Mike Minutes Mastermind 02/06/2025

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to their Mike Metz mastermind. We're going to get jumped, jump, jump right into the Q and A.

Franchise Advisory Council had discussion earlier today about the WhatsApp groups and they all decided that we do need to want to police who gets into them and not just make it an open forum for anyone to join any of them. So, so please don't be offended if Nick removes you from the group. It's not that we don't want you in the group, we don't think you're going to misuse it, et cetera. It's just a matter of if there's a GM group and there's owners inside of that, it's they're going to feel less comfortable to share. If there is a multi unit operator group and we have someone who's so literally just got started, it's just not going to be the kind of conversations that are needed inside that group. So. So someone's gotta be the police here. And so thank you to Nick and Franchise Advisory Council. They had a very good discussion about it and it was a unanimous vote that we do police the groups. So if you want to make other groups outside of that, that's always fine. But the ones that are on the dashboard that when you scan into are based upon certain attributes like size of business, number of locations, et cetera. We do want to keep those restricted just so the quality of those discussions are at their highest level. So please don't feel offended. I think if you were in those groups and you wanted to be able to have some privacy, if you were in of a certain type of business, you would, you would see that value as well. So hope everyone understands and I think that'll be very beneficial moving forward.

Where did that. Okay, cool. All right, let's go get started. First question is from Mr. Anonymous. If you wanted to test Angie leads very lightly, is there a good way for CC to action the leads? Could we provide a CC email for the leads to go to? No, I would send them to your email. If you have the email department at Command center going through your email, then yes, they would manage those leads for you. But I would not be sending it into the main queue at Command center because those are really dedicated for the systems of like SM request forms, instant pricing, max AI calls, et cetera, et cetera. I would more or less put those codes coming to your email and then Command center would only take action if you're in the email department. Oh, that's what I was gonna do. I need to put in the Facebook group. Give me one second. 3M0206 25.

Boom.

Bold 0206 okay. All right, next question is from Ms. Nanas. Could a 3F video get made or added to our careers page?

It's not a bad idea.

My only concern about that is then I got explained to people that most of you don't know about franchising. I explained that to them. I don't know if it'd be pertinent. I'm going to leave it for now. In the videos of the team members talking, several of them mentioned the 3F program though, so that would be super beneficial.

So yeah, I'm gonna leave this part for now. If.

I just don't. There's already four videos. If you start adding too many people, don't watch them. So I leave the four at the bottom talking about pay for performance, etc. And then the ones above that, the team members. There's several people who do mention the 3F program.

But again, 19 out of 20 of your team members are not going to do this 3F program. So I want to speak to the 19 out of 20. They're going to make you money. That's really the objective there. Then you take your best people out of that funnel and they potentially have opportunity to be in the 3F program down the road. Kyle Tarvin, realistically, what are you seeing on the back end? How quickly do you think the friends and family investment round will fill up if no one else can buy in? It would be a shame if someone wanted to invest, but we didn't have the time. Yeah. So I will give plenty of heads up if I think it's about to close. It is filling. I should not say it's filling up. There's a lot of interest, but I am not going to make it based upon that because we still haven't opened up a people can fund. Once people start funding their accounts, I will then let people know if it's filling up very quickly and I'll give kind of a hey, we're at 60%, 70%, 80%. It will fill up probably a little earlier than September, I'm just going to guess, but I will give more details Once people start funding their accounts. We still haven't opened up for people can fund their accounts, but there are commitments that are like, we will close the round. So I'm not making it based on that though, because anyone can fill out that form right now. Once people can actually contribute money and actually fund their accounts through carta, I'LL give an update and I'll make sure that if for some reason it fills up super fast and I didn't catch it for some random reason, I'll extend it if I have to and take a little bit more money to get people in. So don't worry about that. I will give plenty of heads up as it begins to fill up.

Mr. Honest, at what point of the year is it not worth hiring an employee? Only if demand goes down and then right before that demand is spiking. So usually this is around fall cleanups, yet tons of work get kind of a rush of even mowing customers coming in. And then.

