Mike Minutes Mastermind 01/31/2025

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to Mike Minutes Mastermind here on this Friday evening. Nothing like a Friday evening to make some money. Okay, so we got lots of announcements today. Tomorrow I will send an email with a bunch of reminders about announcements. I didn't want to send it too close to conference because I know everyone was already overwhelmed. But what I'm going to be mentioning now, I will summarize everything very nicely in an email. But let's go ahead and start out with a few announcements. Announcement numero Uno. We have present share conference. Boom. Let me share. My audio is fine. One second.

Okay, very good, very good, very good. Okay, if you go to the conference tab on the dashboard, you can now watch the conference.

From.

Just the augustination only part right here. So definitely watch these specifically the State of the Union at the very least if you weren't there, you got to watch that part because all the updates that is coming out. So check this out. And then all of the other owners that were speaking, etc. Very good. So it's all there. You can watch this now. Zach made a post in the Facebook group about it also also.

On the Pro Shop. Go to Instant Quote door hangers.

All the ones we've always made in the past, these are all up here. They're great. Let's go. But if you go to.

Oh, I just realized they're not under Instant Quote, they're on a regular door hangers. So if you're at the bottom of door hangers right here.

Which Zach you. You watch this. You will need to change this. It needs to be re categorized. Vistaprint probably messed this up, but these are the three new Instant Quote door hangers that we currently have done with the QR code. So there is the combo, there is the Mowing Instant quote and there is the Spring Cleanup instant quote. They have been redesigned and they have a QR code. So this one for example is the Spring Cleanup instant quote. Just move forward in this so you can see what it looks like.

It's gonna be now where they use a QR code instead of having to write down their information.

So.

Can I go to the other side?

There it is.

Take a photo. Accept your quote. This is the image that we already have. It's connected to Command Center. It's looking beautiful. You can change out the QR code if you want that to go to you or any different form whatsoever. So it's completely customizable. You just need to change out that QR code and you'll be good to go. So Zach will Be having some training on this and uploading a video on the academy, but it's pretty straightforward. Yeah, do what you've always done. It's just a matter of you do need to put your email in here. So like, you know, Wacom, for example, at Augusta Lawn Care, you got to put your email address in here. This is the way for command center to actually know which location it's coming from. So I do recommend.

Boom. Boom. Boom. There you go. There it is. You got to put your email in there. Okay. Oh, sorry. I guess you hear welcome. Boom. There you go. Welcome. @August Longer Service.com this doesn't need to be changed. Just put your. Your territory name there. They take a photo to confirm things, but that's part of the form. It looks really clean. Feel free if you want to. You could literally scan this QR code and see what it looks like from the customer's point of view. It's pretty slick in terms of the form that comes to command center. So those are your two announcements, your two updates for today conference recordings as well as the year's three instant quote door hangers with QR codes now available on the pro shop at the very bottom right now of door hangers. Vistaprint hopefully will update that for us to be on the instant quote door hangers. So that is in the correct spot. All right, let's go ahead and jump in.

