Mike Minute Mastermind 09/09/2022

Hey everyone. Hope you're doing super well. I know we're a little bit later today. Thanks for your patience with we have training this weekend so just wrapping that up for today and tomorrow. But I want to go over a couple updates. In the description of this YouTube video or Facebook video, there's a form and that form is going to be for if you are doing snow service. Okay. So you know, they fill it out. I'm going to open up real quick just to show you what it looks like and then we'll jump into questions and things. But let me show you what it is going to look like if you were doing snow.

Cool. So just gotta first acknowledge these three things in terms of all your customers being inside the CRM. Snow's team can answer questions for you and your snow clients will not be able to responsible for scheduling or invoicing these clients, making sure that they're on the master route, etc. All right, next, this is the part that is going to go inside of your wiki and we want to make sure it's standardized in terms of the wiki notes. So everyone at command center knows how to answer questions. And then if you click yes to this last question, which is will you accept last minute additions, there's some further questions based upon what you're doing. So again, if you are doing snow, feel free to fill this all out. If you have no idea how to do snow routes in terms of inside the CRM, watch these videos. If you're on Zooper, watch this video here. Over this coming spring there will be added features for snow routes inside Zooper.

But currently this is the one that we are using. It's pretty basic because most people on Zooper currently are not doing snow and if they are, it's going to be 10 to 15 clients that are residential. So it's a feature that we are putting in 2023 for super in terms of really focusing on improving it. So for now though, there is a way that we would recommend doing it and it's pretty straightforward. Feel free to watch these videos if you are in service, autopilot and trying to master routes and a lot of other complexities. Watch these videos here from the Academy on how to do those. So all right, so again, if you're not doing snow, really don't need to worry about that at all. But if you are doing snow, make sure you fill out that form. All right, let's jump over into questions and I will be emailing that form link out as well in case someone was not Watching this live, you go ahead and share my screen. We had some questions come in.

Right.

Sorry about that yesterday. Majority of the time I'm somewhat driving and I use Siri to text what I'm saying and mainly it's just me trying to get the question question out before I get forget I was what I was asking yesterday. For a solo operator, how would you run first day orientation if you run everything out of the house? I think you know, it's first day orientation. You've already hired them. Right. So wherever they're going to start their first day of work I would start their orientation at and I'd just be like hey, your first day is going to be, you know, Monday. You usually start at 9, you come in at 8 for example and we'll do orientation and that's when you're going to go over the four pages of the orientation document etc is during that time. So I wouldn't do a different location though. Maybe for your interviews you do a different location if you just you know afraid of having people know where you live, things like that. But in terms of the orientation I do a start time of whenever you're going to get them started on their first day of work. Typically orientation we just literally do right before they're they're actually going to go start training that day.

If in profitable mode why not raise prices now on new customers and when and when back in growth mode lower prices to new customers because there is an excess of supply essentially a sale for services. The customers acquired during profitability mode with a higher prices will be with me in growth mode at the same rate.

Yeah. So in terms of recurring services.

As long as you're raising the prices in excess. Yeah. This is 100 right. I saw your comment on on Facebook too Vlad. You're 100 right. If you're raising prices when supply is really high you could do that and then they just retain those higher prices when you know even though you are trying to go profitability mode. 100 this is totally correct.

I think it's just a matter of consistency on budgeted hours. So if your crew sees all these jobs that are higher priced and then you bring that hourly rate down on mowing, for example P4P is going to be harder to hit on those the ones you get later on. So I'm not against this at all. Definitely. For projects moving prices up and down is easy because you e fees, dump fees, material markup. When we start talking about mowing prices. I don't I try not to move these a Lot. But you're right. If you wanted to during when you have a ton of demand in the fall, for example, like right now, raise your prices on mowing and the customers that come in, there's gonna be the higher price going into next spring rush. The ones that if you want to start growing into growth mode next spring, you bring your prices down, that'd be fine. You're just gonna have a little bit of discrepancy. The guys might be like, why are some of these jobs so inaccurate on budget hours and these other ones we can crush? So that's my only apprehension. But I don't think that's a huge deal. Honestly, I don't. I would. If you can raise prices, raise prices. I'd rather you do that than turn off all leads from now until you want to go back into growth mode. Right.

