Mike Minutes Mastermind 01/30/2023

Happy Monday, everybody. Let's go ahead and get started. We'll jump right into some questions.

And I think we're good here.

Myself. There we go.

All right. Turn myself up there. Okay, cool. Let's go ahead and paste this link into the Facebook group. Hope everyone had a fantastic weekend. On the weekend I did make a P4P video inside of the P4P Facebook group. Definitely feel free to join there. Some mostly basic questions, answering questions, mostly about projects and how that works inside the software. There's to this date still more Augusta lawn care franchisees that use P4P on a daily basis than everyone else combined. So it's still one of those things, too. We can augment the cost of it and continue investing into it by having some of the public in there. But most will do not last because they just simply they avoid one piece in part of the system and it ultimately leads to it failing or they try to do some sort of hybrid weirdness that is not as effective. Which is okay because I'm mostly concerned about everyone here implementing P4P. All right, let's go ahead and rock and roll.

Let me play with this. I was playing with this the other day. See if this makes it easier for you guys to see. No, that's going to cut off a part of the question, I think. Yeah, nobody got time for that. Okay, let's put this here. No, we don't want that there. Oh, man. Here we go. Here, remove it. Add to stream. All right, we're back in business. Question one comes from Forest. How do we get customized yard signs with Max and mascot on the Verbiage service by Augusta? Also, what is the login to Lawn Web Media? Don't know. You might Lawn Web Media.

May you're thinking about lawn care media. You don't need that login. You just go to Pro Shop on off of the dashboard. It has all of the stuff for Augusta already customized and designed. If you wanted to specifically do a very customized something like saying service by Augusta, go go to lawn caremedia.com Augusta and then that that would send a request to the media team. If you wanted something specifically done for you, not too many people have used it, but we do that. If you have no idea how to use Photoshop and you want to do something special, you can order a special project from the media team from there. So.

Next question. Max Harwood from Burnaby. Do you have any sense of the average growth rate of longer companies in North America? For instance, do most grow 50% per year? What is the industry average So I actually don't look at this because.

It averages out because people quit, right? So if you have let's just call it 30 or 40% average increase in growth rate, but then 50% of people back out and quit, it changes the actual growth rate of the industry. So for example, for the past five years, the growth rate in lawn care and landscaping in terms of the market has grown, increased by 8.1%. So theoretically, if you haven't been growing by 8.1% just by raising prices, etc. You've been behind the industry growth rate. It's expected to be 3.1% in 2023. But again, the reason it's 3.1% is because maybe the, maybe the average is actually of people who stay in business is closer to 10 or 15%. However, if you get a whole bunch of people quitting, that revenue is just simply being moved from the person who quit over to new. The companies that are other companies are already in business. So I would say that this is a much higher percentage the lower on the curve of revenue that you are. So if you're going. So if you're going on a trajectory of revenue like this, I would say definitely if you're on the lower end of the curve, you're growing by 100%, 150%. Because going from 50,000 last year to 150,000 next year is a 200% increase in revenue. Right? So that's why I don't use, I try my very best not to use percentage growth rates because in my mind.

Like it doesn't matter on when you're talking about smaller numbers, when you're talking about above a million, then you can start using 10% growth rate, 15% growth rate, it can be a little bit more stable, but it's all relative, right? If you're talking to a billion dollar company, going from a million dollars to 20 million is like very inconsequential. I was reading reports the other day where Google basically when there's new initiatives, if it's not above $100 million in, in revenue their first year, like the product just gets axed. It's too small, right? So it just doesn't impact a company that's doing tens of billions of dollars in revenue. And so I would not be looking at average growth rates because it just, it skews massively for smaller companies. But then that's also where the distribution of failure is so much greater in the smaller companies. And that's why there's higher growth rate, is because that revenue from companies going under simply shifts towards the companies that stay in business.

That's why like, even though the average increase in in revenue for this year is supposed to be 3.1% in the industry, I, I believe that people who stay in business will probably like 10 or 12% simply due to the fact that people who going who go out of business. If we go from 650,000 contractors and lawn care landscaping down to 600, well, there's 10% of revenue just got moved to the people who stayed in business. Right. Vlad from Winter Garden. Currently renting shop safe from a commercial landscaper. Oh, sorry guys.