To some questions. First question is from Brian Connor, Augusta, Georgia. We've made recently made some changes in our Augusta Georgia location. This location is the GM plus model and we project 1.6 million this year. We are in. We are in now in profit mode for this location. We did 1.47 this past year and profited 140k including distributions. This is up from $1.24 million with 100k in profit. Not the ideal target of 15 to 20% but much better than years prior. The two changes are one, we brought a team member in CJ one year in field as Jeremy's office assistant. We will likely build out mini command center for this region. We have five to six locations. Once we break up the Augusta Georgia location into three, this team member will be answering the phones, checking email and other tasks delegated from Jeremy. Two, we have brought a team member in from brought a team member in Jordan three years in the field to replace my. To replace my role as estimator so I can take the role as regional manager. Until we have until we built out this region and Jeremy can move up as regional. We have chosen to pay hourly for these positions, our base pay for team members, 16 per hour. The starting base pay we chose is $22 per hour. Both team members understand that this role can change and may transition to include production during the offseat during the slow season. Question 1. Does this hourly pay seem reasonable and fair for these roles? I would say yes, because, like, if you're doing 16 as base, you have counter in the fact that they are likely high performers in the field, which means they're making a bunch of P4P. You're probably gonna have to pay them that just to convince them to stay in, you know, not in the field, especially during the busy season. Question 2. Would you recommend any profit sharing or additional ways to incentivize them with pay for these positions? I would probably tie it more to these are the tasks that must be completed and then tie it something like a certain amount of budget hours in the field. As that comes down, they have to then get in the field. So they're gonna be incentivized, like, keep the jobs on the schedule, but be selling upselling. Like, keep the jobs on schedule. If they want to stay in the office, as soon as it goes below a certain threshold, they know they gotta go out and they gotta go do the work. And assuming that they don't want to and they would like to be working in the office or doing sales, they should be incentivized to get more jobs on the schedule. And so I would create some sort of threshold. It's like, hey, when X amount of budget hours is on the schedule, that means sales and admin is going to jump in the field for one day a week. Two have, like, as it goes down, they have to work more and more in the field. That's, that's how I would do that. Question 3. With being in profit mode this year for Augusta, do you think, do you have any thoughts or advice on shooting for 15% profit? I think for Prof. 15% profit is doable. Again, profitability. Now, with these people in place, GMs, et cetera, you're going to have more of that profit going out. So if you can get 10% distributions, that's not bad. So if you could take $150,000 as an owner out of the business in terms of owner distributions, I'd be very happy with that. It's 10%. Like, that's always my target. Like 10% distributions, 20% profit. But I'm assuming that 10% of the profits are going out the door to the team and GM and regional manager. Question 4. Do you believe us? Training my replacement as estimator and me taking the regional model was the right move this year. I think it's going to be required. The thing that takes the business to the next level is you being really good at training general managers is a skill that is not inherently baked in because you have found one good general manager or you have a good partnership as you currently have it with Jeremy. Awesome. The skill that you will now are going to have to figure out as leading leaders and training leaders, very different than training people in the field is a very difficult skill. This is not something you learn in one season. It is very difficult and you will make mistakes. And I think you've actually kind of been able to cut your teeth to the second and the third location trying to find the gm, seeing what works, what doesn't, how your cadence and your meeting schedule, what, how it kind of works. So I do believe you'll be successful in it. But this will, this will be with these additional locations being added, it'll be a full time position of just like covering for GMs that fall out. It will be when their one location will take off in terms of leads pouring in, you'll have to like step in and help them. So it will like regional manager is kind of like they pick up the broken. The balls that are falling. Whether it be on the general manager side as a sales side. If you're taking on admin like all of a sudden they're going to have 30 estimates or 40 estimates come in and they're like, I can't get to these. It's the end of the day and the regional manager will be the one that you just to pick all that up. So no, I think this is good. Good plan. Very good.

Pascua Mendoza from City. Hello, Mike. I hope you're doing well. Myself, my gym would like to get tech notification when you go live on Mastermind. Our phone is boom. Okay, so we can only do one per account. Just because inside Copilot we can't do multiple cell phone numbers that get the text message. So you could do it to yourself and then you could just forward that message along to him. So.

Give me one second.

Our phone number is.

So boom, boom. Give me one second. I'll just do this now instead of telling you to go somewhere else. Give me one second. PASQL Just opening up inside copilot. So right now, Pascal, it looks like we have a phone number on your account that is not one of those two. So let me just change it. No, we do right now we do have that as your default. 712357 yeah so right now that is the first number is the one that's going to we can't do more than one unfortunately per account inside copilot so sorry about that. You just have to forward it to them for now or they can get it in the mastermind the link on the Facebook group Dylan Wirtz in a nearby if a nearby territory set up a lead partner, that partner would get my unserviceable leads as well. As long as they've serviced both our territories correct it's going to go to the person that the lead comes through. So remember how he said it have it set up. It is easy to be able to track where that lead actually originated, which location. So let's say for example you have a territory here, a territory here and right in the middle someone comes into the Augusta leads program, whoever they called in terms of location that lead is assigned to and gets the credit for it.

