Mike Minutes Mastermind 01/29/2024

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Monday Mike minutes. Let's rock and roll.

Quick announcement, nothing major, but a quick warning. I have seen several owners putting in late fee requirements inside a COPA that are probably illegal.

You cannot in most states start charging late fees the day after you send an invoice to somebody. So please check your individual states for what is considered.

Legal in terms of late fees on invoices. Give me one second here.

We cannot.

I'm not going to limit it. So you cannot do certain things inside copilot. But please, you do not want to get some customer that knows the law to come after you and say they're not going to pay because.

You'Re charging too much on late fees. So I've seen some people charging $25 the day after they send an invoice, et cetera. I do not recommend that if your state does not allow it. So please check with your state, make sure that your late fees are actually in compliance.

I don't anticipate that being an issue, but we do service lawyers and lawyers, they will flex their muscles a little bit if they use stuff like that. So just a warning. I saw a couple owners doing that and wanted to give a.

A warning. All right.

We have questions. See what we got here this marvelous Monday. Mike Minutes, Mastermind. Well, we have 12. It's marathon Monday. Let's go. All right, what do we got here? Oops. There we go.

Is this. Yeah, there we go. All right, first one's from Kyle's Harvin from Moore, Oklahoma. What are your thoughts on the BOI beneficial owner information reporting thing? The Fed is Now mandating on January 1st. Looks like we have until January 1st, 2025 to complete and send back. Yeah, so this is, this is the IRS meeting. Make sure they can get as much money as possible. Because.

Pre pandemic level compared to Pre pandemic levels. 42% more businesses are being started right now in the US.

Businesses are harder for them to track income compared to W2Is. W2Is a ran through payment payroll processor. They get their taxes immediately whereas for most self employed people they get their.

Taxes at the end of the year. They pay it once, maybe they pay it quarterly based on estimated taxes. So this is the government being like oh sick. If everyone's self employed and hiding money and income from us because a lot easier to do as a self employed person. We aren't going to make any money. If we don't make any money, how are we going to fund the war in Ukraine and everywhere else? We're doing Just joking, just joking. It was a joke. All right.

But yeah, like I think they're going to increase this. The same thing is true when it comes to.

Payroll. They're requiring much more information about employees and they were requiring IDs, etc. So I think that will only increase, unfortunately.

Vlad from Winter Garden during the winter months for winter services, since there's no PPP to be made, should we still offer trainer pay? I would, yes. And I think there is chance for PvP as you get more route density because again with, with winter services they can hit budget hours. They're hitting budget hours on every single job. So you remove like the seal, you kind of enforce a bit of a ceiling because they have to spend a certain amount of time at the job, but they can still make above BAS pay. They just gotta be super efficient between jobs. So that's really the key.

But yeah, I would still offer training pay. I'd stick to as much as possible. And I think Vlad, as you grow and you get more customers, you will actually they can get above base pay. It is just more difficult because you are enforcing somewhat of a ceiling by saying hey, you must be at the job for the extent for the entire budget hour time.

Joel from Lafayette, you mentioned the roundtable. The team is working offline mode for Copilot got reassigned. Is there an rough estimate for when offload mode will be delivered? Yeah, we finished the API stuff on our end, some of the endpoint stuff last week. So like realistically I would say March 1st. That's what we're shooting for. I've kind of put that as like the, the extended deadline. So that would be, you know, my goal is just like in terms of the bug fixes and things like the offload mode that we've pushed off is to get it done before March 1st. That's kind of like my internal goal. Give me one second guys. I was on wi fi and I switched over to my ethernet. It might block out and then I'll come right back. Give me one second here.

