Mike Minute Mastermind 07/05/2022

Hello Augusta Nation. Hope you're all doing super well. Hope you had a great long weekend. Happy July 4th. Let's go ahead and jump in. I didn't really have any announcements today, but I had some good question. A good question that came in. I think there's just one on the form. Oh wait, there's a bunch more that just came in. So let's go ahead and just jump into those questions. And then I have a little bit of from an educational side, some people had asked some questions and direct message me about some stuff with the real estate. So I'll go over that stuff afterwards. So let's jump into questions. Let me open this up. Give me one second. So I've read the first one, but there are two more that just popped in. So give me a second. Let me pop this here and share my screen.

All right.

First question. I've already read this one. This is from Evansville. I've noticed from time to time that when I check completed by CC emails that there are a couple of emails per week where it will it was put into this email folder but there was has been no response to the customer. There are typically tickets created but there has been no response made to the customer. And from what I can see no call made either in the notes. Am I supposed to be doing something different or should I be responding to them personally? I have some specific examples I could send to you or the department at CC responsible for this to work together better. I just hate to see no response being made to the customer when it doesn't fit our mantra of changing the level of professionalism in the landscape industry. Great question. I've already actually sent this up to Command center management and they are checking into this. What I'm going to guess that has happened occasionally is they are going into service autopilot because they want to have a track record of what is being said along with the timeline of other emails and calls. So they might jump into service autopilot or even super potentially and send an email from there or make a call note for example. If they're not making a call note though, I'm assuming that's an email. So I've already sent this to Command center to see what specifically. If you have a couple examples, Connor, that you could send over, that'd be great just so we can dig into a little bit more. But that's what I'm assuming is happening is they are responding from service autopilot because they feel like they need to keep it inside the timeline and because sometimes when customers email, they'll email different threads. And so all of a sudden you have like emails scattered throughout your inbox versus if it's nice when it's all in one spot. So this is what I'm guessing is happening. But if you can send the directly, the one or two that have slipped through, let us know and then that way we can make sure that because if it's going to completed by cc, you should not have to do anything with it. And so the loop has been closed. But where they are making note of that needs to be standardized and we have. However, I think that's what's happening. They're going to service autopilot and just assuming it's inside the timeline and therefore you're not able to see anything in your inbox. Unfortunately the two don't sync, so that's my guess. But if you can send those over directly, which customers, that'd be super helpful. Yeah, because once, once in the inbox, it's in CC completed. You should have that, not have to do anything with it. Keep in mind sometimes they will drag two or three into that and then work on them because they see there's some sort of correlation between like several customers emailing or a few emails about the same topic, they'll drag it in there and they'll work on them. So that way there's not, they're not doubling up on them. But keep just, just send us the email of those customers. That'd be really helpful. That way we can make sure that that's what's happening. Because that's what I believe is happening. Are you headed towards only mowing and nothing else or do you think you will always keep a couple other services that complement it? I do believe I always keep other services because mowing is too cyclical and too seasonal. I should say you got your spring rush three months out of the year, which is crazy, and then you got maybe one month in the fall where it's crazy. But you got to have something to balance it out. And your lifetime value, your customer is so much greater if you can offer other services. Now I'm still going to be wanting to offer simplified services. And that will be my mantra is constantly making them more and more simple. So you know, the local shop, for example, cutting out things like planting, paver, patios, retaining walls, all that stuff that over the time we've just cut, cutting and cutting and cutting will continue. But things like property cleanups, mulch installations, simple simplified services, I always want to keep that cause it improves the lifetime value of the customer. It also allows me to even out the seasonality. What you want to focus on is during those three, four months of spring rush, get customers for mowing, focus on those initial mows that take forever and getting them onboarded and then push your project times into the where it's slower, whether it be winter, summer, et cetera, when the grass is more dormant. So even the Mount Vernon location that we've turned around, it's been six, eight weeks now since we turned it around. We just started this week adding drive bys twice a week. So Tuesdays and Fridays, the general manager, Caleb, will go do drive bys. Now we just added that in because now we know that the mowing is going to start slowing off and we need to have work for the guys. So we'll do drive bys for property cleanups, mulch installs, simplified services. I'll never go to just mowing because it's way too simple, too seasonal. I always want to do those simplified services again, assuming that whoever mows the lawn in spring can also do those same services during the summer months or when things slow down. When it comes to projects, how can we get and retain more customers at this time of the season with the economy being the way that it is, I think it really comes down to if you are trying to grow or if you are trying to be more profitable. Currently, even at the location I own in South Carolina, we're raising prices, we are cutting out services, we're in profitability mode. The location has been in existence for a year and a half, two years now. And it's time to like really a year and a half, start cutting out services, raising prices and really starting to focus on more drive bys instead of in person estimates. So that way the general manager can be out in the field working and be more profitable. So it's just which stage of business are you at? There is no right or wrong. And that's why like so some people get confused when at the beginning I'm like, I just want you to close work, I don't care what the prices are. And then at the exact same moment I'll say something to someone else which is you need to raise your prices, you need to decrease your close ratio. Like it's just different stages of the business. If you're trying to go hyper growth, keeping your prices lower so you can have a higher close ratio is the only thing you should be focused on. But when you got to the point where like, hey, you know what, I have three or four employees. It's kind of where I'm comfortable doing 50, 60,000amonth in revenue. You can turn a 50, 60,000 dollars a month revenue business into a business that is easily generates $15,000 a month in profit. You've just got to realize you're not going to grow to 100,000 within the next 12 months in monthly revenue. So you're going to increase your prices, you're going to increase your E fees. All of those things are just more defensive measures to become extremely profitable the levers in the business. So when it comes to retaining more customers and.

