Mike Minutes Mastermind 01/24/2025

Hello and welcome to another Mike Minutes Mastermind. Hope everyone is having a fantastic Friday. Didn't have a mastermind yesterday. There was only one question in the queue so I figured I would wait. But there are now six questions in the queue so we will jump in and go ahead and get started. One quick oh, I should change this announcement. Boom. And that is you're going to give an email from Copilot. If not today, on Monday we're going to be doing all of your Twilio transitions for you. And so to do that though, we do need you to fill out a form. So if you look at the estimate request forms on your homepage, there's now a little question that says a little checkbox that gives us permission to text them. And so this is for a compliance thing with, with Twilio as well as it's going to allow us to create a separate campaign or a separate account for every single location is going to really, really help with deliverability, speed of deliverability and ensuring that what like happened last year was if someone ever got in to Copilot and started sending bad texts out that we it would not affect our individual locations. We're going to do this across all accounts inside Copilot, but we wanted to prioritize all of Augusta, Augusta Nation. So you will get a form, it will be an email, fill out the form, it goes through like all the benefits and like why this is important, etc. Bottom line, you won't be able to send text eventually if you don't have your own account inside Copilot. We're going to set up your accounts for you though and do it all manually. We submit each one for compliance, we fill out all their forms in the back end for you. So in order for us to do it though, we do need you to fill out that form. We've already made the necessary changes on the front end of the website to ensure that that is compliant. We ran through my locations to make sure that they gave us the thumbs up on those and now we're going to do everyone's location. So we will handle it for you. You do not need to go in and create your own Twilio account and go through that whole rigmarole. We will do it for you, but we need that form filled out asap. So as soon as you get it, it'll probably take you five minutes. Things like your ein number, your business name, contact name, stuff like that. If we can get that, we will be able to do all of it for you and the back End part in Twilio is much more confusing. Their forms, et cetera is just very confusing. So we're just doing it for you. Otherwise it's going to lead to way too many bumps and questions and eventually if you don't fill their forms out exactly correctly, you get declined and then it's just a pain in the neck. So we figured out what works and then we're just going to do it each for each location we will set up that your own individualized campaign. The email will go through a lot of detail in terms of why we're doing this, why it's important, but the bottom line is event you will be required to have that in order to be able to send text messages out through Copilot. In the past we've done it much more as like hey, everyone's underneath one campaign inside of Twilio from Copilot. But that caused problems last year in spring and that was when we started seeing text messages getting throttled. We saw some people getting blocked and this was because if a bad actor gets inside a copilot and starts sending out texts, it affects all of us. So that will be eliminated. And if you're sending good quality text, it's not going to be throttled, it's not going to be affected negatively. So it's more of a security slash stability system when it comes to texting. Texting as well as just compliance, it is required. Like we have to do this from Twilio. So FYI, your websites have all been updated, those are all compliant so no changes required. We made sure that each of the forms were vetted by Twilio and those have been approved. Alright, let's jump into questions.

Boom. Alright.

