Mike Minutes Mastermind 01/21/2025

Morning Gustonation. Let's go ahead and get started. Welcome to welcome back to your regularly scheduled programming here on the Mic Minutes Mastermind. Yesterday we went over the Augusta Leads program and steps to get that set up. Let's go ahead and jump in. Kevin I saw this message on the Facebook group. The fastest way to do is probably email help us alongservices.com there's literally just a couple sentences that need to be added to the email. Just really focusing on asking the review in the exchange so that the customer so that your employee gets a bonus. Also then adding the one more step in the automation that will text them the message in addition to the email. As we all know, the uptake of a text message is much higher. So if you're trying to get a lot of reviews, highly recommend it. So a couple quick changes. I believe in your email adding those extra couple sentences as well as adding the tech side. If you set it up now, you know in perpetuity the I believe the you'll get a lot more reviews. So if you need Command center's help on this email help GustAlongerServices.com and they could probably take care of it for you. Otherwise just follow those steps that I put in the Facebook group page yesterday.

All right, let's go ahead and get started. We got 11 questions. 11 questions looks like today. So it's been almost a week of questions stacking up. So let's go ahead and get started. Mr. Anonymous, can you diagnose why this is happening? Looking at our P and l, we made $25,000 in profit. However, we have $60,000 in our bank account. Obviously I'm happy about having the money, but why is our cash in the bank so much higher than what our profit is? Saying we started off the year not having anything in and I built it over the last year we don't have it have large loans, maybe 3 to $4,000 in payments this year. Trucks are paid for in cash. Any thoughts why this is? I can't see it.

Looking at our P and L. Okay, so, okay, so I don't see a P and L attached, which is fine. So you have $60,000 in the bank. You made $25,000 in profit and we start off the year as not having anything bankability over the past year we don't have large loans, maybe 3 to $4,000 in payments each year. Well, because see any payments or loans would have an opposite effect. So it would actually be where you'd have less money in the bank than what your P and L shows. So that's definitely not why.

The only thing I can think of based upon what you're sharing with me now is if you've collected for revenue that's in the future. But I doubt that's what it is like projects that you have deposits paid down on.

Or if you had.

Not accounted for all of your expenses. So for example, what I've seen some people do, like their credit card is being paid from a personal account and then their business account is not reflecting that. And therefore QuickBooks is only taking the expenses that are coming from their business account because it's the only one that's connected. So essentially making sure that all the expenses of the business are actually hitting the P and L.

But this would be revenues. This would be almost like the opposite. So potentially if you're taking your revenues somehow into the business.

Yeah, I don't know. I have to look in. I have to actually see your P and L look at your balance sheet. Between your profit and loss statement and your balance sheet, you would figure this out between. You have to have both. Like the balance sheet is actually what would share what's going on here because you're looking for like a statement of cash flows. So. Yeah, sorry, that one's a little vague. The only thing like from what you gave me, the only thing I could probably come up with is deposits that have been paid down payments prior to the work getting done. But I know that's not. Doesn't sound like that's what you do as big projects. So.

Not it. But I would have to see your balance sheet in a statement of cash flows. But sometimes when I see discrepancies there, I'm also seeing people paying stuff out of their personal account, things that are not attached to QuickBooks. So their QuickBooks looks different than their, like their P and L looks different than their bank account because there are expenses or revenues coming in and out of the account that are not being accounted for inside of QuickBooks. So Dylan Wurtz, do you provide health insurance for all your GMs? If so, do you have a general idea of how much that costs to provide provide also other benefits to provide for your GMs? Yeah, so it's really just a matter of like tailoring this to the, the general manager. It's usually going to cost you anywhere between three and five hundred dollars a month to provide a solo individual with health insurance. It depends on the group that you've created. So if you have an older demographic of, of team a group, it's going to be a little more expensive. Insurance has gone up a lot. I think this past year went up 40% at Command center in part. Also we have an older demographic.

And so.

You know, you balance out the cost of say 3 or $500 a month. Also the fact is like usually they will get their spouses or family on that plan. So it can very easily balloon to 7, 8, $900 a month. So what you could do is say hey, we pay up to a certain amount, say 50% of the premium from the company and then they have to cover the rest.

You can also do other benefits like paid time off.

A gym reimbursement program or health reimbursement program and do more of a reimbursement style. The benefit of having it obviously is health insurance is that it can be tax free for them. We also have like 401k plan stuff. You can set that up. If you're doing your payroll through ADP, through QuickBooks, you can set that up through guideline and other services. It doesn't cost too, too much.

