Mike Minutes Mastermind 01/19/2023

09:30 Pacific Time. Nailed it. That's a first. Okay, so let's go and get started. I need to drop.

This link here. One second. Sorry.

Trying to be better about getting started closer to 9:30am Pacific Standard Time. Having some consistency.

See here.

I was amazed because this morning I found out that every single live stream since the beginning of 2023, I have been putting in the title 2022.

And no one told me what's up with that? Right, Sorry. I should drop this link in.

There it is. All right. Drop that in there. Cool. It's going to get started. Let me get. Let's show you guys something super cool. Super cool. All right. Wait for it. Wait for it. Okay, so some people get really excited about sports or shopping or gossip or whatever. But this made me so excited this morning. Check this out. Present.

Share screen. Okay. So you know people like before and after photos, right? Oh, I want to share the whole thing. One second. Present share screen window.

Okay, cool. All right. So this is before doctors 4 showed this sketch that I sent to the designers a while back. This is what it's actually looking like in production. Pretty cool.

So this is the cockpit we're working on.

Should be ready here for our launch in February.

So that's what's coming around the corner. All the numbers that I always wish we had. Things like attrition rate, et cetera. So, yeah, it's going to be really, really good. Looking forward to it. And this is just a piece of it, but lots of good stuff on the horizon. Telling you when you're booked out. We got to get done the exact day which we're working on. Obviously, budget hours and revenue will be filled in. This is pretty basic stuff. Revenue by service, recurring versus projects. So fantastic. This made me so happy. This is like Christmas. That's fantastic. Okay, let's jump into questions.

Questions. Okay, here we go.

Zoom in.

First question comes from Kyle Tarvin. Is it possible we'll have the media team create a small postcard type handout we give to our customers after a project is completing. Ask for a guru with a space for the employee to write their name. Ryan Payne sent his customer text asking if they will write a review on the Google page regarding his service so he can get a tip from his boss. And I thought it might be neat for our employees to give something to the customer with their name on it. It would be nice to be able to order these from the pro shop and allow our employees to take ownership in casting not getting their review bonuses. I can do that. However, we have found that pieces of paper and trucks in the lawn care industry do not mesh very well. And people end up, end up being crumpled up a bunch of trash, folded corners, dirty, oily, etc.

That's why the email, after the person gets it invoice, the email is being sent to them asking for review inside of Zooper and down the road in cockpit or in Copilot, they'll be asked for review directly after completing the job. And one feature that is probably in 2024 that I want to do is it knows who did the job. So when they, when they go to pay the invoice, it could actually say, hey, these are the people who are on your job site and they can literally use their names in their view right then and there. Because, you know, we know who is assigned to the project, so there's no reason why we couldn't just tell them like, hey, you know, Bob and Joe are on your project. Would you like to commend either of them for their service and exceptional service? They click on their name, they leave a review, that person gets a bonus. So that could all be automated down the road, but for now, for now you could do this. What I would say is probably the more powerful thing to do is design it yourself so you can put a QR code on there that is designed just for your Google review link. So if you do a QR code that way, it's like, hey guys, pass this out to all your customers, write your name on it, hand it out to people. You could do that. You could also do this on the back of their business cards. If you're going to order the business cards, you could literally just put a QR code in the back of their business card. And that way they have to give a business card to someone and tell them to flip it over, scan the QR code, leave a review with my name on it so I get paid by my boss. That would work too. So.

I don't think leaving.

Sorry, I don't think just leaving a card or like stationary is going to go online. Typically they need to be online. The QR code is a nice way to kind of segue that to quickly get them online. That's why typically the uptake from emails or in the payment process is typically your best review bet. Or like if you're texting them, for example, they can click on a link and it goes right there. There's just a lot of friction of, oh, I need to leave a review for someone now I'm gonna go find them on Google, but I look them up or I'm gonna type in the URL. That's. That's difficult, right? Keep in mind too, just so you know, in this case too, you can always tell customers not to go to your website on your homepage. There's a review button on all of our sites, so keep that in mind. If you have less than, I think, five or 10 reviews, we're not putting the schema for your Google reviews on there, but other than that, there is a write a review button.

Please let your guys know that too. That's probably helpful. Tyler Kukle, given how you outlined how AI will shape labor markets and businesses in the C suite unfiltered podcast over the decades, how do you think unemployment and quality of life for employees would shift? Do you think it would lead to job creation like the rise of the automotive industry did? Yeah, like, I'm. I'm pretty optimistic about it, and I think it will lead to a better quality of life because routinized and manual labor will be outsourced to robotics and. And artificial intelligence. I think, again, a lot of this is 10, 20 years away from actually being a reality and actually like, commercially viable in terms of price and cost.

