Mike Minutes Mastermind 02/05/2025

Hello, Augusta Nation. Hope you're doing good. Let's go get started. I do have training here in about 25 minutes, so hopefully we can get through all these questions. Looks like there's 10 today, so let's go and get started.

Okay, cool. I made a video I posted on the Facebook group if you'd like to see it. About some of the updates we've been making on the website. SEO side of things. SEO is one of those things. It's quiet, you don't see a lot, but there's stuff happening on the back end. So instead of kind of explaining all the little stuff that we do in terms of SEO, I just wanted to show you an example of a couple new locations that are already ranking on the first page of Google. We've been able to start getting the time it takes to get the first page of Google down dramatically. The web team. So shout out to them. There's Tory, the whole team here that is always cranking away and so shout out to them. Made the video on the Facebook group. Feel free to check that out. We do have 10 questions, so let's see if we can get through them all. If we can't, I will finish them tomorrow.

Let's go ahead. Started. Make sure my audio is good. One second.

Alright, cool.

All right, first question is from Morgan. What is the best way to price and sell chemical treatments? Yeah, Morgan at Trane will go over this. I really like the idea of using a multiple of your mowing price. It scales up with your.

Square footage. Using a multiple also allows you to be able to price it very quickly, allows command center to do it very quickly. Upselling, especially as we start pushing into this whole new upselling on almost every single phone call. That initiative was launched yesterday at Command Center. It's going to be continually trained and revamped and upgraded. But by having it easy for them to price, you make the ability for them to upsell much easier. Landon from Tallahassee, do you have a number of yellow slips you allow before final warnings, firing, etc. It's very personalized. Like not all yellow slips are created equal. Someone forgetting to blow off a backyard porch, is that bad? Yes. Someone running into a fence with the mower. You know you have different size and scope of yellow slips. Also just like their care. Like I've had people make twenty, thirty thousand dollar yellow slips and they didn't get fired because they really genuinely cared and they were very sorry and were willing to do whatever it took to.

You know, they offered to pay back if I didn't allow them. But like, that's, that's the type of thing I'm looking for is like, was this, was this negligence or was this a mistake? Like, I make mistakes too. Kyle Tarvin, in one of your recent emails, you mentioned something about if a task can be completed for less than $30 an hour, you should hire it out. At what point does this become relevant? Is there a specific revenue marker or a team member count? You should be shooting for this to be able to do this. The bottom line comes like, if you have work and you could otherwise be doing work out in the field, you're probably making $80 to $100 an hour doing that. So if you, especially if you're under 800,000 and you have the ability to still be out in the field a couple days a week, for example, the alternative to every single action that you're taking, washing dishes, folding clothes, et cetera, is 80 to $100 an hour. So if you can get something else done for 30 an hour, you should probably get it hired out.