But it's also another benefit that is it might be a little, might be a little more achievable. You could also do something like supplementary benefits. So things like dental or.

Long term disability insurance, life insurance, these are cheaper policies that might offer some value. Just keep in mind a lot of times your frontline team members, especially if they're younger, might be on their parents plans, they might be on Medicare.

Those are some other things that might be coming into play. And so people sometimes don't use, end up using a whole lot health insurance. For the frontline team members, it's usually as they age, as they have families, et cetera, they start to think about that a little bit more. Hey Mike. The team and I had a great time meeting new people at Blue Collar Summit. As we enter the wilderness of 200,000 to 500,000, what are great tips when it comes to time management? Thank you. I think really just like.

Really focusing on non productive time that is non revenue producing. The more time you can be in the field, the easier this is. While at the same token the faster you can get to the this period of time using sales, the better it is. So that's the difficult part about the wilderness is like I want to get there as fast as possible and do that. I need to be doing as much time, spending as much time on sales and then at the same token at this side I still need to be focused on producing revenue for the business and being in the field. So it's very much a game of what, what are you doing from you know, 6am till 2pm in the field and what are you doing from 2pm to 6pm every day in terms of sales, whether it be door hangers, follow up calls, increasing your close ratio, networking on Facebook, groups online like doing all that sort of thing. You need both, you need both to get through that because you can't just be out in the field because you'll stall out around 230, 250, 300.

But you can't just focus on sales because if you do that usually I'll become overhead, overhead, cost of the business and financially it's very difficult. Kyle Tarvin from Oklahoma. I'm planning on doing one click text messages to customers that's this spring instead of relying on emails. How much is too much to bulk text customers for upsells? I see people doing many different frequencies but I was considered two to three times a month in spring and going down to one to two times during the summer months. Your thoughts? Yeah, I would say like this is, there's no like rule of thumb on this. I would say anything more than twice a month is probably too much. You're just gonna get people that unhappy and what I don't want them to do is click stop putting stop because they put and stop it means I cannot message them. And if I cannot message them, even text for.

Estimates and invoices won't go to them. And so I want to prevent that like and vital information around automations et cetera. So I want to prevent anyone from opting out if possible. Um and I think that if you started messaging more than every two or three weeks you're probably gonna get some people putting in stop. Um, even your existing customers that like say want automations sent to them and reminders et cetera. Like I can't, I don't want them to opt out cause it'll prevent them from getting any messages from my phone number. Landon Smith in Tallahassee, Florida. Yes I owe you money. So yeah, so you said anyone who drew out trivia topgolf will get a hundred dollars. Just wanted to throw that out there. Yes, I owe Landon Smith and Brian Cotter $100 because I drove 224 or 222 yards and I think landed at 226 or 229 and then all of a sudden out of nowhere Brian Connor does 239 yards. So I owe both of them $100. I'll be mailing it out to you. I assure you that I actually made a note in my app or in my to do list the other day as I was laying in bed late at night remembering my my conscious kicked in need to pay my debts, my dues. All right, Kyle Tarvin. We have been running solar routes this year and I was very happy with the efficiency of the routes and the guys were making great P4P this season we're going to grow to capacity, going to be growing to capacity with the existing trucks we have and hiring more employees to develop on a truck in doing so. I know it would be less efficient as before simply due to the two man crew. Anytime I've run two man crews in the past, it's always been always way less profitable. Just do the lot small lot sizes. I'm planning on lowering PVP percentage to around 30 or lower if you recommend that they absolutely crush P4P and get anywhere between 5 to $10 above base pay in the summer. What advice would you be going in the summer to ensure still profitable and efficient the routes but also still allowing the crew to get P4P. What you could do, you could offer a higher percentage if they're, if they are doubled up. So if you, if you're really this confident like I'm a huge fan of this because it complicates things for the team but you could be like hey, you get 30% if you are by yourself. You get 33% if you are buddied up with someone else because make sure you change that on each, each day. If they were going back from solo to double solo double, that's gonna be a little bit, a little bit tricky. But you could do that to basically and just be honest like hey guys, we make more money when you guys are solo and you guys make more money but we also have to buy more trucks so we're going to incentivize it. But if you're working with two people so we don't have to buy my trucks, you'll get an extra 10 I. E going from 30% to 33% of on P4P. I can see that working. Just make sure you adjust your, your P4P rate each time. If it's going back and forth, it's gonna be a bit of a pain in the butt. But you know, if it takes an extra 30 seconds a day to adjust, make that adjustment. It's probably worth it. Dylan words I had a customer say.