But yeah, I think it'll be very good thing. The same way that, you know, 150, 200 years ago, majority of our time was spent out in a farm, and now most of us have never done farming in our whole life.

Some people would disagree, but I'd say it's a better quality of life to be able to do things you're passionate about. And I think the same thing is true for routineized tasks that can be outsourced to technology. Oh, that question from Tyler Kukle. Next question is from Kevin from Bloomingdale. How do you determine what you should spend your time on? I have so many things or ideas to work on in my business, but how can I determine which ones will move the needle in my business? How do I know which needle needs to be moved in the first place? This is really why the coaching calls are so important. Because at the end of that coaching call, we specifically make sure that two things are done. One action plan for the next month. And then on the back, you also have the things that you need to improve on. But those are small spaces. I didn't leave a lot of space in there for you to write because in my opinion, you can only really get one or two big things done a month. Obviously, there's daily things you got to do, but those are just tasks. Those are just to do items, but actually moving real things in the business. If you were to do one or two a month, you like crush.

And when I say like big things, I mean, for example, like, okay, we're going to shift all our customers from biweekly to weekly service. We're going to cut out a certain type of service. We are going to remove all trailers and go trailers. Those would be like considered, quote, unquote, big things in your business that if you do one or two things, those things a month that make improvements to the company and you don't get romantic about what you've been doing in the past, you'll crush. You'll absolutely crush. So unfortunately we, you know, as I said, we replace the necessary for the urgent and the things that are most important. We just like whatever's the most most urgent fire in front of us, we typically jump on. So in terms of how do you determine what you should spend your time on? I literally spend no time thinking about this. Honestly, I know this is like a big thing to talk about, but I just don't think about this. There's obviously urgent things you have to deal with on a daily basis. The objective should be, as the company grows, to delegate as much of those urgent things to other people so you can focus on the things that are actually going to move the company forward. Because urgent things typically do not move the company forward. They defensive measure. So, you know, like, I have to fill out this tax information today, right? Otherwise I'm gonna be in trouble with the Whatcom county assessor's office. That's the urgent. If I don't do it, I'll probably end up in jail. However, that is not going to move the business forward at all. So it's just determining what is urgent, what is necessary.

And what is actually strategic. And realizing that if you just do one or two strategic things a month, you will literally crush competition. Because most people can can hardly do one or two really strategic things in their business a year. To be perfectly honest, most people struggle with like price increases. It's like literally that should be done in one week.

And they said, oh man, I'm thinking about switching out a commercial, going to residential. And it takes them two years to do that. Like, seriously, that is a one month decision. That's change our equipment. Let's run the math, okay? That doesn't work. Make the decision go. And that's why some companies will take 20 years and they'll still be in the same spot.

Because the time, how long it takes them to Execute on a strategic idea is so long.

So hope that made some sense. Next question from nobody. Oh, this is a great question. I was going to talk about this. We'll be charged another $500 for conference in October. I'm not 100% sure with this. I'm going to talk to the Franchise Advisory Council about this because if we're going to move conference indefinitely to October, it makes the most sense to move it back to October. But I'm also not opposed to just always charging in January. So I'm split on this. I'm going with the Franchise Advisory Council. Decide on this likely, because I don't really care. It makes the most sense to charge it when everyone's at conference because that's when everyone's coming. And then on the flip side, that's only 10 and a half months instead of 12 months from the last one. So I'll talk to them, we'll figure this out. And in terms of the benefits or the downsides, the other positive too during October is everyone's cash flow looks better in October versus charging in January. And even in terms of taxes, it's in the calendar year, at the end of the year when you're trying to look for write offs. So I'll talk to the Franchise Advisory Council. We'll come up with a decisive answer on this. But I was already thinking about this and I'm indifferent on this. I really don't care. But we want to make sure it's the most fair. It makes the most sense to me to probably charge it in October. So. So that way it's just every year in October because we anticipate to keep it in Louisville, the annual conference for Augusta Nation. So I'll have an answer on this 100% down the road, but it is not definite yet. All right, questions. My only truck rebuilt transmission twice is reaching over 210,000 miles. Can I replace this one before buying a second truck? When you start getting above two trucks, you can't have trucks that are breaking down that often. And if you rebuilt the transmissions twice, I would probably just let it. It's probably not worth a lot resale. So I would just run it until it dies. And when it dies, just make sure you have the cash to go buy another truck or go get a second truck and use that, that one as your backup. Use the old one as your backup and then, you know, get another truck because obviously you're gonna be growing. So the question is, can you afford that? I don't think your rebuilt twice transmission 210,000 mile truck is gonna have a lot of resale value though. So if you're considering buying a truck, another truck, I would probably buy the second truck. Use this one as your backup and then as you continue to grow, eventually you'd probably let that truck go. But it can be a good backup. Like when trucks get really old, but they're still in working order, but their resale value is low. They're great backup trucks. Twice a year you make sure that the oils change. You have someone look at it, make sure the battery is charged up. It's like a great truck for once every three months when you need it. So I'm a big fan of keeping those. Especially when you have two, three, four trucks have a backup that's just junky.