Currently renting shop space from a commercial landscaper dead center at my service area. Trying to think what that dead supposed to be. Landscaper from a commercial landscaper dead center. Oh, maybe it's tree center. I don't know of my service area. Oh, it's a dead center. Okay, got it. Oh yeah. Okay, I remember this. So yeah, Winter Garden, he kind of has a area where he doesn't service in the middle of his. Of his radius. Got it. A commercial landscaper dead center of my service area and one mile away from my home for 250 per month to park two trucks on a shed. Starting March 1, rent will increase to 500. Talking to my accountant, we need a W9 for the. The commercial landscaper for 2022. The owner stated my payments for rent are traded as cash and refuses to submit a W9. My accountant told me if I ever, if I am ever audited, I will owe taxes on the money used for shop space. Should I continue running from this owner who happens, who happens to my neighbor four houses away, or search for an alternative location for shop.

I would keep doing it because think about like, think about like this. Even if you, even if you have shop space, or even if you have like, for example, if you have a contract that states you're spending, giving money to them and you have the evidence that they said they want this as cash, that's actually going to play against them in an audit, especially when you're asking them for a W9. So I think in an audit actually with a good, a decent auditor, they're actually going to look at this and they're going to give you a wave on this. I actually don't believe that what your accountant said. I think that theoretically. Theoretically, yes, but when you actually get, if you ever got into an actual audit, they would just let you have this because you would show. I tried to get a W9. They would not give it to me, I am paying this money and here's my, you know, a one page document or a contract saying I'm paying rent for this land every single month. I actually don't think they would charge you penalties. That's just my opinion though because. Because theoretically they should be.

Secondly, I would do this probably regardless anyways.

Because you're still getting 500amonth which is a steal of a deal. Even though it was two trucks and a shed. Still pretty good deal. I don't know if they're allowing you to dump on this land as well. If they are, it'd be a slam dunk. But it's close to you.

Like a mile away. I think it's a pretty good deal. So I'd probably stick it out. You know, keep your eyes open for a better option potentially. But don't move from that one until you have something already on the horizon.

Yes, this is a great. Yeah, Thomas, to be clear, it is. Okay, sorry, this is Thomas from Littleton. Concerning Google performance Max, to be clear, it is. Is it critical to start over and create a new ad using the keywords landscape mowing or is the original version from last week good to go?

Okay, so that's answer this question first.

So here's the deal. The first one I glanced over keywords and I redid it. I redid it and I put it up on the Academy and the Facebook group on Saturday. I would use that one. However, however there are some people that are running the old one without the keywords and they're getting like one, one penny per click. The reason that is is because you're basically targeting everyone for any Google search in your area. Given that they are in your area and they're inside of that, you know, 45 and up group, I'd be very interested. I have not run the math on this, I have not tested this. But I'd be very interested to see if it's worth doing that even though they don't have intent to buy. Because if I can pay one penny for per click versus two dollars that means that 198 people could not need lawn care services. But if two do it would still outperform the the one click for two dollars. So it's very interesting to me. It's just not intent based marketing if you're not using the keywords. And so I glanced over in the first video, read it on Saturday. So it's going to have keywords but and I'm not saying everyone should do this, I haven't tested it So I can't say like you should run both. I can't say that I haven't tested it. I've never tried to run a campaign without using keywords.

But it's definitely something to think about in terms of canvassing your area, I personally feel like a dollar, a penny or two per click. Like man, it just makes some sense. So I just haven't run the math, I haven't done it, I don't know. But if you. I personally just feel like 500 clicks inside of your area to a given age demographic going to do better than a $5 worth spent on like every door direct mail. Right? So I don't know, I just don't know that I would just say use my second ad. That way you know it is the most recent one. That way you know it's the most up to date. That way you know it is the it's using keywords and they have intent to buy. But when I saw some of the math of some of these people running that actually ran the campaigns without keywords.

They'Re getting one or two cents per click. I don't know, I just. The math might work. So obviously make sure your demographics are set up correctly with your area and your age demographics but it kind of makes a little bit of sense. So I don't know. Again I have not tested that. It was a mistake on my end that some people ran and then I saw the math on it, knew exactly what happened and.

I just didn't know the math was that good. So what percentage of them actually convert is going to be very interesting and I just don't know. So I know a few of you have those running. I'd be very interested to see how they perform over the next 30 days. Even if you're spending like 5 bucks or 10 bucks a day on them, I'd be very interested. So alright, sorry about that. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, the one I created Saturday and the one in the tutorial is correct. It's the one that uses keywords and this part two you uses competitors as a way to target. You don't have to worry about anything I just said but if you had a pre existing Google performance max from week prior, that's what I was talking about. Number two, we rank well already. Therefore should we not spend time or energy focusing on targeting competitors traffic really honestly what you're doing here is you're going after people that are literally looking for their provider. Like let's say for example One of our local competition is North County Lawn Care, right. Someone's not going to type in n county lc s.com they're gonna just type in North County Lawn Care into Google, look for it and then click on it. Your goal is to try to get above that when you're doing the targeting on competition.

