Mike Minutes Mastermind 02/05/2024

I am on my way over in Chicago.

Explain the starboard.

All right, let's run.

See what we got here. We got.

Four questions.

All right.

Okay. First question comes from Kyle Tarvan Morgan is a personal umbrella of policy something you would recommend us getting started? Talking to my insurance agent about it, insurers of businesses and didn't really give me much info. My thought process is that for whatever reason the business got sued denying how liable I need coverage. When an umbrella policy work for me. I don't really, I don't speak really any assets in my personal name besides dead companies. Would this be something you would even enter? I'm seeing you could get a gold 1 to 2 million policy for 15 to 30 bucks a month. Yeah, like so. I used to sell at State Farm, but I didn't sell a lot of.

Umbrella policies. The big thing is if you have stuff set up legally, you shouldn't really need personal protection. Right. Because you should keep it separate from the businesses. Typically when I have talked to agents that understand this more than I do, I eventually come to the conclusion I don't need an umbrella policy.

So I usually just insure the existing businesses out to the hilt because if they're actually coming after me personally, we've got bigger problems. And that is like typically mean. We're even piercing the corporate bail.

And again, if it's a business claim and it's coming against, not to you personally, typically those.

Umbrella policies are going to get voided anyways because it's commercial. So typically leaning at the commercial umbrella. But again, talk to an insurance agent. I've just seen you become less and less used. And.

I've talked with my agent like three or four times. And almost every single time it comes down to spend that money on getting better insurance for existing businesses and then just don't pierce the corporate veil. So I don't know a ton of that, to be perfectly honest with you. And as with most insurance products and financial products, you can go online and find 10 other people that will tell you it's the best thing since sliced bread.

So, you know, find someone you trust in your local market that understands your entity structure and your business and then.

Perfect. I've been waiting a little for the dust to settle before I ask this question. It's not my intent to draw on old things, but I do feel as though it was somewhat quickly brought over about Chuck's firing since it all happened so fast. To be honest, I really like Chuck. He was a straight shooter and I did and didn't shoot things with their value. So it was a bit of a gut punch to learn let go. I know you always have our best heart when you make a decision. So I am in no way question you or position, nor am I defending any wrongdoing you may have done. More clarity. Two questions. One, can you discuss what happened with Chuck for him to be let go so suddenly? Was this something just out of the blue and it was egregious enough to warrant his determination or something that was going on over time? He can't answer. I understand. It would just help. Help me get clarity. Plus, I know a few other owners were curious, but haven't said anything out loud too. After going through this whole thing with him, do you have any takeaways? Good.

Because it is in Chuck's heart to return at one point in time to Augusta. I will leave it to him as to how much he wants to share or is forced to share on the Financial Advisory Council down the road. I will say that if I were to say what he did, I would have 100 unanimous decision behind everyone at the Financial Advisory Council and all of a destination that he should have been let go. I will never hire him as an employee of my own. But you guys have the desire to be an owner and I would lead to the Advisory Council and a few other parties.

Yeah, like there are certain things that we stand for that if violated is instant termination. You can, you can do whatever you want. In my personal opinion, in like your personal life, you, you know, like if someone has, you know, a fetish or a bad habit or that's fine, like, hey, go for it. But if you are going to bring that into the workplace now you involve me and you involve the brand, especially if you're employed directly by me.

That is my business. Is my business. Your business becomes my business very quickly when you bring it into the company. And so personally, I want no person on earth to ever say that working for me, they felt unsafe. And so when that has been put in jeopardy because of someone's lack of character.

Then there's instant termination. And it was within.

And to 15 minutes of him admitting certain things that he was let go. That's all I wanted to say. What do after going through this whole thing? What do you have any takeaways?

Oh man. Any takeaways. You know, everyone has problems. No, no one's perfect. And that includes me. And so it is.

It is why most people don't actually.

Want to be completely transparent and open with their life is because like, we all have dirt. We all have weird stuff we do. We all have past, we all have mistakes we've made. And anyone that fails to realize that we as humans are fallible.

And make mistakes.