Let me make sure let me make sure that that's what you're asking.

No. So the answer to your question is no. If they set up a partner, it does not matter who set up the partner. It comes down to who who did that lead originate from. So if someone calls you, they call you and they sit and you're you're another partner or another Augusta owner got someone who has a massive territory. It doesn't matter who got the partner, it matters who the lead came through. Because if you did the advertising and got all these leads coming in, you should be getting the money. So great question. Really good question. Hutch from Charlotte Greatly enjoyed the stats around website conversion. Please continue to say stats like this in the future. Do you know what this how this affects the customers that do not proceed? I'm curious if the 30% dropping off in regular in both regular web forms and enterprise are the same group of people. I ask mostly because we have had amazing results with online forms and door hangers. However I'm concerned that these bring in lower income clients that churn easier or those just looking for a quick fix I. E. During the hot season we had incredibly high churn this year which was likely largely self inflicted. Could the ease of signing up be attributed to this as well? I've had a few gym memberships of the of the years where it is super easy simple to sign up online but then they will only let you cancel in person because they will they know people will continue to pay and be lazy to and be and be too Lazy or unable to go in person to cancel. Okay.

Here'S the thing. Will making it easier to sign up increase the number of people inside your system? Yes. Once they're inside the system, it is our responsibility to keep them in the system. And that is done through great customer service. It is by solving more of their problems through upselling so that they, it's harder for them to leave. And greasing that wheel, it is making a video for every customer so you have the personal connection. Even though they signed up online, put their card information, you never saw them. These are the things that can be done to help with churn.

I can guarantee you, you will keep good people out by making it hard to sign up for your service. I will. I can also guarantee that some people will get in that are lower quality. I want all of them because it cost me $0 in terms of admin for both of them to sign up when it comes to instant pricing. And so the goal is get as many in and then do a, do a better job of keeping them through better standards of quality, making a video for them.

Upselling them into three or four other services so that I can lock them in, etc. So that would be my focus. I just, yes, there, this will happen because if you get more people in, there will be some that if you make it really easy to get in, there will be some that are less like lower quality. Yes. But my question is how do we convert them from low quality, high quality? How can I get them to accept from one, one mowing job or one service to two or three services? I want to focus on that because I cannot control whether or not someone comes to my site and signs up and they're quote unquote low quality.

So if you were in profit mode, you're like, I don't want to grow, then it might, there might be a really good use case for saying, okay, I'm going to increase my prices on my instant price form considerably. So I weed out anyone that is lower priced. Anyone like you. Like there are locations that are doing this and one of mine is like literally up until last year was like 30 to 40% more expensive because they're like, we don't want all of those people in. But the thing is this, if you get someone in for cheap and then you can raise prices on a bunch of them six months later, that's really, really good for growth mode. So it really comes if you're in growth mode or profit mode, I would say.

I watched a video the other day of you having one of the optional meetings in the morning with Bellingham. I believe in this video you talked about starting up something on the side to produce side income in tandem with your full time job. Does this advice only hold true for employees and not business owners? Where do you draw the line between it being a good idea to start up something on the side versus getting distracted with a new shiny object? Yeah, I was talking to W2 employees that are going to be capped at 40 hours a week. Right. As a business owner, you working an extra few hours on the side doing something else versus just spending that time on your main thing. We all know the answer to that. But when it comes to a employee that's trying to get ahead, they are capped usually by how many hours they are allowed to work. And so doing something on the side, freelancing, doing a side gig, is usually their way of being able to generate because we cap them at 40 hours. For example, Kevin from Bloomingdale, New Jersey, I love the six week sprint idea and the weekly schedule. I'm wondering how you deal with the changes in the schedule, for example, when you travel for the turnaround. So the weekly schedule inevitably change. How do you determine which things on the schedule don't get done?

Yeah, so it's this tough. This is really tough. Last year we're on the six week sprints. Usually we know when we're traveling though. So I'll okay this. This six week sprint, I have two, two turnaround shows like that we're going on traveling. I'm going to have less bandwidth to do certain things. So I just put less things probably in those six week sprints. And just, it's part of like a big focus this year is the turnarounds because it just greases the wheat engine for everything else.