So that would be. Again, I don't think it's a. I, we don't run ads against our competitors personally. But you're more than welcome to like, it's not, it's not like you can't. So.

In terms of spending time and energy focusing on it, I would probably, if, if I was trying to like maximize growth, I would probably, I would probably do a small campaign, let's just call it 10 bucks a day going against my competition. And then I'd probably be spending comparatively against 10, I'd probably be spending like 50 to $60 a day on.

Google Ads. Like the actual ads for me with keywords. And then if you wanted to get a little bit know, freaky, you could potentially do 10, $15 a day doing where there is no keywords. You're just targeting your whole area. All Google searches with people in that age demographic as more of a canvassing branding opportunity. That third one, I just don't know the math on it, but that's kind of what the breakdown would be. We're going to spend about $100 per day on Google for my locations there in North Carolina. Is it advised to prep the ads and then pause until our season gets closer or we'll update it. Google versions, requirements, algorithms cause today's create ads become irrelevant in a few months. This is a good question, actually. There's a big debate about this like a year ago and then Google basically came out. So they don't penalize people for pausing their campaigns. But there's been a lot of people saying they've seen otherwise. Especially when an ad is doing well and then they pause it and they bring it back, it does less well. So I just, I have never created ad, paused it from the beginning. I'm usually creating the ad from the, for it to be up and running right away. So I don't know 100%. If you look it up on Google, you have a split decision. Google has said it does not. So I don't think it's a bad idea to go ahead and create your ads. You could do it out of like a $5 per day. You know, if you're afraid of that, just do this. Do a $5 per day budget to keep it active. And then in a month you would have, you know, kind of wasted quote unquote 150 bucks or just pause it. If it's not doing well, then make a new one. But I think based upon what Google says, they don't penalize people for doing that.

West Meridian has a question. Hey Mike, Google is telling me I should add a bunch of things in my ad in order to prove my ad score or strengths. Would you recommend any of these things? I don't see. I didn't see you mentioned in the done View ad tutorial. Yes. Just keep in mind that Google's objective is to make.

The net of your ad as wide as possible so they can show it to as many people as possible. So there's a lot of things that they're going to add and ask you to improve your ad score, which is really just reaching more people, when in reality we don't always want to reach more people. The third version I just talked about where you basically remove keywords would be like they'd be, they'd be all over that ad score because it increases the amount of people that can see it. However, by adding keywords, by adding more demographic boundaries, et cetera, your ad score will come down because it's not as mass appeal. So I would not worry about that. I have seen people, I have. So we, we hire ad agencies at least once a year to basically I just, I just hire them and I say, hey, look, spend five, ten grand. I want you to see, I want to see what their cost per clicks are. I want to see what their conversions look like. I want to see what their ads look like and kind of test them against ours. And I don't see meaningful difference when their scores are way higher because they optimize everything. And I also see some of their best performing ones have having a lower ad score because they've actually gotten better at targeting. So just keep that in mind.

Their goal is to get as many eyeballs and many clicks as possible so they increase revenue. Max Harwood from Burnaby says, do you know of any resources or databases that would show the size of lawn care industry in Canada and other relevant information, average growth rate, average revenue, et cetera. There's just not a lot of trade journals or stuff specifically for Canada. It's almost always just us lawn and landscape is a great NALP, National association of Landscape Professionals. Again, US based. But honestly, if you're within, you know, 20 miles of the US border, I would say it's pretty much the same data you know, both of our feds are doing the same thing in terms of interest rates. It's pretty identical, honestly. So a lot of those numbers will translate. It's the fact that a lot of Canadian companies are going to skew in the direction of snow services compared to the US data, and that does kind of mess things up a bit.

Logan from Columbus, Nebraska. The only change in the Google Maps campaign videos was keywords, correct? Also, yes, it was the only thing that was changed. So, yes, you could go into your current ad, go to audiences, add in the new segment. You could do that. I just wanted to create one from top to bottom, not confuse anybody. Also, do we need to make sure our ads are working? I've had ads running for about three or four days and have zero engagements so far. Yeah, this is, this is the weirdest thing, honestly. Yesterday I submitted ads and I got them up within three hours. I was getting views and clicks and I've had sometimes where it takes a week or two and I have to resubmit them or I have to call Google and be like, hey, what's up? And they'll tell me what's going on. Whether it be like, hey, you gotta change this one setting. You messed this up. So I would give it a week because I have had some ads take five, six, seven days to become active. But if they're not giving you any errors, that's when it's like, okay, you might have to call them. I know it stinks, but it's sometimes weird because you'd submit the same ad and then all of a sudden it shows up the next day. But typically it takes a day or two for an ad to show up. Start showing up.