Alright, let's get started. First one is from Anonymous for marketing Spring Rush. What is the difference between the different Google channels, Google Ads, Google Local Services, etc. Which provides the best ROI? Should we be putting a little bit in each or or just focusing on one of them. So if you're new and you haven't had your second spring rush, I do recommend doing a blend between these different channels. Sometimes it's blatantly obvious that they don't make you any money and then other times you do need to commit to them for a solid couple months to really see is there a good traction. The reason I say this is there are locations that do door hangers and including the cost of delivery are getting customers for 30 $40 a piece during the spring rush. There are others that will do the exact same door hanger in a Different market, same time of year and they will be paying 90, 100 or $150 per lead that comes in. So this really comes down to testing. And if you're new now, I would say once you've done this for a while, you know which ones work in your market and then then you put more resources behind it. And so in terms of the best roi, typically Google local services is the best. That being said, their lead costs are going up. I've seen some people as high as $80. Again that's for more project based stuff. But you can still be getting Google lead, Google local services or Google leads for you know, 30, $40. Usually pretty good, pretty high quality. The problem with it is you can't dump money on it. So if they give you one or two a week, you're kind of at their mercy. You can't just dump money on like you could scale a door hanger campaign or even a Google Ads campaign. And so the number one thing is that if you're going to do Google Ads, make sure you have a tracking code, make sure you've gone through the done for your ads and you put the tracking code in there, et cetera. So you actually, your cost per lead is so you can actually know whether or not it's working or if you're the Facebook ads are working or people are just seeing your trucks or people are doing, seeing your door hangers. So especially if you're doing a blitz marketing campaign, making sure you're able to track the online stuff is very important. There's going to be a lot of crossover. People will click on a Facebook ad after seeing your trucks senior door hanger and then they just are online and they click on the Facebook ad. So it's hard to sometimes attribute. Exactly. Usually only get last click attribution which means the ad that is seen last gets all the credit. So be careful about that because a lot of Google Ads will get the credit for people searching Augusta lawn care anyways and then they click on your ad, they see your truck and they go to it. Oh, they see your door hanger, they search Augusta lawn care on Google and they click on the ad. So keep that in mind. I've seen this happen when people turn off their Google Ads and like literally their leads stay exactly the same. So and the reason for that many times because it's last click attribution.

Your door hangers, your yard signs, your.

Trucks going around, people then search it and they click on an ad. So be careful about that. But overall still track it's still helpful, but that's why I've always, I've been always surprised when people switch to profit mode and they cut their marketing spend massively. All of a sudden the leads just don't go anywhere. Like, the leads literally stay the same and many times it's because of last click attribution. So be careful of that. But if you're just getting started, yes, you are testing different chann, you're seeing which ones are working. And then I would be keeping as much dry powder as possible to be able to know, okay, these are my two channels. Okay. Door hangers are really working. Google Ads are really working. I'm going to put more money towards those then.

Mr. Anonymous with these Augusta leads partners. Would it make sense to create pages hooked to our site for tree trimming, landscape installation, sprinkler installation and other services? We don't, we don't intend to use the leads program. Do you think this would leave a bad taste in client's mouth or is it worth doing to put a little extra money in our pockets? It's not a bad idea. It really comes down to if you have partner set up, right? So if you had a really good partner that does that service, not a bad, not, not a bad thing. Also keep in mind that like we talked about yesterday, you would be losing that customer in terms of contacting your database like so. As long as you're okay with that. As long as, hey, I'd rather take the 40 bucks and give the lead to someone else to do irrigation and then maybe down the road they'll contact me for mowing. As long as you don't want them in your system, this would be a good strategy. So I think if you're going to have them on your site, for example, or get the leads, at least you're getting paid for something versus if you don't have it on your site, they're not even gonna find your website. So I don't think this is a bad strategy.

There's several things we put in place that just can't be abused and Google's actually pretty smart about this in terms of if you start going way outside your service area, if you go outside your address too far away from your address on Google, etc. So we're monitoring that. But this is not a bad idea. I do think you can make it a little. Assuming you have a really good partner that does a great job and you know they do a good job, this is not a bad strategy. It also allows you to.

Let the Advertising or the social media posts go out a little more fluidly knowing that, okay, even if I don't offer Christmas lights, if someone sees that ad and contacts me for Christmas nights, now it's going to someone in my market that will do it. They do a good job. I know they're good. And I'll get 40 bucks for it. Not bad. So we're basically trying to take all that unused traffic that we can't service right now and monetize it. So this is not a bad strategy. The whole goal long, long term for Augusta is that anything to do with green industry. The green industry comes to Augusta first and then we determine who the leads go to. So I'm not opposed to that. Even if you're simplified services, like, you might as well just have landscaping on there. Like, I don't do commercial. Great. Leave commercial on there. If commercial comes in and we you give a lead to your local competitor for 79 bucks, they're gonna be thrilled out of their mind if they win a, you know, $3,000 a month contract and you're over there like, hey, I don't, I'm, I'm in profit mode. I don't really want that, that contract, so. Or you're focused on the smaller residential stuff, for example.

