Mike Minutes Mastermind 02/17/2023

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it's Friday and today is copilot launch day. Let's go. It is also.

Yellow shoe day.

So hope you're all doing super well getting ready for spring. Let me go ahead and drop this in the Facebook group.

Co pilot launch. It's gonna be great. Very nerve wracking the past few days. I was hoping to launch yesterday.

But as usual there's always bugs. So here's what it is. All right, let's hop in. Keep an eye on the Facebook group. The media team will update us when vistaprint has finished all of their changes to our designs. There's a whole bunch of new ones that are in there, but just wait to download them and use them. If they're brand new and you haven't seen us use it, talk about them for. Just wait because for some reason you guys can somehow get in there without vistaprint making edits that are required. So don't order anything. All right, but once the media team, they will notify you when those are ready to go. And there's some cool ones in there. Let me just make sure.

Yeah, there's some really cool ones for like welcome to the neighborhood. For new people that just moved in. There are upselling opportunities for your customer, for your employees. There's also a Property Inspection 1. Zach gets all the credit for the the green acronym. See if I can do it. Off the top of my head there is Zach. What does green stand for again?

Grooming bushes. Routine maintenance. Just like mowing enriched lawn. It's like treatments.

Excellent. Multilater layer, no weeds. That's weeding. And they also have an option to add more other stuff in there, like write them in. So thank you, sir. Zach gets all the credit for that. Okay, so those would be for like property inspections, especially for solo operators. If you're out in the field on truck, be able to upsell customers into other services. Can be super helpful. But there's a whole bunch of other stuff coming in, so keep an eye open for those. Okay, I think that's all I got. Let's make sure. Yes. Cool. All right, present. Full screen window. Boom.

All right, rock and roll. We got nine questions a day. First one's coming from Nick Sneddon up in the north. Facing the classic issue of my best employee being bad for culture. Oh.

Extremely reliable, very efficient, and crushes PvP. One of the only guys that can send a job alone and know it will be done properly. However, he's missing a lot of the intangibles. For example, we'll eat lunch in the truck alone on the projects. Complains a lot. He has not fun to be around to the point where I have other employees not wanting to be on a job with him, etc. I don't want to lose him and do see potential in him. He has expressed interest in moving up the company. So the first thing I would say is, have you talked to him about these things? Okay, so.

Most miscommunication happens because we avoid just talking about it and discussing it based on what I've seen. So I would recommend talking to him, be like, hey, especially that last part, the fact that he expressed interest in moving up the company. You should be like, hey, I see you want to move up the company. Here's what I see that you could do that needs an improvement in order to be able to move up in the company, right? And then you simply just are really honest about like what are the intangibles that you need to see from him to be able to do that? I forgot this last part looks like how would you go about dealing with the issues I mentioned, specifically the part about him not being fun or positive and other guys not wanting to work with him. So I'd highly recommend doing.

Peer reviews to be able to get all this information out and then do a review of the peer review with each person. So if you, if you do a peer review that's anonymous, you can use SurveyMonkey, you can use piece of paper, whatever it is.

Do that and then go over the review with them because all the other employees are going to tell going to say like should eat with the guy. It should not eat with the guy. Eat alone in the truck is annoying to work with. Like they're going to say some stuff and then you can go over it with him in person and say what your thoughts are. But you didn't have to initiate the conversation. So that would be my recommendation number two.

North Wilmington. Excuse me.

Under creative marketing material, what are your thoughts on creating a dust a coloring book for clients, children? They love the mowers, our trucks and Max when we pull up to a lawn. I think it would be cool for them to have something to keep around the house. Also, it would be harder to throw out during in person estimates. If you notice they have a kid, you can hand the client the book. I guarantee they give it to them. I think it may be a good branding play and something that makes us stand out. If it comes down to it, if you think we should spend time on it and we cost it up. Thanks I'm like not a bad idea. Even if it was like a.

Front and back on like a card stock that you could give them and it could just even be max out like playing you know, working in the garden or something like that. So definitely a good idea, you know, definitely can make that happen.

On the creative marketing, Jeff from Sandwich Master Mike. I'm setting up Google Ads now with future start dates. You mentioned a new way you'll be doing the links to our estimate forms.