In a pinch you have something to use. What is the lawn treatment price ratio compared to mowing? We use 1.5, so 1.5 times the price of mowing. You can change that in your, in your price calculator and change it however you want. But we use 1.5 just so it's simple, easy math.

If we are in growth mode and are just focused on hitting capacity, would you recommend having command center discount the price on the follow up call if the client rejects? Is that something they could do? No, we do not do that command center, because it's too subjective. We don't know how much of a price discount you want us to give. It just it's very difficult for us to ever make everyone happy in that scenario. Do we give the discount away too quickly and we're going to get people saying like, oh, they didn't really need the discount, you probably could have sold it without. So what I would recommend if you're trying to do this, number one, I'd probably just lower your prices if that's really what you're trying to do on every single quote. Secondarily I would say give them a call the customer prior to command center ever getting their hands on it. Right. So for example, you could put your call either at five days or three days for command center to follow up and then you would call the day after those like day one you could give a phone call and try to do a scarcity close. And if you do that, just make sure on the estimate you actually make note of that discount. So that way when we call or they email back or whatever it might be that there's track record of you giving that offer. If you're giving price discount offers, you've got to make sure it's somewhere on the quote, somewhere on the client's information.

What do you recommend? 10:16. I have no idea what this means. 10:16. 10:16, what does that mean?

10:16. I have no idea what 10:16 is.

Oh, you're talking about. Are you talking about fertilization rate, fertilizer ratios? I do not know what you're talking about, Sorry. How would you decide whether or not to put an engine in a truck? We bought a truck and rebranded about 4k into it plus 3k for the ramp rack engine repair. Came out to 7 and a half k, 130k miles. So personally, personally I would probably do the repair on this truck because another truck that has 130,000 miles is probably worth at least 150k or is at least worth $15,000 right now the question is, does it have a whole bunch of other issues if it's just the engine, but like the transmission looks great, all the electrical runs well, you got good tires and brakes on the thing. Then it's probably worth switching out right now because trucks are 15 to 20 grand. You know, back in the day when trucks were seven, $8,000, I definitely would not be switching out the engine. So all that's kind of changed the past few years. We have done a couple of buy one or two engine swaps because they only have 130, 150,000. I'm like, hey, I can use it for another three or four years. $7,000, that's like 100 bucks a month cheaper than buying another truck, right? So.

Oh, years from the truck. Okay, so what would you recommend? 10 to 16. Okay, gotcha. Yeah, I personally now like trucks that are within 10 years. And so what's his name, Chuck is going to send, he's making some videos of all the stuff he's doing for my four new locations down in North Carolina and he is, you'll see he's getting nicer trucks like probably all within five years, five, six years.

And so you're gonna pay a little more. 15,000, 16,000. You're not going to get trucks for three or four grand.

But you start getting a 20, 20 years old, you are going to get the three, four, five thousand dollar trucks but you're going to have more breakdowns. Right. So it's just a trade off and just remember that it's fine to start with smaller and then as you get more money you want a little bit more.

Confidence. You can get the more the newer trucks that you can pay a little bit more for, but there's more confidence that they're going to work. And if you're not technically savvy or mechanically savvy like me, you definitely want to pay a little more for nicer tries. So.

Yeah, personally, I would personally probably recommend 10 years. Anything more than 10 years is probably not a great buy.

Just in terms of. Especially if you're not mechanically inclined. All right, everyone, hope you have a fantastic Thursday. We'll see you guys tomorrow. Take care.