Mr. Anonymous, what happened to the review software you were going to start last year? Yeah, so that's showcase reviews. We actually still are testing a lot of stuff around it. A lot of it has to do with the texting side of things as well as the fact that a lot of what we are wanting to do there can be done already inside of Copilot now that we have max texting inside Copilot for the past year. So what we're working on right now is it's still there, it's still working. We will probably be testing it my locations up in the upcoming year because it does definitely get more reviews is very, very really the benefit is it's all in one spot. So all your Google reviews, all your Facebook reviews, it's a QR code that you can just put on the back of stuff. Like you can do a QR code pretty easily on canva, put on the back of a.

Business card and give it out to people. So we just want to make sure that if we actually are going to give everyone access to it that you. There's a benefit that is outside of what you currently can do. And so there's a few things we're looking at in terms of reputation management for your Google listing and then just Making it really easy to be able, you know, communicate with customers, et cetera from it. So we're working on a couple things I don't even know. Like, I generally believe like the refactor version of Automations inside Copilot are coming out next month and it's been months and months in the process is one of the longest refactorings we've done, which is basically think about rebuilding, restructuring. And so like I think the level of granularity is so much better in just like the customization of automations at copa once those are sturdy. And so that's really the been the focus versus, like, hey, here are like three or four automations that are good for getting reviews and like really the only benefit was seeing it all in one spot. And so I don't think there's enough differentiation to everyone, like, hey, go download the new app. So we're working on it and if it, if we can even create something that is actually unique and differentiated, we'll definitely give everyone access to it. Um, but right now I've seen enough of like split testing between sending out Copilot emails and text messages asking for reviews versus what we do from showcase reviews. And it's close enough. Like it's a little bit better on showcase reviews. It's. But it's more like the back end visibility of the reviews is nice on that, but I don't think there's enough differentiation for people that are like, all right, download the app, see them all in one spot. It's not as enough differentiation for us to even download an app, honestly. So we're working on a couple of things that might make that different in terms of tracking when people leave reviews and some other aspects. But I will, I will keep you abreast on it. That's why I haven't really talked about it recently. Most of our time attention has been focused like how do we improve the texting side and the Twilio compliance inside of Copilot instead of focusing on that other platform. Thomas from Clinton. Gus, the leads question, if a current mowing customer asks something like could you guys install irrigation for me? Is there an avenue for getting paid for that lead? Should we just tell them to call the office to get connected with our partner? Yeah, that's what I would like. That's usually the route it goes. If they're contacting you in the, in the field, that's when it's like, hey, you know, absolutely, contact the office. Because I, when I was in the field, I would never say I was the owner. So I was yeah, absolutely. Contact the office and we have a whole bunch of partners that we actually vet and make sure they're licensed, insured and they're really high quality. And so even if we don't do that service for you, we'll make sure we get you connected. So that would be totally fine. 100%.

Very good.

Mr. Anonymous Dustin from Central Illinois, thank you for conference and everything you and the team did to prepare for it. I've described it to a couple people as a really good slap in the face to get us back on track. In reflection oh, this is a long one. Okay. In reflection we are in the systems for the most part, but the systems are not systematized for general managers. What I mean by this is we hire guys on and pay them via ppp but there's no hiring process or onboarding process or training process other than the lease framework that the franchise has made for this. That said, I made a comprehensive guide for the GMs in a Google Doc that starts from when do you know it's time to hire Onto how how to put an indeed ad up, how to screen employees via resume phone interviews onto in person interviews, then how to onboard through CC and train all the way through when it is time to let someone go and how to do this. I'm moving 100% to a sales and marketing role kind of regional role. However, this is not a full time gig with only two locations. Our plan until March is to upsell the entire customer database, property cleanup, mulch install and mowing. I plan to follow up call everybody everyone through February and March. But if there's any capacity left for the month of March we will use ads and project door hangers to backfill. Once March is at capacity we plan to focus only on mowing. Focus only on mowing the months of April and May. Filling the capacity filling to asset and labor capacity with only mowing. My questions I need to get on the follow up train and plan on doing so through March. We have an average we had an average for the year in Bloomington of 60% close ratio with no follow ups other than automation. This tells me we are we are not at a high enough price as it takes us very little to close work. Would you consider this assumption correct and raise hourly rate to the customer? We already implemented a minimum project total of $280. Okay, so I agree that you will need a price increase. I would to to give yourself no doubt whatsoever. What I would recommend doing is do the follow up calls you Know, go deeper even. Like do the loom calls, the loom videos, customized personalized videos. Like go deeper even. Especially if you're trying to fill that capacity. I would do that. And then if your close ratio is like 75, 80%, that's when it's gonna be so overwhelmingly obvious you need to raise prices. So again, raising prices is never a question, it's when I hit capacity, I raise prices. So if you want to convince yourself that you need to raise prices, hit capacity as fast as possible. If I want to hit capacity as fast as possible, I'm going to increase close ratio and increase close ratio. I'm going to follow up, do follow up calls. That's number two. I'm going to do personalized videos. That's number three. And I'm going to do loom walkthroughs of the quote. That's number four. And so I would stick to that. I would make that like your religion in terms of next to your, you know, I'd stick it like, I'd laminate it, I would put it right next to your.

