross amount that you're paying out. And like, oh, like that's really hurting me because that could be going towards marketing. But again, if you put that money towards marketing, you have more calls, you have more voicemails, you would be able to get back to them. Um, and there's, there's just more of that bottleneck. And that's why most people will stay solo for so long, is because they're taking on all the calls, which creates the bottleneck to where they can't take more calls and do more estimates than it was what is required to keep more than one person busy. And so when you hit that bottleneck, that's why people will stay solo for years and years and years where removing that bottleneck is why we have command center. So that if you go out and get 30 calls today, they'll be able to take them, no problem. If you get 20 over the phone estimates, you could literally get 20 jobs per on your schedule tomorrow, and it wouldn't break the system. And so if someone is trying to stay at solo operator and stay in that for a few years, that's when I'd say, hey, you could probably take your calls. Once you've leveled off your growth, you're only taking a few calls a day, a few estimates a week. Like, then you could potentially do it yourself and be fine with it. It's when you want to scale it, you need to remove that bottleneck. Right. And so, you know, this location here, down here, that we're taking over, like, I'm going completely 100 in where the general manager doesn't do estimates, they're out in the field working. There's no scheduled estimates and there's only over the phone estimates being done. I'm going just straight into that because it's so much more efficient. There's way less overhead. And the extra few thousand dollars I have to spend at command center pales in comparison to the extra $10,000 a month that that general manager will make out mowing lawns, doing landscaping, et cetera. So I understand that the gross amount that you pay for a month, even a Solar operating it's 4 or 5, $600, can seem like a lot. But what you're paying for there is the removal of a bottleneck. And if you don't need that bottleneck to be removed because you're not trying to grow more, that's when I would say, go ahead and take your calls, go and do your estimate. That's Fine. The goal of Command center is to remove that bottleneck. And then as then when you go larger, when you become larger in terms of size of the company, then what you're doing is you're removing the bottleneck to copying and pasting the model, right? So like when we came over and take over this location, for example, immediately office people were let go immediately. Everything was turned to Command Center. And, you know, I show up here once or twice a week right now and eventually will be far less than that. So it's a matter of just being able to copy and paste the locations because you have a system in place where I don't need office space, I don't need Internet, I don't need all the other, you know, office people and training them up and all the rest of it. So that's really the goal of Command center is one, remove the bottleneck when you're at a solo operator level to be able to scale very quickly. I was talking to Lee this morning. Like, Madison, one of locations start in January as a solo operator has 110, 115 mowing customers already. Like, that can't happen if you're answering every single one of those calls, sending out every one of those estimates. Like, there's never going to be able to scale past that solo operator model. If someone wants to stay there, though, they're like, hey, I have 30, 40 customers. I'm going to stay here for a couple years. I'll take my calls and estimates. That's great. You'll be just fine. But then you'll be ready for the time when you're able to. When you want to scale, you can immediately turn your calls back, put more money into marketing, and be able to take 10, 15, 20 estimates on a day. And that. That's really what we're trying to do. So that's all I got. Hope you all have a great weekend. Happy Friday. And.