All right, Joe from Lafayette, what is the current status with Sequence Automations and if they are still in work, is there an estimate for when they will be ready? On a related note, CC removed our past due invoice sequence automation because it wasn't working until sequence automations are fixed. What should we do about invoice follow up? Should we keep a schedule to manually send follow up emails? Is CC already doing this for us as well as keeping track when customers sent to collections or do we need to periodically Request this as a project now. No, all of this is like literally being fixed currently. And so I know the last couple weeks have been bumpy but like these things there's no reason to make a work a workaround for something we are fixing like actively and and it is, we will not stop working on it until it's fixed. So there yeah, there's several triggers and sequence automations that went haywire and so but those are being fixed. So like last week we fixed like mass texting works now, web hooks work now this week it's like sequence automation is what we're diving in deep into. And just as a heads up to everyone here prior to when I do it publicly, we are eventually letting go of the regular automations. We will only like the legacy automations, we will only use sequence automations in the future. So we're going to give tons of heads up before we remove the regular legacy automations. But those are the ones that are causing a lot of the issues because they're built on code that was made five years ago instead of the new stuff that we have like way it's way better on sequence automations just from a back end perspective. And so a lot of the issues we're facing right now are actually with legacy code caught and it's causing issues for sequence automations but it's actually the original automations that were built a long time ago. And so just a heads up it's probably a couple months away but eventually we will get rid of the regular automations and move it to sequence automations only. Obviously command center will build everything and make sure everything's good for everyone. But just as a heads up but I would not create workarounds for this week. You know the tickets are in progress and rolling and this week will be getting resolved. The sequence automations is the next one we're knocking out.

When was that one made? Yeah, that was made a few days ago. Okay. All right. Vince from Medicine Hat. Hey Mike. I'm currently digging myself out of the financial hive created from the past five years of not running my business. Well I feel embarrassed by my financial position performance and I need to get this solved. Recently our bookkeeper made an air on our payroll remains that that added another $8,000 owing to the Canadian government which triggered some more stress financially. Here's a breakdown of our current financial debt situation. Cash on hand, 25,000 accounts receivable 15,000 extra truck currently for sale is 9 grand total cash and cash equivalents is about 50 grand. Credit card, 15 grand sales tax, 30 grand. Payroll remittance, 8,000. Government Covid loan, 5% interest, 40 grand. Owing. Total debt is 92 grand. This past year with Augusta was our first year actually being profitable at a meager 3% margin, which was still a 13 improvement from the year prior. My goal is to go into profit mode over the next two years to pay off our debt. On the bright side, my dad recently and very generously paid off our mortgage on our home. And my question is, should I get a HELOC or reverse mortgage to pay off the debt to the government, the credit card, keeping the 5% interest, Covid loan.

I'd be interested to see how much you're getting charged right now on this, the sales tax and the payroll remittance. What you're getting charged on interest. I got 5% interest. I would keep this loan, the government Covid loan. Depending on what the term of that is, I'd probably keep it at 5% interest because you're not gonna get any debt right now for, you know, less than 8 or 9%. I'd be trying to get this credit card paid off asap. And what I would do, I would literally go after your accounts receivable ruthlessly. I would literally go tooth and nail. I'd knock on people's doors. I'd do whatever I needed to get this 15 grand. Because if you can get that, you pay off your credit card. There's no reason to do a HELOC and reverse mortgage when you have $15,000 of accounts receivable. Like, this would be. Your mission in life for the next 48 hours is to collect all that money. And I think if you do it with violence, it can happen.

And when I say with violence, it is like, literally your mission in life the next 48 hours is to collect $15,000 and pay off your credit card.

And I think that's the most important thing, I would imagine the sales tax and the payroll has less impact in terms of percentage of interest. And if you can get rid of the credit card, that's bill, and I'd be most concerned about. And if you're going into profit mode, I just keep chipping away at this. And I would let this one roll it, like, right out, because the government, when it came to Covid, was just, like, super.

Generous in terms of terms that just be. My personal stance is attack this with everything you got. $15,000, attack that. The $25,000 cash in hand is going to be enough for you to stay until spring rush, ramp up, get profitable, stay in profit mode, raise prices once you hit capacity and then just start chipping away at the 30,000, $8,000. But do not. I personally would not recommend doing the HELOC and the reverse mortgage right now.