And so when it becomes relevant is when you have work to replace the other tasks. So what people otherwise do is they, well, I'm gonna go get someone to clean my house. Great. I'm gonna have an extra hour a week. And what do they watch? Netflix. Now, if you're gonna replace that with $100 an hour task, it makes a lot of sense. So it's increasing your bandwidth to be able to work more and get more done. And so if you're not gonna replace that work with valuable work, then you should keep doing it yourself. But if you, if you have the ability to hire out for $30 an hour, and then you'll make $100 an hour out in the field, for example. And if it's, if you're a larger company, like you have higher leverage tasks, even potentially of creating training of organization, et cetera, creating a system for your maintenance. These are the type of things that are actually probably $150 per hour tasks. Jamie Richards we're relocating our shop to a new location across town. Since I already have a Google listing for the old address, should I create a new listing for the new location to enhance our visibility? My reasoning is that if someone searches for lawn care, to me, having listings for both and for both the old and new locations can increase our chance of being found. This would only work if you actually have a real different location. Like if you had two different, like Augusta Long Care, one city name, Augusta Long Care, another city name. If you're doing the same one, Google will start to track that and they'll say okay, these are duplicates and you can actually get not deplatform but like they really hate when you do this. Like create a bunch of accounts under one business name for example. So I'd be very careful of that. I would either a leave it as is so you don't have to do any sort of re verification if it's working fine and it's close enough to your inside of your territory or move it, do the re verification and move it to the new address. I generally have seen Google pick up on this pretty quickly and that is just randomly making a whole bunch of Google accounts for one business. When you have a different ein, you have a different business name, you have a different business license, you have different insurance, it's a lot easier. Oh and a website because if you're pointing them all to the same website, it almost immediately will pick it up. So if you're like okay, I guess the longer services of Billy Bob, great. If all four of these Google accounts are linking to Billy Bob, it kind of figures it out pretty quick. Like I would guess within one week their system, their algorithm will just pick up on it and get flagged. So just be careful of that. Marco, not sure exactly when exactly but within five years I heard you mention that there will be 600 to 700 locations. What do you think is realistically for an ownership owner right now to have in about 10 years amount of locations? It simply comes down to your amount of cash that you have on hand as well as your ability to find general managers. Those are the two constraints to growth if you're using the Augusta business model. Do you have capital to grow or access to capital through investors, debt, etc. And can you find and retain general managers? And that second part is actually the unlock and that's many times will take two, three, four, five years. Who was it? I was listening to you the other day. Oh, there's this gentleman. Yeah he owns a huge chain of automotive repair shops and, and he was talking about this, this topic too. He said it took him like a five years just to figure out how to get general managers. And he says regardless of how much training he gives to people, like when he gets, when he gets other mid level managers to hire general managers, it takes him two to three, two to three years minimum and more like five years to become someone who can actually manage that number of people and find good general managers. So interesting. That's why this year like we're really trying to figure out as much support around supporting the general managers, whether it be training in person, WhatsApp groups giving them, really emphasizing the monthly coaching call with a coach and gm. So that's really a big focus because it is, in my opinion, the bottleneck. You just need money and you need GMs. If you have those two things and they're both stellar, especially the GM, you can scale it. Marco from Augusta Lawn Care Vancouver. How much would 10 locations in profit mode be valued in if they were to get sold? This is so difficult mostly around the fact that if you had a strategic buyer that wants your market, it's going to be significantly more. So yes, you could have a multiple. Is it going to be probably a doubling of a multiple compared to like one location that's doing 2 million? Yes, it'll double your multiple by having that, that bandwidth, like that spread out distribution of management. Having all of that in place with 10 having one or two regional managers, like the valuation goes up because the risk to the owner is so much lower. That being said, if you earn a market down the road where you have 10 locations around one city and basically the only way to be able to get inside of a 30, 40 mile radius is to buy in and you have a strategic buyer, the multiple probably double again. So that is very difficult to actually answer that question. Marco, what are your thoughts on leveraging debt in the future to start up a location? It's about 140k investment per location. Pros and cons. Yeah. So 140,000. You need yourself a big chunk to be able to.

Immediately have two to three trucks, immediately have two to three employees, and spend a good amount on marketing. My hope is that by the time this is actually a problem for you. Marco, in a few years that we have nailed down, Augusta leads phase two to where you could actually know. Okay, if I have $40,000 from initial markup marketing capital, here's how many leads I'll get and this will be even more predictive. That being said, your ability to find a general manager and then adapt, like do exactly what the system say, that is going to be the depending factors whether or not you go and leverage yourself. Because if you're going to take say 10% debt, you know, on 140,000, it's $14,000 a year in interest plus your principal pay down. So you better be making pretty good money by the end of year one, otherwise you're going to be breaking even for the first five years. If you're just trying to pay off the interest like the 14,000, that's not enough. You got to actually pay down the loan. And and so in general it's a matter of scaling very quickly. Like if you can get to 40 to 50,000amonth in revenue in that first year, this becomes very copy and paste. And if you can find general managers and so you have 140,000 capital is not the constraint, it is can you find a great general manager. So scaling it is hinging on those two things.