I had a customer that said they called us on Saturday and left a voicemail. She Said Max then called her back the same day. Max never calls her back. We yeah, that's not true. She then got a text from Max asking her email and sent it over. She then wanted to cancel this estimate. So she texted that number again and responded back saying to text to max@augustlong.com. i'm assuming this is Max AI and some sort of problem with it. I'll attach the conversation she had. The issue with Max's response is no context. He says to send it like this. Max, we're not sure what that was supposed to mean. So she then tried to mean text. The same thing she just sent to Max I guess and it didn't deliver. Let me know if you need any more information. Yes, this needs to be sent to Liz. But you know, Max never calls her back. So yeah, that would be an agent from command center. And then the only time that we ask for someone's email from Max is when we are sending them a quote and we need their information. And so.

Yeah, and then we text the number to correspond and match up what they say on the phone with what their email is. So feel free to take to send this over. Dylan, if you wanted Liz to take a look at this in terms of this specific phone call. But we do not call back. Max can't call out to a customer.

Mr. Anonymous, love the event. Thank you for putting it on. A few questions about the holding company. When we go public, will we pay a giant tax bill on our increase immediately or is it converted to stock and only taxed if and when it is sold? Do you see a day when Copilot is more profitable than Augusta? Okay, let's just talk at the top. So when we go public, will we pay a giant tax bill on our increase immediately or is it converted to stock and only tax if and when it's sold? Yeah. So again, talk to an accountant. But unless you sell an asset, it's not worth anything because then you pay capital gains on if you would sell. And so like I will not sell my stock. And so, you know, I don't want to have the tax burden of it as well as you know, capital gains isn't so bad. Like you have long term capital gains tax. It's not so bad. I would probably, you know, in that time my suggestion to people would probably change based upon like what is this current capital gains tax at that time? Like if someone jacks that number way up like they were planning to a couple years ago, you know, know you definitely don't want to be selling at Least that I would be doing, I would be selling. And then if you look at any publicly traded stock, almost all of the ones that have been around for a long time, if the founder or people originally in the company would just held the stock, the existing price and not sold, it almost always leads to a better outcome. I think I was looking at the stat the other day, like if, if Bill Gates would just held all of his stock, he'd be like, it was crazy. It was like $1.5 trillion because he owned almost 50% of Microsoft. So he diversified, sold a lot of his stock, got into real estate and other businesses, et cetera, which is fine. But traditionally, as long as the company is being ran decently, staying inside of a publicly traded company once it goes public is usually a good thing, unless it is a money losing company. So if it's burning money left and right, those are the ones that sometimes will turn out like Airbnb or other companies, they'll turn out for a few years inside publicly traded once they go public, because the economic winds of like what's profitable and not consume a change like 2023, 2022, when interest rates went up, a lot of these stocks that had gone public via SPACs.

They really, really got hurt, got 70, 80, 90% reduction in their valuation. A lot of them have kind of returned now, but for those first couple of years because they're losing so much money, that can be a big impact to a share price. Do you see a deal in Copilot as more profitable than Augusta? Long term, what do you see as the most profitable segments that will help grow the value of the holding company?

From a valuation perspective, the software.

Is higher simply because software is valued at a higher valuation. Also because the way we set up Augusta, I don't have contracts holding over all of your heads that basically for the next 10 years you're going to pay me X amount of regardless of whether or not you literally pass away. And that's what a lot of franchise agreements are. So it definitely hurts our valuation a little bit. In terms of Augusta, the way we have things set up where we basically say people can leave at any time because they value us a little bit differently. So from a valuation perspective, Copilot is probably the beast. And then down the road, as you get into robotics, the same thing will be applied. You start to use these growth engines that, that can scale. Like, for example, we cannot add 400 locations tomorrow at Augusta without huge infrastructure investments on a lot of different fronts. Whereas, like there can be 400 people joining copilot tomorrow and assuming nothing happens like it did last January, which it shouldn't, we could absorb new users relatively easy and scale up our infrastructure costs relatively easy aws. And so that's the scalability of it is what also plays into valuation. So as, yeah, like, like longer term that the software will probably be the value engine but the only reason we'll be able to get there is because of certain investments and those are going to be funded by the more profitable aspect of the franchise, especially the first few years as the Copilot requires so much more investment the same way that Augusta did at the beginning. In terms of franchise the first few years we didn't make any money. It was burning money. So yeah. Is it possible you include additional product, software, franchise or other companies under the MIC brand? I don't really have any plans to do this now. I don't foresee this being needed to get where we want to go. You know, I see potentially other franchise brands way down the road, but this is nothing. I'm not thinking about anything. I have nothing even in my list of like stuff to do in the future. Same with software. Like we're pretty clear. It's like we need the media to bring in customers.