When you do these, you are going to get percentage points of fees. You're probably going to pay a few thousand dollars in just fees for the bank to do this. I just, I don't think you're in that situation yet. I understand the stress, but I don't think you're in the position where I'd be like, hey, go into more debt to fix this problem. I think go after your, your accounts receivable, pay off this credit card. That's going to kill, kill you. You just got your mortgage paid off. So start pretending like whatever you're paying towards that, like two, three grand, whatever it was, put, start chipping away at this. I think in one year, being in profit mode, you'll get this all paid off.

So great, great job. If you do what you did last year, like improve your percent profit percentage by 13%. If you do that again this year now, you're 18% profit margin, you'll pay off that whole thing in one year.

Hashtag Coach Connor. I love it. All right, what are your thoughts on employees doing side work? Oh, yeah, this one's fun. Customer told me that one of my employees was doing work on the weekend mowing yards in our neighborhood. Also, another employee recent told me he was considering doing a small side hustle and getting 10 to 15 yards a week on the side. I know we have three F and I want to encourage them into financial freedom, et cetera, and doing what's best. But I am torn if they're straight up competing in the neighborhoods that we are doing work in for clients in my database, per chance. Yeah. So I've had, I've had employees do this in the past. My biggest thing was I want communication. I need to know what's going on. And as soon as they broke, broke, that is when I would let them go.

So it's okay. I understand you want to do side jobs. Here's what the rules are if you want to stay working in Augusta. One, you can't talk to existing customers and you can't work for customers in our database. Two, I need to know what you're doing because you are literally competing with us. Totally fine. I want you to excel. I want you to be able to make more money, but I need to know who those people are. And we need direct communication.

And as soon as the communication Drops, that's when I would step in. So I know some people have a much more harder stance on this and it's like no moonlighting at all. And I wouldn't call this moonlighting as much as I'm just being entrepreneurial. Um, so to your point, you don't want to stifle a good thing, but then you don't want to allow it to become a real big problem where they're upselling existing customers and doing work on the side, etc. So as soon as you have a breakdown in communication.

That'S when I would let them go really quickly.

But I generally encourage people trying to, you know, get ahead, et cetera, et cetera. But as soon as like literally one time, if they breach that trust, they're out. And it's like, hey, as long as you're on the clock, any jobs that you're coming in, they're coming to us. And if you want to go get jobs on the weekend, etc, that's fine, but not while you're on the clock.

And you'll hear about it pretty quickly. Usually customers will say stuff. Kyle Tarvin is the copilot and PPP sync fixed to Our employees don't have to clock in to view jobs and will accurately track time.

Before when they were synced and you uncheck the clock into view jobs feature, it would stop tracking time clock into view jobs. You know, this is. That's not part of it anymore. It used to be where it would create a new instance on the time time cards for every single job because it was trying to record each of them. Now it combines them all. So I don't even think that part exists anymore.

The one part is if you, if you're inside copilot and you're using a whole bunch of different types of items and services for the same service, you probably want to wait a few more weeks because it's going to get. It will create new instances for that. It's not combining based upon service, it's combining based on rate. Eventually we want to combine based on rate and service and it'll make even more organized. But as long as you've stayed organized with what services and items and services you have in copilot, you'll be fine. So I just make it as a disclaimer because some people literally have 20 different types of mowing and it's going to create just a long time card inside P4P. So I just probably wait in that instance.

Kyle Tarvin More Oklahoma Whatever happened with the car crash Lawsuit? Don't know.