If I'm sending it up with slash estimate link, will this still work come later season or should I be updating it? One other question. Yeah, so if it's working, you're good. Just, just test it and do it. We will not retract them, so don't worry about that.

You can always double check it if you want if you wanted to. But yeah, we're making sure that everything that's going backwards is fixed. But just if it's working now, it'll work in the future. I'm thinking to raise rates again this season by $5 or $10. Hit me at 85 to $90, I'm guessing per hour. Curious in your opinion with increasing rates in a possible down economy, I'm thinking to do across the board new and existing. So what's happening in the economy has no impact on whether or not raise prices. In my opinion. Everyone always thinks that. It has nothing to do with that. It has everything to do with what your close ratio and what's your capacity. If your close ratio is high and your capacity, you're hitting your limits of capacity. You should absolutely raise prices. I don't care what the economy is doing right. So don't, don't care. I do not care about the economy. When it comes to whether or not you should raise prices, it comes down to are you getting enough leads to refill the funnel when customers leave because of price increases and are you hitting up against capacity to where you don't want any more customers and you should be raising prices. So I would definitely say go, go ahead and do that.

Big bang. Okay, next question. Max and Burnaby, random question. How many coaching calls do you typically do for the public these days? I have limited it to one every two weeks and I canceled my last one because I don't have time. I just told them reschedule.

West Meridian Zooper announced in a recent update they will be also utilizing Square has a credit card processing merchant. Are we able to switch over to Square? I've been having some issues with Stripe and would rather use Another processing company, I would highly recommend not using Square. Their processing fees are higher. They have a very closed off ecosystem in order to be able to use it. I used it for the gym. I've used it multiple times. Other Weebly is actually based on Square. Square owns Weebly. So I recommend using Stripe. It's built for what we do. Square is not built for what we do. So I highly recommend sticking with Stripe. It's going to be always glitches and bugs with every single software and every processor and things you don't like and issues with processing time. There's always going to be. I promise you. Stripe is one of the best in the industry. I've used Square multiple times and been disappointed.

For what we use it for. They're great for merchant stuff like in person, credit cards, flea markets, barbers, restaurants, stuff like that. But their processing is just not as good as Stripe. And furthermore, when we switch to Copilot, everyone's super everyone stripe. You could. You could keep their card information too.

Max to add a yearly user on Essay, I have to contact Essay support, correct? Yes you do. I believe on the Let me just trouble check this before I speak out of time. I'm just going to the dashboard and I'm going to the deals page.

Underneath the preferred vendors. Let's see if I have this for Service Autopilot here.

I don't. It's on the Facebook group. So if you look on the Facebook group I have a contact in there. But if you contact service autopilot you will be able to get the yearly if you would like. Secondly, do I have to contact essay support to get the discount monthly user or that discount automatically? Yeah, so if you're part of Augusta you automatically get the discount monthly user. But if you want the annual user you'll have to contact that. So just keep in mind you'll be paying for the annual cut person no matter what. So don't go above what your lowest employee count is during the winter.

Kent, Michigan My question about Copilot and how you're going to scan each house for estimates. Can you go into more detail? Explain how you came up with 12 million? Is there any way we can help I. E Take pictures of houses or something like that to put in the database for free? Yeah, so. So there is 80 million single family houses in the United States currently. We can get all the measurements we need for 10 cents an address.

It is still cheaper to do it manually. Like literally having teams of people doing it compared to actually building an algorithm because the algorithm would Cost way more than that and it would be less accurate. Currently, I think in five years, the algorithm will beat it out. But if we're trying to be first to market in two years, we will have to do it manually. So, yeah, 10 cents per. So I'm counting on it costing about 8.5 million direct cost. And then it's in the cost. There's gonna be redos, there's gonna be inaccurate data. There's gonna be times we have to go back and refix things because people will do things wrong and that will cost more too. So I'm kind of rounding up to 10 to 12 million. I think it'll cost us to do that at least, because either a, you do it manually and you literally. It's just a math team of 80 million houses. That being said, I think we can. I think we can hit half of those and hit most of the market. Right, like the east coast, for example. Like, that's the focus. I will definitely be prioritizing everyone that has an Augusta lawn care location. I'll be making sure that we get those areas done first. So when we switch to copilot, we all have it. No, let me get it clear. Not in October. We will not have this done in October. Guaranteed that. But my goal is like in 2025 to have this done.