Negative customer acquisition cost. It's a huge advantage to us. And then we need the software arm which is Copilot and pay for performance and then the, the franchise side which gives us distribution and back end infrastructure that we'll need for robotics. So I, I don't foresee us needing a lot other stuff to be honest. I know we're excitedly working towards an ipo, but for outstanders at the beginning of their investment journey with us. Do you see Mike.

Averaging above average returns after IPO for quite a while? Yeah, like I, I can't, can't really speak to this legally, especially because we've now asked for investment like in terms of, you know, average returns or promise of returns. I'll just say like, you know, I run businesses pretty conservatively. I want them to be very profitable. I build them in, in the thought process of how will this look in 100 years and so will it be as exciting of like 50% year over year jumps, et cetera? Probably not. I would really resist any sort of meme culture around the stock price and momentum. I'm very much like, how will this impact us in 100 years? That's basically the frame. I usually try to make decisions now. And so if, you know, if there's a short term, you know, if Bitcoin is taking off. I'm not going to start an Augusta or a Max meme coin like it just is stupid. So you know do I see above average after IPO for quite a while? Like look I will try to be maximizing that as much as I possibly can. I will obviously have all of my net worth tied up into it. So and I have no problem doing so. Like you look at the the most, you know, highest net worth people in the world, they usually have almost all of their net worth tied up into the valuation of their company. So like you know I will certainly be incentivized to make sure that's maximized. Kyle Tarvin from Oklahoma Are we allowed to invest multiple times in the holding company or is it just one and done after you sign the docs from Carter you can't invest anymore. I was planning on investing the minimum out to start by adding some more during later prior as we get through spring rush.

Yeah I don't think you I don't believe this is a one and done. I believe you're able to continue. So I don't foresee I have not seen any issue with doing a double coming back in assuming obviously there's still room in the fund that would be completely permissible. And if you need help with the stuff through Carta, they have support. We pay them for that software so it's completely transparent. You pay them, you you fund the account through Carta. We don't touch the money until it's actually completely through. So I don't foresee, I don't see this being a problem whatsoever. That would be totally fine. But yeah we extended the the valuation and the.

End of the fund till September 30 just to make sure that people that do want to get an investment in but don't want to get cash poor during spring rush that hopefully gives them plenty of time. If it ever gets to where it's getting pretty close to ending and it's I will give everyone the heads up so don't foresee and even if I had to give a little extra because I didn't get catch it in time or something I would give everyone a heads up. So if you want to invest you're not caught off by off guard I'll make sure that happens. Land smith from Tallahassee, Florida I currently have about $24,000 on at the end of the month before invoicing more around 35 to 40,000 after invoicing our recurring customers. I'm looking to have as much cash on hand as I Can for March and April as I can start as I can market mowing hard. I'm thinking I'll need about $18,000 spend on marketing to grow an extra 60 budget hours a year. I already have the truck. We currently do around $20,000 per month. So I don't think you need that much money. It's a lot. Let's assume that you have. That's a lot. So if you take 60 budget hours, let's just say you have on average half a budget hour per lawn. You need 120 customers. So a hundred eighteen thousand divided by 120. Okay, that's, that's conservative. Okay, it's conservative but not crazy. Okay. All right, that's fine. Questions. Assuming we want to keep at minimum 20k in the bank, what do you think would be a solid plan to get there fast? Advertise projects to fill the capacity, something else.