And so it just needs to be baked into it. Right. So they're inevitably going to be changes. And this is why, like, focusing on one to three things is important. Because you focus on 10 things and then something comes up, you will inevitably get behind. I want to make sure that I get those things done. Like, I need to be manageably, am I hitting these targets every time? Like everything needs to get done within that. Otherwise you're putting too many things on the plate. And most time we just like, oh, I could, I could probably squeeze it in. Like, look, if it's not one, it was one to three things. I'm gonna get rid of it. He's gonna be like relentlessly ruthless with like what goes in there. And I'm going to bake into the account. The fact that there will be things come up, schedules will change, random fires will happen. It just part of business.

Nick. Kind of like you. Kind of like you schedule 30 budget hours in a 40 hour work week. You schedule the fact that you're going to have interruptions and schedule changes in the six week sprints.

Hey Mike, apologies if this is discussed at conference I wasn't able to attend this year. Is the GM compensation plan on the dashboard still the current model you recommend? The one we're referring to Sundays date effective July 1, 2023. Based on that model, I have a couple questions. My 25% business partner is going to be taking over the GM role for my location this spring. We are currently at $850,000 annual revenue, $70,000 month average. How would you structure this GM package? Since I'm going to be in the regional manager position, how do I, I determine how much to compensate myself? I will still be handling most of the marketing and higher level strategy, just not day to day operations or sales. This is all a bit tricky in my mind when it comes to my personal compensation since he has 25% equity. P.S. i know based upon our revenue is early for me to step out and just be regional manager. But I've decided to pursue other avenues for my personal income. Yeah, so.

We are currently. Yeah, I would just do this based on distributions. Like right now, I'm assuming distributable cash. He's getting 25% as the business partner, I would maybe give him another X amount percentage on top of that for the fact that he's running operations to heavily incentivize him potentially. Now I think it'd be fair if you're doing that to be very clear with him what your compensation is based upon, how much time you're spending in the business and like what your salary is going to be because you're obviously getting distributed with cash. That's where you'll probably make most of your money.

But how you, how you determine how to compensate yourself? I would give yourself a salary based upon some sort of like hey, hey, do you usually work around half part time? Okay, well then that's like, let's just call that half of what you usually have charged original, which is like 100 grand. Okay, 50 grand a year, that's your salary. Boom. And then anything at the end of the quarter, distributable cash. He's getting 25% already because he's a 25% business partner. And then you might give him an additional 1015, 20% on top of that, because he's actually running the business operationally that, that I would still just do distributable cash.

