Mike Minutes Mastermind 01/08/2024

And we're live. Welcome, everybody. Hope you're doing fantastic.

Let's go ahead and get started. I have a couple announcements and then we'll jump in. I know most everyone's getting hit hard with snow. We are getting some of it ourselves this week. It looks like.

In Washingtone. Copy this link where YouTube. There you go.

All right, let's get started. A couple quick things.

First off, Command center mentioned to me that quite a few people when they came over to Copilot are trying to charge their customers processing fees. That's fine. You can totally do if you want to. Just note that if you have not done that in the future in the past, customers will be questioning it. I don't recommend it personally. You can do it if you would like. But I do think it's just better to eat the cost and raise your prices and eat the cost of processing as a cost of doing business. Just my opinion. The processing fee of the extra 3% adds usually more headache in terms of people's calling and complaining, et cetera. So if you're going to do it, if you're going to just change it, I do recommend letting your customers know because we got some people that changed the processing. They started charging processing fees to the customer and you know they're going to see on their, their. Their command center bill, like there's a lot of phone calls coming in about it. So just, just be aware of that if you're going to put it on there. I recommend letting customers know so you don't have a whole bunch of feed. Like every single invoice is calling being like, what is this extra $3? What is this extra $8? So just recommend personally don't charge processing fees of the customer. Raise your prices to warrant it if needs be. Second announcement. The five locations that I owned in North Carolina, I have sold to Connor Hutchinson. Connor has worked with myself the past couple years as a general manager and he's going to be taking those over. I sold them to him yesterday and we're getting everything signed over, franchise agreement, etc. He'll be a franchisee, so he will own five locations. So wanted to congratulate Connor. I made this decision, although not easy, for several reasons. Primarily being that for the sake of the team that is in North Carolina, I think it is best they have an owner there and someone that is able to give them the most support.

Right now, it is best that I spend my time exclusively on Copilot and Augusta Nation during the spring rush. And even though it's January we're still. We are about a month away from what we consider spring rush at Command center because we start to ramp up. So this week we start. I think they're training 10 people this week, and then every week they're training 10 people new. So we're ramping up. I need to focus on those things. And so although it is, I'm, you know, leaving quite a bit of money on the table in terms of what those locations were to become this year, it's. It is. The greater good is that I just focus on all of us. Right now. I will definitely be buying more corporate locations down the road and in a much larger way than I have. But in the moment, based on what happened last week with me losing, Chuck Connor was going to step in as regional, and he did. Within about six hours, Command center moved everything over to him and he was acting as the regional. And I'm sure he would do a fantastic job at that doing that. But it aligns with his goals more that he'd be an owner. And for that reason, I want to make that happen. And so in terms of questions about that, it's. I feel like a fair valuation. I helped him with the down payment, so that way he's able to get in. Obviously, it's not like he had time to plan a lot for this, but it needed to be done quickly so that the general managers there can kill the spring rush. They have a solid group of general managers. They're going to just absolutely kill it in 2024. So, you know, financially for me, is this a little bit of a leaving on the table a little bit. I do think the valuation would have doubled or tripled in 12 to 16 months if I would have held on to it because it's our second year and I know what happens in our second spring rush across the board at Augusta in terms of growth and profitability, etc, but it is inconsequential to the fact that it is most important that I spend my time on the two most important things right now. And any distraction, even if it is minor, needs to be taken away. And so it is somewhat a large.

Decision, but had to be made quickly to set up them for success, make sure Connor can crush it. And I know he will. He works like. Works like an absolute dog as a general manager. He did as a regional manager for a couple days that he stepped in and bridge of the gaff with Command center, he did the same thing. And he's going to absolutely crush it. So I have full confidence in that. And again it is not that I do not trust Connor as regional. He would have absolutely crushed it. It aligns most with his goals that he owned, and he's always made that clear to me. And so it was a way for me to be able to focus the spring rush on what is most necessary for augustination. Instead of just making sure that my locations are taken care of, it is better that I, given what happened.