You, if you hire all of a sudden now your capacity is higher, great. But then right after fall, you don't have anything in the Q4. So Christmas lights, snow, nothing in there. Winter services, that's when you have a trouble. So that's the only time I would not hire an employee is when I know that within a matter of four to eight weeks, I'm entering in a period where leads drop off, in which case I'd probably just turn my marketing down so that I'd just be more profitable during those couple months.

Jeff Sandwich Jeff from Sandwich, Massachusetts. I'm going away this winter a few times. I have a team member who is okay with managing snow plowing, which includes managing two employees and approximately 30 drives three parking lots which require hand shoveling and salting. To reward him for managing, I was going to do a 10% of plow sales as a bonus and I was thinking of doing an additional 5% if he completes with zero customer complaints. Doesn't have to reach out to me with any questions. Does the percentage of sales sound fair? Do you think the additional 5% is a perverse incentive? He's been playing with me for six years. He's experienced. Yeah, I don't think this is bad, especially around snow. It's just one of those things that's very stressful. I think a 10% on, say if you're able to get 60, 70, 80 grand in that season, getting a 6 to $8,000 bonus plus the other 5% that, you know, that's a really good bonus for them. And if that means you get to be out of town and not think about it, that's excellent. So I'm not against this. Something like snow that is one off, it is very time intensive. Like I'm not against that. And that'd be basically his pay for performance. Like, hey, you get all the work done, you don't have to contact Me and everything was done to high quality. Customers are happy. That's not a bad deal. Not a bad gig at all.

Also, I would really highly recommend for people to get their partners step inside Augusta leads for snow because we get bombarded at command center with snow requests and if you don't offer snow or you're filled up with snow, those leads are valuable to people. So just, just as a side note there we have, I think this is an Update. I think 120 partners.

So they're still trickling. 116 have submitted. 117 have. Have submitted. Not all of them get in, but every day we're getting a couple more. Keep adding to that. I think once we get about one partner per location, so around 150 to 200 in the program is the majority of our leads that don't get fulfilled by Augusta will actually get monetized. Right now only about 20 to 30% of leads that fall through actually get monetized because we just don't have enough partner penetration. I think that'll step up pretty heavily over the next four to five weeks based upon how many partners are joining. So that's very good. So keep, keep it up. Keep up the hard work on that end. David from San St. Matthews. Hi Mike. I have a question about business and personal finance. For context. My location will be entering the wilderness. 250,200 to 500,000. This year I'm going to start drawing $1,000 a month in the business for the first time to pay for living expenses not covered by my wife's salary. Previously this has been covered by extra cash we had in savings. We also had a separate emergency fund for three to four months expenses. We do not have high interest debt, personal or business. My question is whether or not you think it makes sense to draw income for the business more than a thousand dollars per month to begin saving in a Roth account Currently do not have or other savings accounts. Or is it a better plan to keep as much money in the business possible to get to 500k and switch to profit mode sooner, at which point there will be more margin available for things like retirement and house down payment, etc. Yes, I like Man Mercy. So Roth. Let's assume the stock market continues on its current tear and you get 10 to 15% return on 10, 20, $30,000. We're literally talking about 2 to $3,000 versus taking that 20 or $30,000 keeping in the business and getting through like spending that money on marketing and maybe, you know, a piece of equipment or something to get through the wilderness. And on the other side of the wilderness is the difference between, you know, you know, making three, four, five thousand dollars a month in profit to being able to make that jump to where you can turn on profit, raise prices by 10% and make just raising your prices by 10% at 500,000, you're going to generate an extra 30, $40,000 a year in profits. So like, I don't, I don't think the Roth is, is right at this size. Do I think the Roth is a valuable tool? Yes, from a tax deferred perspective, et cetera. You can see save money on taxes and be able to invest and get return. But is it going to come close to putting that money, that same amount of money into your business and getting through the wilderness to get to the place where you can raise prices by like, I don't recommend 10%, 15% minimum, you're going to immediately make that profit like in way, way bigger returns, way bigger returns. So for example, if, if in the next year you're able to put $30,000 into a Roth, okay, great, let's go say that the stock market goes up 10%, you got $33,000. Let's say you get some tax savings. So let's say call it $4,000 that you got as an improvement or increase in your assets, assuming that everything goes well with the stock market, which could not be, which may not be the case because of tariffs, et cetera. So let's just go assume though it goes really well, 10 year, 10%, $4,000 in your pocket. Now if we put that same $30,000 into marketing and growing the business and we get from 200,000 to $500,000, get to capacity with two, three trucks, maybe four, max, several, a few employees, and then you throw this thing into profit mode. And if you can do that in one year, so next spring rush, you're able to go into profit mode and raise prices by 15%. 15% on 500,000, that's 75,000. Let's be conservatives, just call it 50. Let's just say you make $50,000 extra in cash flow. Like it's a 10x, it's 10 times better. So yeah, unfortunately, like if you are an entrepreneur and a business owner, you are not, you are inherently taking lots of risk. You are also.