As a gm. I would treat him like a gm, treat him like a GM in terms of pay. But then when it comes to distributable cash in a quarter, he gets 25% already. Like he's going getting that. But treat him like a GM. So if he's getting 10, 15, 20% of distributions, that would be his GM pay. And then he'd have owner pay. Like it'd be separate for him. If you're actually saying that from a corporate perspective, like legal perspective, he'd actually like report this somewhat differently because he'd be getting distributions as an owner 25% at the end of the quarter, but he'd also be getting end of the quarter distributions based upon being a general manager. So I would keep them completely separate the ownership. 25% is completely irrelevant from like what would I pay a general manager. And I would use that model. Whether it be 15, 20%, I'd probably do like I'd probably do 20% of distributions that he'd be getting as part of being general manager. You could use that, that compensation model. It might be 15%, maybe 20 or 80,000, might be even 10%. But I would just do that as your GM pay. And then after that post paying a GM, then you have distributions the owners just so happens that he's an owner and a gm. Marco, since we aren't getting an estimate or car anymore, I'll be using our fourth truck for estimates and infield 10 to 15 hours per week. I'm assuming our old plan was to have three mowing trucks and one cleanup a small project truck in order to get to 800k this year. But that obviously changed. So now I'm clueless. Is growing at 600 to 650 this year with four trucks coming from 400k. Too little for the amount of trucks and potential we have. By potential, I'm referring about. Not I'm referring about how it's not just me myself trying to grow. My dad is also in the business. So it helps not only one, but two people tackle the task of operations, hiring, training, et cetera. Ultimately giving us an advantage. Yeah. So the question just becomes, do you optimize for profit now? In which case you could take those four trucks, raise prices, let the lead flow come in and probably get to 7, 750 pretty easily. Honestly, given the fact that last year you did like 500, I believe it was. I think you could probably get to 700,000 even if you went into profit mode without buying more trucks. You know, getting six, seven, you could have up as high as eight employees. I. I think you could honestly grow up to 800,000 pretty easily here. If you throw this into profit mode, you'd still grow just because of the amount of lead flow that you like, the increase that you've been having. And then if you pair that with like Augusta's site, like, I think you're gonna plenty of leads to be able to continue growth. So it's either do you take the growth and you continue expanding, get another truck expand, then you could go in the GM plus model, which again, Marco, you'll get trained on all of this next week. Do you want to go right to the GM plus model? Because you have two basically owners, quote unquote, in the business to be able to do that, That's a possibility. But I think if I was you at training, you're going to see the pros and the cons of do you throw this into profit mode, make this an absolute cash cow at 650, 700, maybe 750 next year and just rinse and repeat with four trucks, that's really manageable for a general manager. And then instead of you and your dad doing a GM plus model, do you start your own location, he continue to run the current one underneath? As a working gm being very profitable, that looks very appealing to me. Um, and also with the dynamics of the family, might be super helpful. Um, so at ne at training next week, I think you'll get some clarity on that once we go over the different models. Jonesboro, I noticed that the QR code instant quote door hanger live on Vista print. Very cool. However, I was wondering if there needs to be clear instruction on how to accept the quote. Maybe it's just me, but it took me a while to realize I had to take a picture of the door hanger and scan the QR code to accept. Just my opinion. But in the last step of the jotform, it's some of the variations of the word. Upload a picture of the back of your door hanger under the accept your quote. It might bypass some confusion. If I was a client, I might. I probably would have skipped that step or jumped off that point because I didn't know what I was supposed to do there may. I'm just dense. See picture right picture. Share this tab Upload the picture of your door the back of your door hanger here. Oh, I see you wrote that. I'm like, we did not do that. Okay, accept your instant quote. Last step to accept your estimate.

I think the words are just wrong. One second. Give me a second here.

This title is just incorrect. We'll get changed. You're right. Yeah, we already went over this revision. I just for some reason that. Accept your instant quote. It is not supposed to say that. So you will get this changed. Yeah, it's supposed to say upload a photo. So I apologize for that. We had this in the revisions. Didn't know. I don't know why I didn't go through.

Present. One second. Let me just share this. Yeah, that's a great point. I brought up my last revision and I do not know why it's not there. It might not just updated. Give me one second.

Okay.

That'Ll get changed.

Mr. Anonymous, how much of or how much are your locations or average locations spending in Facebook ads and what is the typical return on them? Okay, I don't know who this is, so I'm guessing you haven't come to training.

But we don't spend a lot on Facebook ads outside of the spring rush when we're just driving tons of traffic to the instant quote door hangers or instant quote form and just trying to drive people directly to the website and signing up. But outside of that, we don't spend a lot. But we usually. I think we would probably on average, if I had to say, like maybe average $500 a month. But now that we've like reduced our capacity, we're booked out far. We just not spending much money there. We usually can get leads for between 50 and $100 on Google. So, Kyle Tarvin from Moore, Oklahoma, do you still rent the tiny house in Mount Vernon on Airbnb? How's it been going? We do not rent the tiny house in Airbnb. The cost for the time was spent was just not not worth it. And even if I have to get bothered once a month for anything, it just doesn't make sense financially. So we do not rent it out. Very Airbnb. I use a place to do like a second workout workplace. Landon Smith from Tallahassee, Florida. Hey, Mike, just started running some instant price door hangers with all the prices like the website, extra small to extra large. Using the lot size as the guide. What do you think of doing instant pricing price Facebook ads? Also instant price every door, direct mail. I think these could be really effective with the size guides of extra small to extra large small, Extra large. It could be possible.