Lawyers took care of it. I paid my deductible. Haven't heard anything from it. It's still pending though it could very much very well will come back to me in six to 12 months so because like once your insurance handles it, they handle it and then I will get more lawyers involved once the judgment's passed. But I haven't heard anything for several months now. These take a long time, especially if they're trying to take a big case against you. Kyle Tarvin Moore, Oklahoma this is going to sound very ignorant, but my Google searches haven't found anything relevant to me. How did it work for you to have Chuck sign the titles for the vehicles, shop documents, new equipment, etc? Were you still for still retain full control of the assets in North Carolina if you left Example my previous GM at the Moore location had set up the storage unit in his name and now they are unwilling to talk to me since it's in his name. Luckily I know the district manager. She's willing to help us out. But still that could be a scary thing if I didn't have personal connection. Do you just put the name of the business as the owner with the GM regional as a point of contact or or how does that work to where the business owner can still retain ownership if some reason the signer is no longer at the company? I'm more thinking down about down the road. When we have a regional manager signing titles for vehicles, I don't want him to be the owner of the vehicles. I would want the business to be the owner. I may not be available to directly sign, but I want to still retain ownership of any business asset even if someone else's name is on the docs? Yep. So always sign business name, dash title name of the signer. So all the all your trucks, everything you're signing should be in the name of the business. And then anyone can sign and then usually what's going to happen is on the title they're going to put like their name dash their position. So regional manager, general manager, principal CEO, whatever it's like still when I buy trucks I will put Michael Andy's DASH owner, DASH CEO because then like for example last weekend or last week Corey went and picked up a couple trucks on the behalf of the company and I just had to do a letterhead that said I give him permission to sign on behalf of the company. So everything should be signed in the name of the business.

Marcus Redmond for clients acquired from Winter Service Door Hangers, would you recommend we send an Opt out email for mowing right before spring? Yeah, I think so. I know this is our first year doing this where a lot of people have been selling winter services exclusively and it's worked pretty decently. So I don't have historical data to be like there's a certain percentage that will convert into mowing, et cetera. You could also just not send an opt out email, assuming that in your winter services it says like at the top, like MO if needed for example, and you just roll right into mowing. But I'd say an opt out email would be safe if they, if they've literally signed up for winter service during the winter, they're a prime candidate for mowing. So I'd be interested to see how people handle this this come year. I just don't have data, Marcus, to tell you like what to do based upon my historical experience. I would imagine though that an opt out email would be in play and just make it very positive. Just be like, thanks for signing up for wind services. You know your same price is going to account for weekly mowing throughout the season. And you could even say, hey, your price goes down to this amount for weekly mowing. Because if you've been at the bi weekly price, you could go down, you could do that or you could just keep going.

I, I'd be in play for that too because not like with winch services where like you there's there, there's limited demand based upon the seasonality. Like we're going into spring rush, we're going to the time when they need us the most. So it's unlikely people are going to drop off. I think the conversion from people who signed up for winter services exclusively going into mowing is probably like 95, 90. I'm just guessing though. I don't have historical data. I just know that like they actually need us because the grass is growing now. So I, I just have a feeling that you have a very high conversion on that.

Hutch Charlotte, North Carolina. All these names, Connor, you're going to mess us all up. We're going to expect like three different people to show up at conference. Self reflection. If you were on the Mike Andy's business turnaround show 1, 5, 10 years ago, what would you have told yourself at the different points of growth if you were on the show today, what advice would you give yourself? Oh man.

Let me think.

What advice or what difference? Like turnaround. When I think about turnaround, I think about how do I take the current business and make it work. I'm typically not Thinking about, like, future growth and expansion. Because, like, if I was to tell myself one in five years ago, for example, I'd say, like, swing harder. That's probably what I would tell told myself is, like, when you have a good thing, just swing harder. And.

So, you know, five years ago, we didn't have any. We hadn't franchised, and we had no locations. And I just really wanted to help business owners. And so we swung harder, quote, unquote, by a year earlier than I thought franchising. And I think that impact is good. And I probably would have waited a couple of years to feel just right. But it's like, it was a swing harder moment because I knew I needed to do that in order to retain Lee and Liz. So.

I would have. I just. Basically, every single one of those points, I would have said, swing harder.

Turnaround show. Yeah, like, at every single point, I'm. I'm pretty close to my cash threshold of what I tell people not to go into. And so, yeah, if I was coming to my business right now, I'd probably be like, hey, you're super stressed out. Maybe you. You retain a little more cash and stop growing. And then I balance that out against like, what the goals of my whole. The goals of the business are and why I do what I do. And I'm like, no. So, yeah, that's probably what I tell myself is like, twofold. One, swing harder at every single one of those stages, especially the further back you go. And I take bigger risks because I have that opportunity being young and not having dependence. And then secondly, I would say if you want less stress, have more cash in the bank and stop trying to grow your business. So it's like a conscious decision I'm making to do that and have the stress and have, like, the pain. Like, yeah, money just solves all. Can solve a lot of those problems. But by. By not spending the money, I would not be able to do what we're trying to do. So, yeah, like, copilots costed millions of dollars and has been extremely painful. So, like, me trying to save the money and waiting for another three years. Great. And then we'd all be spending extra 100 grand a year at Augusta to service all pot. Just this year.