Risk prone. Like you start a business to be able to make that 10x, there's risk involved, you could lose the 30,000. Less likely that you're going to lose all that 30,000. If you put it into a Roth IRA and put in the S&P 500. So there's higher risk. But my question is, is $4,000 going to change your business, change your life financially? No. But investing, risking that money into your business and allowing it to get into profit mode at 500,000 plus and then turning the profit knob is going to make a bigger difference. So this, this right here, this question that just happened, is the reason why we do not take royalties at Augusta Lawn Care? Because if I said what I just said and I was getting a percentage of all the revenue you were making, you would doubt what I just said. I make not a single penny more. If you go from, if you could take two years or you do it in two months, going from 200,000 to 500,000. But I just know if you get to 500,000 and you can turn on your profit knob, you will make so much more return on your money. So, Eric Largo from Florida, number one, I got a couple questions from you for you. I'll be going in the next season with two veteran employees. One is three years tenor and the other is three quarters of a year tenor. The past, I've had the most exclusively handled. In the past, I for the most part exclusively handled training. So I make sure to set the standard. This got a little difficult in peak season last year when I was answering a lot of emails and a lot of estimates to get done, which left me interrupting training time or having my attention split, which probably isn't the best training experience. I was thinking to delegate most or all of my training this spring and summer so I can focus on door hangers and sails to get us to capacity as soon as possible. But I'm a little hesitant. I know for this route I need to set up the trainers for success with accountability and have touch points through the process to make sure the newbies are guided well. Does this seem like a regional approach? How long should I personally spearhead training? We did $330,000 last year. Yeah. So the more risk friendly approach is what you just said, you hand this off to the person that's been with you for three years. You say, here's the training guidelines. Use the training checklist first. Over the course of two weeks, they're going to learn all the skills they have to get signed off by the trainer, that that's the more risk on approach, you're going to go do sales and grow very quickly. The less risky approach, which is going to be more if you have cash sensitivity and not as much Cash in the bank is you're going to train this person new people from 7am till 2pm and then you're going to do estimates from 2pm till 6pm and you're going to tell command center, hey, I can only do estimates from 2 to 6pm and you're going to be with them training for the first maybe six to seven hours, not a full eight hours because you got to do the estimate still. But try not to like mix them up is what I would say. So it's one of those two options. It depends on how much cash you have in the bank. More cash in the bank, you're going to more risk on, you're going to try to accelerate, stay in sales, doing door hangers, crushing it. If you have less cash in hand, I'd be doing training for six, maybe seven hours a day. Having a little bit earlier Dave is not going to hurt the new trainees. They usually get wiped out anyways. And then you're going to go do four hours of estimates. One of my employees is still having issues clocking into every job and punching at the end of the day. Typically this is easy enough to figure out, but is annoying and extra work for me. We have many conversations about the importance of these things. It's gotten better but not eradicated. I was thinking about applying yellow slips to hold them more accountable. Is a good approach. And if so, what is a reasonable dollar amount per offense? $5. Other than time tracking as being a very solid employee. Yeah, like I wouldn't let a solid employee go or like make them humiliated over.