And your confidence in that is what counteracts the risk associated with that. Once a thousand location is reached in 10 years, to be honest, I think we'll be more on 700 locations in, in 10 years. But anyways, would robotics allow people with current locations grow past 800,000 without putting more work on the GM? For example, since robots would be doing the work that allows. Okay, so this is very speculative. For example, since robots would be doing the work that allows a location to grow to 1.5 to 1.2 million when Augusta reaches 1,000 locations wouldn't be able to keep copy and pasting. I feel like I wouldn't be satisfied with the income coming in 10 years from now. And we want our passive, our passive income even more. So I'm not going to hypothesize about this too much. I have my thoughts about how this would actually work, because I don't believe it's in 10 years when this actually changes the business model. That's when robotics will start to supplement the same way I started to supplement and help people in the past couple of years. The same way I believe in 10 years robots will be helpful. So for example, instead of having a two man crew, you have a couple robots and a mower to edge line trimming, blowing, etc. So I think this is more a function of yes, you could take your current customer base, make it more efficient, make it more profitable, but ultimately I still believe that a GM will be able to manage six to eight people effectively. And so how much revenue you can do with that will increase because you have the robots to do more of the labor for you. Those six or eight employees now produce significant more amounts of revenue because they have robots assisting them.

So from a revenue perspective, yes. But also keep in mind with things like inflation that will happen alongside of robotics, like there's a lot of the dollar amount will change completely. So.

Yeah, a lot of that's hypothesizing, but I generally believe we are the robotics that are happening in 10 to 20 years are going to be the Thing that supplements the current labor and makes them twice as efficient. And so I think there's software gains that can make someone 20 to 50% more efficient, but you can double the output of someone if you had the robotics alongside of them did all the mowing, they just had to blow off and do the line trimming, for example. Or the robot could spray everything off and then the technician would have to make sure that the other aspects of the job were done. Marco, if each location yields $100,000 in profit after paying GM well, does this mean that if someone had 20 locations, they could be around 1.5 to 2 million passively 10 years down the road from even with the robotics? No, because 20 locations in 10 years.

It'S possible. You would need a lot of money, a lot of capital to fund that. So assuming you have tons of capital behind you. Yes, but also most of those locations will happen in years 8, 9 and 10. Just because you have to get your systems of hiring general managers and regional managers in place. And so.

You would not be able to have them all in profit mode at 7,800,000 in revenue by that 10th year marker, you have maybe half of them, like the first ones in the first five or six years, but not the ones in the last few years. So unless you started 20 locations in like five years, which again, you need super amounts, you would need a few million dollars to make that happen. Well, assuming you also have the skill of hiring general managers, I don't. So I don't recommend anyone go get 20 locations unless you have had the opportunity and the you have the skill set of hiring and training general managers and you have a lot of it. So that's why even like with the the executive model, the owners are stepping in as the regional manager for now. Because finding someone to hire your general managers is another skill. On top of that, like you're compounding it to find regional managers who manage your managers. And so.

Yeah.