Myself alone at my locations would have spent like, an extra 20 grand. So things like that, you know, in hindsight, I'll be happy about it in the. In the moment. Yeah, it's painful, but, like, I'm balancing the fact that, yes, I know I am close to my. What I consider a Threshold of cash, that's risky.

And it just motivates like in. In moments of pain when you have no other option because your back's up against the wall, you must go make money.

Usually make a lot of progress. So it is unfortunately addictive. And it is unfortunately, when you do that too often, you have evidence to prove that doing that behavior is rewarding. And so this is something I talk about with Dr. Kashi is like, you have no evidence him speaking to me. You have no evidence that you working harder doesn't provide good results. And so you will have to provide. You will have to create instances of failure in order to prove to yourself that working harder and being miserable is actually not good for the business. And so I've been working on that. And yeah, this is from Mr. Anonymous. I'm looking to double our mowing customers in 2024. We currently have 200 recurring clients. We already have the asset capacity to do so. Can you give a roadmap to accomplish this? Go.

Okay, well, if you're trying to double and you already have the asset capacity to get to 400 mowing customers, because that's what you're saying, you have the asset capacity to do it. I have two questions. One, can you increase your labor capacity? And two, can you take it personally? Because we have three capacities. We have labor capacity, asset capacity, and we have personal capacity. You have told me the asset capacity you can get to 400 recurring customers. My next question is, can you hire effectively and train up enough people to double your staff? And third, can you take it personally? Right, so it sounds like you have already paid money to the assets and that capacity is extremely high. Literally, you're at 50% of capacity when it comes to assets. That tells me you're probably not super profitable because all of your profits are sitting between you're currently at in terms of revenue and your asset capacity. And so the question simply becomes, can you increase the team members and can you take it personally? Then the question is technically, how do I actually double? It is simply a matter of fill that as fast as possible. And so I would be using max. I would be using Max AI. I'd be using the instant price features on the website to get as many customers as possible and then raise prices on them. You need to get to capacity as quickly as possible. Assuming. Assuming they are able to get labor capacity and personal capacity without losing your marbles. Because doubling sounds great. And yes, that's where all the profits of your business are sitting right now. However, doing so and causing personal collapse or mismanagement of team members because you're not capable of managing that people, those individuals will lead to ultimate failure.

From what I read our lien process is only 60 days after final service. So if our Last visit was 5:15 we only have till 7:15 to place a lien. Then if we do not follow up within a year with legal proceedings our lien falls off. How should I let CC know about that? With collections we have about $15,000 in collections between this year and last year, about 700,000 combined revenues. So only 2% don't pay but still hurts.

Okay, so the question in this is how should I let CC know about this collections? I would reach out and I just say hey look can I add this to my automations that notifies you guys when to contact the customer and like maybe put more information in there specifically if you need them to know that I would just adjust your automations accordingly to fit within the 60 days and make sure that like at 45 days you're actually putting the lien in. Right. I'd be really encouraging you to make sure credit cards are on file and as of this morning that process is like way cleaner inside copilot. So like if they have a card taken off a file they are removed from autopay and you're going to get a notice saying to take them out of service. There's no longer the toggle auto pay button so they can't go in, put a card on file and remove the auto pay toggle. They can't do that anymore. It's just way cleaner. So I would be leaning on that 110% going forward and then throw that $15,000 from the past. I would religiously and violently go after it and then I would.

I would just make sure that your automations process re mirrors that. But in the future you can avoid this entire process by requiring cards on file and like having that in a setting on copilot. So. All right everyone, I hope you have fantastic Monday. We'll see you tomorrow. This is another edition of the Mike Minutes Mastermind on Monday. See you guys.