Dustin. I'm attaching a picture for the plan on this year's marketing spend and avenues. Can you poke holes and tell me what you would change? Champagne goal is to grow at all cost. Bloomington girl. Goal is to grow recurring massively. Hope to have so much work for spring marketing that after April, May, I won't spend any more because we have too much work. 1 clicks will be sent out monthly. Okay.

Okay, let's see if I can't scroll in on this. Okay, so you got your one click estimate, emails going out. You got your champagne right here. You got your Bloomington. Okay, got it. So over here we got champagne, over here we got Bloomington. I like the planning. Very good. All right, so amount spent for location. Okay. Spending $6,000 in a month is fine, as long as. Okay, you're doing four. Every door, direct mail. That's why? Got it. That's a lot that you're gonna be spending on Bloomington. Seeing that you are trying to optimize for profit. I would probably do less in April because your spring rush, if you look back at like last year, is typically not a time when you're like, let's get more leads. You're usually constrained by labor. So I would just hold off on that. Spending that much in one month on your location, that's in profit mode. I maybe do two or three every door direct mails instead just to again, you're only spending $16,000 a year for marketing. Not bad. But try to bring that maybe from 6,000 to 3,000. Because that location you're not trying to grow massively. Just try to optimize it for profit. But again, all of that, what I just said there hinges on do you have capacity come spring rush and are you overwhelmed with work. So that's a big deciding factor. But I like this. Everything looks good to me.

Looks like April use probably when you start mowing. That's why you're doing the big push there with for every door direct mail.

So in March, May and June, you're spending $2,000 per month on this, this location here with two every door direct mail. Personally, I would spend more on Google and less on every door direct mail. Because if you're doing two every door direct mail, I bet that means that you're probably spending about 1,500 on every door direct mail I'm looking right here.

And 500 on Google Ads, which is like 10 bucks a day plus your names on Facebook. So you're probably spending 10 bucks a day max on Google. I would personally spend $50 per day on Google and maybe do one ever door direct mail campaign max. I know last year though, in your market you crushed on every door direct mail you had mentioned. So take that with a grain of salt. But like, if you're not getting the type of results that Dustin got on his ever door direct mail campaign last year, you might consider like, we personally are going to spend almost all of our budget on Google performance max at my new locations. So I think we're going to do one or two every door direct mail though, to like very specific markets. But I think it's good. I think it's good. I would shift a little bit more of your every door direct mail campaign instead of doing 13 12. Okay. You got a lot of every door direct mail campaigns going out, so I would reduce that somewhat and really focus on Google to get every single person in your area that's looking and searching for lawn care and landscaping. Focus the money on that is my my recommendation because again, every direct mail is still a pretty wide net. Even though you're targeting specific neighborhoods, it's still a wide net comparatively because people don't have intent to buy. So I would personally just divert more of my budget towards Google in comparison to every door direct mail. That that'd be my main focus there on that spend. So I'm going a little bit fast. I got another call. I gotta hop on in two minutes. Plantation. Is there a way to view the customer intelligence when using the app on Zooper? Last week when I went to service a client, the side gate was locked. I knocked and called the customer, but no one answered. So I emailed CC and went to the next. Later that day when I checked my email, CC said that the gate goes inside the customer intelligence, but. But there was no way of me viewing that in the app. That's a great point. I will forward that along to Lonnie. She can submit that for their.

For the feedback we give them. Super customer. Yeah. The thing is customer.

Honestly though, like the customer intelligence is mostly just for the office, but I think it'd be a good idea for the. For the app to see it as well. I agree. It's kind of stupid too. Like, even for service, office notes are not visible inside of the app easily. You can go into the client profile and all that, but it's like I would like there to be a spot where it's like very important things are seen on all visits basically of that client. Evansville yearly marketing, all elites. Okay guys, I'm gonna. I gotta hop on their call. I will do this one tomorrow. I apologize but I gotta hop on this other one. So I will keep this one for tomorrow. Evansville will be the first one tomorrow. All right guys, take care. Have a good day.