So definitely I would be filling the capacity using your projects and then just knowing that as you add those mowing in. So for example, you could take three months. You say, okay, over the course of these three months, I'm adding 20 budget hours, 20 budget hours and 20 budget hours and then bake that into your schedule and then just know that as you go through those three months, you're going to have less and less time that you can put projects in. So that way you prevent the, the option of overbooking yourself and going completely way overboard in terms of like having to work weekends and scrambling to find anyone with a pulse to work, etc. And then yeah, I was really laser in your budget hours and I would, I would look as you book into the future, know that you're going to keep getting these mowing customers. Otherwise I see this happen all the time. People, I'm going to grow a bunch of mowing. They get four to six weeks deep into the spring rush and turn off all ads or even turn off all leads for mowing simply because they are now overbooked due to the fact that four or five, six weeks ago when they were putting out projects, they booked as if they had the existing number of customers that they did today versus what they knew would be coming in based upon their marketing projections. So I'll be very careful with that. I'd probably assume like even five budget hours a week of mowing going up and bake that into your, your thought process in terms of booking out projects. So I would definitely be, I would not advertise the projects, but I would use the projects. One click estimate emails, etc if Needs be. Or text messages to be able to get those. You booked out your fill full schedule and the money coming in. How much money do we need to get on hand to do this? Should I have money in the account after or before invoicing? I would also say it wouldn't be a bad idea, Landon, to get like a $20,000 line of credit. Do we want to use it? No. But when we're talking about doubling the revenue of our business. From a recurring standpoint, I'd rather have. Have that line of credit just in case so that you're not actually cranking and you're getting customers for 60 or 70 bucks per. And then. And you're doing really, really well. But because you simply just got so much work coming in, you have to stop it because you have. You basically out burn. You outpace your burn rate. So that I would probably have. I'd try to open a line of credit. Now you have enough cash, I think you'd be just fine to collateralize your trucks and equipment to get said 20, $25,000 as a cushion just in case things go too well, quote unquote, which is you're getting lots of customers pouring in. You have to buy an extra truck. You have to get a couple more employees. You have to move a shop space. And that's great. That could literally get you to 500,000 marker this spring rush. But I don't. You have to do is stop midway because, oh, man, we just don't have enough cash for the truck. We can't. I don't want to have to hire another person, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I would. I would think about doing the line of credit. And you. Your budget projection right now has $150 customer equity cost. That's pretty good. Like, that's very conservative. I think that you might get 40, 50, 60, $70 during the spring rush if you really focused on things like door hangers that are lower cost. So just something to think about there. How can I spend this money fast, yet be responsible and not waste it? Sorry for the long question. Thank you very did. And putting on an awesome conference. Yeah. In terms of spending the money fast but being responsible with it, I would figure out which of these channels is producing your lowest customer acquisition cost. And like Brian Connor talked about at conference, like, door hangers is a great way to be able to really measure it, really have a planner and know exactly what places you're targeting. I also am a little more confident, too. If you have Augusta Leads Partners set up. Because if you're doing this much marketing and you're doing it online and not with door hangers, I want to make sure that if there are leads that are trickling around this and I get maybe 2, 3, $4,000 back to me from leads that coming outside my service area or for lead for services that I don't even offer. So I would be making sure my partner program is set up very heavily. I would be like I would have at least three or four partners around my service area. I have partners inside of my service area for leads for services I don't offer probably 5, 10 of them as much as I possibly can. So that when I dump money on I'll probably, you'll probably get 20, 30% of it back based on simply the fact that leads come from outside your service area. And for services you don't offer, even though you're marketing MO and they call for something like hardscaping, that'd be my first thing. Second thing would be I'll be getting a line of credit 20 to $30,000. Try not to use it. But it's there just in case things go quote too good and things are going really, really well. And then I would make sure from a schedule third I would make from a scheduling perspective. As you're booking projects in the future, you take into account your budget hours of mowing trickling up so you don't get above your, get above your head when it comes to scheduling those projects as you get two months, you know, six, eight weeks into the spring rush.

Mr. Anonymous for the new leads program, when someone calls in or submits a quote form for a service we don't offer and gets referred out, does their information still get put in our CRM? Just because we don't offer a certain service doesn't mean we can't mark. We can't market the services we do offer to them. Thanks brother. This is a great point. So if you're going, this is the bottom line. If you're going to sell a lead, we are not going to put that lead information inside your CRM. So this is a trade off. This is a trade off. However, right now what happens? Say someone submits a form. Let's say someone calls in and we say they're out of their service area. You know, you're out of our service area. If we put them into your system, you really can't market them. You don't want to market them. Like we will tag it as like out of service area. You don't you don't actually want to market them. It might be in a couple of years from now, but it's very good chance that by then the lead is already cold anyways. And so I don't see as much value in terms of just like getting the money today. And if you ever did go into that market, you would already kind of know, like, hey, there's a bunch of leads coming to this area. Now I'm actually going to extend my service area and actually focus on it. So.