You know, your desk, your office and I'd be like, okay, based upon how many weeks you're booked out, these are the steps I'm going to do in terms of follow up for these estimates. I would do that. And then you will get to capacity fast. You'll get capacity faster because your close ratio will increase. And so again, you raise prices when you hit capacity. If you want to raise prices, hit capacity as fast as possible in order to close more jobs. You will, by closing more jobs, you will hit capacity sooner. And so I would just reverse engineer that. I would just go hardcore, like you mentioned, in terms of follow up. And then you will convince yourself that you need to raise prices across the board, whether that be minimum project total, whether that be your hourly rate on mowing, whether it be your mowing prices across the board raising by five or ten bucks. Um, yeah, question number two. Like I genuinely believe for anyone that's doing like 400,000, like three, even 300,000 to 500,000, the difference between you being in growth mode the entire year and basically still trying to get to 500,000 by getting more customers, the difference between being have to do the entire 2025 to get to the 500,000 marker, and the difference between that and actually being able to hit it within the matter of the first month of spring rush, just because you only need so many customers to hit that capacity. The difference is that follow up process. And so if you want to get into profit mode sooner. Like I don't, I don't want to hold my breath the entire year. Maybe it's your second year. Last year did 220, 230. You're trying to get to 500. The difference between getting to 500,000 or 45 or 50,000amonth in revenue, the difference between that now and then or raising price and going to profit node next spring is how you follow up going into spring rush. And so I would, I would just deep dive into the follow up process. I would not just do follow up calls. That's number two. You know you've been doing number one at 60% close. I, if I had to guess by doing number two you're gonna go like 70% close. By going to number three or four, you're probably gonna get to 80% plus. And that's when it's like you will fill the capacity much sooner because you're getting all these jobs. And then when you hit capacity, we now have the green light to go raise prices.

Question two, when our focus switches to recurring work. I am struggling with a focus on door hangers and isn't pricing the website. I'm sure that we have some OTP pricing that comes in that I need to follow up on, but not as much as in years past. The rest of my time I plan to just hang door hangers. Then there are little to no OTP estimates going out. Do you believe this is the best use of time or should I be doing other cold outreach to gain mowing customers? I'm overthinking this. All I care about for the year is recurring customers. That is stability for the year. So we can start location three. This comes down to your, your cash position. I think that the better use of your time instead of doing the door hangers itself like that's a good 20 to $25 per hour.

Task. You'd probably be better off hiring someone to do that full time. Getting so many new customers from that because that's all they're doing. You're then focusing on like getting those customers in the system and putting them for your general managers on the correct route. Because if they're getting 2, 3, 4 new mowing customers a day, they're going to start getting overwhelmed with just with the amount of admin required to put them on the route, send them up, send the thank you and welcome email. You could just take that on. And then that way you have someone out in the field literally doing six to eight hours a day of door hangers. Hundreds Every single day. And then you're hopefully driving two to three new customers per day per location. And then you're actually putting them on the schedule, sending the thank you welcome email, making sure their credit cards on file. You do all that part for your app for your GMs because it'll save them an extra hour, an hour and a half every single day when there's that many leads coming in and that many new customers hopping on the recurring mowing route. So I would probably step in and kind of help them with that if you want them to be out in the field doing the work, the working GMs and then having someone doing a $25 an hour task in terms of actually delivering the door hangers. But then you are on the back end facilitating during spring rush only the actual like implementation, like putting those customers into the system, putting them on the correct route, making sure their credit cards on file, making sure they're inside the service area. You could do that part. So.