If that's the only issue they have. So what I would recommend is instead of, I would use carrots instead of sticks. So instead of paying, instead of removing $5 from him, just say hey, every day you clock incorrectly, you give them something. Or every week, if you do a whole week and you do all your clocking in and out correctly, I'm gonna give you 100 bucks or whatever it is, whatever that pain that he's inflicting on you is worth to you. That's what I would give him on a daily or weekly basis.

Okay, Brent from Utah, what is the best practice for bidding and budget on Google local services? Is it reasonable to set it automated bidding to maximize leads or do you recommend putting a manual amount under manual? It suggesting I will get the most at $76 leads which is getting pretty expensive. Yeah, like you know, I'd put it whatever you're willing to spend in terms of the manual dollar amount per lead. I don't usually see them going that high. But especially this year I've seen Google services starting to get more and more expensive and I don't think that trend's going to change. But I generally you know, I put what your max you're willing to spend per lead and just know it's going to be it's a bidding process so they get bid up from whatever is $2030 and it'll just keep going up whoever's willing to spend the most. So.

You know there's really no right answer on that. Just just a matter of like during the spring rush if you're getting customers for 2030 bucks on door hangers, I'm probably not going to be having $80 of Google Local services. But during the off season you might be willing to spend 80, 90, $100 on Google Local services in order to get a lead. So you can also throttle it. But it really depends on your Are you in growth mode? Do you have cash on hand to grow into capacity? If you're right at capacity, I'm not going to be spending that kind of money on on leads. But if you're trying to get to capacity, I know that like those customers are worth more to me because I know I'm way more profitable on every customer between now and when I'm at capacity.

Mr. Anonymous hey there Mike. I'm in a bit of a dilemma and could really use your not financial advice. Okay, I'm middle aged and have around $40,000 in savings separate from the business account. My location is set to cross the $500,000 marker by end of year. I'm not enjoying living with my existing roommate anymore and need to move out. I have two options. I can rent an apartment very close to the business shop. I don't anticipate moving the shop location anytime soon if ever, which would let me live alone and utilize saved funds towards a Future Augusta location. 2. I could put $25,000 down on a two bedroom condo which required me to find a roommate to help with the mortgage. Both scenarios require me spending an additional $600 per month. Both options would have similar monthly costs, but I'm feeling nervous about depleting the savings, running out of money and are prolonging in the location, not investing in equity, etc. Thanks for your input. Okay, so because you asked for my non financial advice, I'll give you really like what I would do. This is a little more difficult because you said one part where was your middle aged? This actually plays a big part. If you said you were 25, I'd immediately be telling you what to do. So let me just caveat that like you're middle aged, you start to, you know, are you looking for a relationship or is there other things outside of life, outside of business in life that are important, important to you should play into this factor. Like from a business perspective. I would take one year and hold your breath one year do the rental of the apartment so you can get to 500,000 and then your goal is that when I get to 500,000 and I turn on the profit knob after hitting capacity, that's when I can go buy the, buy the apartment. Because now you can afford it. Because if you, if you get to 500,000 and you hit capacity and next spring rush as you go into it, you're like oh man, we, we have, we have so many jobs coming up, I got to get, I got to raise prices. You doing that literally nets you out another 40, 50, $60,000 in annual profits. And so that's when you go make the buying decision. So for anyone out there that's like I'm gunning for the 500,000, I'm gunning for getting to profitability. I'm gunning for hitting capacity benchmark. Something like this around when I get to capacity and I raise my prices, I know I can afford it. That's when I'll make the purchase.

Kyle Tarvin I'm finding it difficult a business line of credit. Call a few lines, few local credit unions, they only offer personal lines of credit currently. Is there a way that I could get, could use this personal line of credit for the business? I'm thinking of getting the personal line of credit, pushing whatever I need on the line of credit and just paying myself extra from the business to pay off this line of credit. Bad idea.

Very strange that they're not offering you business lines of credit now if they're, if they're saying if you're trying to get a line of credit without a personal guarantee, I don't rec like that's very difficult. You're going to pay really crazy terms, etc. But if you're collateralizing debt, I don't know why you wouldn't be able to get a business line of credit.

I think in, in the multi unit Operator 1 Jason had had.

Mentioned a really good firm that he was using for some debt. I'd probably refer to that one because he had a really good experience. But.