I get this one. It's like, hey, in the future they might become a customer or like in a year or two I might move into that area. True. But at that point, you would not have the guest of leads program in that area. You, you would increase your service area and the leads would start coming to you and you'd have good data in terms of knowing where are the leads coming from like this. Like, I, I believe in 12 to 24 months this would be really, really helpful to know where your next location is. Do I extend my service area? Like, you might be thinking like, hey, do I extend my service area during the off season so I can get, you know, projects in a little other area? Well, it'd be really cool if you can just go to Gusta leads like, hey, can I get a picture of like all the leads in the past year on this side of my market? It'd probably take them a couple of weeks, but they'd be able to give you a map of like, hey, here's all the ones that came in. Like, oh man, this side of my market is where like, I'm getting a bunch of projects that are, you know, two, three, four, five miles outside my radius. Maybe I extend this for just the off season to be able to get some more work. This is the type of thing that down the road will be beneficial, but I would really avoid this mentality like, hey, I want the contact in my database that one day I can market to them. And what we find most of the time happens is people forget to weed out the customers are outside their service area and they send out mass messages. And then what ends up happening? You just get, you get, you just end up paying again for them to contact command center, command center again, say they're out of your service here. They get frustrated. They usually unsubscribe or block or say something weird online because it is a weird customer experience to say, hey, out of your service area and then be sending them messages. So we see that quite often, honestly, and it's wasting money it's also a bad customer experience to be told you're out of our service area, but then also get a message from, from, you know, offering a certain service. Travis from Jonesboro. Hey Mike, thanks to you and your team for the awesome event I had. I have a good to do list to work on. I have been talking with Lee and some of the coaches about this year. We need a profit year or two to pay off some debt and stack some cash in preparation for starting another location. I plan to capitalize on spring rush and then switch to profit mode. This is a skill I don't have. I love the hunt, prospecting, selling, etc. Other than regular coaching, any tips for making the switch and staying locked in mentally? Yeah, the reason that a lot of times when it comes to growth, we it's easy. It's easy to have goals because it's very metric based. How many budget hours do you have on schedule? How many mowing customers do you have? How many door hangers did you put out? What are you spending on marketing? I would just flip this when it comes to profit. So I'd put like your debt as a thermometer on your wall and like every single day you pay, you're chunking away at it. You. I'd be, I'd be. So for example, if you take a, a jumbo size or even like a Sharpie and you put, you make a big red thermometer on the wall and then at the bottom is zero. At the top is your total amount. I would use a marker every single time you pay any of it off and just scratch it out. Even if you're just making monthly payments and chipping away at it, I just be like marking it off and like that would be a good, you know, benchmark. I'd be looking at things like, you know, your efficiency score and tracking that because that's going to be a direct correlative to profitability. I'd be looking at number of budget hours completed every week. Again, a great form of stacking cash. So I'd be, I'd be creating metrics that you track just as much as in the past. You track number of customers, number of budget hours, how many new sales, how many door hangers you put out. Like, we love the hunt of numbers and metrics because it's easier when it comes to new customers. It's a little more difficult when you have to tie things like paying off debt, increasing prices. Like, I would have a competition. Like just again, measure it makes the competition. I would be doing it on like when you raise prices, what percentage of people can you keep? And then I benchmark it like hey so If I have 150 customers and we're able to keep 140 of them, we're going to go on a vacation. If I keep 130 of them, we're going to go out for a weekend locally vacation and if it's under this like nothing, it's like it's make game the system for profitability and increasing prices and paying off the debt instead of getting new customers, growing revenue, etc. So I would sit down with your spouse, I'd sit down with your general manager and he's like what are these metrics that are going to be our new focus?

Because like getting new customers is an easy one. We're all pre programmed to like grow.

Mr. Anonymous. I fill out the investment application. Are investors able to get copies of Augusta's financials? What will the company need to look like to get to a billion dollar valuation? Number of locations, copilot customers, command center size, media followed etc. Yeah. So in terms of end of every year, so the round ends at in September 30th. End of every calendar year I'll be giving an investor deck to those that have invested. It is a privately held company, we don't want financials leaked out so but we will be giving metrics. So like here's the revenue growth, here is the number of new users, here's the projections, that sort of thing and that's, that'll be the first one would technically be about 11 months from now. So end of 2025 I would do it just to the investors that did participate in that. I don't believe, and again I, I, I don't hold me to this. I don't believe though we will be handing out actual financials as a privately held company with a target to be able to go public. It's not something you actually want going out but I would give a lot of details like profit percentages.