What does it mean to you on a daily basis interacting with the field crew and week to week as a crew to start with. Why? Really dedicated to building on the strong team culture we have. What does it mean to you on a daily basis in interacting with the field crew and week to week with the crew to start with. Why? Really dedicated to building on the strong team culture we have. Yeah, like, honestly, I think team culture a lot of times is made or made or broken when things go bad in the business. And so you know, at those pivotal like kind of like transitions is important. So for example, like last week we.

This, this week we did the, promoted the new GM at the local shop. And that's a, that's a very important moment to make sure that you are handling it correctly. And you can really decimate culture if you're not handling those, you know, moments correctly. So those are important moments. Making sure that you actually have the best interest of the employees at heart and are doing what you can to educate them in terms of open book management, having optional meetings and showing the numbers. These are all things that really help with team culture. Team culture in, in labor industries is fragile because we have seasonality and you're typically going to have a churn that you could have an entirely new team in 12 months. Right. So trying to build your systems of culture and, and what you stand for around your current team is kind of risky because it's very likely that you won't have any of your current employees in a year or two from now. So you got to create systems that outlast your employees. That's like having the optional meetings, have an open book man, having open book management, doing giveaways and cash Giveaways during team meetings. These are the type of things that build the culture and the outlast who is there. So I'd be trying to build culture outside of who is currently at your location and more around the systems, the meetings, the things that kind of go beyond how long someone is going to work for you.

What was the 45 minute proposal that you were saying no to and just eating your fries?

No. So the proposal they had was to do what we ended up doing which was having splitting the GM role because we really tried to do working GM model at the Bellium shop and just didn't work. And so I said that kind of the video this morning and that is having one person at the top doing all the estimates, all the scheduling, all the estimate like everything at 1.5 million revenue just too much like Marcus pulled it off and it was extremely exhausting. He's working crazy hours. But it's not sustainable to be able to do that. That's why I kind of say 800,000 to a million is a good spot because you can have one person run the show but once you get above that million marker, it's impossible. You got to have someone just managing the cruise all day long. And so we are splitting that to where April's in the office really kind of back to what Liz and I did. I was out in the field kind of being the GM doing estimates. She was in the office doing, you know, managing the crew throughout the day on the office side of things, the dispatch board, etc. So that's kind of what we're going back to and we feel like that model we will be able to get to two and a half million. We haven't, haven't grown at the local shop for the past three years and we're not looking to like lower prices and go into growth mode. By no means we're going to raise prices still. But I'm really confident that going to next year we're going to start growing at the Bellingham shop again because we've just reduced our services down to such simplicity. Everything's being sold over the phone. We don't have in person estimates. We really believe we can scale to 2.5 over the next five years. So to do that we're going to have those two people in place GM office manager and I think you really need to have that if you're going to scale past a million. You can't really get away with the working GM model after a million. It's just too much on that person. It's Too hard to find their replacement. It's too many hours that they have to work. And that's what we, we try to, you know, the Bellingham shop we look at as a guinea pig. We try stuff and see what breaks. And we tried running a 1.5 million dollar location with one person as a working GM and just doesn't work. You need someone else to be able to go out in the field, do estimates and then someone else to be able to help the crew live throughout the day when you're having 10, 15 trucks out on the road. So.

Oh, this is about the why. I probably have a book lesson and not sure how to apply the books lessons. Yeah, like, honestly, like, you know, obviously the why of Augusta is to change the level of professionalism in the landscaping industry. It's not a bad thing for you in your personal location to have some sort of why. Also, if it that means being the largest landscaping company in your area, it could be a certain number of customers. It could be to be able to have an average pay above $25 per hour or whatever that is. To be able to.