They're usually pretty delusional. And so what my takeaway is that those things are fine. And like we all have issues and problems in our life, but when you make that, you bring it into work, that becomes a different situation. And so I would just recommend or encourage people, okay, if you have certain problems or relationship issues or health issues or past mistakes you've made, or maybe you have warrants in the past or you have to go, you have a spotty. Your history with drugs or alcohol, etc, it's like, you know, get help, be open and transparent. But more importantly is like don't bring that to work.

There's a lot more ramifications financially, legally, etc. When you bring those things to work. So.

A lot of the things that were done, if not done on, on the clock, I would have, I would have been completely like hey, sorry. Like you do you. Do you man. And whether or not I agree with someone morally, it doesn't really matter. Like I really don't care. This is business, but business has functions inside of it that are legal compliance that are also a matter of culture and team. And if people do not feel safe working for me, I have a big problem with whoever is causing that. So.

That is all that needs to be said.

Hey Mike, we're still in the dead of winter here. Spring cleanups don't start until early to mid April. Do you think it would be worthwhile sending out an email to my existing clients and the entire database to try and book them in for spring cleanup, multi solid treatment package, etc. I'd write the email in a way that makes it very clear. We are offering discounts for signing up for this time of year. Brand it as winter sale extravaganza or something like that. Lol. Add some scarcity and say only available to 50 clients. I always hate coming to see me with a blank schedule. We want to offer decent incentives to people to sign up now. Let me know what you think. Yes, I have a lot of capacity to take on lawn treatment clients. What do you think of offering a limited time price match guarantee for lawn treatment programs? I don't think the price match would be as valuable as what you were talking about above here, which is getting discounts. Discounts are different than price match guarantees. Price match guarantees. You are attracting the person that is going to go price shopping and try to find a Better price. Like literally you are asking to go get prices for your competition. I don't recommend that. What I would do is go really aggressive potentially with your prices and advertise just how great they are and really do a, a.

A limit on how many people there that you're giving it to. For example, you could say like hey, if you sign up before.

March 1st, your first service is free because you know most people aren't going to sign up until the end of April, beginning of May, that first service. You're willing to do it for free if you sign up for the whole year of treatment, if you sign up for a package. So I would go really, really strong on it, I'd create the scarcity around it.

And.

I would focus a lot more on your offer. Instead of a match guarantee, price match guarantees typically attract the lowest type of customer because they literally have to go to another competition just to Brandon. Now what you could say is use the price match as a throw in part of the offer to basically throw out any objection of well maybe I should do another good again another price because maybe I get cheaper. Well now if you say you're a price match guarantee, sometimes you're like oh well if they're saying that they must be the lowest price so I'm not going to go check. So I like, I like sometimes the price match guarantees as like a last throw in offer or like a, a bonus.

As part of the offer. But not the main thing. Don't make that like the main call to action. I would make the main call to action, like the scarcity around how many spots are available at a certain price. Or say for example, you're giving away 50 free spring treatments. And really what that free treatment comes when you sign up for the whole year, for example, I would probably focus more on that.

I don't think there's too early of a time you can do those sort of offers because when you give someone a discount, my main thing is you need to have a reason why, whether it be the day, whether it be a holiday, whether it be the fact that you're so early. Like it makes a lot of sense to customers. Okay, if you buy this two months before you really need it, I'll give you a discount that makes a lot of sense to customers. What I'm not a fan of is like always just having discounts and always giving away free things because then you become your brand, becomes a discount brand. But if you literally say hey, if you buy now in two months I will do the service and you'll get it for discounted price or free or whatever. I like that sort of offer because it makes sense to the customer.

Kyle Tarvin from Oklahoma.

Eventually I would like to offer health insurance plans to my employees. A few questions at what point is that financial feasible to offer? Is the business owner typically covered under these plans? Would each location need to have their own policy? Or could we have one policy for S Corp that owns your location? How would this work depending on your provider? If you have one S Corp like honestly, the easiest way to do it is through that QuickBooks Payroll or Gusto payroll. It's just so nice to have integrated into your account like we did our 401k through them. And it's so much easier versus having to have an outside party literally just for the sake of bookkeeping. But it is easiest if you have one S Corp and doing payroll to like one account makes it easier. However, you don't have to. So for example, our healthcare policy, we have all of my businesses that I own under one policy.