Number of locations, number of users, growth key hires, things like that. More internal stuff I would definitely be sharing with our investors in terms of what company size needs to get to a billion. This is difficult mostly because of a billion dollar valuation actually hinges on so many different things in terms of like what's the rate of inflation, what's interest rates look like at that time? Is the market actually valuing our type of industry, like SaaS for example, like in 2020 and 2021, all of a sudden we could just like make a SPAC and become worth like hundreds of millions. It was just insanity. Whereas like a couple years ago there's a lot of really, really good companies that were worth 20% of what they're worth today. And they're doing the same metrics as they were a couple of years ago. It's just a matter of the market was turned against them. So I don't really look at the.

Like the time. The time. That's why we have the 8 to 12 year window. It's because like the timing of it. Do I want it to be closer to eight? Yes. But I'm not going to go public in a market where IPOs are just getting absolutely whacked. So I'll be watching upcoming ones like Stripe potentially going public and a couple others and seeing like where is the IPO market actually at? And that'll be important. But again, we're still years from then in terms of number of locations. You know, I think it's going to be around that 700 marker copilot customers. You know, we're talking like, we're talking so far for now, but it'll be in the thousands for certain. Like if you looked at Service Titan for example, I think they have like between 6 and 8,000, but they're very upmarket. So people are paying tens of thousands of dollars a month to be inside their system versus we're much lower mid market when it comes to Copilot. Thoughts on using the franchise 500 logos in our marketing? How many new locations were sold at the summit? Thoughts on using the franchise 500. So definitely not a bad idea. Again, if you're trying to go after that target customer that wants that big brand, wants some reassurance that there's some protections around their service. And again, separating yourself from the other hundred people in your market, they're also trying to be the low cost, small hometown independent. So I'm not opposed to that. I think it's a good idea. I wouldn't be talking about the franchise. I'd just be using it as a way to say like hey, we're part of a bigger chain or you know, 170 plus locations. I really like, like I will want to get to the here. Give me one second guys. I gotta pause it. Give me one second.

Sorry, I had another me. I just need to delay a little bit.

So not opposed to using the franchise 500. I'd really lean to 170 plus locations. I do look forward to getting past 200. It's an easier number to be like, hey, we're over 200 locations. From a customer's perspective, just understanding that even saying things like, like when we're in 45 of 50 states or whatever it is, things like that, international, you know, things like that are helpful. In terms of how many new franchises are sold at Summit, we'll have to see how many get through.