Lastly, do you remember any closing follow up scripts? I plan to use that ChatGPT to write a script for me for follow up for both projects and mowing and then adjust it if there is a trend. I honestly this is what I would do. Give me one second. I'm going to make this on the screen so you guys can screenshot it. Give me one second. It's going to take me about 40 seconds to find this. Give me one second.

Where was it? It was number one. Okay, give me a second. Canva. Okay, here we go. Give me a second. Ah, that was page 300.

We're going to get there, don't you worry.

Follow up. Here it is. Aha. All right, everyone ready for screenshots. Here we go in 3, 2, 1. All right, screenshot this. Okay, this is a slide from the workshop at conference. Here you go, one second.

Boom. I would take this and I would literally start like if you want to really split to test this, just start going through these and seeing how many times you close and like oh man, this certain one just crushes for recurring. Oh, this one crushes for project based jobs. Like I would use this. I don't think a script is going to be super helpful if you as the owner are doing it because you know a lot of the, the more fluid dynamics of the conversation if you do a script when someone doesn't have those skills. If you're doing the follow up calls, which I think is a higher value task than a $25 an hour doing putting out the door hangers. If you're doing them, you probably don't want a script. Assuming that you can do like Dustin, you have the skills to talk to a customer. So I think a script might actually constrain you from being more fluid and using the appropriate follow up reason. So I would use, I would use these, I would literally put the, again probably put this right next to my same document about how to follow up in terms of, you know, when I'm doing the calls step number two or the personalized video step number three or the loom video step number four. If I am in doing any of those, I'm going to use one of these tactics. And what's cool, if you're actually following up on someone multiple times and you're doing the phone call, then you're doing a personalized video, then you're doing a loom. You could use a different one in every single case and see which one they bite on. So for example, the first one, hey, just calling you, I had this one specific day. That's the second one on this, on this page that we wanted to get filled up. Boom. Okay, another one. You follow up with a personalized video. It's like, hey, we really need some pictures for our marketing for our social media around this specific project. We would love to be able to get that on the schedule. Boom. There's your, you want before and after pictures and then in the loom video. Hey, I got an authorized discount just for today only. I just went through the quote with you. Let's go hang it on the schedule. I can do X amount, right? So I would be, I'd be using these. This is what would be my, my recommendation.

You give a script to someone who does not have the skills to be able to banter with someone because someone, usually you can smell out someone's using a script. So unless you get derailed, unless you can't banter with someone, I would actually use just like what is my clothes? Instead of using a script, you would use a script. If you literally needed to give this to someone else that had never banter with the customer has not done hundreds and hundreds of estimates like you have Dustin, then you give them a script and say this is what you say for this one, this is what you say for this other one. And then you throw one of these scripts in front of them. But there could be a script for every single one of those different, you know. Closes Kyle Tarvin couple price questions on price increases. When doing price increases on mowing, what is the minimum amount to raise them? We will be picking up $30 weekly yards in spring and looking to raise them to 40 or 45 come summertime. Is this too much of an increase? Last year we did 25% crease across the board and that $30 mow would only be raised to $37 based on percentage. Yeah, like, I'm going to raise at least, you know, 15%, you know, going to. From 30 to 40, I think you're going to be fine. If you start going above 45, you might have a little because it's above a 50% increase.

I would also argue that start doing a $35 mo, you might do a 35 and get just as many to close up front because it's like on that lower end already. So you might go from sort of like a 75, 80% close rate. You might go to like a 70% or 65% close rate just by starting them at 35. But if you were like, hey, I'm just going to go aggressive, cool, go for it, and then raising it to 40 or 45, I don't see as a problem. If you start going above 45, that's when it can get a little bit hairy because you're raising more than 50%.