Different entities. So like the one on the from Allstate in the.

Deal section of the dashboard, through Allstate you can combine multiple LLCs and different S Corps into one package. Now you have to pay. The problem is you have to pay with one invoice, but you get the benefit of having a whole bunch of different entities that you own underneath one plan and you get better prices. So I basically put all my entities together to get better pricing for the team. But really you could do it either way. From a bookkeeping standpoint, it's way easier to do it individually. But from a pricing perspective, the more people you typically have in a plan, you can get better pricing. So if I was doing it over again, I would probably just go straight to QuickBooks, even though I might have to pay a little bit more for the sake of bookkeeping. But that's where I have a bunch of different businesses. If you had just one like, you know, I'd probably just price check a few. I'd probably be allied or like the outstate one on the dashboard. I'd then do, you know, QuickBooks or Gusto, whatever your payroll process is and try to do one through them. Just see what the pricing is. But yeah, one thing I did to get some jobs early up, some early jobs signed up.

Some jobs signed up early was by offering a 2023 price lock on some spring services and selling it as a savings to them when it wasn't really changing in the first place. Helped me get like 12k in multi job scheduled in a few days. Yeah, this is a great option, right? There's two ways to do a discount like this. One is, hey, I'm bringing down my price. Or two is, hey, prices are going up after this date. Right? So essentially what we do is the copilot thing. And you know, unfortunately, software, you can't just dump a bunch of people in and not cause issues. However, it worked really well from the offer perspective. It just crushed. And that was like instead of saying, hey, your prices are going up.

You'Re going to get a discount. I just said, hey, look, the prices are going to go up if you don't get in before this date. So what you could do for spring rush, for example, is say due to increasing costs, kind of like this, kind of like a semi political post. And that is like due to rising costs and all these other things, we're going to be raising prices in spring. If you would like to get your spring cleanup scheduled now before our rates go up and get a price lock, make sure you get on the schedule. Your job has to be accepted before March 1, for example. You could do that and then expect like it's really, really good if you already, you know that like, hey, you're gonna hit spring rush, April, May, you're gonna be raising prices because you're hit capacity. Like it's a great way to be able to do it. Like, hey, get your, get your job scheduled now. If whoever gets their job scheduled before the end of February, their, their prices will be honored.

And then we'll be raising our prices as we come in the spring and we get booked out. It does the exact same thing. It's just what part of the brain are you triggering? The reason that one I really like is loss aversion. Right. So if you give a discount, a lot of people give discounts. Consumers are somewhat callous to discounts, but people hate losing things. They would rather not have something than to lose something. And so they would rather just forego having the cleanup. But if they lose out on something, loss aversion is a pretty powerful thing. Typically we are more inclined to the negative than the positive. And so.

Sorry, distracted. So typically, like, that's why I like price locks. Giving a discount on the future increase in price. And so people hate to leave out, oh man, if I don't do it now, that means forever. It'll be more, more priced. The problem with discounting is when you say, hey, 20 off today in the back of my will it be 30 off tomorrow? Right. Will there be a better price down the road. Whereas if you take price looking, it will never be above below this price again. That's why, you know, the loss aversion is pretty powerful. I, I personally, if I was going to do this, I would make sure I am going to be raising my prices at a given time and then hold to it. So like I would, if you're gonna do this, just say okay, I know that in spring I'm gonna hit my capacity. I know I'm going to raise prices. Okay, now I would feel better about saying, hey, these are prices you can get locked in. We are going to be raising our prices in spring. I would feel better about that even if it was marginal, just so you can deal with good conscience and actually have scarcity around it. All right everyone, I hope you have a fantastic Monday. I didn't think I was gonna have a mask time for a mastermind today but we got early in Chicago and now I'm headed up to Calgary, Alberta. That was very, very short time. Take care everyone. See ya.