There'S nothing wrong with getting a personal line of credit. You're still gonna have a Personal guarantee. So you can use the money however you want. Once you get a line of credit, very rarely does the bank like, hey, what are you spending this money on after you get it? It's getting it. They're like, what do you want to use this for? You're like, I want to build a deck. You could technically do that. And usually they're not gonna like ask for receipts or anything like that. So you could do that. I just don't see why if you're collateralizing the debt, why we wouldn't. Why you wouldn't be able to get the business line of credit, honestly. So yeah. Iota, is there a way we can access the ALC watermark to add to pictures posted on the social media? Access the ALC watermark to add to pictures and posted? Yeah, you can definitely do that. Just go into the, the logo portion of the, of the dashboard and just take the Augusta logo and you can just put in the bottom hand, right hand corner or left hand corner, wherever. If you want to watermark any image you're putting up, that's totally fine. Iota, is there plans for copilot have the ability to save routes permanently instead of having to route every day? Yes, there is. How it's kind of going to roll out is February is going to be. It's going to be end of February, maybe the first week of March. But that's customer portal and then it is right after that is the Field Force mobile app as was described at a conference. And then after that is wait list and then after that you're going to start seeing multi route and then master routes which are what you're talking about here. Two different versions, but we will get there. Yes.

Alamo Ranch. Marcus. Hey, Mike. I think my webpage is on the sec. It's on the second page. Google. What can I do to get the first page? I searched lawn care service in San Antonio. Yeah, so if you search San Antonio, you're not going to get on the first page. When we go after smaller markets, that's what we can just dominate. Like that's why some of our slowest growing locations are from our first 10 to 20 locations inside of Augusta Nation where I let them have massive territories or territory names that encompass millions of people. San Antonio has millions of people. Like There are probably 10 plus companies in your area that do 10 million plus have thousands of Google reviews. Like it's just we can't displace them. You have to. The amount of traffic they're getting, their site is just off the Charts compared to yours. So we could only really dominate if we're going up against people that are in smaller markets. And when I say smaller markets, like under a million people. So when we go after 100,000, that's what we can blow off the doors. And you'd rather be the number one spot in Google listing Google local services and native search in a smaller market? Because like the idea that you need to get into a big market is if you want to build a $10 million business, if you want to build a really profitable $800,000 business, you don't need a really big market. Almost everyone can build that inside of like a 10, 15,000 population.

City, in my opinion. And you'll do it faster because you can boil the puddle. So I would not be searching long care service in San Antonio. And if that's what you're trying to rank for, I would strongly just like try not to do that. It's you're especially like your size getting started. Like you're not going to for San Antonio, for Alamo Ranch, you will. So it's a matter like what the keywords are. There is the important part.

Mr. Anonymous, one second here.

Give me a second, guys. I'm just make a note to the leadership team.

All right, last question. How do you go about putting a manager on a PIP performance improvement plan? Context is performance is low, but even more so, an attitude is a. Attitude is a problem. I've seen extreme decline in team morale and lots of complaints and excuses. So.

First off, I would create your. Your pip. You can use ChatGPT to give you some guidance. And then what I always do is I throw a document like this into ChatGPT and I tell it, I do not want this to come across negative. Please remove all negative language and make this positive. Because like, if you're gonna give a PIP and you actually want them to take action on it, making it negative, like super against like negative words. And I tend to talk negatively just like certain verbs I use and stuff. So if you throw it into ChatGPT, ask it to make it a positive thing it'll make because like that's your inclination if you want to actually see improvement. Bashing them is not the idea. It's like give them something to work with, give them something tangible. And I would really recommend using ChatGPT as a guideline if you have no know where to go with this. I usually take mine and I'll put it in chat to be like, hey, take this and please make like take out my negative language I don't want any negativity from this, and it's going to water it down a little bit, but you don't want to be pointed to the point where someone wants to leave now, especially if you want them to actually.

Stay on, so. All right, everyone, I hope you have a fantastic issue. I'm gonna go wrap up training with a little, little bit of training about multiple units and general manager compensation. Love you all. We'll see you tomorrow. Take care.