Vetting. It doesn't look like we're going to hit 16, which is totally fine. It just means we'll need to have a little bit longer period to go into the R D ver portion of phase two of Augusta Leads, which is fine. It just probably be three to four extra months just to make sure we have enough capital available going into 2026. So I'll keep everyone abreast on that. But Lee is stacked with calls, et cetera for the next couple weeks. But not everyone that pays a deposit or is interested gets in. We still have very stringent things in order and so I don't think we'll hit the 16. But again we will still be working towards the goal of R and D for the Augusta Leads Part 2 program or Phase 2 program. And for those of you who were not at conference, the media team will be working this week to try to get the recordings done as soon as possible and they're prioritizing the Augusta recordings. Thomas from Issaquah hi. My question we are slated to start back in spring with $100,000 a month in recurring revenue. We currently are doing roughly 75,000amonth for winter service revenue. My question is for our growth this year we are looking at two options. One, we go more projects heavy and raise prices in maintenance. We're doing this for existing already starting March. Two, we default to more recurring routes and less projects. Problem with this is there's not a ton of cash to grow recurring for what we would need. We have the assets and equipment for projects would give us more capital faster to put back into recurring. Wanted to hear your thoughts. Yeah, I'm not opposed to using project revenue as a way to fund the growth of recurring. Right. I'm a big fan of this because like that's why a lot of times like you your first year you might have 70, 80% of your revenue coming from one time jobs. So I would just be tracking like if your goal eventually is to have this run without you guys on every project. I know that your guys current setup is very very intensive in terms of the equipment, multiple owners involved, et cetera. If you want to get away from that I would just keep doing what you're doing it's like invest the money into recurring and don't buy more assets. Just take the assets that you currently have allocated to projects and slowly move them over to recurring as you get more recurring jobs. So I like the idea of getting to capacity, raising the amount of work that you're doing to closer to where your truck's capacities is are. But then slowly over time as you market and get more recurring, just move those assets over to your. To your. Your recurring side. This is why I think it's important to buy trucks that are able to go from projects back over to mowing. Because if you buy a whole bunch of trucks that are for projects and then you want to flip, you now have to sell the trucks versus just like hey, let's repurpose them, let's throw a ramp rack on them and we can move them over to recurring and make the business much more systematized, simple and standardized. And so it's just a function of, you know which direction you take in the business. I think at the beginning it's very normal to get more projects and a higher percentage of your revenue come from projects. But I would recommend in the long term trying to use those funds to market the recurring services and as that builds up, just slowly moving your assets without increasing capacity over to the recurring side of the business. David from Modesto Hey Mike. Was a great meeting at Blue Collar. What are your thoughts on leaving the crew on their current hourly some of them in 20 plus an hour base pay changing to be for P and increasing prices up to $90 per hour per budget hour. We're really trying not to lose anyone this transition but to my understanding putting them on P4P with this high of a base pay will kill the incentive to perform highly. If we need to change their base pay, how would we represent that to guys who are high producers but really really don't want that will almost definitely quit. Sorry for the long question. Thanks for everything. Yeah, so a couple things. First off, you'd have to go through the three step process of transitioning. So you're going to run all the numbers in the background. For all you know, these high pay people are your least performers or they're crushing and actually making way more. So I would know the numbers in the background. All of this is outlined inside of p4psoftware.com on the on the training on P4P University. Just go to mikeandys.com P4P it walks you how to convert from hourly over to P4P. Assuming your crew is above base pay. It walks you through all of this.

But you know, there's other ways to do this, you know, temper this as well. And that is like you could have a higher percentage on P4P at first in order to be able to accommodate that.

You could do a higher percentage on base pay to accommodate it. I do believe that if you ran the numbers you'd have a very good, a much better picture of actually who is the most efficient, who's actually generating the revenue, etc. And so just go through that three step process. You're basically going to run the numbers in the behind the scenes. Then you're going to give them the higher of their base Pay, Current or P4P. And if you do it right, that should be higher on P4P. And then you're going to do a vote and yes, you'll lose one or two people and very likely those are the people that are overpaid currently.

Good morning. Two questions. What are the numbers behind deciding what Gus leads will be a 50% profit split. It seems very generous for work done. 100% by CC. Yeah, but the thing is.

A lot of times what we're trying to make up for the fact that you are spending money on marketing, you are spending money on advertising. And so I don't like what Jim's Leads does. So Jim, Jim's Leads has the exact same program but they don't share any with the franchisees. And I think it's caused a lot of animosity between them and their owners because like if you market and you advertise and the lead now is basically going straight to the franchisor and then they're taking all the money.

Didn't sound. I saw a lot of animosity between the owners and the franchisor because of that and I want to avoid that. Secondly.

I want it to be where like my goal is that eventually we get enough leads and domain authority where like basically the franchise fee can get covered using this program.

Just making it better value. Two, where would revenue for Augusta Leads go on a P and L? Would you count it as revenue or maybe a refund in the advertising marketing tab? This is a great question. I actually haven't thought about this. I would probably say you're right. I'd put it in the advertising marketing tab as like a negative, as a, as a refund essentially to counteract any Facebook ads, Google Ads, anything you're spending. That's probably, I would put it. Yes, that's a really good question. Hey Mike, is there a video from conference Augusta Leeds I can watch somewhere as I wasn't able to make it conference this year. Yes Steve. So we're gonna get the recording from conference out soon but if you go to the dashboard augustafranchise.com There is a new tab called Augusta Leads. Go there and watch the video there. It's like a 20 minute video. I explain everything there and it's very similar to it's the exact same stuff I share at conference. So you should be good to just watch that stuff and be locked and loaded. And then like I said the actual conference where I delivered that that presentation will happen later, if not this week, next week we'll have it out for everyone. There's like terabytes and terabytes of footage they have to go through and piece everything together. So anyways love you all, hope you all have a fantastic rest of your day here on this Tuesday and I will see you tomorrow. Thank you all.