You know, have, have employees, buy houses, whatever it is the why of your location, you could potentially have that in addition to changing the level of professionalism in the landscaping industry. Right. I think the changing level of professionalism landscaping industry is good because it's an infinite game and it's never really fully achieved, regardless of how good and big you get. Right. If you cross your why is to become the largest in your area, what happens when you do well, then what are you chasing then? So if you're going to play an infinite game, the whole the why needs to be expansive as you grow. And so I would say to really do that, focus on changing a little professionalism. That way you're able to use examples of other landscapers in your market, what they're doing really well in, what they potentially could be improving on. Don't use their names, just like point out examples like, hey, I was driving by another company the other day, I saw them jump out and they were smoking right up against the customer's property. And then they tossed their cigarette but butt on the customer's lawn. Like, that's not what we stand for our level. Our goal is to change the level of professionals in the industry. We want that to eventually be something that is looked down on. And in our industry, we expect professional employees, we expect professionalism. We have, we can afford them on P4P and the customers expect that from us. And that's the type of Thing.

I appreciate that move more than you know. Jeremy and I are wondering if we were weak sauce. Oh, I'm guessing this is Brian. No, I 100% stand by. Anything above a million, you needed someone in the office. You just do even with command center because they can't. What command center can't do for you is manage your crew. And guys can't wait 30 minutes while you're finishing up an estimate or training or doing an interview, which you need to be focused on doing an interview for. If it's a good interview, you should be focused that for 30, 60 minutes or if you're doing estimate, might be 30 minutes. And now you got a calamity happening out with the, with the crew because there's no one to manage them. So you need someone. When you have 10, 15 trucks on the road and you know, 15 plus guys, you got to have someone that they can be in touch with all day long. So even though command center will still be doing full service and stuff for the Bellingham shop, it'll still be a matter of needing that person. But that setup, I believe can scale the 2.2 and a half million. But you can't get above a million in my mind, without someone in addition to the general manager working and operating. Right. And so Brian, I'm assuming this is you, this is where you hit this spring. And this, this is like, hey, we got to get Jeremy back in the office and we gotta be able to manage it like that way. And you can do everything yourself. And that's you hit that million marker, right. So that's why I say like either A, you scale up past a million, go into stage five growth, or B, you stay at stage four growth, that 500 to 800,000 in revenue and you have a GM in place, right. And that's a working GM model that also is profitable. It's not right or wrong. It just means if you're going to go scale past a million, realize you're going to need another office person. There's going to be more overhead, you're probably need more space and you're going to need to scale it, right? So if you're trying to find working GM, that's easier to find someone that can run a 500,000 to 800,000 business versus a 1.5 million plus operation. Not to say you should not go to 1.5 if that's what you want to do. It's just a matter if you're trying to scale location, location, location. It's harder to find a GM that can run a 1.5 million location versus a 500. Like it's a different skillset completely. A working GM doing 500. 600,000 in revenue is working out in the field a few days a week doing estimates, Hiring someone every few weeks at 1.5, you are hiring every single day. You are doing 10, 15, 20 estimates a day is a lot. A whole different scale and. And level of GM that you're gonna have to try to find pie out city turf. Oh, that's funny. Yeah, the interview comes out on Sunday. It'll be really good. So I was actually texting Jonathan this morning, so. All right, that's all we got. Thanks so much, everyone. Feel free to submit more questions and we'll see you on Monday. Take care. Oh, and make sure you fill out the form for snow. If you're doing snow, fill out the form. If you're not doing snow, don't worry about it. You don't need to fill out anything. But I'll also email that to you guys this weekend. But if you're doing snow, make sure to fill out so we can standardize everyone's wiki. All looks the same. You know exactly how you do snow salt, how you do pricing, and all the rest of it, so. All right, guys, take care. Bye.