Focus on all of us instead of just my locations. So that is that. Connor's gonna absolutely crush it. Several of he and a couple of the gms are going to be here this week actually for training, and the general managers have all been briefed on this already previously on the Weekend and everything has been nailed down. So congratulations to Connor. I think everyone's met him in the past and he and his wife just a pretty awesome duo and. And they're going to absolutely represent the brand tremendously. And the joy and satisfaction I get out of seeing that will be far greater than whatever money I'm leaving on the table. But he did pay what I felt felt was a fair market valuation for the current day, and I think he'll crush it. So congrats to him. And I think that's just the best thing for Augusta Nation as well as for those locations locally, given what all happened last week. So that is that. All right, sorry, if you hear a bunch of noise, there's a bunch of onboarding going on over here. Okay, let's jump in.

Questions.

All right, let's rock and roll. First question is from Alistar. Make sure I can pull this up here.

Very nice. Okay.

There we go. All right. Alistair.

What do you do when your funds are drained and you're barely making enough money to pay bills and cannot pay franchise fees?

So, Alistair, I don't know how much you're comfortable with saying stuff. I know we're pretty open with the destination, but I know with the divorce and everything being wrapped up, I know a lot of things get locked up. Please communicate with your coach. So I know a few months ago, Lee talked with you on the phone, etc. So please stay in touch with the. The. With your coach. We.

We. When people are going through personal struggles, we are pretty lenient when it comes to making sure things get deferred, et cetera. So please reach out. Something like a divorce, deaths in the family, et cetera. We are pretty lean, lenient on. So please reach out. But more importantly, you know, I know the house is going through sale and things like that right now, but even when I looked at Your last coaching call. You know, the consideration of buying apartments right now should not really be in the equation. It should be writing the business and the assets that you have there, focusing on getting the asset of the house liquidated so that you can move forward after the divorce. And I know the divorce clouds everything. This is the time you lean on other people inside of a destination and coaches to give clarity of thought when otherwise it's just not there. So that would be my recommendation and I hope you don't mind me sharing a little bit there with other members.

Kyle Tarvin from Oklahoma when connecting copilot and P4P, do we have to put the P4P percentages under each service? Would it mess anything up if we didn't put any percentages under each individual services in Copilot? And the percentages don't matter because it's pulling over budget hours and the rate from Copilot and then the percentages inside P4P. So that's all that's required.

It's not point percentage over. Okay Forest, I've heard this five different ways for you now. Set route, order options needed quickly and go. But I hear you. It is on the on the dispatch board. I have, I have seen it in two Facebook groups, email analysis. I hear you.

And so it is on the on the dispatch board it is going to get done before spring rush. So telling me five ways isn't gonna help. I see every single one and yes it is going to get done. It's already on the dispatch or it is on the roadmap.

Landon Smith Tallahassee, Florida.

Been struggling pretty bad this winter. I currently have one guy who I'm struggling to provide for, I work for and I'm still actively losing customers due to winter opt outs. I got 2,000 door hangers and put out 900 of them and got zero leads from them. My next thought is to just knock on doors and see the return As I got one customer doing that after doing it for about 2 hours 1 clicks. I also got zero leads from as well. I want to save up money for the upcoming spring, but it's becoming increasingly difficult to keep a steady flow of work without marketing. Also, the bank account is not able to increase at the rate I intended because work I'm not doing as much work as I'd like. I'm not exactly sure what to do to solve this. I was wondering what your suggestion would be. The things I plan to try are knock on doors a couple hours a day with the second half of door hangers at hand. 2. Call old customers and see if they'd like to get on a monthly schedule. Maybe offer the bi weekly price if needed until the mowing season starts. 3. Try more one clicks. How many would you send a month? In my situation, I would not send out more than one max. Two for connecting, contacting companies I know to see if I can get any accounts off of them for a good rate. 5. Serving outside of my territory until I get the schedule filled the dial back. What would your suggestion be? Thanks for everything you do. Yeah, so I think all these are good ideas.