Jason sorts to make sure I'm setting up the Augusta leads correctly. On the dashboard Augusta Leads setup page. We will check the leads we want to come into us and the service we don't select. Fill out the name and phone number. Then will I need to make to fill out the submit leads here form if Tracy takes our calls. Just want to make sure I set this up correctly. Appreciate all you do and thoroughly enjoyed the conference. Okay. So Augusta leads setup page. So this is the form that you're filling out. Basically, if you check those boxes, those are the ones. Those are the services that you want sent to the Augusta Leads program. Cool. Ideally, you then go find a partner for those services. Okay. Secondly, and you're like, well, why would I put mowing? Why would I want mowing to go in the program? Because there are many times people outside your service area that you don't want to go to, 10, 15, 20 miles away are calling and you want to be able to give, have a partner to send and so fill out the ones. The only reason you would uncheck one of those boxes, if you have a partner locally that you're already giving leads to and you don't want them to have to charge them. So there are, there are about ones. I've seen about eight or nine locations inside Augusta Nation that have A really good local partner for like chemical applications. And the other one was irrigation that they, they don't want to be in the leads program because they do actually exchange leads very well. But it's literally less than a few percentage points of Augusta Nation. So like that's why the partner program exists. So but what you could do is uncheck that bot that service because you know you're going to take that lead, you're going to give it to this specific vendor or you can refer them directly by putting their name and their phone number. So command center can, can do those for you. The alternative.

To your point, then, then what you would do once the leads, once you submitted that, that initial form, the GUS lead setup page and you have leads going to the Augusta leads program. Cool. You're gonna find partners. And then when someone calls in to Tracy, she would then fill out the submit leads form. You're right 100%. And we have the verbiage in terms of what you can say when they call in. Okay, Tracy knows, okay, we don't do irrigation. For example, boom. Click on that form and fill it out. And that goes directly to the Gusta leads program. And we will get the partner set up for them. And there's script at the top and the bottom of that form for her to read to them basically so they know what they're getting into. It's like, hey, we're going to, we have a really good relationship with a partner locally. We're going to go ahead and introduce you with them with a three way email and make sure you get set up and taken care of. And we'll give you priority. They give you priority by you coming through Augusta. So it's kind of how it sets up. It works pretty well. So we have, we've had about, I think it was 35 or 40 people already applied to be inside the program. Only about half of, less than half of them actually are getting in because like licensing issues, registration issues, we're checking business licenses, we're looking at their state. So it's pretty stringent and I know it'll slow us down in terms of how many we can actually monetize right at the beginning. But I generally believe right now we're getting like five to 10 a day. If we can keep doing that over the next month or two, we'll go into spring rest really well. And if you have a really big business that does like every service under the sun, you might only need one or two partners locally. Like if they do every single landscape service Every single, the commercial, they do residential, they do all the services. You might only need one or two partners in your area. And if they service like a 40, 50 mile radius, you might just need one partner, honestly. So again, recommend finding those people because it's gonna be the difference between the people who get, you know, thousand plus dollar checks at the end of the quarter versus we will try our best to find lead partners but it's very difficult for us to do that without the lead going cold because if a lead comes in, we are going to try to like call people that are using Google Ads, we're gonna call people that are using Yelp, we're gonna call people that are using Angie's leads because we know we can get them a lower cost lead. But it's difficult. By the time they, okay, answer their questions, get them then to apply, get them through the review process because we have to vet each one as well as each owner inside of Gustingation is notified and there's a cooling off period. So at the best it's 48 hours later. So if you can get your partner set up in your area, it is the difference between monetizing, actually getting the money versus a lot of these leads just become cold. All right everyone, I hope you have a fantastic Friday and keep an eye out for that email from copilot. Do fill out that form. We will do the backend Twilio compliance and all the forms that they have, but we do need that form filled out so we can do that for you. And it's already been changed on your website. You won't need to worry about that. We've made changes to every single location last week. Love you all. Have a great weekend. Take care.