And so currently that's the method we're using.

Yeah, we have some things we're working on, but like right now we are. This has kind of been shelved after our beta. I finished Whatcom County. I should have finished it next week. We should have Whatcom county, the local area, finished first. And so we'll probably end up doing this. Summer and fall is actually starting to test on the website and everything and getting kinks out locally.

People are gonna lose their mind when they see it. It's that big. But it's just gonna cost a lot. Like, even just for the locally, I'm spending. Oh, man, how much do I spend?

Probably ten grand. Probably ten grand to get all the ones in Wacom county scanned. But again, it's inefficient. We have to redo things, fix stuff, change stuff around on how you're databasing things.

So anyways, people are going to lose their mind when they see what it can do, especially with integration to copilot Kyle Carvin for the Augusta conference coming up in June, the one Kevin is putting on. Would you suggest having your GMs come too? Absolutely. Could. I think that Kevin will probably record it so you can watch that. If it's a price issue.

I think it's called just so we all call it the same thing. I think he's calling it the workshop, the Augusta Workshop. That's in June. That way everyone knows that conference is going to be October. The workshop is coming up in June. Southeast.

Evansville. Would you recommend doing a hiring bonus? If we need more employees looking at 500 hiring bonus, like what Chuck does, does it over 30 or 60 days. I know he treats it like one late and it's half gone, but just profit, just. Just like profit sharing. Do you still recommend hiring bonuses? If so, what's a solid execution of it and wording? I think a solid execution of it is like what Vlad did Chuck does. It's like if they stay for 90 days, they have to get a 500 bonus. You could do 30 if you're really struggling to find people. But.

There are so many people doing hiring bonuses. You're not going to be competitive on that front. You're going to be competitive. And what's making you unique is things like upward mobility, the ability to be able to become a gm, the ability to own your own business. That's what I'd be selling. Because that's going to be unique than, you know, a lot of other people trying to offer hiring bonuses. And if someone's joining a career that is making say 40 or $50,000 a year on P4P and they're going to change jobs over a 500 hiring bonus, I don't know if that's a person you want around. I'm just being honest. So.

They gotta use their head a little bit.

Next question. Oh, that's hilarious. Put your name in the part here. Okay, cool question. Would. This is from Plantation. Would you use city benches for marketing advertising? I mean, in my service there are a dozen available. Prices range from 150 to 250. These are right in my service area inside the better parts can cutterhouses between 2 to 6k. I would not recommend this. I have not seen these work. I've never tried them personally, but I talk to people who have.

Now this is literally going right into your neighborhood. Try doing one. Do a yellow one with Max. Just see what happens. Like got mowing and put max on it. Just do what happens. Do one, but don't do 10 of them.

But if this is like the way that this is angled by the way is actually very unique. That's literally why I'm stopping and thinking about this. Because like most C benches are parallel to the road. If it's bent like this. And this is going into, like, a target neighborhood. Do one of them. See what happens.

Do something off the wall, though. You can't just, like, throw your phone number and say mowing. Like, you can't either got mowing or.

Something funny. Like you've got to do something to catch people here. So some sort of tagline around the mowing, the grass.

Sitting on it. Something. Right.

Okay, delete all responses. Very good. All right, we had some other questions come in.

How has Copilot been since released any bugs? We will find out today, because today.

Launch day. So we'll find out. We're gonna launch 30 people in and then do 50. 50 people per day. I'm sure they'll leave you up bugs, but George is gonna crush it over here. Where can I get P4Pmerch? P4Pmerch? Mercy. Goodness. We don't have any merch right now. We do have shirts, but you can actually. You know what? You could order them from Ashley. If you really want P4Pmerch, order it from Ashley, because she made us all our shirts and sweaters and things. All right, everyone, have a fantastic Friday, and we'll see you next week. Have a great weekend. Take care of.