Getting more customers this time of year, you want to tap into one click estimate emails. Having as many people in that database as you possibly can. The locations that are able to tap to their one click estimate emails and have hundreds if not thousands of emails are the ones that are able to get past the seasonality of our industry because when things get slow, they send a one click estimate email out and immediately get work. So I know that like the local shop for example, for the past few months has been so far booked out, they haven't sent any one click estimate emails because there's like two months booked out. Well, I know what's going to happen is when we send one out in fall because we want to book in the whole winter, we, we will literally get probably a hundred plus clicks because we haven't someone out there's that pent up demand. We haven't been doing it every few weeks to try to keep the funnel full. So in terms of getting more customers, right now it's a matter of how do I take the existing customers and upsell them. How do I make sure that every single job that I'm on for mowing, I'm trying to upsell them on a mulch job, weeding, bush trimming, I'm looking around, I'm incentivizing my crew by giving them a $50 or $10 bonus or whatever it is that you're doing to upsell customers. So for us it's $10 gift card that they get. Assuming that they just make notes on their visit of what the customer needs and how many budget hours it's going to take, they're going to 10 bucks. So literally if they do that at 20 jobs in the day that they are at and doing service on two of them get accepted, that's an extra 20 bucks in their day. That's actually like $2, $3 an hour just by them making a couple notes of what this customer needs and how many budget hours it's going to take and we can send out the estimate and you'll close a lot of those because you've already. You're literally sending an estimate to someone who already knows, likes and trusts you when it comes to you're doing their lawn now, you're offering them mulch, you're already aware of their property, you know what they need. It saves a lot of time for them. The acceptance rate is very high. If someone's mowing their you're mowing their lawn and then you see that their bushes are overgrown, you send a couple pictures with an estimate like those get accepted a lot. So I'd be really focusing on upselling during those times and whether it be one click estimate emails or just making more aware on the crew to be able to do that and that get those informations. I know we had a conversation on the Facebook page about this, but with our size, I have been running and getting gas Fridays after work is completed. If I were to get credit cards or whatever to give to the crews, will I need to put their individual's name on the cards? Yeah. So like Capital One for example, the Spark Business card is great, yet 1 1/2 or 2% back, cash back. And it's so great because you literally just put the employee's name in there and they send it to you like within three to five days. It's fantastic once you get over a certain number of cards. I get Chase, for example, I have to call in every single time and they won't do it. They won't even allow my general managers do it. It's annoying as I'll get it. And we've actually switched to debit cards at some of my corporate locations because it's such a pain in the butt to change, cancel and add new employees. But Capital One seems to have their stuff together. You can put the spending limit on there. It's easy to lock the card from the app. So yeah, I would do that and I would definitely not at your size destin be running the gas station, filling up the trucks either a give them cards, it's part of their day, they're stopping at gas stations anyways to go to the bathroom, to grab lunch, whatever it might be, they can fill up then and then you could also potentially down the road, if you really had a ton of trucks, you could have someone come in on a Saturday and fuel up, wash the trucks, etc, but definitely at your size, you shouldn't be fueling up trucks on Friday evening. Who should be handling notes? The Crew leaves on jobs with action required. CC used to do these but had who. Who should be handling notes. The crew leaves the jobs with action required. Oh, I see what you're saying on the dispatch board. This is something that you're going to be doing as a scheduling. You know, once we hand off scheduling, the scheduler is the one who needs to address notes inside of the dispatch board because you're seeing those, you're doing those live. You usually have to schedule a yellow slip or schedule another appointment or whatever it might be or edit something if a crew member is. Is. Is on the site and making notes. So whoever's new scheduling needs to be going back and seeing the notes on.

The the previous day for dispatch.

How long does Clearant typically hold on to money? We invoice on 30 June and have not seen a deposit in our account. Last month it took two to three days. But five days seems a little bit much with the holiday. Everything is going to be locked up, honestly. So if you build like the last day of the 30th, literally it probably had like the 31st. Was there a 31st in this month? June. Let's check here. Yeah. No, there wasn't. So, yeah, if you build the last month, the last day of the 30th, it means that the first was the one business day you should have had money in. Now like you should have money in the fifth. So yeah, it took five days. It's really because there's one business day Friday and then you got it the next business day, which is the fifth because of the long weekend. But most of the time if you bill earlier in the day, you'll get the money the next day. Most of the time with clearance. But I've seen it be weird sometimes, but I know like Andy Burleson, he said he always gets the money the next day. I think the earlier in the day you can bill. Just assume that you're going to get the next business day if you have enough time in that day. I don't know exactly what that batch time is. I'm sure there is a time where it's okay if you get before this time it batches for the next day. But I don't know exactly what that time is. Sorry, Dustin. Cool. I had a few questions about the real estate side of things.