Using lot Size as the guide. Yeah, like I, I just, I don't think most people know their lot size, honestly. That's why we've always avoided it. When we ran these split, tested these against pictures, they just don't come close. There's too much of a drop off because people don't know their lot size. Now, extra small to extra large makes sense to most people, but lot size square footage, doesn't it? Just like we just see the drop off is way, way more when, when we showed the pictures. Like there's such a small drop off. We see drop off once we show the prices. But I can't even get them prices if they can't determine what they're. Where they're at in extra small, extra large. So I've just never seen the conversion be good enough when it comes to lot square footage if. Because people don't know it. They just don't. We do because we like square footages and we know lawns and we talk about it every day. The average homeowner does not know lot square, their lot square footage.

Kyle Tarvin from Moore, Oklahoma. If an Augusta leads partner decides they no longer want to be in the program, what is the process of them getting out? They can send us an email and we will say, fantastic, we will remove you and they will not get anything. The same way that if a location closed on Augusta like we would, they wouldn't get any leads.

Same thing is true. It's literally they have their own service areas and service availability, et cetera, in the department and they would not get leads anymore immediately. Second question. If a location wants to start offering a service one of their partners offers, what happens with the partner? We would need be. We would, the lead would go to you because remember, all leads are coming through you and they only go to the lead's partner if you don't want them. And that's all governed to your wiki. So it's like this will never actually happen because if you accept the service when they go to the wiki, you're like, oh, this service goes to. Goes to you. Now this is a really good point. I saw some people saying, I want all mowing customers. I'm not going to put anyone in the leads partner. I don't want those to go into the leads program when in reality there are going to be mowing customers that come outside your service area, like way outside your service area. You might as well find a partner for them. So just keep that in mind. I saw someone the other day say, oh, I want all my services to go to the lease program. But the mowing ones, I want them all to come to me. But then their service area was still confined to less than five miles. Look, there's still going to be people that. Except mowing that are 10 miles, 15 miles away from you. You might as well get paid for them. So. But yeah, if you ever started offering a service, it would just come in like oh, yep, they offer that service great. They wouldn't even see the referrals tab of the wiki because you offer that service. And they'd take the information and start rolling with it. So we wouldn't even have to notify the partner. The partner does not get leads for that service anymore. Mr. Anonymous is in growth mode. Are there any times you recommend raising prices?

Not unless you've reduced capacity. Because if you're in growth mode, it means that you have capacity to fill to. And traditionally the only reason I would do this, if you are in dire straits financially. Dire straits. And if you're also in dire straits, I'd be selling off assets and trucks to get down to capacity as quickly as possible. So I could actually be at capacity or closer to it and then enter profit mode by raising prices and being at capacity.

That's the only time I would, I would recommend doing it.

If that revision to QR code is needed. Will the qr, the door hanger QR need to be changed or is the link just updated? Oh, it's yeah, the form we changed on the back end. The QR code does not need to be updated so that that change that they will make likely.

Momentarily and left if not first thing Monday. You do not need to worry about the QR code. The QR code worked just fine. It's the form on the back end that, that that change probably went through or saved but was didn't. Sorry, was done but not saved because I already made that revision for the QR code. Instant quote the four step to the client. Submit your door hanger photo. That's that way it's more clear. Yes, yes, you're right. You're right. It's just a matter of that edit. I don't think was saved. So we will get that fixed.

Boom. Cool. Appreciate you all. Hope you have a fantastic rest of your day. If you did not make it to conference tomorrow morning, I am dropping the recording of the workshop. It's a separate, completely separate video. It's not of from conference. We didn't record anything from conference. I recorded separately the workshop from Friday. Feel free to watch it. It'll be helpful. It's very much of the 5 different tracks etc. For off season. Please please watch that if you were not at conference be very important. That's all I got. I hope you have a fantastic weekend. I will send an update email if not Saturday on Sunday. All the most recent updates including the door hangers, the conference stuff departments at command center are going to be getting reduced in April and more details and training videos about those etc. So hope you have a fantastic weekend. Love you all. Take care.