In terms of, you know, all of these things. The answer to this is everything, right? Especially in your first winter and second winter. Especially like when you're not going to have enough winter services to usually keep your crew busy, you're going to have to try everything. And so whether that be increasing your service area, you can do that for just the temporary like tail commands. And remember that's only that's updated. I think on the fifth of every single month was once a month they change all those so you could do that and just for one time projects. Contacting old customers. Great idea. Knocking on doors instead of just doing the door here is also great idea. Especially Landon, you're a good talker. People are gonna like you'll do well there. And if you got one lead after two hours, one customer after two hours, technically speaking, if we run the math, if you debt for a day, you should be able to get three or four jobs which could potentially fill the week, right? So all of these things is what you do, right? And so I'm glad that you came up with those five things because I would have basically said those if you just gave me that first paragraph because it is a matter of like getting scrappy during those first couple winters when you don't have enough recurring work to keep you busy throughout the winter. It is, it is all of these things. Adding more services, upselling customers, calling them one on one with them, et cetera, and not just doing one clicks. It's like I'm going to email my 40 or 50 million customers specifically because I know their property and ask and offer them services. I'm going to offer cleanup estimates personalized to each of my customers that are on recurring like these are the things you'll just have to do. And so the question is like knocking on the doors. Two hours. Okay, great. If you spent that same two hours going through your existing client list of all the properties you know and giving them a personalized email with a video and an Estimate would that be better than one every two hours? I don't know. It. It is a matter of doing all of these things and that's usually what it requires the first couple of winters. Honestly, like until probably my sixth or seventh year, we lost money every winter. Like we can never just break even. And that's always the goal. Assuming that you don't do snow and you have four or five months of where you don't mow the grass and so it's enough to stay, keep the schedule enough to where you can pay the fixed costs. Usually the goal. Landsmith with a switch over to Copilot. My invoicing got pretty messed up. Over 60% of my customers never paid for November and I haven't even sent out December invoices yet due to still try to fix some stuff. CC says they have already tried to contact people, but I've never had an issue with my customers pay me for. What would you recommend I do in my situation? Thanks. Yeah, it is likely because you had credit card information on file previously, right? So it looks like half your customers haven't paid yet. Honestly, it's because they, they are not used of. They're used to the money just coming out. And so I would do two things. One, I would send them all text messages with the links to the invoices that are overdue. I would also. And the reason I say that is because potentially, you know, moving over to Copilot, your emails might be going to spam now. So they're not seeing them. Secondly, I would say that the subject description of your emails, subject line of your emails should be something more along the lines of like payment.

Please update your payment information or like payment not processed or something along those lines or like past due. So they open the email up because what's happened, you've done service with them for a year, whatever it is. They just see the emails typically come in and think, oh, it's a receipt. Oh, it's just a paid invoice. Because they. They're used to just seeing the email and there's like archiving it. You've got to get them to open it up, right. So I would send a text message along with said email. I would also make sure the email header makes sure that it gets opened instead of it just be like here's an invoice because they usually have seen that and just archive it because they know credit cards on file. So it's kind of a two, two prong approach on that.

Caleb from Mare island in regards to the QR code, door hangers, prices. I'm hoping that when these get designed it'll be extremely clear on how to use the QR code. I know the majority of people understand them, but we have a ton of retirees in our area and I've already seen a bunch that don't know how to scan a QR code. Maybe a three quick three step explanation or something. Yeah, it'd be really basic, similar to what's currently there, which is like fill this information out and take a picture and send it to us at this email. Those three steps, it'd be similar. And if you wanted to say, if you're, you know, very confident that most of your market can't scan the QR code, might be better just to have the pricing that like the way they write it out. I should say. That being said, if they have the pricing and the phone number, if they can't scan the QR code, usually they call. And so when they do that, typically command center walks them through it is like, hey, can you send this, you know, this email, etc. So yeah, just a heads up on that. I don't know what the math like what the data is of, like what percentage of people do or do not in your market. That's the challenging part. But if you're very comp, like 70, 80% of you are not gonna be able to scan the QR code. You might just want to stick with the older ones. But I would test them and just see what happens. Because really what it's doing is it's removing the point of them having to write out their information when most of the time people already have pre filled information on their mobile devices for like address, phone number, name, etc. So they literally will click scan it, it'll have the accepted estimate numbers and those have to like literally a button or two pre fill information. And now they've accepted the estimate for a certain price. So I would just, I don't know, Caleb. I would just say that in the spring you're probably going to want to test this or late spring, whenever we get that finished.

All right, I think that's all I got for today. We do have training for new owners coming up this week. Starting tomorrow, hopefully everyone can get in. I know the flight schedules are an absolute joke right now, but all the weather, but we will be doing that. So over the next few days I might not have masterminds every single day, but I will do them as I can. I think that's all I got. Appreciate all of you have a fantastic day and we'll see you tomorrow.