Wait one second here. I called last month and they immediately deposited once I called. But yeah, it's weird. I don't know what's up with clearance. Sorry, Clearance. Supposed to do next day deposit they took everyone off and began charging a fee for that. What? I have not heard of that. If so that's stupid. Sorry. I just unfortunately have a monopoly on service autopilot. You have to use clearance in order to use service autopilot now. But that's why we're getting away from it. With Stripe, you have way more options. We control the data and. Anyways, yeah, I'm kind of, if I think about it too much, I guess, frustrated. Okay. Last thing, a couple of you had asked about FHA loans, which is basically where you can get usually 3 1/2 to 5% down on your first. Your first house. And so one other thing that's kind of a hack if you. If that's still a steep incline for you, think about this. During the slow months, during the winter, if you're just getting started, which I'm assuming if you're doing three, 3.5% down is your first loan, you're probably just getting started with Augusta. You probably are going to have a few months in the winter where you're a little bit slower. I would recommend trying to get your real estate license during those months if you don't have a lot to do now, if you have stuff to do and you're really busy in the business, focus on the business. You'll make way more money. But it's a potential hack is to be able to go and during the slow months for some of your states, you literally need 40 hours of education and you're able to pass the test. Some states are a lot more like Colorado is a pain in the butt to get your real estate license in Washington State, we have to do 90 hours. And so I'm doing it at night, trying to chip away at it. It's horrible. And most of it honestly is just memorization. You can memorize stuff for the exam and then it doesn't have anything to do with real estate investing after that, however, you gotta pass it. The reason you do that, though, is then you join a brokerage like exp, which is online. You pay like $80 a month to be part of an agent underneath them. And then what's cool, the reason you would do that, so that you can represent yourself in a deal. And then you get two and a half percent of the commissions. And so what's really cool about that is if I'm buying an FHA loan and I have to put 3.5% down, guess what? I'm gonna get two and a half percent as a commission from the person who is the seller. So you could literally get in for 1% down. What's really cool with exp is they allow you to get all the commissions, 100% of the commissions on. I think it's three deals a year that you're doing for yourself. So they really actually embrace people who are doing self. They're self representing. Most brokerages don't like this to have brokerages. There's other besides exp. I'm somewhat biased because they're local. So that is definitely an option. Once I am set up as an agent, I could definitely give you all more information on that sort of thing. But if that is something of interest as we go into next winter again, you might need to spend an hour a day for a couple months chipping away at it, doing it at night, pass the exam. But it's a great way if you're looking at three and a half percent down, you. You do a deal as self, you know you're representing yourself as the agent. You will get 2 1/2% in most states. Some, some states it's 3%. Usually about 2 1/2% as an agent commission. That money will go into your pocket and then you'll only have to really have 1% out of pocket. So it's a great deal again to get started. And I'd only be doing this, I'd only be doing this if this is the type of location where you're able to hack it some way in terms of getting space for the business, space for your either personal, your personal residence and be able to basically kind of get the business in there for free is the way I'd be looking at this. So I can give more details on that if you are interested, post a question in it on the form. But that's definitely an option if you go into the winter and you're slower. Get your real estate license. It's not hard. It's just a matter of memorization. And 95% of what you learn you don't need. It's just a matter of you got to get it to pass the test. Once you pass the test, you can become an agent. And exp. There's other online agencies and brokerages that you can hang your hat of your, of your brokerage license underneath. And then like exp is like 80 bucks a month to get all the training and all the rest of it. And then when you close a deal, they help you on the back end. And then how they work is like you get 80% of the commission goes to you, 20% goes to them until you hit a certain cap, which none of us are going to hit because we're not trying to sell real estate. We're doing it for our own usage. And even if you did this for one deal, your very first deal, two and a half percent of a deal, let's say $500,000, you're looking at what, 2%, 5%. That's 25. You're looking at like 12 grand that you could potentially save on that deal. And if that might mean that you're only putting down five or six grand out of your own pocket, plus that commission, that's how you get into your first deal. You hack it, maybe do it in Airbnb, do an accessory dwelling, put your. Put your shop on it, and all of a sudden you're making three, four grand a month in cash flow, and you literally put a few thousand dollars into the deal. So for those of you wanting to think about that getting started, you're having struggles finding a place to rent, which is going to become more and more difficult. That's definitely an option for you. It's not as hard as you might think. It's just memorization. It's a pain in the butt because literally 99% of it, you do not need to know. And my agents that I've used in the past don't even know the stuff that I'm learning because it's just very, very much in the weeds of real estate and law and things like that. So if you're interested in that, submit a question in the form and I can talk more about it. But definitely a great hack. Two and a half percent as a commission would come back to you, you'd literally just roll that into your three and a half percent down. So. All right, everyone, hope you have a fantastic rest of your week.