Marco, would buying out another Augusta locations be the Smart Financial News 15 to 20 years from now? At that point there wouldn't be any good cities to open up new ones. Thanks to the input. Yeah, like likely as with most territories and franchising, when you, when territories are given, because some like Subway don't have territories, but for Augusta, where we do have the territories, the only way down the road would be to buy in. But the reason I like that is because then it makes all our valuations for each location go up. And I do believe in 10 to 20 years there's gonna be people currently Watching this video that want to exit and that's fine. And so in order for them to be able to exit, be able to really drive where they're completely surrounded by territories and they're landlocked and in order for someone to join, they have to buy in. That's awesome because your valuation will go way up, just like mine has Anytime Fitness, because we're probably 2 to 300 miles landlocked in terms of where territories can fit in for Anytime Fitness. So like my valuation's gone up even though my revenue's gone up. Not. Not crazy. And like profits are better, but not like insane, but yet my. My valuation is higher because everyone just wants to buy in. It's the only way to. So that. That's like the benefit of a growing system. And. But I think that'll be like more 10 to 15 years, especially if people, if we go public and people have been able to kind of cash out on with that side of things, if they've invested and then they have a few, several locations, it's like, okay, I want to, like, I want to become a little more retirement or I want to move into something like real estate, or you're something you're passionate about. I want to make sure that's an opportunity. I don't look as at August. It's like you all need to be here for the rest of your life the same way that your frontline crew members, I want to see them move up, become general managers, become owners. Like in 10 to 20 years, I believe people, I'll mention some names because I think they're awesome people like Ryan Payne, Connor Hutchinson, Jordan Hellbush is here for executive model. You'll probably want to either a, make them very passive and make them like cash cows that just print you money, or you'll want to sell them and like move on to something else. And that's awesome. That's cool. I don't think he'll mind it. Connor Hutchinson is super passionate about, like, space. And like, in order to even start space, you need millions and millions of dollars. Like, he'll have to build this. He'll probably get experience in years 5, 10, 15. That is educational towards the goals that he has outside of Augusta. And then down the road, he has an asset if he has 10, 15, 20 locations that he can sell, cash in and move on to something. So I think that's super cool. That's the way I kind of think about it. So in order for that to happen, though, like, the more locations we can get, the value of all of our territories go up the same way that people who join in the first 10 locations, their license has more than doubled in terms of the value. But not just a license, because the license will go up to probably 50,000 down the road. But more importantly, it'll be the value of someone needing to buy in to just get access to the system. So.

All right, fantastic work to everyone getting partners inside the Augusta leads program. We have about a hundred, over 100 now that have applied. We still go through vet every single week. We put the new ones in. Right now only about 25 to 30% of leads that come in actually have a partner. So we want to get that number up. So we're working our hardest to be able to call and contact partners in your area when a lead does come in. But the best thing you can do to ensure that all of your leads get actually monetized is to get your partner set up. So highly recommend it. You still have a month or two before we all get crazy busy. Spend this time to get partners. Feel free in the Facebook group. If you're hitting a roadblock, I'll hop in there and help. It generally like these, this is the time to do it. When we hit spring rush and you have leads dumping on you and you're starting to reduce services and you're trying to make it simplify, you want to be able to have those leads handed off to someone else. The ones that right now we are seeing the easiest to find partners on is anything outside of mowing, because people like that have retaining walls, paver patios. Contractors are thrilled to pay $79 a lead for mowing. Some people have a little more of a problem with it because they think that you're going to compete with them. So that's where, like the, the security of the data and why it's so important is that we can sell off mowing leads that are just outside your service area down the road. And people are, are happy with it. But we are getting a lot of those people too. It just. Those are the ones that usually follow the content. They know the brand, they trust what we're doing and they know that we're not going to rip them off. So you're going to get some, some pushback because people are going to think that you're going to take the lead from them, et cetera. So that's why we're being very, making sure it's third party outside of command center, outside of you, that that data gets very clean, is very clean. But trust me, like Even from what I'm seeing right now, if they're. If. Even. Even if 60 to 70% of your leads that are go unserviced could get monetized in your local area, there's going to be a whole bunch of people in 12 months from now as we go into spring rush 20, 26, that are making money and above their franchise fee. I'm just looking at the numbers, the strict numbers of the amount of leads that are falling through the cracks right now. So take that time. It's well spent. If you send an email or text and you didn't get a response, call them, show up at their office right now, they don't have a lot going on, so they're able to spend the time for you to explain it to them. I just, just honestly believe that in the next few weeks, if you can nail this down, this is going to lead to 5, 10, $20,000 extra this year for each location. And I want to see you all be able to make that. So appreciate you all. Hope you have a fantastic rest of your day and we'll see you tomorrow. Take care.